National Security (State Threats) Bill

Lord Docherty of Milngavie Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Docherty of Milngavie (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, and other noble Lords. I thank the Minister for the measured and thoughtful way in which he introduced Second Reading. As many have said, there is no more important issue facing our country than our national security and, more broadly, our defence.

We are living in the most dangerous period in Europe since the 1930s. That is not hyperbole or geographic sophistry. I studied at the Rostov technical institute in 1990, during the collapse of the Soviet Union. In Rostov, on the bank of the River Don, our hosts would proudly point to the other bank and tell us, “That is where Europe starts”. We might have said that it is where Europe ends. But that is where a war in Europe between Ukraine and Russia has now lasted longer, for each country, than in both world wars.

That Russia is a hostile state with few if any sympathies for western democratic norms or our liberal institutions is beyond doubt. That we live in a dangerous world that is getting more dangerous is also beyond doubt. As has been mentioned many times, the director-general of MI5 has openly reported a substantial increase in the number of investigations of state threat activities. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and others, have mentioned, the convictions just last week of a Romanian and a Ukrainian national for arson on property connected to our Prime Minister shows how emboldened bad actors have become.

I know that the Minister will not wish to name individual organisations which may fall within the remit of the Bill. However, we also know that Iran and its proxies are increasingly active. That state actors and their proxies are attempting to commission surveillance, sabotage, arson, theft or physical violence is manifest and self-evident. The review of counter- terrorism legislation carried out by Jonathan Hall KC has set out the need for a Bill such as this clearly, as so many noble Lords have said.

There are several areas in the Bill which describe the critical issue of finance in relation to potential offences. An offence can be made when financial assistance is provided by a designated body or where financial assistance is provided to a designated body, either directly or indirectly. That financial benefit will, as has been mentioned, almost always take the form of cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency is now the payment method of choice for criminal gangs, hostile state actors and it appears, for reasons known only to itself, for the Reform party. With payments made to wallet addresses and not individuals, without the involvement of banks, these payments are, as we know, far harder to subject to anti-money laundering rules or sanctions compliance. Some cryptocurrency products are specifically designed to avoid detection. In my view, the legitimate use of crypto is becoming increasingly difficult to defend.

A parallel can be drawn between social media and cryptocurrencies. The first smartphone was launched in 2007, and you could argue that social media, as we understand it today, came into being a year later with the launch of the App Store. Only now, 18 years later, are we seeing a concerted effort across jurisdictions to try to address the harmful effects of social media on children using smartphones, relying less on the professed good faith of big tech and other providers—rather, through comprehensive regulation and even prohibition. Future generations will look back on our handing over smartphones unregulated to children in the same way today we look at photos of Victorian children smoking a pipe. They will ask, “What were they thinking?”

The year 2008 was also when a seminal and anonymous paper was published, setting out the rationale for cryptocurrency. The first cryptocurrency was created the following year. Social media and cryptocurrencies are essentially the same age. Is it not also time for a similar concerted approach to regulate crypto more effectively and make it less obviously useful to criminals and bad actors, or will future generations ask, “What were they thinking?” What steps are the Government taking to ensure that the individuals responsible for cryptocurrencies used by any organisation or person designated under the Bill will be held accountable? Are there any more general plans on crypto regulation being made much more effective?

No one should be above the law or beyond its reach. The security and defence of the country is our first priority, as many noble Lords have said. For that reason, I strongly welcome the Bill and the provisions contained within it.