Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill has launched a formal inquiry and has written to ministers on the council asking them to co-operate, according to the PoliticsHome website.The National Security Council had decided to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core parts, according to sources.
The leak of information from a meeting of the National Security Council has sparked anger in parliament because the committee’s discussion are supposed to be secret.
Huawei, the world’s biggest producer of telecoms equipment, is under intense scrutiny after the US told allies not to use its technology because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying.
Huawei has categorically denied this.
Sources say the UK’s National Security Council (NSC) have decided to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core parts.
Speaking in response to an urgent question on Huawei in parliament, Culture minister Jeremy Wright, said: “We cannot exclude the possibility of a criminal investigation here.
“I do not think that the motivation for this leak matters in the slightest. This was unacceptable and it is corrosive to the ability to deliver good government.”
Mr Wright said that such leaks endangered the ability of the committee, made up of senior ministers and which hears regularly from intelligence agency bosses, to get unequivocal and frank security advice from experts.
He added: “Decisions will get less and less properly-based if we can’t trust people to keep private what should be kept private.”
A spokesman for Prime Minister Theresa May, who chairs the NSC, declined to comment upon leaks or questions on leak enquiries, but added: “The prime minister is clear that the protection of information on matters of national security is of the highest importance”.
Mr Wright said that he would report to parliament the conclusions of a government review of the 5G supply chain once they had been taken.
