“We all know Donald Trump, don’t we,” he told Sky News. Rejecting claims that the UK government was kowtowing to Trump because of the UK’s need to sign a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, dismissed the president’s claim. In a press conference at the White House on Tuesday, Trump immediately claimed credit for the UK decision – “I did this myself, for the most part” – and said he was trying to force other nations not to use Huawei. The decision has also led to accusations that the UK government is putting its loyalty to Trump – who is waging a diplomatic war against China over coronavirus, human rights, trade, its stance on Hong Kong, and Huawei in the run-up to the US presidential elections – before its commitment to put the UK in the vanguard of global technological advances. However, Beijing’s response was more muted than many on the UK side had feared. But it has called into question Boris Johnson’s manifesto promise to supply superfast broadband to every home and business across the country by 2025, and led the Chinese to warn of retaliation. Tuesday’s reversal of that announcement pleased all but the most hardline anti-Huawei Tory MPs. This led to fierce criticism from Tory MPs, including former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, who described Huawei as an arm of the Chinese Communist party and a risk to the UK. Last week’s move reversed a decision made in January when the government announced that Huawei equipment could be used in its new 5G network on a restricted basis. Oliver Dowden giving a statement to the House of Commons: he said US sanctions had changed the balance of the security risk.
Given the uncertainty this creates around Huawei’s supply chain, the UK can no longer be confident it will be able to guarantee the security of future Huawei 5G equipment affected by the change in the US foreign direct product rules.” “The NCSC has now reported to ministers that they have significantly changed their security assessment of Huawei’s presence in the UK 5G network. “The National Cyber Security Centre has reviewed the consequences of the US’s actions … “The new US measures restrict Huawei’s ability to produce important products using US technology or software,” he said. In the Commons, Oliver Dowden, the secretary of state for digital, culture, media and sport, said new sanctions forbidding the sale of US-produced components to Huawei – meaning the Chinese company will have to source them from elsewhere – had changed the balance of security risk.
The government’s private admissions are out of kilter with public statements last week by ministers, who said Huawei had been banned because of new security concerns raised by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which is part of GCHQ. Senior Huawei executives have gone public since Tuesday’s decision saying that they hope the British government will rethink, apparently encouraged by the results of back-channel contacts. In the days leading up to the controversial announcement on Tuesday last week, intensive discussions were held and confidential communications exchanged between the government and Whitehall officials on one side and Huawei executives on the other.Īs part of the high-level behind-the-scenes contacts, Huawei was told that geopolitics had played a part, and was given the impression that it was possible the decision could be revisited in future, perhaps if Trump failed to win a second term and the anti-China stance in Washington eased. The British government privately told the Chinese technology giant Huawei that it was being banned from Britain’s 5G telecoms network partly for “geopolitical” reasons following huge pressure from President Donald Trump, the Observer has learned.