1: Clause 1, page 1, line 11, at end insert—
“(1A) The duty under subsection (1) includes a duty to review—(a) vendors of goods or services to public telecommunications providers which are prohibited in other jurisdictions on security grounds, and(b) the reasons for such a prohibition.”
In moving Amendment 1 and speaking to Amendments 20 and 27, I first thank the noble Lords, Lord Blencathra and Lord Coaker, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who have signed one or all of the amendments. This is a clear signal from across the Committee that the Bill must be strengthened to deal, first, with companies that have been banned in other jurisdictions, secondly, the need to dig deeper into the ownership and investment of companies and, thirdly, the desirability of acting in concert with our allies in Five Eyes.
These amendments sit comfortably alongside the call that we heard at Second Reading for additional parliamentary scrutiny, which the Intelligence and Security Committee has called for. At Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, said that we should focus on what other nations are doing:
“we have allies around the world and will want to be able to work with other companies and countries around the world to make sure we have that diversity of the supply chain.”—[Official Report, 29/06/21; col. 716.]
On 30 November 2020, the Secretary of State told the House of Commons:
“We must never find ourselves in this position again. Over the last few decades, countless countries across the world have become over-reliant on too few vendors”.—[Official Report, Commons, 30/11/20; col. 75.]
During our debate, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, told us:
“Other countries in the free world face the same challenges as the UK”.—[Official Report, 29/06/21; col. 718.]
The noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, urged us to work
“in close partnership with our Five Eyes allies”,
reminding us that
“We have known that Huawei is a security risk since 2013.”—[Official Report, 29/06/21; cols. 726-7.]
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Future threats to the UK’s telecommunications network may not come from as high-profile global brands as Huawei. It is vital that the UK takes into account the experiences and views of its allies when considering the risks associated with a certain vendor or operator. That is what these amendments require us to do. Co-ordination with allies bolsters UK security. Co-ordination with allies protects against threats from China. Failure to take a co-ordinated approach with key allies on telecommunications security undermines the functioning of long-standing security arrangements that protect the UK’s security interests. Recall, too, that US officials warned that the UK’s failure to ban Huawei could have jeopardised Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangements.
These amendments will ensure that the views of key allies will be taken into account in reviewing the threats posed by high-risk vendors. Bear in mind, too, that failure to co-ordinate with allies leads to costs—a point made by my noble friend Lord Erroll on Second Reading—and uncertainty for business. Standing together will also help us to see off the threats which the CCP makes, such as telling us that banning Huawei from the 5G network would cost Britain dearly in investment. Similar threats have been made against Germany, Australia and Sweden as they considered taking action against Huawei’s security risks.
Taking a co-ordinated approach with allies will help to protect against these threats, making it harder for the Chinese Government to single out any one country for retaliation. Earlier collective action could have prevented the later expensive U-turns. The Government’s own estimates calculate that belated Huawei decisions cost £2 billion, excluding the broader economic cost of the delayed rollout of the 5G network caused by changing policies. Belatedly and at great cost, that was the right thing to do, but let us not make the same expensive and dangerous mistakes again. The amendments seek to better protect our national interests in concert with our allies in the free world. I beg to move.
My Lords, we move into the scrutiny of the Bill, which seeks to balance the need for the United Kingdom to be at the forefront in technological development and connectivity—requiring the fastest and most efficient broadband, for example—with the need to ensure that we do not inadvertently open ourselves to malicious actors or states as we do so. It is therefore appropriate that the first group of amendments seek to strengthen the security side, recognising the complexity of modern threats. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has as ever laid out the case extremely clearly and in detail, and I look forward to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, replying as comprehensively. He has long made sure that in the Lords we delve deeply into these issues as we challenge the Government and hold Ministers to account.
