National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I am very sorry. I apologise to the noble Lord and the Committee; I thought he had sat down, and I was not the only Member of the House who thought so.

I have made my speech. The only point that I was going to add was that if we retain Clause 2, it includes the preparatory acts under Clause 16 and the powers of search under Clause 21. For all those reasons, I think Clause 2 should not be included in the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord obviously did not know that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, had not sat down, but he perhaps ought reasonably to have known.

This exchange has focused my mind much more on the following question: part of the grey zone that we are dealing with is whether or not economic security is now part of national security. To a considerable extent, it is. I have not yet fully understood the relationship between the Bill and the National Security and Investment Act, passed last year, which deals with, among other things, some aspects of intellectual property. There may well be—but I am not sufficiently expert on it—a degree of overlap between that Act and what is proposed here.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. The National Security and Investment Act 2021 deals with investment and the transfer of more than 25% of the equity in certain types of companies, and it is very clear. A unit has been set up, in two departments at least, to deal with those provisions. There is no real relationship between this provision and the NSIA.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I am reassured. I declare a certain interest: I have a number of relatives in aspects of scientific research. My son tells me that he is a systems biologist, but I note that engineering biology and synthetic biology are defined in the NSI Act among the strategic areas, and they are in some ways very similar to systems biology. So that is part of my active interest in this area. I am well aware that, in our universities, we have a large number of multinational teams working on the cutting edge of advanced science in a number of different areas. That is part of the grey zone with which we are now dealing and which it is extremely difficult to come to grips with.

I will speak to my Amendment 11, which is very much a probing amendment, raising the question of how we handle the very substantial number of dual nationals we have in this country, both living here and living in other countries—in some cases, they are long-term residents in other countries. If we are moving towards an increasingly unfriendly and difficult international environment, as we are already seeing, dual nationals will come under increasing pressure, not just from what we may do, mildly, within the Bill but from the other countries of which they have citizenship and with which they have connections. We have seen the pressures that the Iranian Government are willing to push on to the family members of dual nationals or single British citizens living in this country, and we have seen the same in China. Therefore, there are a number of questions about whether we need to take on board the presence and complexity of our dual-national citizens as part of the complications of the Bill.

I am also conscious that, unless the Minister can reassure me, we have no idea how many dual nationals we have, who they are or where they are. All the questions I posed during the passage of the Elections Act about our overseas citizens, and potential overseas electors, have told me that we have very little idea of who and where they are. I raise this because I simply do not know whether there is a problem or how serious it may be. But it seems to me that we should pay more attention to a world in which some hostile foreign states will do their best to bring all the pressures that they can on British citizens with origins in their country or dual citizens.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I will not take very long; I will just correct the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that economic pressures on national security are a new addition. The Security Service Act 1989—the noble Lord, Lord Beith, who is not in his place, referred to this—talked about protecting the

“economic well-being of the United Kingdom”.

This is not a new issue. That is a point of clarification, for which I have not taken too much time.

--- Later in debate ---

Basically, this part of the Bill requires a considerable amount of work, as suggested in the amendments that I have tried to describe, to make it compatible with people’s normal human rights, civil liberties, freedom of expression, freedom of association and ability simply to go about their normal business. The Government ought to respond positively to these amendments. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. I suppose I should declare interests in relation to the amendments of my noble friend Lady Ludford. I have been stopped by the MoD police twice in my life: outside RAF Fylingdales when walking with a local Liberal Democrat councillor, and outside RAF Menwith Hill, where I had stopped to address a meeting of splendid Quaker women who constituted the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases. We were watching American servicemen in the ceremony in which they took down the union jack. There are no British servicemen on the base most of the time.

I want to talk about the probing amendments I have put down on why the Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories do not appear here. I explain my interest—and form—on this, which dates back to the Royal Commission on the Constitution of 1970-74, on which I was a very junior witness. I learned about the deep ambivalence surrounding the relationship between the Crown dependencies and the UK in particular, and about the British Overseas Territories.

I note that, in the Procurement Bill, which we have just passed through this House, the Crown dependencies are included under the definition of “a UK supplier”. However, under a number of other Acts that we have passed through this House in the last few years, they exclude themselves. They move in and out in various different ways.

