Tory rebels oppose plan to let Huawei build 5G networks
UK prime minister Boris Johnson’s plan to let Huawei
Technologies help build the UK’s fifth-generation mobile networks is under
threat from mounting opposition to the Chinese company in his ruling
Conservative Party, government officials say.
The government had hoped to win over Tory rebels with an
information campaign about Huawei ahead of an as-yet-unscheduled vote in
parliament on the company’s involvement in the country’s 5G infrastructure.
But two people familiar with the government’s thinking now
believe that a hardening of positions among rank-and-file Conservative MPs will
make it difficult – If not impossible – to get the legislation passed.
China’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has triggered
calls from prominent Tories for a rethink of the UK’s push for closer ties to
China after former Tory prime minister David Cameron and Chinese president Xi
Jinping promised a “golden era” in 2015.
Even foreign secretary Dominic Raab said at a televised
press conference on Thursday it can’t be “business as usual” with China once
the pandemic is over.
That’s put the spotlight firmly back on Huawei. Johnson’s
government decided in January to give the company a limited role in 5G wireless
networks and fibre, while capping its market share and restricting it from the
network core which sees and controls sensitive information.
The US and other countries say the company is an arm of the
Chinese Communist Party and could enable spying. A spokesman for Huawei, which
has repeatedly denied that its equipment poses a security risk, didn’t
immediately respond to a request for comment.
The government’s argument didn’t persuade a group of Tories.
They include former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who led a rebellion over a
relatively minor piece of telecommunications legislation in the House of
Commons last month to warn ministers of the strength of feeling about Huawei.
The government, which has an 80-seat majority, passed the bill by just 24
votes.
“I think the mood in the parliamentary party has hardened,”
Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs
Committee, said in an interview.
“And I think it’s a shared realization of what it means for
dependence on a business that is part of a state that does not share our
values. That has become clearer.”
Asked if he agreed that the government won’t get its
legislation through, Tugendhat replied: “Yes.”
It’s a view also shared by Damian Green, de facto deputy in
former prime minister Theresa May’s government.
“We need to devise a proper, realistic exit strategy from
relying on Huawei, which will be difficult for some of our telecom providers so
they need to know the government is determined to drive down Huawei’s
involvement to zero percent over a realistic timescale, because that will
affect everyone’s procurement decisions,” Green said in an interview.
William Hague, a former Conservative leader and foreign
secretary who now sits in the House of Lords, said Wednesday the UK cannot be
dependent on China as it’s demonstrated it does not “play by our rules”.
Separately, the British government paid Chinese firms $20
million for two million coronavirus home testing kits that didn’t work, the New
York Times reported on Friday.
A similar rethinking of China relations is visible in the US
Republican Party, as the Trump campaign on Tuesday sent out a fund-raising
email that accused China of “lying” about the outbreak and saying it must be
held accountable.
But whereas the US had already banned Huawei from its 5G
networks, the UK planned to push ahead with a company that is already present
in all four of the country’s next-generation networks rolled out to date.
If the government’s plan is defeated, new laws would still
be required to ban the Shenzhen-based vendor explicitly, a significant U-turn
for Johnson.
A blanket ban would in turn incur billions in costs for the
country’s telecom carriers, who would have to rip out their existing Huawei
equipment, and delay the UK’s 5G rollout by more than a year, the industry has
said.
“Our position has not changed,” a government spokesman said
in an email Thursday. “We are clear-eyed about the challenge posed by Huawei,
which is why we are banning them from sensitive and critical parts of the
network and setting a strict 35 per cent cap on market share.”
Under the UK’s policy, that 35 per cent cap will be imposed
on Huawei’s share of the non-sensitive section of the next-generation networks,
such as antennas, masts and even fixed-line fibre-to-the-home components.
Merely complying with the cap within the three-year deadline
is set to cost BT Group £500 million (€462 million), the company has said, as
it needs to rip Huawei equipment out of its 4G network, which undergirds its
early 5G systems.
High-risk vendors, a category including China’s ZTE which is
already banned from the UK, are also to be “excluded from sensitive geographic
locations, such as nuclear sites and military bases”.
The cap will be kept under review and could be reduced over
time, the government has said. The cap is roughly in line with Huawei’s current
overall market share in 4G, and Huawei said it was expected and reasonable.
Duncan Smith’s group has been trying to ban operators from
using any equipment from so-called high-risk vendors beyond December 2022
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