These are sensible amendments intended to set the Bill in the context of what our allies are doing, drawing from their knowledge and experience and, as the noble Lord said, most importantly, working together. They propose actions that should be happening anyway but which we know can be easily set aside or overlooked as Governments address many pressing issues. Amendment 1 includes a duty to review telecoms vendors
“which are prohibited in other jurisdictions on security grounds”.
It is important that we both learn from other jurisdictions and act together. We have seen how China, for example, seeks to pick off states, as in its recent threat to ban Australian beef on the basis of what it had judged to be interference in its internal affairs. We also saw the Foreign Minister of New Zealand at first indicate that her country should go its own way in relation to China, clearly worried about China’s possible actions, before stepping back from that position in recognition of the fact that we really are stronger together.
There are clear risks. We see Canadian citizens used as pawns in a wider concern about Huawei. As China becomes ever more dominant economically, and under its current leadership, resistance to its positions will become ever more difficult. We have been unable even slightly to hold it back in relation to Hong Kong, and it is therefore vital that like-minded countries work together. Therefore, there are two reasons for seeing what other like-minded countries are doing: first, to see what risks they identify and, secondly, to decide whether we should act together, as we would hope they would act when we saw risks. We are of course in a weaker position globally as we are out of the EU, which has strength in numbers and economic power.
My Lords, I apologise to my colleagues that I was not able to speak at Second Reading. I am quite clear, as I suspect we all are, that the security of the UK’s telecoms infrastructure is vital. Sadly, we come pretty late to the scene. The expansion of 5G and full-fibre broadband should have happened years ago, so this is not before time.
I read economics at Cambridge and looked at a number of aspects of economic expansion there, particularly in relation to business sectors. It is all very well saying that we will try to prevent the supply chain to the UK network being dependent on a limited number of suppliers. That may be a good idea in theory, but I just reflect that we have a national grid which is every bit as important as 5G; we have one or two aircraft manufacturers, and we have a couple of shipyards, so I just wonder whether there are a whole lot of suppliers out there for the telecoms world—there will be others who are better qualified than me to judge that. However, it is clear that we need to identify areas of risk, and Huawei is clearly one of them.
I would just ask a couple of simple questions. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, mentioned Five Eyes. Is there a co-ordinating structure for Five Eyes in relation to this particular structure? If so, where is it based, what is our contribution to it and who exactly is doing it?
Some of our colleagues may have read the recent trading standards report that has just come out—I read it only last evening. A massive number of scams is happening at this point in time and we are dealing with the trouble they cause.
Amendment 20 refers to
“a specified country or … sources connected with a specified country, including by ownership or investment”.
I have worked overseas, including in a fair number of countries in south Asia such as Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, so I ask: who on the ground will actually be doing the work? Quite frankly, I know of nobody in any of our high commissions capable of doing that sort of analysis. Do we have a floating investigatory system? How are we going to judge the evidence properly?
My Lords, I want to say a few words on this. It is highly relevant that we keep a close eye, but on all vendors, including the ones that may seem okay at any given moment—the world keeps changing. I am not an apologist for, and nor do I wish to promote, China in any way whatever, but it happens to be there and it happens to have ripped off a lot of Cisco stuff a few years back and improved it. The Japanese did this to our cars, many years ago—nothing changes.
The real problem is that we do not manufacture this sort of stuff here; some of it is manufactured in Europe, and of course we are no longer part of that, but does that matter anyway? We are reliant for the supply of all this electronic equipment, and the components—such as chips, which I mention specifically —on China and many other places. The Americans also rely on China to manufacture components which they then put in their equipment. We had a security compromise a few years ago, when compromised components were put into some Cisco equipment. It is more complex than trying to ban one company or one country. But there are not many alternatives for us here, and that is the real problem. We need to get some home-grown stuff going and we need to get it done very quickly if we want to be really secure.