In a number of these territories and dependencies, there are places of considerable concern to our security and interests: the Falkland Islands, the British Indian Ocean Territory, Ascension Island, Saint Helena, et cetera. The Crown dependencies I am much less sure about, although I know there is a Territorial Army base on Jersey. The last time I looked at the official Guernsey website, it still said that Guernsey’s contribution to British defence is the maintenance of the Alderney breakwater. That is a very interesting conceit. When, nearly 20 years ago, I asked the Ministry of Defence a Written Question on the importance of the Alderney breakwater, an official phoned me up to say, “We don’t understand your question”. On further investigation, he said that they had ceased to be concerned with the Alderney breakwater at the time of the Second World War.

There are many ambivalences here but surely, they should be part of this Bill. They are neither foreign nor entirely British. They are of importance to the UK, in financial terms and, when it came to the Falklands, in military terms. I am assured that there are some facilities on Ascension Island. There are certainly facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory, although they are of course primarily American, and I think there are fewer than two dozen British servicemen there. However, they should be in the Bill and are not. I merely wish to ask why.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, anybody watching a wonderful BBC documentary series about Ordnance Survey maps a few years ago would have seen the rather amusing part about a gap in the centre of London on the Ordnance Survey map as result of the Official Secrets Act. That was because it was forbidden to have the Telecom Tower on the map because it was a prohibited place for national security, so none of our foes were able to know where it was by studying the Ordnance Survey map. I hope that we avoid such absurdities with this Bill.

In Committee in the Commons, the Minister stated that there is not, nor will there be, a register of prohibited places. I hope the Minister can provide some more clarity with regard to that today. The offences under the Bill are so significant and potentially draconian that some of the issues that my noble friend Lady Ludford indicated might well come about, because the Minister in the Commons was unable to state in clear terms how people will know where a prohibited place is. Some might be perfectly obvious, such as some of the bases which my noble friend Lord Wallace approached with a Liberal councillor, but others are not. I understand entirely that there will be some areas where the Government do not wish to promote the activities or make it clear where they are, but how will they approach inadvertent activity, given that someone statically observing a prohibited place through an iPhone lens or a binocular lens could inadvertently be committing a criminal offence? I simply do not know how the Government intend to ensure that people are aware that they are potentially falling foul of this legislation.

Not only that but the Bill allows Ministers to move quickly to extend prohibited places. It does so by general description, as the Minister said in the Commons. Prohibited places do not have to be specified, as I understand it. They can be categorised, so that all areas that meet the general specification will become prohibited places. Is there a mechanism so that local authorities or local police are informed, even if no local communities are going to be informed? The Minister in the Commons said

“some sites will not want people to know exactly where they are and what they are doing because they will become targets. Once again, there is a balance to be struck in relation to provision for the intelligence community”.—[Official Report, Commons, National Security Bill Committee, 12/07/22; col. 107.]

Of course there needs to be a balance but, as with some other elements of the Bill, we see no other part of the balance. We see no mechanism that will protect the interests of people who are inadvertent.

The Government have also indicated that they might have to move very fast. There is of course merit in understanding that if there has been an alert about a threat, certain areas might need to be prohibited. I am not advocating it, but I am curious about the choice that has been made. The Government have not chosen to go down the route of the “made affirmative” procedure, which other legislation has if something has to be done urgently. They say that if there is a threat risk, to allow a prohibited place to be put in place they will bring it forward using the negative procedure and consult on it. It does not really ring true as far as how urgent a response that would be to a national security threat.

However, there are significant wider concerns when it comes to the powers that the Government are seeking. Where are the limits for the extension of prohibited places? Would it be, for example, that an immigration centre could not become a prohibited place under this Bill? Would it be that local government department buildings could not be prohibited places? What is the limit? Unless there is a limit, notwithstanding if there is an immediate threat—I think there are procedures anyway with regard to securing areas where the police think that offences are to be carried out, and for the safety of the public there are mechanisms that can secure places under existing legislation—how do we know how far Government want to extend those prohibited places? Unless we are clear, that raises the considerable concern that they can be used to prevent peaceful protest or concern.