National Security

Debate between Angela Eagle and Nusrat Ghani

Wednesday 15th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Dame Angela Eagle)]

I beg to move,

That the draft National Security Act 2023 (Designated Bodies) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 13 July, be approved.

I am grateful to the House for its consideration of this draft statutory instrument, which will see three bodies designated: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right, and the GRU Volunteer Corps. Threats from foreign powers and their proxies have grown in scale and complexity, and we have just had a debate about one of the areas of the world from where these threats emanate. Designation is a powerful tool for disrupting state bodies and those acting in concert with them, and it sends a strong message about the UK’s commitment to tackling foreign power threat activity globally. The Home Secretary has determined that the three bodies are involved in foreign power threat activity, so we propose to designate them under this new power.

Before I give more detail on the bodies in question, it is worth setting out the legislative basis of the decision. For a body to be designated, the Home Secretary must reasonably believe that it is involved in foreign power threat activity, as defined in the National Security Act 2023. The definition of “foreign power threat activity” covers the most serious offences in the Act, including espionage, sabotage and foreign interference. It also covers broader activity that constitutes a serious threat to life or public safety when carried out for, on behalf of, or with the intention to benefit a foreign power. If that test is met, the Home Secretary must then consider whether designation is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom. She will take account of considerations such as foreign policy and the impact on human rights.

Once a group is designated, it is a criminal offence within the UK’s jurisdiction to support, assist or obtain material benefits from that designated body, and the penalties for such offences are imprisonment for up to 14 years and/or a fine. Where an individual commits certain espionage conduct or sabotage for a designated body, this can attract sentences of up to life in prison. Designation therefore enables law enforcement and intelligence agencies to disrupt designated bodies more effectively. Given its wide-ranging impact, the Home Secretary will exercise this power only after thoroughly reviewing the available evidence, including intelligence material and cross-Government advice. A decision to designate is only taken after great care and consideration, and it must be approved by both Houses.

I turn now to the bodies in question, starting with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The long-standing threat posed by Iran and its proxies is well established; indeed, we have literally just debated it. We know that the Iranian intelligence services have a pattern of targeting dissidents, Persian-language media organisations and journalists, and Jewish and Israeli communities globally. The IRGC Quds Force and the IRGC Intelligence Organisation, together with the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, form the Iranian intelligence apparatus. As a key component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, the IRGC is answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Its role extends beyond conventional military operations and includes intelligence activity, the use of proxy actors, and influence operations that are designed to advance Iranian state objectives. Activity linked to the IRGC has involved threats to life and intimidation on UK soil, including credible plots to target individuals in the United Kingdom. The IRGC also supports militant groups overseas, and has been associated with cyber-attacks and other state threats that are actively aligned with Iranian state objectives.

I will move on to the Islamic Movement of Companions of the Right. The IMCR has publicly claimed seven attacks at UK locations linked to Jewish and Israeli communities and to Persian-language media, including the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green on 23 March. Sitting behind the IMCR are members of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, who almost certainly directed attacks across Europe by the IMCR. These incidents, including acts of arson and intimidation, have caused real fear and distress, and they have a profound effect on the communities affected. It is clear that this sustained activity directly threatens the safety and the interests of the United Kingdom.

On the GRU Volunteer Corps, Russia’s threat to the United Kingdom extends far beyond conventional military action. The Kremlin increasingly relies on proxy organisations to pursue its objectives, seeking to undermine our security while maintaining a degree of plausible deniability. The so-called GRU Volunteer Corps is a clear example of that approach. It is not an independent force or a loose collection of volunteers. It is a proxy organisation operating under the direction and control of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service. These formations are directed, supported and sustained by the GRU, and they are already operating across conflict zones, most notably in Ukraine in support of Russia’s illegal invasion.

We are seeing a conscious attempt by the Russian state to blur the lines between military action, intelligence activity and criminality, using deniable forces to carry out sabotage, destabilisation and violence beyond its borders. This is not conjecture; it reflects a pattern of behaviour that underpins Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and has been seen repeatedly across Europe, including here in the United Kingdom. In 2024, two men organised an arson attack on a Ukrainian-owned business in east London on behalf of the Wagner Group, another proxy body that acts on behalf of the Russian state, and which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the UK. It is notable that large parts of the Wagner Group have been absorbed into the so-called Volunteer Corps, which demonstrates the threat posed to the UK.

