Undersea Cables: National Security Threat

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I confirm that the MoD has had discussions with Ireland, rather than me personally. Northern Ireland is an integral part of the UK while the people of Northern Ireland want that. The noble Baroness’s point with respect to the importance of protecting that, and the important part that it plays for the whole UK, is really important, and we will certainly take that on board and keep it on board.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. Disruption to cables would have potentially huge effects on communications, data and so on—so too, incidentally, would disruption to the satellite systems on which we all depend. The strategic defence review called for a national conversation about raising the country’s awareness of the threats we face. Is there any plan to have a national exercise, involving large businesses as well as government departments, local authorities and local voluntary organisations, to prepare for a major communications or data disruption?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

There are certainly plans to do exactly as my noble friend asks. There certainly needs to be work on those plans, and they need some more detail to them, but there certainly are plans to do that. I have said a number of times from this Dispatch Box that the threats we face from others are now different in many respects from the threats we faced in the past. The disruption to data, the disruption to energy supplies and the disruption to communication are all part of the threat that we now face. Clearly, we are going to have to do more as a homeland to stand up against that. Part of it will require a conversation with industry, the public and the defence sector in order to protect ourselves.

Strategic Defence Review 2025

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Friday 18th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am delighted to follow my noble friend Lord McCabe and his excellent maiden speech. I have known my noble friend for probably more years than either of us would care to remember. We worked together in the All-Party Group on Policing, and in the PLP departmental group on home affairs.

He describes your Lordships’ House as quaint but charming. I wonder if that was how he was described in Birmingham Hall Green when, as an export from Port Glasgow, he was given his peanut butter. His many years working with young offenders and children who have experienced trauma may not seem like it would be immediately valuable in fitting into your Lordships’ House—then again, it might. That pragmatic experience of needing to find practical solutions to problems will certainly add value to the deliberations we have here. Indeed, his self-description of being a generalist with common sense, focusing on solutions rather than ideological fantasies, could be seen as encapsulating the very best traditions of your Lordships’ House. My noble friend is very welcome, and we look forward to hearing from him frequently in the future.

This House, and indeed the nation, owes a debt of gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Robertson, and his team for the review we are debating. The assessment is candid: the UK is closer to the reality of war than it has been at any time in the last 60 years, and we are woefully unprepared for conflict.

As chair of the National Preparedness Commission, I particularly welcome the SDR’s focus on building a national defence effort that includes the whole of society, and the express reference to building

“national resilience to threats below and above the threshold of an armed attack through a concerted, collective effort involving—among others—industry, the finance sector, civil society, academia, education, and communities”.

The public have, to some extent, been shielded from the escalating risk, so the willingness of the Government to start the national conversation that my noble friend called for about national security, resilience and preparedness, is welcome and indeed essential.

Grey zone aggression is already threatening our daily lives. Cyberattacks against public and private organisations are detected daily. Russian submarines are encroaching into British waters. Geopolitical unrest is threatening continuity of supply chains, and disinformation campaigns threaten national cohesion. We have to improve our preparedness for all of these. The nature of these attacks will change and intensify. They will demand a nationwide response, a nationwide endurance, and, in the same way, we need to be prepared for all the other risks that we face.

Just think of what has happened in the last few months. We have had the cyberattacks on M&S and the Co-op, and four substation fires in five weeks—one of them shutting down Heathrow. They are probably not malicious but demonstrate the consequences of clapped-out, aged infrastructure and certainly highlight that vulnerability to future malign actors. West Nile virus has been detected in mosquitoes here in Britain. A wildfire shut the M25, following on from the driest UK March on record. Most recently, three ne’er-do-wells were found guilty of an arson attack on a warehouse that they carried out on behalf of the Wagner Group. I could go on. That is why the National Preparedness Commission has advocated the need for a threat-agnostic preparedness. As a nation, we must be ready for whatever may happen.

The SDR proposes a defence readiness Bill that would give the Government new powers to improve preparedness of key industries, support the mobilisation of resources when needed, and mandate annual reporting on our war-fighting readiness. Can my noble friend the Minister tell us when this will be introduced? The National Preparedness Commission has separately proposed a national resilience Bill, following the model of the Climate Change Act, that would place a legal obligation on government departments and public bodies to take account of and prioritise the need for preparedness and resilience in all their actions. Such an Act could establish an independent national resilience committee, akin to the Climate Change Committee, to advise the UK Government on their assessment of the progress being made and what additional measures should be taken.

