Black Dog Crisis Management Company

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

If the noble Baroness wants to give a donation to the Conservative Party, I am sure that it would be welcome. Government procurement is open and transparent and there are very strict rules around it.

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two questions. First, what skills deficiencies in the Home Office’s 16 directors and 277 senior managers persuaded the Secretary of State to award contracts to Black Dog Crisis Management, a company with £100 share capital and only one employee, who previously worked at the Cabinet Office? Secondly, when will these contracts be published in full?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I understand that all direct awards are listed in the contracts finder area of GOV.UK. On skills, as I said, this was a particularly novel incident and that is why the STA, which is very restricted in its use, was used in this case.

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sikka (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Sandhurst, to the House and I look forward to engaging with him in the weeks and years to come. I have considerable concerns about large parts of the Bill which seem to be designed to attack hard-won human rights. I am also particularly concerned that the Bill is empowering Ministers to make laws without any parliamentary approval. That seems to happen only in dictatorships; maybe that is where we are heading.

The Bill would criminalise Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities without explaining why the Government have failed to provide adequate sites for them. The Government also have in their sights trade unions, workers and peace marchers, who could all be criminalised because their protests are deemed to be noisy and disruptive. Companies can cause disruption by moving production and the Government say that is good and fine, but if workers protest about loss of jobs or homes and cuts to their wages, that is considered to be disruptive, and the full might of the state is unleashed upon them. Did someone ever say that the laws passed by Parliament are even-handed? If so, I would love to see the evidence.

This Bill also creates distrust between people and the police by requiring police commissioners to interpret the new noise triggers embedded in the Bill. People protest because Parliament and Governments are not responsive to their concerns. Whether they are civil rights, feminist, environmental, LGBT or anti-war demonstrators, people are asking to be included in the fabric of society. They ask for dignity and rights and draw attention to the destructive practices of corporations and abuses of power by the state. Rather than building an inclusive society, this Bill would criminalise people of conscience and deprive them of jobs, mortgages, credit cards, travel visas and other things that many of us take for granted.

This week, the good people of Liverpool protested about an arms fair to be held in the city in October. It is not criminal, apparently, for companies to market weapons of mass destruction near schools, homes and hospitals, but under this Bill it would be criminal for protestors to object to such a deadly trade being conducted in their neighbourhood. Obviously, the Government are concerned that corporations should not be deprived of their profits, but people can be deprived of their lives and there would be restraints on demonstrating about it.

So many of our rights are derived from protests. In 1968 the Ford sewing machinists organised strikes and protests to demand equality. They drew attention to legalised discrimination, which paved the way for the Equal Pay Act 1970. Under this Bill, they would all be criminalised. I remember demonstrating against racial discrimination. I made plenty of noise and caused disruption too, so presumably I would also have been criminalised and would not be standing here. Maybe this is the aim of the Bill.

The CND marches created social awareness of the destructive power of nuclear weapons and a climate for international treaties and bans, yet this Bill could criminalise similar protests. It would return us to the era of the Tolpuddle martyrs, when people protesting about wage cuts and workers’ rights were criminalised, prosecuted, silenced and exiled. The power of the state would be, once again, unleased against the likes of the Jarrow marches, seeking jobs and an end to persecution by the state.

As a result of protests, we have a better and more inclusive society. This Bill would reduce the possibilities for emancipatory change. In my final words about the consequences of such a Bill, I quote from President John Kennedy:

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”


Is that what the Government are trying to achieve?

Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I thank my noble friend. As I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, on the definition of freemasonry, the Code of Ethics published by the College of Policing makes it clear that the police must remain impartial and that membership of groups or societies must not cause a conflict of interest or impact an officer’s ability to discharge their duties effectively. As I said earlier, the panel is clear that it found no evidence that freemasonry had any effect on the investigations.

[Lord Sikka (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, a statutory duty of candour is a necessary first step in checking institutionalised corruption through the sunlight of transparency, candour and frankness. That point was made strongly by the 2013 Francis report, the 2015 Harris review, the 2015 Report of the Morecambe Bay Investigation and the 2017 Jones report on the Hillsborough tragedy, which specifically called for the establishment of a duty of candour for police officers. Can the Minister explain why the Government have ignored such calls? Secondly, if the Government are sincere about creating such a duty, they can easily and speedily adopt the Public Authority (Accountability) Bill, which was tabled in March 2017 by former MP Andy Burnham. There we are—we have ready-made legislation. What prevents the Government adopting it?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

The noble Lord may not have been here for an earlier question, but I said that the Home Secretary is very keen to speak to the families before publishing our response on this duty.