What are we going to do about it? The thing that worries me is that you cannot assume that your allies are always your friends in everything. We have to be particularly careful of being dragged into a trade war under the cover of security or defence—and this does happen. The cost of this whole thing is not so much that Huawei will try to cause us problems in some way unknown if we remove it from our system completely; there is the other side of it. If its technology is working and is better, and we can make sure in various ways that we are secure against what Huawei might do, its technology might get us to where we need to be in an internet world a lot quicker. I notice that we have already delayed quite substantially the rollout of broadband everywhere and 5G—everything seems to be stalling because of these rows, which to me are trade rows.
This is an interesting debate—one that we started about a year ago. During the summer, on the then Telecommunications Infrastructure (Leasehold Property) Bill, many of these arguments were rehearsed. This Bill was held out, in a sense, as the carrot that would address these issues, and it has been some time coming.
To some extent, the initial issues that came up last year have been discounted, with the Government largely moving on the Huawei issue. However, as we have heard—and will hear over the course of Committee—many questions are unanswered. We should once again thank the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Blencathra, and my noble friend Lady Northover for bringing forward these amendments, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. I will be interested to hear his perspective as, having been a Minister, he understands some of the trade-offs in decision-making—it is interesting that he chose to sign this amendment none the less.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, for his Second Reading speech. He could not give it to us at Second Reading, so we got it anyway. There are some issues around industrial capacity which I will come back to.
The noble Earl, Lord Erroll, picked up a point on which I queried the Minister and did not get a response: at what point are we examining this technology? You have systems, sub-systems, components and software. Frankly, if we are doing this, it must be done at all levels. The capacity to do that and track a chip, a piece of software or something in the software which we do not even know is supposed to be there is a huge task. Do we have the capacity in the intelligence services, and the industrial ability, to do it? It is a very important question, as there is not much point having this if we cannot actually do it.
Before speaking to Amendments 1 and 20, I will say a few words on Amendment 27, the Five Eyes element. As we know, this requires the Secretary of State to review the UK’s security arrangements with companies banned by Five Eyes partners and to decide whether to take similar action on the UK’s arrangements with those companies. As I think my noble friend Lady Northover said, the Minister will no doubt say that we do this anyway. If we do this anyway then, to some extent, we should not be afraid of putting it in the Bill. It is important that we walk in as lock-step a way as we can with our Five Eyes partners, but the point of the noble Earl, Lord Erroll, is apposite; China understands that and will play the Five Eyes against each other. We must be aware of that; we must not be slavish in how we respond but canny, and work with our partners so that they understand why we are moving in the right direction.
My Lords, this is my first Grand Committee appearance, and I hope that I do not disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Fox. I have been in a number of committees, but not at this end of the building. I am still getting used to some of the processes and procedures, but I am very pleased to be speaking on this Bill.
From our perspective, the Bill is very welcome. The Government are clearly addressing a very real security concern that our nation has, and, in trying to deal with it, have not just my support but that of every single Member of the House of Lords. It is our country, and we want it looked after and defended properly. Many of the amendments and the comments that have been made so far today, and which will be made throughout the Committee and no doubt at Report and beyond, are about challenging the Government, not from an oppositional point of view but from one of trying to improve the legislation. We want to ask the Government testing questions to see where their thinking is. That is what all the various speakers have done so far today.
There are a number of particular issues. As others have said, the amendments in this group, from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, deal with the international context for the security of the telecommunications sector, however you define that. This is really important, because it affects—not infects—every single part of our lives. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, gave the example of Hikvision and CCTV. Whether it is the hardware or the software, this demonstrates that there are examples of new technology and telecommunications which impact on all our lives but which many of us probably do not view as causing a potential security threat to our country and nation. We have only to look at where that is going—whether you look at this sphere or the defence sphere—to know that we are going to see an increase in telecommunications, and in the use of space, drones, artificial intelligence and all those sorts of aspects.
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That should enable us to avoid what the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, described as “another costly security debacle”. My noble and gallant friend Lord Stirrup told us that we
“need to develop an approach ... that constantly monitors and rebalances this equation in the context of our complex and dynamic world.”—[Official Report, 29/06/21; col. 715.]
