National Security (State Threats) Bill

Baroness Doocey Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Doocey (LD)]

My Lords, the Liberal Democrats support the principles of the Bill. We have been clear that we also want this legislation on the statute book and we will not seek to hold it up. We fully recognise the unprecedented security challenges that we face, confronting more serious and less predictable threats than at any time since the Cold War. In 2025 alone, MI5 reported a 35% increase in state threat activity on the previous year, including more than 20 Iran-backed plots to kidnap or kill on British soil. We are in accord with the Government. This activity must be stopped.

However, while we will not obstruct the Bill, our support is not a blank cheque for lawmaking. The Bill was introduced just 13 days ago and was rushed through the other place in less than six hours. That begs the question: why did it take 14 months to act on recommendations from Jonathan Hall KC, which were accepted in full in May 2025? To ask this House to deliver a watertight defence in a single afternoon is a tall order and risks the Bill being seen as a rapid answer rather than a complete answer. Such accelerated progress risks important areas not being properly covered or provisions having unintended consequences.

Good legislation also involves scrutiny and input from outside Parliament. The media and experts from a wide range of professional fields are normally critical in improving a Bill. However, the speed of this Bill’s passage runs a real risk that much-needed external scrutiny will be missed.

The Bill addresses a critical gap. Looking to existing terrorism laws to deal with state organs was, in the words of the independent reviewer,

“shopping in the wrong department”.

By creating a power to designate bodies involved in “foreign power threat activity”, the Bill creates the right tool to penalise the proxies and hired guns that foreign powers use to carry out sabotage on UK soil.

The litmus test for the Bill will be the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—the IRGC. My noble friend Lord Marks has constantly argued that if the IRGC was not in power in Tehran, it would be universally recognised as a terrorist organisation. Yet, as drafted, this Bill is gentler on the IRGC than our laws are on the terrorists it funds.

We must also ensure that these powers have teeth in the global financial system. My noble friend Lord Purvis noted on 11 June that these groups operate through complex commercial, financial and now digital trade routes. We must use this Bill to trigger robust investigations by Companies House and the Financial Reporting Council to unmask front companies and starve designated organisations of UK-origin funds. However, I remain a bit concerned by the Minister’s comment that a UK connection of some sort is required for designation. In an era of digital interference, when state-backed proxies can target our citizens and sabotage our interests from behind a screen thousands of miles away, we must ensure that this requirement does not become a loophole. We need an assurance that this Bill is equipped for the era of digital interference, ensuring that hostile actors cannot evade designation simply by operating entirely from abroad via digital means.

We must also listen to the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Development Committee. They warn that new Section 17B is so broad that it could unintentionally criminalise impartial humanitarian aid. Ministerial “intent” is not a legal safeguard. We need an express exemption on the face of the Bill for impartial humanitarian organisations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, acting in accordance with international humanitarian law. Anything less leaves our aid workers at the mercy of a 14-year prison sentence for simply delivering life-saving medicine.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has identified another trap. Clause 1 currently allows for designation without even establishing a link to a foreign power for certain acts, such as those under Section 4 of the 2023 Act. That is both too weak against our enemies and too broad for a free society.

On future-proofing, the director-general of MI5 has rightly warned of the next frontier: autonomous AI systems that may evade effective human control. The Government’s own AI Scenarios 2030 report admits that such systems could cause “existential harms” without intervention. I will be moving a specific amendment in committee to ensure that “foreign power threat activity” captures the development of super-intelligent AI capabilities by a foreign power.

Finally, because this is a fast-track Bill, we must have a 12-month statutory review of its adequacy. We also need the safeguard that any removal of a designation must be approved by votes in both Houses. Parliamentary oversight must exist at the end of a designation, not just the beginning.

As I said, we will not hold this Bill up, but we will seek to amend it. We are talking about individuals who actively assist hostile states in sabotaging our nation. We owe the citizens and residents who are being specifically targeted by these lethal plots more than just sincere intentions; we owe them a law that holds up in the courtroom and at the border. We look forward to a rigorous, if brief, Committee stage.