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

The amendment seeks to limit the definition of criminal conduct in that way. I think it is a matter of tightening it up and getting rid of material in the Bill that should not be there. I beg to move.

[Lord Sikka (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. My concern is about authorising corporations to commit criminal acts and the consequences for the individuals who have been somehow enrolled to commit criminal acts and subsequently discarded. Through this amendment, I seek to address those issues.

The Bill permits the relevant authorities to enrol and authorise state and non-state actors to commit criminal acts. None of the relevant authorities listed in the Bill is hermetically sealed; they are not self-contained. They use corporations—private organisations—to further their aims. They interact with others, and there is evidence to suggest that over the years corporations have been authorised to commit what some would say were criminal acts, while others might perhaps say those acts were dangerous. Corporations have become an arm of the state, and all Governments in recent years have had an appetite for outsourcing things. I can see nothing in the Bill that would prevent a Government from outsourcing the commission of criminal acts.

There is a fair bit of research into some of these companies. I want to draw attention to an article, dated 20 December 2018, that is easily accessible on the openDemocracy website. I shall quote part of it:

“G4S, one of the UK’s biggest private military companies, provides pivotal ‘operational support’ to Britain’s military in Afghanistan and such incidents bring back into focus the extent that private military and security companies are present – and sometimes directly involved – in combat … Britain has led this privatisation of modern warfare. It leads the world in providing armed contractors to ‘hot spots’, be it combating terrorism in the Middle East or fighting pirates off the Horn of Africa. Some of their biggest clients are governments; since 2004, the British state has spent approximately £50 million annually on mercenary companies.”


I would add that lots of details are very rarely provided by government officials to Parliament or the public. Over the years, I have tried to look at some of these companies, but it is almost impossible to track them. They are formed and then very quickly dissolved. It is very difficult to track their operations. The article that I have referred to goes on to say:

“Despite the size of this mercenary industry, the entire sector is marked by secrecy. Men trained in the arts of subterfuge and counter-intelligence dominate this sphere, and the result is an industry that operates from the shadows.”


How will the CHIS Bill make this industry accountable? There is clear evidence that these companies have been used for the commission of criminal acts.

One example of this is that in 2007, employees of Aegis Defence Services, based in London, posted footage on the web showing its guards firing their weapons at what was reported at the time as “civilians”. The company said the shootings were legal within the rules of protocol. That company has also been criticised for allegedly employing former child soldiers from Sierra Leone as mercenaries in Iraq. This is a company that is headquartered in London.

As far as I am aware, there is no central database of private military and security companies operating from the UK, and I do not think that there is even any legal requirement for them to register with a governing body. Yet these companies, both in the past and possibly even now, are authorised to commit criminal acts. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent a relevant authority from authorising such companies to conduct these acts.

My concern is that we must not authorise private profit-maximising corporations to commit criminal acts. You could argue that, the more terror they unleash and the more criminal acts they commit, somehow the higher their profits will be; their executives and shareholders will be that much richer. This is simply unacceptable. Their victims receive virtually no compensation or justice, and Governments have simply pretended that they know nothing about the criminal acts being committed in their name. The murk surrounding them was touched upon in the 1996 report of Lord Justice Scott’s inquiry into the arms to Iraq affair, but there was very little clarity.

Corporations provide not only mercenaries and related services; they also operate much of the local infrastructure, including the operation of prisons. Their employees may be persuaded to go undercover into a prison to learn about drug dealing and much more. Presumably, they would need to be authorised to do so by the Home Office to commit such acts. These undercover agents can, intentionally or unintentionally, injure others. In those circumstances, who exactly is to be held accountable? Is it the corporation which has been authorised to commit the criminal act, or is it the relevant authority? As far as I am aware, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner does not have access to the documents and the personnel of these corporations.

There is also the unedifying scenario of a relevant authority authorising a corporation to commit criminal acts, which in turn holds training sessions for its employees, training them to commit murder, torture and other heinous acts. What would happen to those individuals who refuse to obey the instructions of their employers? Would they be able to say that they cannot go along with that? Would they be able to access an employment tribunal to secure redress? I cannot see anything about that in the Bill.

At the moment, people can refuse to commit criminal acts but if the Bill becomes law certain criminal acts would be normalised, though they would need to be authorised. That presents an enormous danger, and we have not sufficiently discussed the implications of corporations being licensed or authorised to commit these acts. Over the years, government departments have not come clean at all about how they have interacted with such corporations.

