Israel and Palestine: United States’ Proposals for Peace

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord. I am grateful to the noble Baroness for having secured this debate. For many years, I have been both a friend of Israel and a friend of Palestine—not always an easy balance to achieve in the ebbing and flowing of the two-state solution arguments—but President Trump’s so-called “deal of the century” has totally upset that balance. I have long championed Israel’s right to security within its legal borders, but when those borders are unilaterally changed by illegal acquisition or settlement —or even worse, as now, by American presidential diktat—that right to security is questionable, probably meaningless and arguably forfeited.

This deal would effectively mark the end of any acceptable two-state solution. The proposed illegal land grab and the quasi-Bantustan configuration of what would be left would hardly meet the concept of a genuine Palestinian state. The proposed swap of fertile land in the Jordan Valley for dusty land east of Gaza would understandably exacerbate—and it has—Palestinian resentment. With the Palestinians sidelined into the extremities of Jerusalem, gone too would be the possibility of a genuinely shared capital.

Over the years, I have spoken to Palestinians of all walks and politics, and I have no reason to doubt the universal intensity of their feeling. I fear violent consequences if these proposals are acted upon. This purported peace plan will strengthen the so-called resistance, and the spread of Israeli jurisdiction into Palestinian land will further stoke the flames of hatred and despair. I cannot understand how a United States Administration, who so frequently preach the importance of the rule of law, can propose a plan that so patently promotes illegality. The current occupation of the West Bank and the settlements within it are already illegal. Now, as well as entrenching these illegalities, they propose further illegal annexations.

United States presidential diktat cannot make what is illegal legal, whether it is in Jerusalem, on the Golan heights or, more widely, under the new proposals. Nor can the eerie silence of Arab neighbours make it any more acceptable. Currently our Government seem at best ambivalent and, at worst, quietly supportive of these proposals—although I still hope not. Since Sykes-Picot our involvement in this region has been somewhat less than honourable. The Balfour Declaration, and that which followed, undertook to respect the interests and rights of the Palestinians. If I may so: have we heck.

Backing the present Trump proposals would be one further betrayal. They are not about peace; they are about politics—the politics of the United States and the politics of Israel. The consequences could well be frightening. Violence in that part of the Middle East is never very far beneath the surface, and violence stoked by genuine grievances is a dangerous concoction. Before it is too late, we need to find our way back to a genuine two-state solution, opening up the possibility of genuine negotiations and, once again, the chance to be a friend of both Israel and Palestine. For that reason, I hope that the Palestinians continue to reject these dishonourable proposals and that, at the same time, we find the courage to do so too.

Palestinian Territories

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Thursday 7th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Steel of Aikwood, on securing this very timely debate. I agree with much of what he had to say. The Middle East is currently facing a struggle for hegemony between Iran, Saudi and Turkey. On this occasion, Israel seems intent on joining in. I do not believe that this is about preserving or strengthening Israel’s security but, on this occasion, about physical acquisitions with potentially disastrous implications for the Palestinians. The so-called American deal of the century, if what we hear about it is true, would permanently dispossess the Palestinians of the West Bank. It is an increasingly real threat and one of which we should be very much aware.

At the same time, Israel is my friend, but certain actions cannot pass without comment. We owe our friends our honesty. Over the years, I have often praised Israel and the Israeli people, for whom I have great admiration. But Israeli actions against the Palestinians which are legally and morally wrong should be condemned. It cannot be morally or legally right to lay claim to parts of someone else’s territory by building settlements on it or by building a wall across it, which effectively creates a new territorial border.

Nor is it right, with or without ill-judged United States support, unilaterally to proclaim the whole of Jerusalem the capital of Israel, in the process striking a vicious blow to the search for a two-state solution. Nor is it enough to pray national security requirements in aid of otherwise illegal or immoral acts. No level of threat from Palestinian protests on the border of Gaza can excuse the killing of innocent children or medical staff, as the noble Lord, Lord Steel, referred to. Nor can the disproportionate and one-sided shooting of some 70 Palestinian protesters on that same border be anything other than totally unacceptable.