These amendments seek to address many of those points.
At Second Reading, noble Lords referred to companies that have caused security concerns in other jurisdictions, including Huawei, TikTok, ZTE Corporation, which the Government have named a high-risk vendor, Hytera Communications Corporation Ltd, Zhejiang Dahua Technology Company Ltd and Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Company Ltd. I will return to Hikvision later. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, said that the Bill’s headline is
“a ban on the purchase of new Huawei equipment”.—[Official Report, 29/06/21; col. 711.]
Like the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Bennett, he referred to the genocide against Uighurs in Xinjiang. I serve as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Uyghurs and am a patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response. Following the House of Commons’ decision to name a genocide in Xinjiang, only last week the Foreign Affairs Committee published a damning report calling for a much stronger response from the Government. These amendments, like those to the Trade Act, which the House passed with three-figure majorities, are a modest attempt to force that stronger and effective response.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, has frequently pointed to the way Chinese companies can fundamentally compromise our infrastructure and, through subsidies, asphyxiate UK industry. The one billion lateral flow tests that we have bought from the CCP are a glaring example. These amendments specifically address the telecommunications sector, but they provide a road map that could be emulated in other strategic sectors.
Finding ways to protect our strategic industries has never been more important. Last week, we learned that, in a deal estimated to be worth £63 million, the Newport Wafer Fab, the UK’s largest producer of semiconductors, has been acquired by the Chinese-owned manufacturer Nexperia. Nexperia is a Dutch firm but is owned by China’s Wingtech. Newport Wafer Fab is the UK’s largest producer of silicon chips, which are vital in products from TVs and mobile phones to cars and games consoles.
This acquisition is happening during an increasingly severe global shortage of computer chips. Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, said that the Government are monitoring the situation closely, but do
“not consider it appropriate to intervene at the current time”.
When she comes to reply, perhaps the Minister could tell us why it is not appropriate, when the right time would be to protect a key national asset, and whether, following the Prime Minister’s subsequent expression of concern, the acquisition is being reviewed under the National Security and Investment Act, which at Second Reading we were all told would protect key national assets from dangerous foreign takeovers.
There is a lamentable lack of strategic coherence or consistency in our approach. On one hand, we have the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, saying that he wants to deepen trade deals with China, while the Foreign Secretary tells us that slave labour in Xinjiang is “on an industrial scale”. We have the integrated review telling us that China is a threat to the United Kingdom, but the Business Secretary telling us that it is not appropriate to do anything at the present time.
This predatory absorption of our semiconductor industry is inimical to the material interests of our technology companies and to national security. Our Committee should consider carefully what is at stake here and why these amendments are so very relevant. Have the Government examined what is happening within the same sector in other jurisdictions, for instance? What assessment has been made of the dependency of United Kingdom manufacturers on China for imports of critical technologies such as semiconductors and semiconductor devices? The applicability of these amendments, by generating a review of other practices in other regions, is of course self-evident. We are starting with telecoms, but the same lessons apply across the board.
I also want to pursue an issue which the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and I raised at Second Reading. The Minister was asked about companies that operate and own CCTV security networks. UK local authorities are reviewing contracts for CCTV equipment made by Hikvision. This is being used to enforce China’s surveillance state in Xinjiang, but it is also operating CCTV equipment the length and breadth of Britain. Is that wise? Hikvision is banned in the United States but not here. I put a simple question to the noble Baroness at Second Reading, and I put it again: why not?
Last week in its report Never Again: The UK’s Responsibility to Act on Atrocities in Xinjiang and Beyond, the Foreign Affairs Committee said:
“Cameras made by the Chinese firm Hikvision have been deployed throughout Xinjiang, and provide the primary camera technology used in the internment camps.”
