MPs Push for Tighter Rules on UK Public Procurement From Hostile States

Hikvision surveillance cameras outside the Hikvision headquarters in Hangzhou, in east China's Zhejiang province, on May 22, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

The UK is facing “Huawei-level decisions on a range of security measures,” Alicia Kearns, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said on Monday as she and a number of MPs called for tighter rules around public procurement.

The government “took too long” to strip Huawei—a Chinese telecommunications giant—from the UK’s 5G network, the Conservative MP said during the second reading of the Procurement Bill, adding that there are “tens of examples” of other Chinese products in the UK’s public supply chain, such as DJI drones, Hytera body cameras, and Hikvision cameras.

Equipment used by British police, hospitals, government, and councils are “providing hostile states with a back door” into the UK’s security and “forcing dependency on these malign actors and the states who produce them,” Kearns said.

She also warned that Chinese-made cellular internet of things (IoT) nodes, commonly known as SIM cards, installed in cars, could give the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) the ability to pinpoint secure sites or to find about “where our prime minister is travelling to.”

It comes after I News cited a “serving security source,” saying a sweep of government and diplomatic cars revealed “at least one SIM card capable of transmitting location data” hidden inside a sealed part that was imported from a Chinese supplier and manufacturer-installed.

The report said Chinese officials dismissed the findings as “groundless and sheer rumour,” and decried “political manipulation on normal economic and trade cooperation or any smear on Chinese enterprises.”

But Kearns told MPs that the three Chinese companies—Quectel, Fibocom, and China Mobile—which together make half of the world’s cellular IoT modules, “cannot be trusted.”

Conservative MP Alicia Kearns, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, speaks during a debate on the Procurement Bill in Parliament, Westminster, London, on Jan. 9, 2023. (Screenshot/House of Commons via The Epoch Times)

Chinese companies including Hikvision and TikTok have previously denied providing user information to the CCP, but the guarantees provided little reassurance, owing to China’s National Intelligence Law that requires all organisations and citizens to “support, assist, and cooperate with national intelligence efforts.”

Kearns argued buying cheaper equipment that is often subsidised by hostile states “is a dangerous false economy because it produces that path dependency.”

She also urged ministers to proactively investigate and debar suppliers that pose national security risks or are implicated in human rights violations and provide guidance to local governments, instead of depending on a “whack-a-mole” approach of waiting for MPs to become aware of certain companies and flag them.

Conservative MP Bob Seely also urged the government to accept a potential amendment that deals with the UK’s dependency on “states that seek to harm us,” listing Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

Hikvision

Hikvision, a leading surveillance company ultimately controlled by the Chinese communist regime, was repeatedly mentioned in the debates.

The company is known to supply surveillance equipment that has been used to target Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in China’s Xinjiang region and has been blacklisted in the United States since 2019 for this reason.

According to security and surveillance industry research group IPVM, Hikvision had also activated alarms that would be triggered by protests, “religion,” and “Falun Gong”—a popular spiritual discipline that has been targeted by the Chinese regime for eradication since 1999.

Hikvision headquarters in Hangzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang Province on May 22, 2019. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)

British civil liberties group Big Brother Watch said more than 60 percent of the UK’s public bodies were using cameras from Hikvision or Dahua, another world leading security camera manufacturer controlled by the CCP.

The UK government in November told departments to phase out Chinese surveillance cameras from “sensitive sites,” but Kearns said the cameras, many made by Hikvision, should be removed from all sites.

She said using Hikvision cameras would be “tantamount to facilitating genocide, because we are funding the Chinese government and enabling them to continue to do what they do.”

Anthony Mangnall, Conservative MP for Totnes, questioned whether Huawei and Hikvision be put on the debarment list. Kirsty Blackman, Scottish National Party MP for Aberdeen North, also urged the government to get rid of Hikvision cameras, vowing to work with other MPs to “ensure that public procurement does not work to enrich those who profit from crimes against humanity.”

When the bill was in the House of Lords, peers successfully inserted a clause that would accelerate the replacement of Chinese-made cameras from British public buildings.

It compels the government to publish a timeline for the removal of physical technology or surveillance equipment from the government’s procurement supply chain where there is established evidence that a provider has been involved in modern slavery, genocide, or crimes against humanity.

The government opposed the amendment at the time, saying the issue has been covered in the bill under national security grounds in the exclusion list and the new centralised debarment list.

The government also argued the bill should be about future procurement, not existing equipment, kits, or contracts.

It’s unclear if the government intends to seek the altering or removal of the clause in the House of Commons.

Tim Loughton, Conservative MP for East Worthing and Shoreham, urged the government to “not only support” the clause, but extend it beyond surveillance technology.

Speaking for the government, Cabinet minister Jeremy Quin said the government is thinking through the Lords’s amendments and will discuss them later.