With the House’s consent, these bodies will be designated. Having carefully considered all the evidence, the Home Secretary has decided that there is sufficient evidence for her reasonably to believe that each body is involved in foreign power threat activity, and that designation is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom. Designation will strengthen our ability to disrupt these bodies and those who support and facilitate them. More broadly, it sends a powerful message to any foreign power or proxy intent on harming the United Kingdom or our interests. We will do whatever it takes to prevent such activity on our soil.

This debate is a significant moment, because this is the first use of a new power introduced by this Government to answer an urgent need. We are taking action because the three bodies in question, in their different ways, pose a threat to our country, and because designation is a necessary and proportionate response to their activities. With that, I commend the regulations to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

National Security (State Threats) Bill

Debate between Angela Eagle and Nusrat Ghani

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Dame Angela Eagle)]

I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments 2 to 6.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

The first duty of any Government is and will forever be to secure this country and keep all its inhabitants safe. It is a mission that has challenged us relentlessly, but it has grown and evolved in recent years. The threat posed by foreign powers will be known by all here: physical threats against individuals and property; theft of trade secrets; attempts to interfere in and influence our democracy; and cyber-attacks targeting both the state and the private sector that disrupt critical infrastructure and compromise sensitive data.

As the House has heard many times before, the source of those threats has come predominantly, though not exclusively, from three countries: Russia, China and Iran. The threats from each present differently, but those threats are very real, and they are evolving. The Bill before us will strengthen the Government’s ability to disrupt hostile intelligence services and their proxies by adapting counter-terrorism tools to tackle state-based security threats to the UK. In developing this legislation, we have worked closely with the police, security and the intelligence agencies. The Bill gives our operational partners the powers that they need, and it does so in a way that reflects the differences between state and non-state actors. As Jonathan Hall himself has said, this Bill “does the job”.

As the Bill progressed through its stages, the Government listened carefully to the arguments about legitimate humanitarian assistance, as well as concerns expressed by non-governmental organisations and the International Development Committee. The Government’s position remains that the Bill should not criminalise legitimate humanitarian aid work or the important work of journalists and diplomats.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

We are very confident that the Bill as it is written does not place journalists in any jeopardy. In fact, these measures allow us to act against those who are conducting harmful activity in the UK, including targeting journalists here in the UK because of their attempts to expose activities in other regimes. The right hon. Gentleman makes a more general point about the jeopardy in which journalists put themselves in war zones, and I would agree that their news reporting is some of the bravest. We all support a free press and journalists’ ability to report in war zones, but I would say respectfully to him that these things are slightly different and he is combining the two issues. We are convinced that this Bill does not and will not put journalists in any more jeopardy in this country—certainly not for reporting.

Baroness Northover tabled amendments 1, 2, 4 and 6 in the other place. They introduce a new defence into the offences at new sections 17B and 17C of the National Security Act 2023, specifically to cover legitimate humanitarian aid activity. This means that non-governmental organisations that have to engage with a designated body in order to carry out legitimate humanitarian activity will benefit from the same protections under the Bill as do UK diplomats.

The Government also supported amendments 3 and 5, which were tabled by Lord Anderson. These amendments were based on the advice of Jonathan Hall KC and also had the support of Lord Carlile. They add a reasonable excuse defence in new section 17C of the 2023 Act for obtaining, accepting or agreeing to accept information from a designated body. This means that where a person has a reasonable excuse for receiving information from a designated body, they benefit from a defence. This might include, for example, a journalist conducting an interview or a charity receiving information on the location of landmines. The Government considered the case for exempting humanitarian NGOs from the offences, but we were advised by our operational partners that this would provide a loophole that hostile actors would seek to exploit, which in turn could make the NGOs themselves a target for infiltration. In fact, that is the case that I made to this Chamber in Committee.

