UK to ban ‘high risk’ Huawei from 5G network

Amid concerns China has exploited COVID-19 economic chaos, Boris Johnson tells civil servants to unwind Huawei from 5G network.

The Johnson government’s reversal comes as MP’s demand an overhaul of the country’s relationship with the Chinese communist party.

Boris Johnson is to claw back Huawei’s involvement in Britain’s 5G network after extraordinary pressure from Tory backbenchers in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

The British prime minister has told civil servants to unwind Huawei’s involvement in the UK telecommunications network to zero within three years, putting the Chinese company’s 5G aspirations across the country in tatters.

This comes as the United States continued its pressure on Huawei and western countries began supporting Australia’s push for an inquiry into the coronavirus outbreak.

While Tory backbenchers have been persistently pressuring the Cabinet to reverse its earlier decision to allow Huawei as much as 35 percent access to the 5G network; it is understood the US negotiations in the US-UK free trade deal were crucial in the fresh decision-making.

The US want the UK to align themselves with the US at the expense of trade relationships with China.

There has been concern across Europe that China has been exploiting the economic chaos wrought by coronavirus for it’s own advantage and suspicion about China’s trading ambitions on the continent as it buys key southern European ports. In Germany there are plans for new laws to stop the sale of critical infrastructure to China.

Australia had warned Britain that the Five Eyes intelligence arrangement would be under threat if the Huawei deal in UK telecommunications was allowed to continue.

The Johnson government’s reversal comes as MP’s demand an overhaul of the country’s relationship with the Chinese communist party.

British MP Bob Seely who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee said:

“This is potentially very good news indeed and shows that there is a significant re-evaluation of our relationship with China.

“More generally, the evidence is now overwhelming that we need a root and branch reform of our attitude toward China.

“Huawei now needs to stop trying to ’dig’ its way into the UK network as it has been doing. British telecoms firms now need clear guidance so we can build an advanced comms future without high risk, high-tech from authoritarian states.

“Huawei is part and parcel of the Chinese state. It is a ‘high risk’ vendor in the UK’s infrastructure. There should be no place for it in the UK.

“Huawei in our 5G network is bad for data privacy, bad for our security, bad for human rights: glad the Government may now be thinking, ‘no way Huawei.”