Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 20th February 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I feel proud, honoured and thankful to have been present in your Lordships’ Chamber to hear the powerful and informed speeches from my noble friends Lord Boateng and Lord Hain, and the powerful and forensic speeches from my noble friends Lady Chapman of Darlington and Lord Wood of Anfield.

I intend to devote my limited time to drawing your Lordships’ attention to a few specific provisions in the Bill and arguments about them, in opposition to it. I start by drawing your Lordships’ attention to remarks that were made at the Second Reading of the Bill in the other place. In rebutting the critics of the Bill, Michael Gove suggested—and this was deliberately calculated—that the central question for every Member of that Chamber was

“whether they stand with us against antisemitism or not”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/7/23; col. 591.]

This is not merely a false dichotomy but an extremely irresponsible piece of rhetorical manoeuvring. I am not surprised by it. By implication, it condemns opponents or even critical friends of the Bill as anti-Semitic. It seems ironic, to say the least, that in moving legislation purportedly designed to ease community and cultural divisions in this country, the Secretary of State chose to frame the debate in such inflammatory terms. For my part, I know not only that every Member of your Lordships’ House abhors anti-Semitism but that we are all conscious of the very specific and insidious ways in which it can creep into public discourse. We will do everything that we can to prevent that.

We were also told during those proceedings—I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, for drawing our attention to this—that the Bill fulfils a 2019 manifesto commitment. Leaving aside the question of how far the writ of that manifesto can seriously be expected to extend, given that it was the product of neither this Prime Minister nor his immediate predecessor, it is worth looking at, as was encouraged by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, how that commitment was framed and to what extent the Bill we are considering today reflects it.

The noble Lord read out the relevant passages, so I will not repeat them, but there are a number of aspects that are interesting in relation to the Bill. For example, there is no manifesto commitment to legislation that singles out protection of Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is anomalous for three reasons. First, I fear that singling out Israel and the OPT in such a way is counterproductive. If I seriously believed that the actions of local authorities or other public bodies were compromising the coherence of British foreign policy—and sometimes I beg for the coherence of British foreign policy—I would have greater sympathy for this Bill.

With this in mind, I would be grateful if the Minister, whom I respect immensely, and she knows this, would outline a few cases that support that contention—where international perceptions of our foreign policy have been distorted or compromised, or where local authorities or other public bodies have acted in a way that courts serious confusion at an international level because of behaviour that is identified in the Bill. There must be data to support legislation that has such implications for the way in which we live. We have to justify the sweeping powers contained in the Bill, and this data must be shown to us before the conclusion of our deliberations on it.

Secondly, the more extreme elements of the BDS movement argue that Israel is too often held unjustifiably exempt from criticism and that the actions of the Israeli Government do not receive appropriate scrutiny. Surely by naming only Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories in the Bill we will not defang those who make such criticisms but give them further ammunition for such assertions. This is of particular importance to Clauses 1 and 4.

Clause 1 prohibits action that a “reasonable observer” would conclude is motivated by “political or moral disapproval” of a foreign Government. It strikes me that the words “reasonable observer” are doing a great deal of heavy lifting here and that we are merely opening ourselves up to legal challenges based on contending subjectivities. Given the historical complexity, emotional depth and diplomatic ambiguity that attend any discussion of Israel, Palestine and their relationship, who is to decide what constitutes the position of a disinterested, reasonable observer? The last couple of years have shown me that, on this issue, in this country, there is no such thing.

Of even greater concern is Clause 4. As we have heard from other noble Lords, this provision does not merely debar a public body from expressing its intention to act in a contrary manner to this Bill but in addition—God forbid—prevents them expressing how they might wish to have acted were the legislation not in force. I should be grateful if the Minister would be kind enough to present even a hypothetical case for where this provision may prevent serious harm to the coherence of UK foreign policy. In asking that, I do not contend that we have not seen cases where councils have made declarations supporting anti-Israel boycotts that they had no intention of implementing but that were none the less opposed by local Jewish groups. But I do not believe that these cases, however regrettable and ill-conceived, justify such sweeping measures to curtail free speech, nor that they in any serious manner compromise the wider unity and coherence of our foreign policy. It must be pretty fragile if they do.