I am grateful to the other place and the International Development Committee for their engagement on this Bill and for the constructive amendments, which have helped strengthen the Bill and broaden its support. The Bill represents an important new addition to our toolkit to address the growing threat from foreign powers. As I said in Committee, my officials have worked closely with operational partners in the creation of this power and the accompanying offences, and our partners are fully supportive of the Bill. It closes a gap, and they have been explicit that it provides them with vital tools capable of addressing the sharpest threats that they are tackling.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Minister.

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[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Minister to wind up. As I said, an hour and 15 minutes is yours.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I am grateful for the contributions of all right hon. and hon. Members. The hon. Member for Stockton West (Matt Vickers) was worried that we had changed the Bill in a way that would make it less effective, and my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) still made the case for having an exemption rather than a defence for humanitarian assistance. I confirm that in our view the Bill as originally written would have excluded humanitarian assistance completely, because of the primary purpose rule, but we felt that there was some merit in the argument about the chilling effect of not having a defence. That is why we accepted the amendments in the other place, but that is belt and braces—nothing has changed. We are trying to accommodate potentially legitimate worries and chilling effects that might have an effect on the operational effectiveness of some NGOs, even though the law itself would not have caught them.

Cabinet Office

Debate between Angela Eagle and Nusrat Ghani

Monday 29th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Has he just come in?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

Order. The hon. Member has been here throughout the debate.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I give way.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

The hon. Lady is correct, and she talks about mitigation. There is also an adaptation issue here, which I was addressing, but clearly the cross-departmental nature of co-ordination happens within the Cabinet Office.

Our country’s resilience is front and centre of our approach to national security. Without security and resilience at home, we cannot deliver economic growth or any of our other missions to improve the lives of the British people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) gave a good speech about what happens if corruption is allowed to get out of hand and people who defraud the public purse of money are allowed to get away with it. I thank him for asking important questions about Tom Hayhoe’s recommendations. I promise to make inquiries with colleagues in Government, and commit to writing to him about the specific issues that he raised in his speech.

The Government inherited a resilience landscape that had too often been neglected, leaving our nation exposed to the shocks of an increasingly volatile world. The resilience action plan, published last July, sets out the Government’s strategic approach to creating a stronger and more resilient UK, and the steps being taken to deliver it. We face a rapidly changing global risk landscape. From severe weather to geopolitical instability, the risks are complex and numerous. We must be honest with the public about the challenges while demonstrating our resolve to address them head-on, and we have to strike a balance by giving an appropriate warning without panicking people. Building a truly resilient society requires a fundamental cultural shift in the way that emergency preparedness is thought about. That includes being clear about the risks we face and the actions that we can all take to improve collective resilience, as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Lisa Smart) said from the Liberal Democrat Front Bench.

In summary, our No. 1 priority is to keep the country safe. The Government are undertaking plenty of work within our own shores to strengthen our stance, which is further bolstered by our unshakeable commitment to Europe-wide security. That responsibility has been spread right across the Government, and it is emblematic of the good work that can come when collaboration is at the heart of planning. Thanks to this work, the risk landscape is not an unknown country; we have made it familiar terrain through rigorous mapping of what could harm us and our citizens, and of what our response should be. It is through level-headed planning that we will create resilience at home and, through that work, create a secure foundation for families, businesses and economies to thrive.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call Matt Western to wind up briefly.

Male Chick Culling

Debate between Angela Eagle and Nusrat Ghani

Thursday 11th September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I agree that when a supply chain, however difficult, is established and we try to move away from it, there can be unintended consequences. We have to look at the whole series of issues along that chain, so that we do not end up in a situation that has lower welfare outcomes than the one we started with. I assure my hon. Friend that the Department is well aware of that, and we will not move in any way if we would end up in a worse welfare situation than the one we started with, but he makes a perfectly good point.

As I was about to say, another issue flagged in the Animal Welfare Committee’s report is the fact that male chicks provide a whole food source for exotic animals, and we would have to replace that.

