Telecommunications (Security) Bill

Debate between Earl of Erroll and Lord Coaker

Committee stage
Thursday 15th July 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I apologise to the Committee for having to hear so much of me in the first 48 minutes. This is a really important amendment and I will make a couple of general remarks before making some more specific comments.

Concern has been expressed throughout consideration of this Bill about the extent to which the Bill provides for parliamentary scrutiny. Parliamentary scrutiny is the important area that Amendment 22 seeks to address, and I am grateful for the support of my noble friend Lady Merron and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover.

Amendment 22 seeks to improve and prioritise national security. We have all said that we support the intention behind this Bill and the need for national security, but the sweeping powers that the Bill gives the Secretary of State must be used in the interests of securing our critical national infrastructure. Removing Huawei does not in itself do that, so there is a question of accountability here. Amendment 22 is designed to ensure greater scrutiny, focus and transparency and address the deepening hole in accountability presented by the Government. At its heart, it would

“ensure that the Intelligence and Security Committee … is provided with any information relating to a designated vendor direction, notification of contravention, urgent enforcement action or modifications to an enforcement direction made on grounds of national security”

by the Secretary of State, as soon as reasonably possible.

The Minister knows that, during the passage of the National Security and Investment Bill, noble Peers from all sides of this House repeatedly tried to ensure that the Intelligence and Security Committee had oversight of national security issues. To be frank with the Minister, it was difficult to understand why the Government were so determined not to give the committee a role. This amendment says to the Government that the ISC is the appropriate place to discuss matters of national security and that it has a unique role in assessing security implications, as even Ministers accept.

The key point is to ask the Minister how this would work. This is the nub of the amendment and goes to the heart of what many noble Lords have said. The DCMS Select Committee and many of the people who will be looking at these documents do not have the required clearance to scrutinise highly classified evidence, so should the ISC, which does have the necessary security clearance, not have a role? It is the only committee of Parliament that has regular access to documents marked “information sensitive for national security reasons”.

I am sure that many of us simply do not understand that when you look at the state security threats to the telecommunications infrastructure that have been identified by the Government, the level of clearance will not be official-sensitive, STRAP 1 or STRAP 2, it will be STRAP 3. No one in this Committee will see that. Some Members of the Committee may have seen it in the past. So how can Parliament be reassured without knowing that the Intelligence and Security Committee has looked at it? Who has oversight of it? Even the Minister will not have the level of clearance to see all of it, yet she will tell the Committee that Parliament has oversight of these matters, when none of us—or very few of us—have the security clearance to actually look at and scrutinise those threats. So how will Parliament scrutinise it if we do not have the security clearance to do that? It is logically inconsistent. Yet time and again, the Government refuse to allow the committee set up with that express purpose—namely, the Intelligence and Security Committee—the function that it was set up to do on behalf of Parliament. With respect, I simply do not understand why the Government are so resistant to that. On many of the other things that we mention, there is a debate and opinions are exchanged. But this is completely and utterly illogical.

I ask the Committee to consider this. Given that the level of security clearance needed to protect our country, its telecommunications structure and that of our allies from the threats posed by other states is above that of the vast majority of Ministers of the Crown, Members of the House of Lords and civil servants, who is to scrutinise these matters if not the Intelligence and Security Committee? I fail to understand what the answer to that is. Parliament deserves to scrutinise these matters and it should be done by the committee set up to do that because it is the only committee of Parliament that has the necessary security clearance. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has summed up an important recurring theme that was raised at Second Reading. The Government should take this very seriously indeed.

Oversight by a body with top-level security clearance is essential. I certainly would sleep safer if I knew this was happening. Part of this comes from the Minister’s reply when I started to query the status of Ofcom and its relationship to the Civil Service department. I gather that the relationship of Ofcom is similar to that of an agency—if it is not actually set up as an agency; it is set up as a regulatory body, I think. I remember the huge problem—debacle would be a better word—when Defra failed to bring in the new mapping system back when we were changing the way of paying farmers. Everyone knew that it was about to be disastrous. Everyone could see the train crash coming. The Minister could not do anything about it except stand at the Dispatch Box and say, “I’m not allowed to interfere. It is a separate company. We can only call it to account at the end of the year.” As a result, when it all went pear-shaped and farmers suffered disastrous and severe financial problems, the Minister was retired—and it was not any fault of his. He knew perfectly well what was going on but had no power under the structure.

This is my problem with the agency structure that was set up, I think under Mrs Thatcher, when she was trying to cut back the Civil Service so she took things off the Civil Service books to make the figures look better. We have to be very careful when we are handing huge powers or these momentous decisions to an agency. Therefore, it is important that we get into the Bill mechanisms by which we can know what is going on at the time and make sure that it is not going wrong. This oversight, certainly by the Intelligence and Security Committee, is essential—a no-brainer.

I will just mention that the same principle applies in Amendment 29 in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Clement-Jones and Lord Fox, which I did not put my name to because I thought that was unnecessary. Exactly the same thing applies to the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. Rather than me wasting time speaking again, I will say it now: please will the Government start looking at this more seriously?