So why not bring these proposals together? Let us have a national resilience and defence readiness Bill in the next Session of Parliament. This should spell out the respective roles of the UK Government, the devolved Administrations, mayors and local authorities. It would place explicit expectations on the critical national infrastructure and businesses more generally. It would strengthen and rationalise the network of local resilience forums and require them to engage with local businesses and the local voluntary, community and faith sectors.

We need the national conversation proposed in the strategic defence review. We must raise public awareness of the threats we face, the escalating risk of conflict, as well as the consequences of climate change, the associated extreme weather events and other hazards. The SDR has kick-started that process. The Government have acknowledged what needs to be done in the national security strategy, but now that must be turned into action. We have not got long.

Defence: 2.5% GDP Spending Commitment

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I absolutely agree with the point about deterrence, and I have been making it in various debates. The noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, has been present at those debates, and the noble Lord, Lord Dannatt, asked me about this during the previous Urgent Question we had on defence. We need to re-establish deterrence. We need people to know that there are lines which, if crossed, will result in consequences. Perhaps we have not given the priority to deterrence that we should have, but the noble Earl is right that it must play an appropriate part in future. Countries know that, with our allies, we stand up for certain things and that if those lines are crossed, there will be consequences.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests as set out in the register, as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. Do we not have to look at defence holistically? It has to be a whole-of-society response that includes the resilience of the nation to all sorts of attacks and measures that undermine our future. Unfortunately, that is about the scale of not merely of our Armed Forces but our investment in other resources to ensure that we are resilient. The reality is that the 2.5% figure is probably not enough just for conventional forces, let alone for that whole-of-society resilience. I hope the Minister is considering that and will discuss it with his Treasury colleagues.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend Lord Harris for his question. It is not just me who is considering that; the whole of government is considering the need for homeland resilience. Indeed, my noble friend has asked me about this issue on a number of occasions. Part of the remit of the defence review is to look at what we should do about homeland resilience; that is an important step forward. What do we do to prepare the population for the threats we may face in future? What about hybrid warfare? What about, as we have seen in Ukraine, attacks on critical national infrastructure? What about some of the other data breaches we have seen? These are wholly important issues to which we have perhaps not given the priority needed. My noble friend is absolutely right, and the defence review is looking at this. Homeland resilience will have to be a proper part of how we take our defence and security further in future.

Drones: RAF Bases

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lancaster of Kimbolton (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I might build on the question from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, if I may—or not.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I think it is this side. I refer to my interests in the register as chair of the National Preparedness Commission. I too wanted to follow up the question from the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup. This is a widespread issue. Drones are comparatively cheap; they are easy to mobilise; they can be used, potentially, with an explosive or chemical or even a radiological payload; and they can be used for hostile surveillance. There are all sorts of uses, not just by hostile nations, but by criminal gangs and terrorists and so on.

This is not just a question for national defence against national defence assets, but it must be a question of the police around the country having the appropriate equipment and facilities. Can the Minister reassure us that we are going to have that country-wide, whole-of-government response to the threat from drones, which, as we have seen in other countries, can be extensive?

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My noble friend makes a really important point. The defence review will address national resilience. As the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Stirrup, has also said, of course air defence means missiles and other things in the conventional way in which we interpret that term. It also includes being able to deal with low- tech mass efficiently and cost effectively. Clearly, we will need to address that—and we will—as the hybrid threat and the low-cost, low-technology threat will be part of the warfare of the future.

Defence Policy: Deterrence

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, for giving us the opportunity to debate this important issue. I will talk about deterrence in the broadest sense. In so doing, I declare my interest as chair of the National Preparedness Commission.

Deterrence is not just about the ability to hit back hard against an aggressor, thereby making that aggression less likely. It is also about demonstrating a level of preparedness against the threat posed and a degree of resilience to recover quickly from any attack mounted. The first duty of government is to keep the country safe and protect its citizens. That is an essential platform on which the nation’s economic growth and prosperity depend.

Increasingly, hostile states pursue their objectives in the grey zone between peace and open conflict. Conventional campaigns are supplemented or preceded by tactics of hybrid warfare involving cyberattacks, campaigns of misinformation and disinformation, and disruption to civil infrastructure, the economy and the vital services on which citizens and communities depend. For example, we have seen a spate of unexplained fires in installations around Europe, and in the past 24 hours have read the news with great interest in that context.

