My Lords, I support Amendment 449 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and Amendment 449A from the noble Lords, Lord Berkeley and Lord Clement-Jones, which deal with transparency. The Minister will not be surprised that I will use this opportunity to raise the blocking of information about the purchase of Hikvision cameras, which are used all over the United Kingdom; he was good enough to meet me twice to discuss this and I am very grateful to him for the time he gave. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, raised this in a Motion to Regret debate in February. I raised it at Second Reading, quoting the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, Professor Fraser Sampson, who said he was
“encouraged to see reports … that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has now prohibited any further procurement of Hikvision surveillance technology by his department”.
I asked the Minister at the time whether he would be willing to share his own department’s response to that letter to the Cabinet Secretary from Professor Sampson, and to explain why, if it was the right thing to do in the case of the Department of Health—and I believe it was the right thing to do—to give information to Members of Parliament in parliamentary Questions, which it was, because the Minister answered Questions from me specifically on this on 25 and 26 May, it was not possible on security grounds to give the same answers it was possible to give in connection with the Department of Health.
Even more relevant, in conjunction with these amendments, is the fact that only last week the information requested in a freedom of information request about Hikvision in connection with HS2—which I will come back to—was denied. That raises quite a lot of serious problems, I think, in the minds of any member of the public, let alone parliamentarians anxious to discover the truth about why particular things are being ordered, how much they cost, whether they pose security risks and what the dangers are to the United Kingdom.
I think we have a serious problem in our procurement supply chain when it comes to the problem of Chinese technology companies—blacklisted, I might add, by a Five Eyes ally, the United States, as a threat to national security and yet allowed in the United Kingdom —who are known for their complicity in human rights violations taking place in Xinjiang against Uighurs, and I declare a non-pecuniary interest as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Uighurs. When I met the noble Lord to discuss the legislation before us, he noted that there are over 1 million Hikvision and Dahua Technology cameras in the United Kingdom —I repeat, over 1 million. The noble Lord outlined that the Government do indeed have concerns regarding the security of these cameras and their links to the concentration camps in Xinjiang.
Now as many will be aware, a number of civil society organisations, including Free Tibet and Big Brother Watch—through freedom of information requests
—have found that a number of government departments, local authorities, NHS trusts, schools, police forces, job centres and prisons use cameras manufactured by Dahua Technology and by Hikvision. What is not clear is the extent of the issue across the public procurement supply chain, and that is why these amendments are so important.
I have asked the Cabinet Office how many departments have cameras manufactured by Dahua Technology and Hikvision and, as I have explained, Ministers—with the exception of the Department of Health—have refused to reply. I welcome the decision made by the former Secretary of State at the Department of Health to commit to removing Hikvision cameras from his department, but when will we have a timetable for other departments to follow suit? How can we justify doing one thing on national security grounds in one department and not elsewhere?
I have asked Ministers how many of these cameras are at UK ports, airports and train stations and, again, I have been rebuffed on the grounds that the Government will not speculate on the security provisions on our transport network. When you apply through freedom of information requests for that information, it is declined. So, sadly, the debate around the use of Hikvision and Dahua in our public procurement supply chain is shrouded in secrecy. I hope Ministers unwilling to be transparent about the issues that we have faced hitherto will see that they are wrong to have been so and will remedy that.
Nowhere is this issue more evident than when I was recently approached by a concerned party who had reported to me that Hikvision may have received a contract from HS2 to install its cameras along the entire length of this new high-speed rail network. Following this information, I submitted a freedom of information request to HS2 asking for information on whether Hikvision has any contracts with HS2, and I was informed that HS2 does not centrally hold information regarding contracts with its suppliers. This is clearly an unacceptable state of affairs. Phase 1 of HS2 is to cost taxpayers—and the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, I am sure will correct me if I am underestimating this—some £44.6 billion, and that includes substantial procurement contracts. It is well within the public interest to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not going to Chinese technology companies that have been accused of complicity in gross human rights violations and the use of forced labour—slave labour.
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With that in mind, I believe the Government should consider provisions to this Bill that will ensure transparency and that public procurement contracts do not go to companies such as Hikvision and Dahua, which have these known links to slave labour. That is why I think Amendments 449 and 449A are so admirable.
I recognise that the Government are beginning to wrestle with the substantial task of removing Hikvision and Dahua technology cameras from the public sector supply chain. One person about whom I have no doubts is the noble Lord, Lord True, who, as I have already indicated, has already been extremely helpful on this matter. But this will become possible only with a timetable and a developed plan, which requires transparency
about the extent of the problem. I hope the Minister will consider what more the Government can do to fully outline the extent of Hikvision’s and Dahua’s presence in the UK—they already have 1 million cameras in this country—so that we can finally discuss a reasonable timetable for their removal, as is happening in other Five Eyes countries such as the United States.