A final anomaly to mention is a further consequence of Clause 4. In what circumstances is a decision-maker, or one who may influence a decision-maker, under the terms of this Bill speaking in a private capacity or as part of a public body? If the leader of a council spoke in the council chamber expressing their disapproval of Israeli actions but prefaced these remarks with an acknowledgement that such views were privately held and siloed from decision-making, would this exempt them from these provisions? Answering in the other place, the Minister sought to square this circle by saying that

“the simplest way to express that is that if an individual is speaking on their own behalf, they are speaking as a private individual. However, if I say that I am speaking on behalf of my university or my local authority, then I speak on the behalf of a public body”.—[Official Report, Commons, Economic Activity of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill Committee, 12/9/23; cols. 155-56.]

While that clarification was no doubt tremendously insightful, I am sceptical that such a simplistic definition would survive contact with reality, never mind the courts. For these reasons, I believe that Clause 4 should simply be removed from the Bill.

Talking about contact with reality, noble Lords heard, in the opening sentences of his introducing the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart of Dirleton, or the Advocate-General for Scotland, say:

“I am speaking to the House today as a member of the Government for the Bill, not in my formal law officer capacity”.—[Official Report, 29/1/24; col. 1003]


The man is only in the Government because he is a law officer. The Advocate-General for Scotland position had to be filled, and he came from the Scottish Bar to fill it. He is only in the Government as a law officer. If noble Lords want to see the degree to which that survived reality, they can look at the rest of the debate and at how confused everybody in this House was by those remarks from the noble and learned Lord as to who he was talking for.

This Bill may be well-intentioned—I am sceptical about that—but it contains sufficient ambiguities and contradictions to risk deepening existing fractures and creating new contentions in relation to freedom of speech. For those reasons I will be seeking, at the very least, to support critical amendments as it moves through your Lordships’ House.

[Lord Evans of Rainow (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a wonderful debate, but the advisory speaking time is seven minutes. I am looking forward to seeing all noble Lords again in Committee, so please try to keep to seven minutes. Some of your Lordships were up at midnight, so we are hoping for a reasonable finish.

Homelessness: Veterans

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Lampard (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, shall we hear from my noble friend Lady Lampard, followed by the noble Lord, Lord Browne?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

Veterans can access a range of support, including via the 24/7 Veterans’ Gateway, which deals with gambling, as well as housing and so on. There is also, of course, a national gambling helpline giving advice. There is dedicated support through Op Courage for mental health, which is often linked to gambling. The other things that I have mentioned can all help with this difficult issue, which obviously goes much wider than veterans.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the data that supports the conclusion that homelessness among veterans is increasing is uniquely English data. The Scottish data, which was most recently published in August 2023 and relates to the period between 2008 and 2022, shows that the number of veterans assessed as homeless or, importantly, at risk of homelessness has halved from 1,335 to 640. Would it not, on this occasion, be an idea to find out what Scottish councils, NGOs and the Scottish Government are doing to have achieved this?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I am always glad to hear of good practice, wherever it is, but, as I tried to explain at the beginning, we have changed the way that we are counting veteran homelessness in local authorities. That does not mean that we should not do more or not learn from the devolveds when they do things better. A result that halves numbers is very good. However, as I said, there are almost no veterans rough sleeping now, due to the variety of provision that this Government have provided and the underpinning of the priority that homeless veterans get for social housing, which I think everybody supports.

AI-generated Public Services

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not think that list is dull. I have other examples, such as the world-leading child abuse image database, which the Home Office is working on. My son, as a detective in the Met, thinks it will be a marvellous opportunity to make the police’s job easier and less awful. The noble Lord is right that the robot vision has to be moderated by an understanding of the usefulness of AI on many things, such as conversational front ends to public services on GOV.UK. These things will make life easier and more accessible, which is why it is good that we are debating them and can reassure people. Of course there are fears, which is one of the reasons why we are working on guidance on frontier AI—that is in the pipeline.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, we know from the Post Office Horizon scandal that the Post Office itself, the prosecuting authorities, the courts and God knows how many hundreds of lawyers were, for years, unable to identify failure, including in the computer system. What confidence can we have that the Department for Work and Pensions has people able to tell if the data that informed AI had a bias in it which caused it constantly to be making mistakes? Do we have people trained to do that? I am not confident that they even exist. I am just picking this example out of the sky.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I agree that the Post Office scandal was one of the most awful. It is good that we now have a proper process for moving forward on it, even if it is far too late. To deal with the point raised by the noble Lord, I can say that we are setting up the AI Safety Institute and a hub in the Cabinet Office, bringing in experts from outside. The idea is that they can help across the board with these issues. Some of the uses of AI, such as with fraud at Companies House and the DWP, can be very useful. The noble Lord is right in that we need to look at the dangers as well. As the noble Lord, Lord Allan, rightly said, we have to make sure that we look at the opportunities. We think that, as regards public sector productivity, costs could be reduced by about £5 billion a year through the sensible use of AI on the kinds of things that we have been debating.