The committee heard concerns that facial recognition cameras made by companies such as Hikvision operating in the UK—I repeat: operating in the UK—are collecting facial recognition data, which can then be used by the Chinese Government. Dr Hoffman, who was one of the witnesses giving evidence to the Select Committee, said that Hikvision cameras are operating “all over London”. The committee said:
“Independent reports suggest that Hikvision cameras are operating throughout the UK in areas such as Kensington and Chelsea, Guildford, and Coventry, placed in leisure centres and even schools.”
The committee concluded:
“Equipment manufactured by companies such as Hikvision and Dahua should not be permitted to operate within the UK. We recommend that the Government prohibits organisations and individuals in the UK from doing business with any companies known to be associated with the Xinjiang atrocities through the sanctions regime. The Government should prohibit UK firms and public sector bodies from conducting business with, investing in, or entering into partnerships with such Chinese firms”.
So will we? It would be good to hear from the Minister.
In parenthesis, the committee also registered concerns about
“substantial research connections between the Chinese organisations responsible for these crimes and UK universities”,
and said that,
“the role of advanced technologies in the use of oppression in Xinjiang cannot be ignored.”
At Second Reading, the Minister referred to the report into export licences. The Select Committee complains that
“the Government has not made clear when the urgent export review will be concluded. The crisis in Xinjiang is far too urgent for delay.”
Again, it would be good to hear from the noble Baroness on that specific point about export licences. Can we at least be told what plans the Government have to impose import and export controls on firms linked to China’s military-civil fusion programmes? Are we acting in concert with our allies, as these amendments require, over Hikvision? As in the US, will this Bill be used or amended to enable us to ban it?
The Select Committee also referred to our duties under the Modern Slavery Act 2015. I refer to my interests as a trustee of the Arise Foundation. The committee report says:
“the issue of forced labour in Xinjiang is pervasive, widespread,”
and that
“In the Government’s own words, ‘no business can consider themselves immune from the risks of modern slavery’.”
This, too, is information that has been assessed in other jurisdictions and deemed to raise ethical and security issues of which we should make ourselves aware, as these amendments would require us to do. I can think of no compelling reason, other than vested interests, as to why we would not want to know what other jurisdictions are doing about these issues.
I turn again to telecoms. The argument for more concerted action was put well, in the context of Huawei, by Senator Marco Rubio, who said:
“Rejecting Huawei would not mean the UK going it alone, but joining a coalition of like-minded countries determined to ensure effective, market-based alternatives to Huawei are available.”
He is right. Have we examined this? Are we doing the same?
As long ago as 2018, the US put in place a block on ZTE, China’s second-largest maker of telecommunications equipment, because of violations of sanctions against Iran and North Korea. It has designated ZTE as a “national security threat” with government telecommunications funds banned from buying equipment from ZTE. Are we doing the same? In April, the Department of Commerce added seven Chinese supercomputing entities to the list, with Gina Raimondo, the US Secretary of Commerce, insisting that
“The Department of Commerce will use the full extent of its authorities to prevent China from leveraging U.S. technologies to support these destabilizing military modernization efforts.”
The US has gone further in examining investments, as these amendments do. Proposed new Clause 15 would require us to examine what others are doing in this respect. President Biden has issued an executive order banning US investors from trading shares in China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom. The list of firms in which US firms cannot invest comes to more than 60. I will not read out the full list today, but I have sent it to the Minister, who has kindly acknowledged receipt, for which I am grateful. Among those firms listed are a number specifically connected to surveillance technology including China Telecommunications Corporation, China United Network Communications Group, Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, Huawei Technologies, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation, China Mobile Ltd and China Telecom Corporation Ltd.
However, it is not just the US. Australia is another of our closest allies and a core member of Five Eyes, which is specifically mentioned in these amendments. In blocking a A$300 million takeover offer by China State Construction Engineering Corporation, Australia cited national security grounds. As long ago as 2016, Australia forbade a deal on the basis that China’s subsidies rendered it difficult for Australian bidders to make a competitive bid, with the Treasurer saying that it may be
“contrary to the national interest”.
