National Security (State Threats) Bill

Debate between Lord Davies of Gower and Viscount Hailsham

Committee stage
Tuesday 30th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

My Lords, I have already made it clear that the way the Government have dealt with this Bill is unfortunate, so I will not dwell on that any longer. The amendments in this group reflect the concerns that the Opposition have raised with the Government on a number of occasions. The Government have told us that they cannot accept any of them for myriad reasons. As I hope I will demonstrate to the Committee, every one of the Government’s arguments will fail at the first hint of scrutiny.

Amendment 20 would create an offence of wearing or displaying in public an article in a way that arouses reasonable suspicion that a person is a supporter of a designated body. This would include those who publish an image of such articles. This amendment seeks to correct the strange situation that could arise under this Bill whereby a state entity may be designated, but it would not be an offence to display its insignia or to glorify it online.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I am a little concerned by what is meant by an article of clothing. My noble friend will know that the keffiyeh is widely worn on the streets of London and was much associated, when worn by Yasser Arafat, with the PLO. Is there a risk that the wearing of the keffiyeh would be associated with support for a designated body? If there is, we are in very serious trouble.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

I am not well-acquainted with this article of clothing.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

It is an Arab headdress.

[Lord Davies of Gower (Con)]

Should it come before a court, the court would have to decide. Further than that I cannot comment, but I take on board what the noble Lord says.

Getting back to what I was saying, such provisions already exist for proscribed organisations under Section 13 of the Terrorism Act. Where the IRGC is designated under this legislation, its insignia and flags could be displayed openly in public with complete legal impunity. Hordes of its supporters could wave IRGC flags on British streets and intimidate members of the Jewish community, and avoid any legal ramifications. This is an obvious legislative gap that is damaging to public confidence.

At Second Reading, the Minister said that banning uniforms would impact legitimate engagement of the designated state body, which would need to continue, for example, on diplomatic channels. I do not buy that argument. We are not legislating for Iran in this Bill; we are legislating for the United Kingdom. The offences do not apply to non-UK persons outside the United Kingdom. My amendments would not criminalise the display of IRGC insignia in Tehran. They would criminalise such acts only in Britain. I contend that, if, for some reason, an Iranian diplomat came to the country for diplomatic negotiations—although I do not believe that that has happened since 1980—it would be perfectly acceptable to require them not to wear an IRGC uniform or insignia.

If noble Lords are not convinced by my arguments then perhaps the following words will help put forward the case for my amendment. For the same reason as penalising support,

“it should also be an offence to display in public a flag or other insignia in such a way as to arouse reasonable suspicion that a person is a member or supporter of a”

foreign intelligence service subject to a statutory alert and liability threat notice. The argument continues:

“This is by parity with section 13 Terrorism Act 2000 which applies only to public displays.”


These were the words of Jonathan Hall KC, the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation, in his report published last year.

Much of this legislation has been justified by the Government on the grounds that it is rooted in the recommendations made by Jonathan Hall in his independent review. This amendment is a policy recommendation explicitly called for in his review. If the Government believe that his recommendation is grounds for policy justification, why does that not apply to our amendment, or will the Minister say that he believes that Jonathan Hall was wrong to suggest that uniforms should be banned?

This Government have been one categorised and defined by reviews. On countless occasions, across a range of departments, my colleagues and I have been told by the Government that they are waiting for the outcome of a review before taking any decisive action. Well, the review has concluded and Jonathan Hall has been clear, and now the Government have decided that they want to pick and choose which recommendations they would like to take forward. That raises the important question: why bother having the review in the first place?

Amendment 23 would give the police and immigration officers the power to seize the passports of individuals attempting to leave the country to assist a designated body abroad. It would do that by replicating the provisions of Section 1 and Schedule 1 to the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015. The amendment details at length the powers available to police and immigration officers to seize passports, and would ensure that the same safeguards in the 2015 Act are in place.

I remind noble Lords that this too was a direct recommendation from Jonathan Hall’s report. He said:

“There is a strong case for enabling speedy action to remove a passport from a person who would otherwise leave the jurisdiction, where there is suspicion of involvement in foreign power threat activity”.


At Second Reading, the Minister stated:

“We are going to do it; we are just not going to do it in this Bill, which is a specifically designed piece of legislation to give powers to the Home Secretary. We will have further national security legislation later in his Parliament”.—[Official Report, 23/6/26; col. 614.].