Such grey-zone operations may take place without any associated conventional military activities. They are often conducted by proxies, non-state actors or groups that may be state-controlled, state-sponsored or state-tolerated; or they may be conducted by covert means. They may be plausibly deniable and, although they may fall below the threshold of armed conflict, their consequences are likely to be just as serious as those of a more conventional attack.

Recent years have seen attacks on undersea cables and fuel pipelines; cyberattacks by state-sponsored actors, such as those leading to the SolarWinds hack in 2020 or the Hafnium attack in 2021; the jamming and spoofing of navigation satellite systems; and various sorts of drone activity, which of course can be conducted from hundreds of miles away. A preparedness to respond effectively to such attacks, or to recover quickly from them, makes them less worth while for the adversary and therefore helps to deter them.

The consequences of these grey-zone activities are not just immediate or limited only to recovering from the event itself. Of course there are costs involved in addressing the immediate challenge but, more seriously, there may be a weakening of the nation’s ability to respond effectively to other attacks. More significantly, such attacks and the failure to deal with them effectively may undermine public confidence in the state and the ability of the Government to protect their citizens. That would be a win for any adversary.

Similarly, the objective of misinformation and disinformation campaigns is to sow discord and undermine faith in a legitimate, democratic Government. Such campaigns are fuelled by social media and ever more sophisticated applications of artificial intelligence, but the intent is to undermine citizens’ faith in their Government and the democratic process itself.

Dealing with such challenges may not necessarily involve a military response. It will need a response from the rest of government, local authorities, emergency services and, indeed, the whole of society. Such a level of preparedness and resilience is an essential part of the nation’s defence capability, and it has to be a key component of modern deterrence.

King’s Speech

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, particularly for the very apt and interesting comparison that he concluded with. I declare my role as chair of the National Preparedness Commission.

The tone of today’s debate has been very clear. I think your Lordships all acknowledge that the world is closer to widespread war than at any time in the last 60 years, with the conflict in the Middle East, in Israel and Gaza, now threatening to involve Lebanon and Yemen. We have already seen Iran and Israel trading missiles, and they are both nuclear-capable powers. There is also Russia’s bloody and cynical invasion of Ukraine.

Let us be clear: the established world order and the post-war certainties are rapidly changing. The United States is becoming more isolationist as it surrenders its global economic supremacy, with a threat to its commitment to NATO after the elections in November, while the “deadly quartet”, as somebody called them, are becoming closer all the time.

China is investing huge sums in the critical infrastructure of Africa, Asia and Europe, buying up controlling interests in critical minerals and at the same time becoming increasingly bellicose towards Taiwan, on which we rely for semiconductors. Russia’s attacks are both kinetic, as in Ukraine, and hybrid—ask the Baltic states or Scandinavia. Remember the disruptions to pipelines or internet cables and the cyberattacks by state-tolerated groups—we have suffered some of those in the UK—to say nothing of the bot factories spreading and magnifying misinformation and disinformation. Those attacks are grey zone; they are deniable, but they are real. If they reduce the faith of our population in our elected Government and their competence, or if they undermine confidence in democracy itself, that is job done by the people who perpetrate them.

So, of course, we must be prepared to defend ourselves against the threat of war. For that, we need conventional forces and an enhanced defence budget, but we must also prepare for non-conventional disruptions inspired and caused by our enemies. A resilient nation that has preparedness built into its fabric is a nation that can recover from attacks of whatever nature. That very resilience and preparedness act as a deterrent against those who mean us harm.

The gracious Speech was based on the principle of security for all, on the basis of stability. That must mean that our other objectives should be safeguarded against being disrupted or blown off course by external challenges, whether malicious and state led or from any other cause. It means that our defence agenda must also embrace not only military threats but all the other 89 acute risks outlined in the national risk register.

Last week’s report from the inquiry of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, into the handling of the Covid pandemic showed how ill prepared we were for a risk that had been at the top of that register since its first publication in 2008. It is a national imperative that we are better prepared to respond to our increasingly volatile and unpredictable world.

That includes the extreme weather events that we are increasingly experiencing as a result of climate change. Climate change will trigger mass displacement of peoples around the world—1 billion people by 2050 —with disruption of supply chains, food supplies and everything else, and the political instability that will go with it and spill over national borders and into this country. At the same time, our critical infrastructure is ageing. Much of it is from the 19th century, inadequately maintained for decades and designed for climate parameters very different from those we now experience.