UK Government Resilience Framework

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I draw the noble Lord’s attention to the developments in openness that there have been. We now have a UK Resilience Forum, which was established to bring together the voluntary and community sectors, emergency responders, business and so on. We have published a very chunky National Risk Register, which is available for public comment—and, of course, we are gearing up the local resilience forums, which are led by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. We have announced new pilots this summer to work out how best to engage local communities, develop community risk registers and so on.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the fact that in June the first ever head of resilience was appointed and the new promised COBRA unit came into being, promised in the integrated review. The first, the head of resilience, of course deals with long-term resilience challenges while the second is more to respond to emergencies, but, after all, these emergencies are usually immediate manifestations of just the same challenges. Why, therefore do these two bodies sit in different reporting frameworks within the Cabinet Office? Is it not sensible that they should be in the same reporting structures and that the best chance of improving resilience lies in encouraging some sort of symbiotic relationship between them?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I think we are very aware of the need for symbiosis and have indeed been thinking about that in the way we have set this up and led the way, with the resilience framework, which has been widely welcomed; with the setting up of the Resilience Directorate under Mary Jones; and with various other measures. Exactly how the Cabinet Office is organised is an internal matter; the key thing is that we should make progress in this area, and I have actually been pleased that, since I became a Minister at the Cabinet Office, I have seen what my colleagues have done to progress this very important matter.

WhatsApp: Ministerial Communications

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

The answer is that it did.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, in April last year, when the Government saw off at first instance a judicial review about the use of WhatsApp in government, a Cabinet Office spokesperson said publicly:

“We have been clear from the outset that there are appropriate arrangements and guidance in place for the management of electronic communications within Government”.


Those are the exact words the Minister has used at the Dispatch Box. The Cabinet Office position clearly was that these applied to WhatsApp messages. So, in a generality, do these procedures and arrangements allow former Ministers to take these records home? Do they allow them to alienate them to a third party, such as a journalist or ghost writer? If they do not, why do they not? Will the Government to publish the guidance?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

I do not entirely understand the question, but what I can say is that the High Court dismissed challenges to the Government’s policy and practice with regard to non-corporate communication channels, which allows us to move ahead with the new guidance that I mentioned, and there are clear rules, of which we have already had evidence, on what we are supposed to be doing in the meantime.

Preparing for Extreme Risks (RARPC Report)

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the committee’s chair, my friend the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, and thank him for his comprehensive and powerful opening speech, and for his adroit and inclusive chairing of the committee. I join him in recognising and thanking the clerks, the staff and our advisers for their exemplary support. I apologise, but if I am to have any hope of getting home today, I must leave before the winding up. I thank the Chief Whip, my own Whip, the Minister and the noble Lord, Lord Arbuthnot, to whom I have explained my predicament; they all responded graciously and generously to the situation.

The report has contributed already to improving UK resilience. The Government acquiesced in all but two of its recommendations and the resilience framework published recently builds upon the work of the committee and its findings, as Oliver Dowden acknowledged in his all-Peers letter. I welcome the Government’s publication of the resilience framework. It is the first step towards the national resilience strategy mandated by the integrated review. Its publication, like this debate, is timely. We face several risks and many threats, all demanding swift and effective response. Russian attacks on Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure serve to underline the importance of looking to our own resilience and ability to respond to such external threats. That is true whether those threats are natural disasters, driven by hostile actors or an unintended consequence of anthropogenic activity.

The major risks are well known. However, the ways in which they manifest are fluid and subject to change. Any coherent resilience strategy must respect this truth: if we are to prevent, mitigate and diminish their impact, our response must be multifaceted and as adaptable as the threats. This requires nimbleness and a data-driven approach in the Executive, as well as better ownership of risk in lead government departments, but it also requires a whole-of-society approach, as suggested by the integrated review.

I regret to say that the Government have, over the last couple of years and an even greater number of Prime Ministers, inadvertently exacerbated the risks we face through structural failures. Shortly before Covid reached these shores, the Threats, Hazards, Resilience and Contingency Committee of the NSC was quietly and ill-advisedly disbanded. In answer to a Written Question, the then Defence Secretary downplayed this development, suggesting that its functions would henceforth be performed by the NSC itself, and would not mean a loss of capacity but merely reflected

“wider consolidation of Cabinet Committee sub-Committees”.

This sub-committee has been resurrected—a clear acknowledgement that the earlier disbanding of it was a mistake, as our report identifies.

