A parliamentary committee has launched a scathing attack on the British government’s failure to investigate the use of equipment from China’s Huawei in the UK national telecommunications network, saying security issues “have risked being overlooked”.
In a report that will raise questions over Huawei’s links to Beijing and the People’s Liberation Army, parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee said it was “shocked” Whitehall officials failed to tell ministers about BT’s use of Huawei equipment in a ￡10bn upgrade of the telecoms network eight years ago.
The report provides no evidence that Huawei, the world’s second-largest supplier of telecoms equipment, is being used in the UK as a vehicle for cyber espionage or that it has given unauthorised access to any third party.