Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson has been fired by Prime Minister Theresa May after reportedly leaking information to The Telegraph about the Prime Minister's plans to stop Huawei supplying core 5G equipment to British telecom services.

As the BBC reports, Theresa May said that she had "lost confidence in his ability to serve," with Penny Mordaunt replacing him in the role.

However, Williamson "strenuously" denies that he is the source of the leak, apparently swearing on his children's lives that neither he nor his staff are responsible.

Spoken to Gavin Williamson. He swore on his children’s life to me that he didn’t leak the Huawei news and neither did his staff. Said he believes this is the settling of a vendetta between him and Mark Sedwill — Alistair Bunkall (@AliBunkallSKY) May 1, 2019

Nevertheless, Theresa May said that she had "compelling evidence" to the contrary, and that "no other, credible version of events to explain this leak has been identified."

The reason the leak is so pertinent at this moment is due to the UK's relationship with the United States, and President Trump's relationship with Huawei. The US has banned its agencies from using equipment made by Huawei, prompting a lawsuit from the Chinese company, and the government is encouraging allies to do the same.

For some Conservative MPs, it has been reported, this is seen as effectively snubbing intelligence from the United States - with some calling for an outright ban on the manufacturer.

Recently, it was revealed that British telecom company Vodafone found backdoors in Huawei's equipment in 2009, but still continued to use the company's products. Vodafone is only using Huawei's chips in low risk areas but has said that banning Huawei's technology altogether could cost hundreds of millions of pounds and affect the UK's rollout of 5G networks.