A decade of reform has left the government better equipped to take the Huawei decision

The prime minister has decided to allow Huawei participation in our 5G network, but to designate the company a “high risk vendor” and to exclude it from sensitive parts of the infrastructure. Legislation to enact the decision will soon follow, and the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has already issued guidance to telecoms networks on how to use equipment from these vendors.

This won’t end the controversy which has surrounded the build-up to the crucial National Security Council (NSC) meeting, with one newspaper accusing the prime minister of “risking the country’s security at the behest of the civil service”, having “buckled under pressure” from the cabinet secretary Sir Mark Sedwill. That accusation perhaps stems from fears that Sir Mark holding the National Security Adviser (NSA) role alongside his other responsibilities gives outsize weight to his views.

On the other hand the prime minister will have had the benefit of Sedwill’s security expertise. The duty of the civil service is to ensure that ministers are supported with the best advice available, and such a decision, with major diplomatic and economic as well as security consequences, can only be taken by senior elected politicians – as the prime minister will know. The NSC, which includes the chancellor of the exchequer, the foreign, defence and home secretaries and other senior ministers, as well as the prime minister, is the right forum for taking such a decision.

The creation of the NSC in 2010 has helped inform such Cabinet decisions better. So have other recent developments. One is that GCHQ, the UK’s intelligence, cyber and security agency, and particularly the NCSC, which sits within the GCHQ family, have been able to assess the evidence and provide advice to senior ministers within a much more coherent structure than before 2010. The second is that the debate has played out at least in part in public, informed by commentary from former and some serving ministers and officials. The same level of public scrutiny was not in place for earlier Chinese investment, for example in the early stages of the Hinkley Point nuclear project.

A coherent national security structure is now in place

Internal government use of intelligence has improved over the last decade. The NSC was one of the earliest creations of the coalition government, building on a plan set out during Gordon Brown’s administration. It has been a success, establishing itself alongside the National Security Adviser (NSA) as a core part of the Whitehall landscape. By November 2014, the Institute for Government was able to say that the NSC “brought greater clarity to a broad range of national security policy issues” and “demonstrates the potential benefits of a ‘strong grip’ at the centre”. 

Even more important for the Huawei decision will have been the creation of the NCSC. It was launched in October 2016, bringing together expertise from across government to assess cyber security risks, and creating a much more public-facing organisation to lead on these issues. The NCSC played a leading role in the response to the WannaCry ransomware attack in 2017, and 2019’s “Operation Haulster” into uncovering credit card fraud. NCSC and GCHQ have been open about the cyber threats from hostile states as well as non-state actors, a departure from the past.

Official advice cannot tell ministers what decisions to take

This is how the government will have reached its conclusion on Huawei. NCSC will have made a technical assessment of the cyber risks, and Sedwill will have given his advice on the overall approach, drawing on other relevant advice.

Security officials are by profession cautious. It looks as if they concluded that the risk could be contained, or at least that Huawei’s investment in UK mobile networks is already so well-established that the company’s involvement in 5G did not create significantly more difficulties.

But it is the NSC, chaired by the prime minister, which takes the ultimate decision and bears responsibility. Only those senior ministers can weigh up what is ultimately in the national interest – including the offence it would give the Trump administration, lobbying vociferously for the UK to reject Huawei. They could have rejected the advice and phased out Huawei’s involvement. The fact they did not will have been based on official assessments, but also seemingly the government’s overall enthusiasm for embracing technological opportunities and digital investment.

Some security debates should be public

There will be those in the security community intensely uncomfortable that this debate has played out in public. But these are difficult trade-offs, and security issues are just one part of a complex decision which goes to the heart of where the UK positions itself economically and diplomatically.

Nobody within government would defend the leak from the NSC which helped spark this debate. However, a more open discussion about security trade-offs is a good thing. It means the public will be better informed and decisions will acquire more legitimacy. The prime minister and his cabinet colleagues should build on the increasing openness of the NCSC and use their national security apparatus to provoke similar debates. Some “deep state” secrets will always remain secret, but the more that can be shared and explained in public, the better.