In recent years, there has been phenomenal global progress in the development of technologies that could help to end routine culling of male chicks by identifying or determining embryo sex before hatching, and it appears that this is going on in the dairy industry as well. There is clearly a lot of scientific work going on to see what we can do to get away from the current situation in our livestock supply chains. Several new methods and systems have appeared, and many refinements in existing systems have continued, since the publication of the Animal Welfare Committee’s report on this subject.

We welcome the UK egg industry’s interest in the development of day-zero sexing technology, which enables eggs to be sexed prior to the start of their incubation. Such a commercial system offers many benefits, including economic and sustainability savings by directly freeing up hatchery space, in addition to providing an ethical solution to the culling of chicks.

In Germany, one alternative is the rearing of male layer chicks for meat production, also known as brother hens. Due to their slower growth rate, rearing brother hens requires a greater input of feed and a longer rearing phase to produce a smaller bird with less desirable body composition, making it more challenging to rear them commercially at scale in the UK. There is a lack of published research on the welfare of brother hens, but animal welfare concerns have been linked to this practice. In particular, managing aggression and high mortality within all-male flocks can be problematic, often accentuated by housing inappropriate to the birds’ behavioural needs.

Aside from in-ovo sexing technology and rearing of brother hens, I was pleased to hear about an initiative to assess the viability of dual-purpose poultry breeds in the UK—that is, breeds that can be used for laying and meat. Clearly, they are not as specialist as the different breeds currently used for the laying of eggs and for meat, but since they are dual purpose, they do not result in the mass culling of males in the laying industry. The initiative was awarded funding earlier this year as part of DEFRA’s farming innovation programme.

Using birds that can serve both as egg layers and meat producers could offer an alternative to chick culling, but it is different meat—they grow and turn out differently than UK consumers are perhaps used to. It is also thought that dual breeds bring other animal welfare benefits, as hens of dual-purpose breeds have lower incidences of keel bone fractures, and some breeds show less injurious pecking behaviour than found in commercial laying hen breeds. The males of dual breeds have better walking ability, lower levels of pododermatitis and better feather cover than fast-growing meat chicken breeds.

In addition to the animal health and welfare benefits, the project is also looking at the sustainability benefits of dual breeds. Dual breeds have lower protein requirements, and a German trial found that locally grown beans were a suitable alternative to very high- protein soya. If this approach to chicken breeding can be made viable, become popular and be accepted by UK consumers—those three things all have to work—it may deliver sustainability benefits. Bringing value to male layer chicks is of key importance, and I look forward to hearing the outcome of this research and whether dual-purpose breeds might offer a more ethical and sustainable approach than our current one.

This Government were elected on a mandate to introduce the most ambitious plans in a generation to improve animal welfare, and that is exactly what we are going to do. Our farm animal welfare policy is backed by a robust evidence base, and is supported and shaped by input from our many excellent stakeholder and expert advice groups. I look forward to speaking to hon. Members about this in more detail soon. Although, as I said earlier, this is principally an ethical rather than animal welfare issue, that does not mean that we should not be trying, very robustly, to address it. I look forward to seeing progress in this area over the next period.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

That was incredibly educational.

Question put and agreed to.

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Angela Eagle and Nusrat Ghani

Report stage
Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

We have no more speakers, so we will go straight to the Minister. Forgive me, I thought we had another person bobbing, but they no longer seem to be in the Chamber. Minister Eagle, you get the lucky extra few minutes for the winding-up.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise after what has been a very full debate, with people having to fit in quite complex points in short amounts of time. I congratulate everybody on the points they made. I will try, as much as possible, to deal with some of them in the time I have left.

I thank all those on the Labour Benches who made contributions: my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson), my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Tony Vaughan), my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Ms Creasy), for Sheffield Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Edinburgh East and Musselburgh (Chris Murray), for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Bassetlaw (Jo White), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), for Bolton West (Phil Brickell) and for Leigh and Atherton (Jo Platt).

Liberal Democrat Members concentrated on safe and legal routes, and the ability to work. I was worried that the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross-shire (Pete Wishart) had had such a difficult time in Committee. I thought we were having quite a reasonable time, but he was extremely downbeat about it. I must try more on another occasion.

