We must learn from Huawei decision
The decision to allow Huawei to continue supplying a significant part of the UK’S 5G telecoms network steers a pragmatic course between the acknowledged “high risk” to national security and the need to adopt the new technology for economic reasons. No one pretended to be entirely happy with the position in which the country had found itself, required to rely on Chinese infrastructure because home-grown alternatives were not available. The story of how we lost the expertise we once possessed in this field is a sorry one, the product of both a market breakdown and a long-term public policy failure. The one saving grace is that in having to confront this reality, the Government has been galvanised into doing something about it. As Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, told MPS, we must never be placed in this position again.
The compromise agreed by the National Security Council will see a 35 per cent cap placed on Huawei’s share of the market. This will be reduced over time as new domestic suppliers move in. The firm will be allowed access only to the peripheral transmission systems and not the sensitive 5G core which controls data and resilience.
Since Huawei already runs about a third of the infrastructure, this decision effectively limits any further expansion but does not go as far as critics want in reducing or removing it entirely. Foremost among those critics is the American government, whose Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in London for talks today, while in Washington furious Republicans and Democrats lined up to denounce the UK.
How President Trump reacts could determine the direction of future post-brexit trade talks with the US, though in Whitehall there is a sense that this is something he can live with. China, too, saves face by not being frozen out of the UK market.
Aside from Brexit, this has been Boris Johnson’s first big foreign policy conundrum since the election and he has handled the inherited dilemma probably as well as he could in the circumstances. Tory MPS, who are deeply suspicious of Chinese involvement in such technology, were more muted in their criticism and the Government was refreshingly frank about the difficult judgment that had to be made. What is important now is to learn from this experience and work with allies to make the West once again world leaders in a technology on which we all have to rely.