Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government when Huawei was first given access to the UK’s telecommunications infrastructure; what assessment was made of any security, defence and human rights implications of that decision at that time; whether Parliament was consulted; and which Ministers had to approve that access.

The details of Huawei’s entry into the UK market and associated decision making were subject of an inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee into ‘Foreign involvement in the Critical National Infrastructure - The implications for national security’. The findings of which were published in June 2013 followed by the government response in July 2013.

The government response accepted the Committee’s conclusion that the processes of considering national security issues at the time in 2003-06 were insufficiently robust and that Ministers should have been informed.