I welcome the maiden speech from the hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin), which we all listened to in traditional silence. I congratulate her on it, welcome her to the House and wonder if Reform is practising the principle of one in, one out—or perhaps one out, one in. It is a pleasure to welcome her to the House.

The shadow Home Secretary produced a flurry of amendments and new clauses demanding that we do a whole range of things that not only did he not do when he had the chance as a Home Office Minister, but his party did not do when they had the chance over 14 years. I have to keep saying this, but we inherited a system in the most incredibly difficult mess, with huge backlogs. He says we have made it worse, but by beginning to process claims, that by definition creates a backlog of those who have been refused. By trying to get the system working again, we get a backlog of appeals, because people who are refused asylum generally appeal, and the backlog—as he knows from his time in the Home Office—therefore reappears in the appeals system. That is why we have the new clauses to attempt to get a timeline for dealing with those cases.

I will concentrate on some of the things that I know there will be votes on tonight. First, I will deal with safe and legal routes and new clause 3. Our approach is to resettle refugees identified by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees who would benefit most from resettlement to the UK. Alongside that, we have bespoke routes to sanctuary for those from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong. It is important that safe and legal routes are sustainable, well managed and in line with the UK’s capacity to welcome, accommodate and integrate refugees. Part of the difficulty we have at the moment is the legacy we received from the Conservatives of a huge quadrupling of net migration and the issues with having to assimilate all those people in the huge, unplanned way in which they delivered that.

New clause 37 was tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Clapham and Brixton Hill (Bell Ribeiro-Addy). We recognise her campaigning on this issue over the past five years. We also recognise that there has been an unfair burden for some families with rights to citizenship under the system as it is. I can confirm that the work referenced on page 76 of the White Paper—it is right at the end—will look at tackling the financial barriers that she highlighted in her speech. I urge her to work with us on how we move forward and to not press her new clause.

The Opposition tabled new clause 14. Let me be clear that this Government are fully committed to the protection of human rights at home and abroad. As the Prime Minister has made clear, the United Kingdom is unequivocally committed to the European convention on human rights, and it is worth noting that many of the legal obligations provided for in the European convention are also found in other international agreements to which the UK is a party.

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[Dame Angela Eagle]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

This Bill restores order to an asylum system that was left in chaos by the Conservatives. It puts an end to the failed gimmicks and unworkable mess that they bequeathed us. It repeals in full the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, and it repeals most of the unworkable Illegal Migration Act 2023, which trapped asylum seekers in limbo as asylum backlogs soared and the taxpayer picked up a spiralling bill.

This Government are clearing up the mess that the Conservative party left us, and the Bill before the House will help us to succeed. It will assist in securing our borders by dealing with the soaring backlogs. It gives counter-terror style powers to law enforcement agencies, equipping them to go after the people-smuggling gangs that are making millions of pounds out of exploiting people’s misery. The Bill introduces new powers to seize electronic devices and disrupt the activities of people smugglers; new offences against gangs selling or handling small boat parts for use in the channel; new powers on serious crime prevention orders to target individuals involved in organised immigration crime; a new law to protect lives at sea by making it an offence to endanger another life during small boat crossings; a new statutory footing for the Border Security Commander; and new and improved data sharing between Government agencies, such as HMRC and DVLA, and law enforcement to detect organised immigration crime.

The Bill introduces a statutory timeline for appeals decisions and a major modernisation of the powers of the Immigration Services Commissioner. It ensures that those who commit certain sexual offences will be denied protection under the refugee convention, and contains a long-overdue extension of the right-to-work checks for casual and temporary workers in the gig economy, so why on earth is the Conservative party going to vote against it tonight?

People smuggling is a complex and multifaceted problem, and there are no quick or easy solutions to prevent it. Anyone who claims that there are easy answers is a snake oil salesman, but it is possible to identify, disrupt and dismantle the criminal gangs and strengthen the security of our borders through international diplomacy and operational co-operation. This Bill will help us do just that, and I commend it to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the shadow Home Secretary, who has a minute or two.