In 2020, the Guardian Australia reported links between companies operating in sensitive sectors including the national science research agency and technology companies and operatives from the Chinese intelligence agencies, with one reported as having ties to the CCP’s United Front Work Department, a foreign-influence body described by President Xi Jinping as an “important magic weapon”.
Amendment 20 would expand the powers to include ownership or investment, and this clarifies further where risks might be; for example, through the investment clout of certain players. This is clearly vital.
Amendment 27 would require the Secretary of State to review the UK’s security arrangements with countries banned by a Five Eyes partner and decide whether to issue a designated vendor direction or take similar action with regard to the UK’s arrangements with that company. This updates previous legislation where this risk was not so apparent as it is now, with the hugely increased economic and other associated power, for example, of China. Of course, the Five Eyes of the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK are very much aligned on this. Certainly, the risks identified by the Five Eyes should be front and centre in our thinking. I would say that we should add in the EU. Had we still been in it, we would have had that major sphere of influence to strengthen our position further. That makes these amendments even more important.
As the noble Lord, Lord Alton, laid out, we have become very dependent on China in many areas. That is true not only in the area of the Bill but in the new green industries, for example. We need to be much more strategic than we have been in this regard up to now. As he also set out, we cannot build our business on human rights abuses even up to genocide.
I am sure the Minister will say that these amendments are not needed as all these actions will be taken, but they are tabled to make sure that they are. We know that this has not happened adequately up to now; we need to strengthen the Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Alton, has stated. I therefore look forward to the Minister’s reply.
On Amendment 27, we need to take care, clearly, but we must recognise that there may be a valid opportunity in a company that has upset the host Government. You and I would not know the situation, but we should be aware of that fact.
I am a bit sceptical about the security check. I made a freedom of information inquiry—it was nothing to do with telecoms—and, at the end of the day, the reason given for not producing all the evidence following my FoI request was the security of the country. It was never explained in words of one syllable—or indeed in any syllables at all—what aspect of my inquiry would affect the security of the UK. I would like to know this from the Minister: are we relying on Five Eyes or are we relying on Ofcom? Who is it specifically that will be doing this analysis?
I fully understand the points of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about supporting regimes that are doing appalling things around the world. The trouble is that there are an awful lot of them. Take the situation he mentioned, to do with cameras. It is actually the software that does the facial recognition, not the camera; it is purely a bit of hardware that takes a very good, high-quality photograph, and there are many alternatives to it. Who is supplying that facial recognition software? That is where I would really target, and I would bet it is China. If there are bits that are useful to us, we need to use them. We need to stay in the world and we need to get ahead. We are not ahead and we are going to drop behind more and more.
The other difficult thing about picking a fight with China is that, if we are really going to go net zero and start going all electric in the next few years, lithium supplies and processing are from China. There is already a shortage of chips and other things in the automotive industry; I am sorry, but we are reliant on an intertwined global supply chain which stretches all over the place. We must be very careful about singling out one country, but we are—and that is why the amendment is useful. We must have something that says that we are keeping a proper eye on the whole lot of them.
Again, this comes down to capacity. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, asked who does it. The NCSC is supposed to provide the ammunition for the Secretary of State and Ofcom to operate on. There are big questions around the interface between the NCSC and Ofcom and how they relate to each other. How, for example, does the highly secret information the NCSC is dealing with get to DCMS and Ofcom without either breaching security or eroding transparency, or both? We have big concerns about that, and obviously it will come up later.
The noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised Newport Wafer Fab, which until recently I thought was an ice cream firm somewhere in Aberystwyth. However, now I find that, as he set out, it is our only supplier of this equipment. That is an object lesson in itself but it is also completely appropriate to this point. In its response, BEIS confuses manufacturing capacity with technical novelty and has the idea that, because this is not technically novel, that somehow stops it from being valuable to this country. However, manufacturing capacity is central to the delivery of future technical novelty, and if you want somewhere to look, look at the communications industry. We were pre-eminent global leading companies in analogue communications technology; no country could match us. We lost that manufacturing capacity and the ability to innovate in the digital space, and that is why we have the supply chain issues we have today. If the Government have not learned this lesson, and it seems that BEIS has not, we have a long way to travel yet before we get to a sensible place.