Today, and in previous debates, many noble Lords have drawn attention to the fact that children and vulnerable people may be enrolled to commit criminal acts. They can be used by the relevant authority and then discarded, perhaps being paid a small sum. However, many of these individuals will have flashbacks for years. They will have nightmares and suffer mental health problems; where exactly will they be able to turn for help? On the other hand, if these individuals are employees of the relevant authority, the employer will owe them a duty of care. They will then have recourse against the employer—namely, the relevant authority—so that they can be supported and compensated. Again, that is an issue.

Corporations should not be authorised under any circumstances to commit criminal acts. In the UK, we do not even have a regulator to enforce company law, never mind anything else the corporations might do—there is no central enforcer of company law in this country. Another benefit of restricting the commission of criminal acts to persons employed by the relevant authority is that that would protect very young children: children under a certain age cannot be employed at all. This will provide extra protection for those individuals. If the vulnerable people are used, the relevant authority has to be accountable for their action.

It is with this kind of issues in mind that I have proposed Amendment 53, which suggests that only individuals directly employed by a relevant authority can be authorised to commit criminal acts. We do not have the power to fully look into what corporations do, and, as I said earlier, there is not even a central regulator.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]]

I can be brief. My noble friends pose two very important questions that become even more unnerving when run together. I look forward to what the Minister says about, first, the exact detail of this conduct in relation to CCAs—it is vague language; can it be sharpened?—and, secondly, the ability under the legislation as drafted for corporations, rather than individuals, to be licensed to commit criminal conduct or to run CHIS and criminal conduct themselves. If she thinks that the Bill is too broad compared to government policy, will she consider ruling out on the face of the legislation that kind of sub-delegation or outsourcing to corporations?

Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 11th November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sikka (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome the noble and learned Lord, Lord Stewart, and the noble Lords, Lord McLoughlin and Lord Walney, to the House. I look forward to meeting them face to face in the not too distant future and working with them.

I have a number of questions. First, the Minister and the Government have told us that we can rely on the Human Rights Act as a way of curbing any excesses of the CHIS Bill, but the difficulty is that the Government have already committed to repealing and revising that Act. We do not know what will be taken out or left in. Surely it would be more prudent for the Government to introduce the revised human rights legislation first and bring the CHIS Bill later? But that is not what they are doing.

Subsection (5)(c) of new Clause 29B, as proposed by Clause 1(5), permits authorised criminal acts

“in the interests of the economic well-being of the United Kingdom.”

As the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, indicated, the Bill does not say what that actually means. How do we know what is in the long-term economic interest of the United Kingdom? Was deregulation of the financial sector really in the economic interest of the UK? Is anybody calling for deregulation now because it clashes with the government ideology of the day, perhaps? Are they really to be infiltrated by undercover agents and the organisation subverted? It is hard to know.

Some in authority will have argued—they certainly did in their day—that the general march against unemployment and poverty, the miners’ strike, the Dagenham women’s quest for equal pay or the Grunwick workers’ quest for better pay and working conditions were somehow a threat to the economic well-being of the UK. However, with hindsight, we know that they enabled many people to live a fulfilling life. They brought in an era of possible gender equality, at least over pay. Much of our social awareness is due to social organisations such as environmental activists, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, anti-apartheid movements and Extinction Rebellion, which may well operate in the margins of the law from time to time. However, these organisations can easily be classified by the Government as damaging the economic interests of society and thereby perhaps become subject to infiltration by undercover agents.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher referred to the African National Congress as a “typical terrorist organisation”; by definition, she labelled Nelson Mandela a terrorist. Whether the Government sent in any undercover agents to undermine the ANC, we do not know. Nevertheless, the idea that somehow you are going to safeguard national security and economic interests poses particular problems, because the issues tend to be seen through the lenses of the ideology of the Government of the day.

The Bill defines “relevant authorities” but omits an important fact: all the relevant authorities have been outsourcing some of their activities to private corporations. That means that other corporations would also be authorised to commit criminal acts. Where does that leave us in terms of corporate responsibility and the responsibility of corporations under international law to uphold human rights? Who will oversee these corporations? In this country, we do not even have a central regulator to oversee the enforcement of the Companies Act. What happens to the employees of these organisations if they say that they cannot go along with instructions from their employers? What happens to those conscientious objectors? The Bill provides absolutely no guide whatever.

For those reasons, it is impossible for me to support the Bill. I look forward to a number of amendments and a further debate.