The first duty of any Government is to protect their citizens. The compelling reason for investing in resilience and preparedness is to safeguard the world our children and grandchildren will inherit. That must be at the heart of our future strategy. Defence, resilience and preparedness must go hand in hand. They must be at the core of the Government’s defence and security review. Preparedness and resilience must be a central role of all government, every department and every agency—whole of society, whole of government. Our future depends on it.

Ukraine

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

I assure the noble Viscount that we have agreed mechanisms in place to ensure that these weapons will be used within Ukrainian territory to disrupt Russia’s ability to strike Ukrainian civilians and critical national infrastructure, and to relieve pressure on Ukraine’s front lines. It might be helpful for him to know that this capability is subject to the missile technology control regime. On that basis, we have in place a Government-to-Government assurance with Ukraine to facilitate the transfer.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, clearly, the whole House is behind the support that the Government are showing for the Government of Ukraine against the illegal attack from Russia. But clearly, the more that we are at the forefront of that, the more likely it is that we may be subject to some form of retaliation, whether explicitly or by grey zone means, to which it would be difficult to attribute the reasons concerned. For example, as we know from the past year or so, there has been interest from Russian submarines in the undersea cables that come into this country, and there have been issues around the pipelines. All of these things go on all of the time. Could the Minister give us some reassurance, without going into too much detail, as to the measures we are taking to deal with possible activities, potentially on a deniable basis, against us as a result of the support we are showing for Ukraine?

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

The noble Lord poses an important question. Regarding recent activity, he is correct that Russian ships were operating in the North Sea. The Ministry of Defence constantly monitors activity within UK waters and the economic exclusion zone to counter and deter detected threats, and British warships frequently patrol and shadow foreign vessels throughout the UK marine area. Royal Navy vessels are routed through the North Sea where possible on increased surveillance of offshore oil and gas installations. In addition to our effective armed surface fleet, we also have multirole ocean surveillance vessels. HMS “Scott” is currently in service and operating, and very recently we made an off-the-shelf purchase to acquire at speed a new multirole ocean surveillance vessel, recently named RFA “Proteus”. It is currently being readied for operational activity, so I hope I can reassure your Lordships that we are vigilant about that threat.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Monday 3rd December 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Paddick has added his name to this amendment. I want from these Benches to support the noble Baroness. At the previous stage of the Bill, I tabled a number of amendments, including to this clause, on behalf of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I am not suggesting that it has in any way abandoned concerns about the Bill, but I do not now speak on its behalf, simply because we have not had an opportunity to consider further where the Bill has got to.

One of those amendments would have imported “supports” rather than “supportive”. “Supportive” seems far more open to interpretation than “supports”, the former being much more subjective than the more active “supports”, which is, as the noble Baroness said, the term used in Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000. Like her, I looked back at the debate in Committee and noted that the term used by the Minister during much of it was “supports”.

New paragraph (b), adding recklessness or intention to “supports”, creates a new and separate offence, although it occurred to me only yesterday that we might have amended “a proscribed organisation” to “the proscribed organisation”.

The existing Section 12 offence is very direct, referring to “invites support”, and in the context of a meeting, albeit a small, private meeting. Under new subsection (1A)(a), it will be an offence to express an opinion without mentioning a proscribed organisation. Many people in this Chamber could probably advise me of the answer to the following question. If were to say that I could understand that a 15 year-old girl in London might find herself persuaded or groomed to travel abroad to support freedom fighters in an area where Daesh was active and there had been plenty of press reports of the situation—I refer noble Lords to the splendid novel Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie if they want to be provoked to think further about what might underlie such a situation—would I be committing an offence? The answer is probably not in this Chamber, but if I did so at a meeting at a university with a young audience, I am not sure what my position would be.

Turning to “reckless”, I believe that I would be unable to rely on a defence similar to that in the existing Section 12(4) of the Terrorism Act, allowing a person to prove, with the application of Section 118, that he or she had no reasonable cause to believe that an address to a meeting would support a proscribed organisation. I would be hard put to think of a context—which I think was the term used by the noble Baroness, Lady D’Souza, at the last stage—other than something like this debate, where one could be fairly confident of expressing an opinion and not being reckless. The Minister in Committee focused on recklessness and said little about support or being supportive, so I look forward to hearing the response today.

