Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification Advisory Council Report: Government Response

The security and resilience of the UK’s digital infrastructure is of central importance to the Government’s strategic objectives. This statement provides an update on the Government’s response to the Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification Advisory Council’s report and recommendations. It outlines the Government’s approach to addressing the risks to supply chains that support advanced connectivity technologies.

I am grateful to the Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification Advisory Council for its report and recommendations, setting out the risks we still carry and what the Government, working with industry, should do to address them.

Ensuring that individuals and businesses have access to high-quality connectivity serves as the foundation of our modern, digital economy. Given our current and future reliance on this connectivity, it is essential that these technologies are secure and resilient. This includes ensuring that we have a healthy, competitive telecoms supply chain, both to drive innovation and to avoid the risks that may arise from acute market concentration. In the broader digital sector, last year’s Crowdstrike incident, which led to IT outages worldwide, showed just how disruptive it can be when something goes wrong with a supplier to which we have high exposure.

I accept the Council’s recommendations. The previous Government took steps to begin addressing these risks, but Government and industry still have more to do. In the Government’s response, we reaffirm our commitment to secure and resilient digital infrastructure. We outline the steps we will take to manage risks in the short term, transition to a healthier supply chain in the medium term, and prevent similar risks from emerging in the long term.

By addressing these issues, we can drive growth and build sovereign capability by increasing the share of technologies developed within the UK. With a strong research base and a range of suppliers of advanced connectivity solutions based here, we aim to expand the UK’s role in the global supply chain and influence the next generation of technologies to meet our connectivity needs.

To seize this opportunity, the Government have committed to advanced connectivity technologies as a key growth market in the forthcoming industrial strategy, utilising our available levers to maximise our potential. We will work in partnership with the mobile network operators to deliver the measures set out in this response. To ensure all our efforts are well-targeted and informed by those both developing and deploying these technologies, we will also establish a new Advanced Connectivity Technologies Council.

The security and resilience risks to our digital infrastructure are significant, but the economic potential that will be unlocked by cutting-edge connectivity is vast. Guided by the Telecoms Supply Chain Diversification Advisory Council’s recommendations, the Government will work to advance secure, resilient and innovative digital infrastructure and the technologies that enable this, now and in the future.