Britain’s defence secretary echoes the US with ‘grave, very deep concerns’ about Huawei

The UK’s defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, said he has ‘grave, very deep concerns’ about using equipment from Chinese firm Huawei Technologies in Britain’s 5G infrastructure.

Williamson said the UK would need to examine the possible security threats as it upgrades its mobile networks over the next two years, according to The Times.

“I have grave, very deep concerns about Huawei providing the 5G network in Britain. It’s something we’d have to look at very closely,” he said. “We’ve got to look at what partners such as Australia and the US are doing to ensure that they have the maximum security of that 5G network and we’ve got to recognise the fact, as has been recently exposed, that the Chinese state does sometimes act in a malign way.”

Huawei is one of the most popular consumer smartphone brands in the world and sells more phones than Apple globally. But Western governments are sounding the alarm over Huawei’s core telecommunications business, due to concerns its equipment contains flaws that enable spying by the Chinese government.

The company has always denied that its equipment contains “back doors” in this way. In a statement to The Times, Huawei said it had “never been asked by any government to build any back doors or interrupt any networks, and we would never tolerate such behaviour by any of our staff”.