Like the noble Baroness, we are not happy with how the Government appear to be moving against freedom of speech in this clause, but we have the opportunity here to make it somewhat more proportionate. I thought I should look at Article 10 of the Convention, on freedom of expression. Article 10.2 reminds us that the right is qualified— understandably, of course—in such a way as is,

“necessary in a democratic society”.

That phrase really struck home to me. I would like to think that what we are doing through the Bill is necessary in a democratic society. I am not persuaded by Clause 1 as it stands.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, in considering the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, we have to look at the two new paragraphs (a) and (b) together. In the Bill, the Government seek to eliminate various routes by which an ingenious individual who wants, in effect, to incite people to support a terrorist organisation might create a defence. It is a combination of the two new paragraphs that seems to me to be important. An individual might claim that that they are not supporting a terrorist organisation, but merely supportive of its objectives. They might express that supportive nature of the objectives in such graphic and bloodcurdling terms that it might be deemed to have an effect on those listening to those descriptions. But of course, if they then went on to claim that they had no intention of making people act and follow that particular terrorist organisation, they would be permitted to do so.

By including both being “supportive of” the general objectives and at the same time being reckless as to the consequences of that, the Bill seems to attempt to avoid those ingenious individuals proclaiming that in fact they are not encouraging people to join a particular terrorist organisation, but are merely being supportive of the objectives of that organisation and have no intention at all of making people take action on that. The fact remains that that they have been supportive of the organisation and at the same time reckless as to the consequences. My concern with the amendment is that it actually allows two routes by which people can claim a defence when they have clearly, in the most common terms, been trying to persuade people to support a terrorist organisation. That is why I think the combination of “supportive” with the reckless intent makes a degree of sense.

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to say that it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, and that I completely agree with him.

UK Territorial Seas: Incidents

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I would be more than happy to meet interested parties to discuss those concerns. This is an important element in the tapestry of activity on which we depend for maritime security. It is important to emphasise, as the noble Baroness is aware, that we rely not just on aerial surveillance, space-based systems, radar and so on, important as those things are; human intelligence is often important as well. There is now a network of field intelligence officers working for Border Force around the country. I would be happy to take this matter forward with the noble Baroness.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Earl for the briefing that was provided yesterday. The improvements that have come with the co-ordination activity are welcome, but it is co-ordinating limited resources, as the noble Earl has admitted. He talked about it being intelligence led. Perhaps he cannot share it with us, because it would be difficult, but can he ensure and guarantee the House that he, as the relevant Minister, will have an intelligence assessment of what is actually required to prevent illicit materials, guns, people and so on entering the country, and whether that is sufficient given the resource that is available?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, Ministers collectively will have that picture presented to them because, as I have explained, it is not just the Ministry of Defence that is involved in this sector. The Royal Navy is deployed, as noble Lords will be aware, very much in a supportive role to many of the other agencies. But I entirely take the noble Lord’s point. He may be interested to know that UK Border Force has introduced into service six new coastal patrol vessels in addition to the five cutters already in service, while continuing to call on a maritime patrol aircraft contract for aerial surveillance. But that is not the end of the story: we are looking at future needs across the piece.

Multilateral Disarmament

Lord Harris of Haringey Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

I completely take the noble Lord’s point. It is early days to be thinking in those terms, although he is right to do so. It is encouraging that the November IAEA report to the board of governors confirmed that Iran remains compliant with the nuclear-related measures set out in the joint comprehensive plan of action. We welcome the findings of the DG’s report. We praised the IAEA for its progress and continued work on that very challenging task, but no doubt lessons and messages will emerge from that strand of work.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Earl has talked about the need to move towards multilateral disarmament, but there are stocks of fissile material in various parts of the globe. How confident is he that those stocks, which could be turned into nuclear weapons, are sufficiently secure to avoid them falling into the hands of aspirant nuclear powers or, worse still, non-state actors that might wish to possess such materials?

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, that is clearly a constant concern and the noble Lord is right to raise it. Against that background, the UK continues to push for the early start of negotiations, without preconditions, on a fissile material cut-off treaty in the Conference on Disarmament. We supported a Canadian-backed resolution at the United Nations first committee on that topic, in October. In this country we have a voluntary moratorium on the production of fissile material for nuclear weapons or other explosive devices. We have not produced fissile material for nuclear weapons since 1995.