In a sense we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and others about specific issues but I would like to rise up a bit and look at the bigger picture slightly. In his Mansion House speech on 1 July 2021, Rishi Sunak crystallises the challenge and perhaps the dichotomy, and points us in a number of different directions at the same time. Your Lordships must excuse me, but I will read out a fairly lengthy passage which is appropriate to this debate. He says:
“And our principles will also guide our relationship with China. Too often, the debate on China lacks nuance. Some people on both sides argue either that we should sever all ties or focus solely on commercial opportunities at the expense of our values. Neither position adequately reflects the reality of our relationship with a vast, complex country, with a long history. The truth is, China is both one of the most important economies in the world and a state with fundamentally different values to ours. We need a mature and balanced relationship. That means being eyes wide open about their increasing international influence and continuing to take a principled stand on issues we judge to contravene our values. After all, principles only matter if they extend beyond our convenience. But it also means recognising the links between our people and businesses; cooperating on global issues like health, aging, climate and biodiversity; and”—
here we come to the rub—
“realising the potential of a fast-growing financial services market with total assets worth £40 trillion”.
What does a mature, balanced relationship look like in context? How nuanced are the examples that we have just heard about the Chinese? First, we can see that because of advanced concerns around the security of at least one Chinese vendor, the UK Government are mandating equipment to be torn out of our existing infrastructure and thrown away at the cost of several billion pounds. That is not a nuance. Secondly, we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, this time and previously, and we have seen the evidence of malevolence within China to its own people on a scale that is, let us say, unusual even for the age in which we live. Thirdly, we can see transparently what is going on in Hong Kong. That in itself is not a nuance either. Fourthly, we have the Chancellor’s stated desire to realise the potential of a fast-growing financial services market.
All this is the context in which Amendments 1 and 20 have been tabled. This gives the chance for the Minister to explain where she and the Bill sit on that nuanced scale, as the Chancellor puts it. He clearly sets out that the Government’s principles will guide our relationship with China, so what are those principles?
One thing that I will talk about in other debates on other amendments is how you future-proof this—and that is part of some of the later amendments. Hikvision, which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised, is an interesting instance. At the nub of it is that, if our allies, who we depend on for our collective security, are banning companies such as Hikvision, as in the United States, how is it in our interests to defend our own security to not do the same? It is unfair to say that it has not been thought about, but there is something of a disjointed approach when one of our closest allies—if not our closest—has banned a tech company that we use. I am sure that there are very good reasons for it, and the Civil Service and others will no doubt tell the Minister X, Y and Z, but it defies common sense. Whatever the reality of it, it just does not appear to be a sensible option, so I very much support the example that the noble Lord, Lord Alton, gave. That is one of the reasons why I added my name to Amendment 27.
With regard to NATO and Five Eyes on a domestic and international level—I shall return to this point on Amendments 18 and 25—who actually holds the ring? Who is the person or what is the department that co-ordinates all this activity across government? Who holds the ring across government? You could say that it is the Prime Minister, but the Minister will know what I mean. Out of all the various aspects of government, who actually in the end decides? And if there is a conflict of interest between them, who then is the judge of that and how does that work on an international level? But as I say, that is more to do with Amendments 18 and 25.
Amendment 27 in particular, as I said, ensures a review of telecoms companies when a Five Eyes partner bans the operation of a vendor of goods or services to public telecommunications providers in its country on security grounds. That is eminently sensible. It a review. The amendment is, essentially, testing the Government by asking, “Why wouldn’t you have a review?” Why would you not—to use a security term—keep that under surveillance?