There is rising anxiety among members of the United Kingdom’s Parliament with a plan to let Huawei help build the country’s fifth-generation wireless infrastructure.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is recovering from a bout with the coronavirus that put him in the intensive care unit, announced in January that the Chinese-based company would be allowed to supply equipment in some parts of the network.
An amendment to a Telecommunications Infrastructure Bill offered by a group of Tories and backed by a small pack of 38 Conservative dissenters would have ended Huawei’s participation in the project by 2023, but it was defeated in March.
But a growing number of lawmakers are getting increasingly unsettled over concerns about the Chinese government’s lack of transparency in its response to the coronavirus pandemic as the telecommunications legislation is still being debated.
“We need to devise a proper, realistic exit strategy from relying on Huawei,” Conservative MP Damian Green told Bloomberg News. “Our telecom providers … need to know the government is determined to drive down Huawei’s involvement to zero percent over a realistic timescale.”
“The mood in the parliamentary party has hardened,” said Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative Party’s chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee. “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.”
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has discouraged allies around the world from partnering with Huawei, arguing that China’s spy services will exploit the next generation wireless technology. Huawei has denied cooperating with Chinese intelligence and urged the United Kingdom to not reverse its position.
The Chinese government has long been accused of misinformation and underreporting the number of cases and deaths. Earlier on Friday, Wuhan officials increased the number of deaths from the coronavirus from 1,290 to 3,869, according to a notice published by China’s Xinhua News Agency on Friday.
