A second director of Huawei UK is to quit the company after Sir Ken Olisa signaled plans to step down, just hours after the Government ordered a complete ban of the Chinese company’s kit from the UK’s 5G telecoms network by 2027.

Sir Ken Olisa joins Lord Browne of Madingley, who also confirmed he plans to quit the firm amid mounting international pressure over the use of its technology.

Sir Ken is the Lord Lieutenant of Greater London and former deputy chairman of the Institute of Directors. He said he would not look to renew his role as a director on the board when it expires at the end of July.

“If the company is going to be sliced to death in a war of attrition, the consequences are that it is going to have to be somebody else’s problem to deal with,” he said.

Lord Browne, the former BP chairman, handed in his resignation this week. He will leave in September, six months before his term had been due to end.

Lord Browne was previously chief executive of BP, joining the oil firm in 1966 and serving as chief executive between 1995 and 2007. He joined Huawei’s UK board in 2015 and was due to leave next year.

The departure of two veteran board members comes five months before the country’s telecoms firms will be banned from buying new Huawei 5G equipment - a move that is expected to delay the rollout of 5G by at least one year.

The resignation of two prominent board members will add to pressure on the remaining members to leave ahead of new restrictions which will make it illegal for UK operators to install fresh Huawei kit from 2021.

“Frankly, the members of that board should have been reconsidering their position ever since the wolf warrior diplomacy of China became evident,” said Bob Seely, a Conservative MP who has been a vocal sceptic of Huawei’s role in the UK’s telecoms networks.

“I understand people's reasons for leaving the board. I just don't understand why they were ever on the board in the first place,” he added.

However, Tiernan Kenny, a policy manager at technology lobbying firm Access Partnership, said any immediate departures should be viewed as “a very toxic reaction to the decision of the UK Government”.

The remaining members of Huawei’s UK board include former civil servant Andrew Cahn and former BT chairman Michael Rake.

Executives from Ericsson and Nokia, Huawei’s largest rivals in supplying 5G kit, said on Tuesday that they were prepared to plug the gaps in the UK’s telecoms networks caused by the removal of Huawei equipment.

Arun Bansal, an executive vice president at Ericsson, said the group stood ready to replace Huawei kit. “We have the technology. We have the supply chain capability to meet any demand,” he said.

Secretary of State Oliver Dowden confirmed the ban in the House of Commons on Tuesday. He placed the cost of stripping out all of Huawei’s kit from the country’s infrastructure at £2bn.

The new sanctions on the Chinese kit will lead to a “cumulative delay” in the roll-out of 5G across the UK of up to three years, Mr Dowden said.

The decision represents a major U-turn by the Government in its policy on Huawei. In January, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced that Huawei would be limited to a 35pc cap in the 5G network and banned from its core.