It would be helpful to have a clearer explanation of why this decision was made in the first place, to what extent it compromised our ability to respond to emergent risks with speed and coherence, and how the structural changes that the framework requires can be protected from future, ill-conceived “consolidations” of this sort. We know that data is vital in risk mitigation, but so is institutional memory. If the Government’s approach to resilience is to succeed, institutional memory must be maintained.

What evidence is there that this Government can develop, publish and implement the promised national resilience strategy at the speed commensurate with the seriousness of the risks we face? Soon it will be two years since the integrated review which mandated the resilience strategy. It has taken 18 months for the framework to be published. I welcome the promise that we can expect the strategy to be published in “early 2023”, but I would be grateful for clarity on whether, and which, measures and their implementation are contingent upon other ongoing inquiries, such as the crisis capabilities review led by the Home Office Permanent Secretary. I welcome the creation of a head of resilience, a dedicated resilience directorate and the resurrection of the resilience sub-committee of the NSC.

There is much to commend in the context of accountability, both to Parliament and through risk ownership by lead government departments. The framework promises a real cultural shift. Here, the UK’s determination to embed climate change considerations within the culture of government offers lessons. I should be interested to know if a structure analogous to the Climate Change Committee has been considered. An independent body established by statute, offering external expertise and scrutiny of our approach to resilience, which is then empowered to report to Parliament, would enhance our ability to scrutinise the promised annual statement to Parliament on resilience and provide valuable context for subsequent debates.

While supply chains, global context and societal make up ensure that different nations must mitigate risk in different ways and with different emphases, universal challenges show us that preventive work, on which the framework places a welcome emphasis, can work properly only through international co-operation. I urge reflection on the response of the Centre for Long-Term Resilience to the framework. While commending it, it asks that, in recognition of the global nature of the threats, the Government advocate for a dedicated multinational resilience forum for greater coherence of the efforts of individual nations to protect their people.

In closing, I remind noble Lords of October’s report of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy, as well as our own report on critical infrastructure, which was scathing about the Government’s ability to protect it. It called on the Prime Minister to

“get a much better grip”.

I trust that the resilience framework and the strategy that is promised will be a long-overdue step to getting a better grip on national security.

Net-zero Emissions: Behaviour Change

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, I am also a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, and I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford on securing this extremely timely debate so soon after the publication of our committee’s report on the importance of changes to people’s behaviour, by which I mean the importance of securing changes to our behaviour to achieve the legal target of net zero by 2050. I also congratulate the right reverend Prelate on his excellent opening remarks, which set the scene and tone for the debate well.

The Question tabled underlay much of the proceedings of our committee’s inquiry. Helped by the last contribution, this short debate centres on whether the Government have a role to play in encouraging change that will contribute to a lessening of our emissions. It also centres on what that that role is and whether such initiatives are, in themselves, unreasonably restrictive, nannying, bossy or any other word plucked from the Rolodex of adjectives employed reflexively by those ideologically suspicious of any attempt by the state to engage in any way with individual freedom of choice. Lastly, it centres on whether such behaviour change will make a substantive contribution to smoothing our path to net zero.

In conducting this inquiry, the Select Committee heard evidence from across government, industry and the third sector, but I was particularly struck by the evidence we received from former members of the Climate Assembly. Like the vast majority of witnesses, they made it clear in their testimony that the public supported behaviour change and that they were looking for greater government leadership to make it happen. It is unfortunate that the pandemic eclipsed the report’s release in September 2020 and that it consequently gained rather less public traction than its contents deserve. It makes clear that the participants in the assembly regarded cross-party co-operation as essential, that government has a significant educative function in mobilising public consent for the changes needed and that the deliberative process involved in the assembly had motivated each of them to make changes in their individual consumer choices designed to minimise their environmental impact. This is perhaps the best evidence we heard of the effect that education and knowledge can have in prompting individuals to make decisions for the collective good.

To address the concerns of those who feel that the cause of net zero is being hijacked by a group who wish us to regress to some kind of pre-industrial world, I gently point out that at no point in the 550 pages of the assembly’s report is any mention made of abolishing industry, travel and the edifice of post-modern capitalism and returning to some prelapsarian world structured around our circadian rhythms. The citizens’ assembly on climate change was not constrained by moderating voices from inside or, much more importantly, outside government, which allowed it to apply the common sense that led it to balance the demands of business and individuals, supply chains and customers, and individual choice and broader social goods in its deliberations.

