Senior Tories alarmed over Huawei's new role within UK's network

Senior Tory MPs have expressed alarm about Theresa May’s readiness to give the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei a limited role in supplying the future 5G mobile phone network against the advice of some cabinet ministers, security chiefs and the US.

Huawei will be banned from supplying core parts of the network but will get a role in non-core technology, according to leaks from a meeting of the national security council (NSC).

Any potential role for the company in the future network has alarmed senior Conservatives, including the chairman of the defence select committee, Julian Lewis, and his counterpart on the foreign affairs select committee, Tom Tugendhat.

Lewis raised the issue at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday when he pointedly asked whether the government accepted Huawei was “intimately linked with the Chinese Communist government and its deeply hostile intelligence services”.

Standing in for the prime minister, her de facto deputy, David Lidington, said: “Legally speaking Huawei is a private firm, not a government-owned company.”

Earlier, Tugendhat said as part of his role he had been briefed by security officials that it was difficult to make a distinction between core and non-core activities involving 5G because of the speed and capability of the system. “This is a concern that has been raised extremely clearly to me,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

Huawei is a Chinese telecoms company founded in 1987. Politicians in the US have alleged that Huawei’s forthcoming 5G mobile phone networks could be hacked by Chinese spies to eavesdrop on sensitive phone calls and gain access to counter-terrorist operations. Allies who allow Huawei technology inside their 5G networks have been told they may be frozen out of US intelligence sharing. Australia, New Zealand and Japan have banned Huawei from their 5G networks.

In the UK, BT has excluded Huawei telecoms infrastructure from its own 5G rollout and removed some of its equipment from the 4G network. The University of Oxford has placed an indefinite ban on accepting research grants or donations from the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei. In January 2019 Vodafone said it had decided to 'pause' the use of Huawei equipment in its core networks across Europe.

Poland’s internal affairs minister, Joachim Brudziński, has called for the European Union and Nato to work on a joint position over whether to exclude Huawei from their markets, after an Huawei employee was arrested on spying charges.

Much of the doubt surrounding Huawei stems from founder Ren Zhengfei’s background in China's People’s Liberation Army between 1974 and 1983, where he was an engineer. His daughter, Huawei’s senior executive Meng Wanzhou, was arrested in Canada in December 2018 over allegations of Iran-sanctions violations, and she awaits extradition to the US. Ren, referring to trade issues between the US and China, says the company is 'like a small sesame seed, stuck in the middle of conflict between two great powers'.

Asked if supplying an antennae presented a low risk, Tugendhat said: “No, an antennae obviously carries the communication system and this is exactly the point that was made very clearly to me by one of our Five Eyes intelligence partners.”

He added: “The reality is we are talking about a system here that will need constant upgrading, and every time you do that you’ve got to open up the system to your technology partner to make sure it works.

“The Chinese government is experimenting in extremely – how can I put it politely – adventurous ways of expanding an intelligence state into a domestic infrastructure.

“They are bound by Chinese law and Chinese law does oblige them to cooperate with the security apparatus of the Chinese state. This does mean it is unwise to cooperate on an area of critical national infrastructure like telecoms with a state that can best be described as not always friendly.”

Margot James, the digital minister, appeared to confirm the leaks, tweeting that the advice of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre, responsible for monitoring Huawei, was that “we can manage/minimise any risk Huawei might pose to telecoms infrastructure and Theresa May is absolutely right to act on that advice”.

She added, however, that no final decision had been made on the Chinese firm and 5G supply, despite the leaks from Tuesday’s cabinet-level meeting. Whitehall sources indicated their view on Huawei was as James had stated, adding that countries such as Germany also thought the risk was manageable.

Jeremy Fleming, the director of GCHQ, said a final decision on Huawei would be formally announced by the culture secretary, Jeremy Wright, in due course.

Speaking to a cybersecurity conference in Glasgow, the spy chief said GCHQ was offering expert advice, but added that concerns about Huawei’s home country were not the top priority.

“We are looking at the risks that arise from their security and engineering processes, as well as the way these technologies are deployed in our national telecom networks,” Fleming said. “The flag of origin of 5G equipment is important but it is a secondary factor.”

Tory concerns were underlined by Mark Pritchard, a former member of the joint committee on national security strategy, George Freeman, a former minister and No 10 adviser, and a former army reserve Bob Seely.

Allowing Huawei to build the UK's 5G network could expose the UK's critical national infrastructure to additional 'risk' and is causing serious concerns amongst many in the #FiveEyes intelligence community & Parliamentarians with oversight on cyber issues. Time for a rethink....?

— Mark Pritchard MP (@MPritchardUK) April 24, 2019

I fear this may prove to be a bad decision, with major strategic #datasecurity & contract issues. Only a few weeks ago the excellent @TurnbullMalcolm⁩, former Prime Minister of Australia, was here warning against this very decision. https://t.co/MmcphBb8Dd

— George Freeman MP (@GeorgeFreemanMP) April 23, 2019

A bad and short-sighted decision which fails to heed the warnings of US and Australian experiece. I fear that this has not been thought through or treated with the importance it deserves. https://t.co/iOCQI7i0hM via @Telegraph

— Bob Seely MP (@IoWBobSeely) April 23, 2019

Some of the UK’s allies, notably the US, have taken a tougher stance against Huawei. Chinese companies are banned from working on critical telecoms infrastructure in the US. Mike Pence, the vice-president, called on “all our security partners to be vigilant”.

The former US homeland security adviser Tom Bossert said May appeared to be ignoring the advice of her security chiefs.

He told Today: “What we see seems to, from the outside, undercut some of her senior security officials and their recent comments in general about cybersecurity and specifically about Huawei’s poor performance over the last year … I’m not sure what the prime minister was thinking but it seems to be against the advice of some of her security professionals.

“I think it is a little overly rosy and optimistic to suspect that [risks] can be mitigated in new 5G infrastructure … Some are concerned that Huawei represents a future espionage risk, that there will be theft of information and some believe a future sabotage risk.”