In our discussions with the Government, they once again said that they agreed with Jonathan Hall KC and that they would do this at some point in this Session. When we asked the Government why, if they had accepted the recommendation, they would not implement it in this Bill, we were simply told that the Home Office did not have enough time to draft the amendment. But the Government have had over a year since Jonathan Hall KC’s report to sort out the policy detail. They have had a year to get the drafting right. Let us be under no illusion about how much time it would actually take them to draft this power. They are not starting from scratch. We already have the framework for the power in law in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, as I have already mentioned. Half the job has already been done.

I have tabled my amendment, which the Minister will know is a more comprehensive version of the amendment tabled in the Commons, to show the Government that it can be done. If the Opposition can draft a comprehensive amendment on past procedure in a few days then surely the Government, with their Civil Service, can do the same.

The other criticism the Government have raised is that the amendment retabled in the Commons was too narrow, as they want the power to be extended further than to just those travelling abroad to assist a designated group. To do that, the Government say they need more time to ensure that this legislative gap is properly addressed, but all the while they prevaricate the legislative gap remains in place. If the Government want a wider power of passport seizure, applying to more offences in the National Security Act, they can bring forward a wider power in future legislation. I would be fine with that, but why will they not accept this narrower power for now as a stopgap while they draft the wider power?

Finally, Amendment 21 seeks to emulate the offence of disseminating terrorist publications in the Terrorism Act 2006. I have heard what the Minister has said about the differences between designating state-linked bodies and proscribing terrorist groups. I accept that there is a difference, but this is an issue where the difference in treatment is not borne out by the facts. The bodies we are dealing with in this threats regime are the very bodies engaging in propaganda to further their nefarious ends. The IRGC distributes materials encouraging others to wage war against the West. For example, the IRGC has founded news outlets, including Sepah News, Tasnim News Agency and Fars News Agency among others. The Seraj Cyberspace Organization serves as a central organisation that recruits and mobilises pro-regime users to conduct online operations for the IRGC. This includes social media campaigns, spreading disinformation online, and fomenting divisions among opposition groups through targeted operations. It has developed an expanded initiative to increase the IRGC’s human capacity online—its so-called soft war officers, who have been particularly active since the anti-regime protests in Iran in 2022 and the Hamas terrorist attacks on 7 October.

Other countries are taking action against the propaganda spread by the IRGC. In May, Europol’s internal referral unit launched co-ordinated action to target the IRGC’s online content after the EU designated it a terrorist organisation. It took down a total of 14,200 posts linked to the group. This operation exposed the enormous extent and reach of the IRGC’s online activities. Europol said:

“The content was spread across mainstream social media platforms as well as streaming services … Propaganda was identified in several languages, including Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, Persian, and Spanish. The material ranged from speeches blending religious martyrdom narratives with highly charged political messaging to AI-generated videos glorifying the IRGC and calls to avenge the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei”.


There we have it—AI-generated videos glorifying the IRGC, calls to violence, blogs, recruitment of online operatives and more. The reach of the IRGC’s propaganda and violent material is vast and it is only growing.

I will not accept that designated bodies are different from terrorist groups when it comes to the dissemination of propaganda material. The Government stated that they believed dissemination would fall under the Section 17A offence of inviting support for a designated body. However, the reality is that many publications may not explicitly invite support for, in the limited sense as applied in Section 17A. They may simply glorify the actions and activities of the designated body. I have already given many examples of the myriad ways in which groups like the IRGC disseminate material. If this is the reality then it is abundantly clear that there is a gaping hole in the Bill.

The corresponding terrorism offence that my Amendment 21 is modelled on is contained in Section 2 of the Terrorism Act 2006. The offence in new Section 17A of inviting support for a designated body is modelled on the offence in Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. These two offences were enacted six years apart. It is therefore evident that the Government and Parliament believed in 2005, when the new Terrorism Bill was introduced, that the original Section 12 offence in the 2000 Act was insufficient to deal with the full range of terrorist publications. If they believed otherwise, they would not have sought to create a separate stand-alone offence of dissemination in the 2006 Act. In other words, Parliament has already confirmed its belief that “inviting support for” does not sufficiently cover the wider dissemination of supportive materials. That is clearly evidenced by the arguments from the Government at the time. In 2005 the Minister responsible, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, said that the Government wanted to give law enforcement agencies the tools they needed to tackle a particular mischief: the dissemination of publications in context, which means that they will either encourage terrorism or be of use to terrorists in practical ways. That was a very clear statement.