Our report takes the same approach. Led by the evidence, we concluded, as we record in the summary:

“People want to know how to play their part in tackling climate change and environmental damage, and the Government is in a unique position to guide the public in changing their behaviours. The Government should provide clarity to individuals about the changes we need to make, in how we travel, what we eat and buy, and how we use energy at home, and should articulate the many co-benefits to health and wellbeing of taking those steps. A public engagement strategy, both to communicate a national narrative and build support for getting to net zero, is urgently required. Behavioural science evidence and best practice show that a combination of policy levers, including regulation and fiscal incentives, must be used by Government, alongside clear communication, as part of a joined-up approach to overcome the barriers to making low-carbon choices. A behavioural lens must be applied consistently—


and this is the important one—

“across all government departments, as too many policies … are still encouraging high carbon and low nature choices.”

To address the concerns of those who feel that the cause of net zero is being hijacked by those who wish that regression, I encourage them—including, with respect, the noble Lord, Lord Frost—to actually read both reports before levelling these groundless accusations.

In short, the role the public wish the Government to play is that of an enabler, not an enforcer. Both the assembly’s report and ours are clear that it and we do not wish this—or any future Government—to remove the power of decision-making from individuals. We want them to fashion a context in which the gap between ethical and practical decision-making is closed. For those who wish to preserve individual liberty, including the noble Lord, surely a context within which people can make the decisions they wish to make, on an ethical basis rather than by purely practical considerations, is desirable.

Unemployment Figures

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I am not wishing to duck the issue, but the answer to that question should really come from the Home Office. I will take it back and ask the Home Office to respond to the noble Lord.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the number of inactive people in this country of working age is increasing inexorably. In the last three months alone, it has increased by 80,000 people, and of the 640,000 who have become inactive since the onset of the pandemic, 55% say that they are long-term sick. Instead of tinkering about at the edges of this problem, as Kwasi Kwarteng was intending to do with benefits, all of the informed experts who write extensively on this are saying that we need significant investment in health, social care and childcare to release the potential of these people who are being wasted. Is the noble Baroness’s department encouraging the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he makes the economic Statement that we are all waiting for, to announce the sort of investment that will release that capacity? We will otherwise not get anything like the growth we need.

[Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)]

I take the point that the noble Lord makes. Those people who are long-term sick may have mental health issues that are complex, and the mental health support service is an essential element to it. As regards influencing the Chancellor, I am not aware that my Secretary of State has spoken to him, but I will ask her and respond to the noble Lord.

Bain & Company: Public Sector Contracts

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

I note what the noble Viscount says, but the Cabinet Office review into this specific company will conclude within weeks. We will have discussions on this in the Procurement Bill, and your Lordships will be able to explore these matters at greater length then. Obviously, I am concerned by any suggestion of corruption and misconduct, and we are widening in the Bill the scope of misconduct which can lead to exclusion.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister sought in part to assure us, saying that Bain & Company—I think I quote him properly—are not doing any substantial business with the Government. What does “substantial” mean in those circumstances, and were any of these insubstantial contracts agreed after the judicial inquiry in South Africa reported?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I am advised that there is not a current contract with central government. If I am incorrect, I will correct that. I am aware of one live contract that Bain has with an NHS trust, which has a contract value of approximately £2 million.

Ministerial Code

Lord Browne of Ladyton Excerpts

Thursday 27th January 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

The noble Lord started off with “scandal” and retreated to “apparent contradiction”. I would advise him and others to refer both to the statement put out by my noble friend Lord Goldsmith and the official statements put out by No. 10 Downing Street and the Defence Secretary at the Foreign Affairs Select Committee yesterday.

[Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)]

My Lords, once again we are being treated to Ministers in studios and in the House not facing up to the fact that the evidence is out there. These emails are there for people to see. I have not heard one Minister deny that the Nowzad animals were helped out of Afghanistan by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, and the Prime Minister—and possibly also by the intervention of his wife—or say that these emails are not correct. So the evidence is there. Over and above that, my noble friend Lord Foulkes, who cannot be with us today, was on LBC last night with Dominic Dyer, who explained at length how it happened, because he was involved in identifying the Prime Minister, his wife and the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, as helping them to get the animals out of Afghanistan. He is upset because they will not take credit for it; that is what is upsetting him. So when will we get to the point where Ministers here or in television studios will live in the same world as the rest of us, when all the evidence proves the contrary of what they are saying?

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I fear I say too often in this House that allegations do not constitute proof. I remind noble Lords that whatever the context of this particular circumstance, a truly outstanding operation was conducted to remove people from Afghanistan safely. I repeat that statements have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith, No. 10 Downing Street and the Defence Secretary which repudiate the allegations being made.