What worries me is the West’s reaction: concern, yes, but condemnation, no. I do not believe that it does anyone any favours to stay our tongue. Perhaps I may say to my noble friend the Minister that I do not believe it is enough to call them either disappointing or disturbing. I have long been a friend of Israel and I remain a friend because I believe in it, but I have no hesitation in condemning its recent behaviour. Equally, I condemn unprovoked acts of violence by those who oppose Israel, but many of them cannot be in the same category of friendship as Israel is to us. Democratic Israel should know better than what it is doing at the moment.

Just as I am a friend of Israel, I am a friend of Palestine. Just as I believe in Israel, I believe without qualification in the statehood of Palestine. I believe in a secure Israel alongside a viable and independent Palestine. In short, I believe in the two-state solution because I can see no other lasting or fair alternative. But it must be based on fairness, and fairness to the Palestinians is today in very short supply.

Queen’s Speech

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Thursday 28th May 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, offer my heartfelt congratulations to my noble friend Lady Helic, who I had the pleasure of working with in 1995 on defence matters and for whom I have tremendous admiration. We heard a great speech from her today.

I would like to ask a question: in a new Parliament with a Government with an overall majority, is it too much to hope that after decades of drift we might at last seek to develop a clear foreign policy strategy to guide us through the turbulent years ahead? There will of course be times when we must simply react to events; we cannot avoid that, but we should remember that in reacting to them we will by definition always be behind the curve. What I look for in a foreign policy strategy is something that keeps us ahead of the curve. To achieve that, we have to honestly learn the lessons of the past.

We should never again undertake military interventions without a clear idea of what we are seeking to achieve, why it is in our national interest to do so, how we will end our involvement, and what we will leave behind. Had these previously been our guidelines, we would have exited Afghanistan some 10 years before we did. We would never have gone into Iraq and Libya, and more recently we would not have started bombing ISIS in Iraq. We have left Afghanistan dangerously unstable—an instability which I now hear China is seeking to mediate. We have left both Iraq and Libya in varying stages of chaos and civil war. As I feared in an earlier debate, bombing ISIS has achieved little except to increase Islamic antipathy towards us, and with it the threat of domestic terrorism.

While we now recognise our error in regarding the so-called Arab spring as an Arab version of events in eastern Europe in 1989 and treating it as such, we have formed no alternative approach to what is fast becoming an Islamic winter. That does not mean that we should consider intervention. The danger of ill-considered intervention is that while we may not originally have had a dog in these fights, to use the American expression, by the time we finish we tend to have bred one or two. To add to that confusion, we seem no longer to know who our enemies in the region are. We are tacitly looking for Shia militia support in combating ISIS in Iraq while vocally supporting Saudi bombing Shia militia in Yemen, even though the Houthis are the most effective forces against the considerable threat of al-Qaeda in that country, which indeed poses a direct threat to us here in the United Kingdom.

More broadly, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, I believe that we should have carefully considered Russia’s historical antipathy to western forces along her borders or even within her territory. The extension of NATO to Poland and the Baltic states was inevitable, but we should have been more understanding of Russian unhappiness at it, particularly the proposal to base missiles on Polish soil.

Our immediate and enthusiastic support for the 2008 revolution in Georgia—and even more for the Maidan square protesters in Ukraine last year—inevitably in reaction encouraged Russian popular support for Putin’s otherwise unacceptable aggressive actions, including the annexation of Crimea. With that support he is able to do things that otherwise he might have been prevented from doing. We have, as a result, resurrected shades of the Cold War when we should have had a strategic plan for reaching out to the Russian people as potential partners in a new future. Even now, as feelings on both sides harden further, we still have no strategy to develop a more measured attitude towards Russia. We even seem to have abandoned our old Cold War aim of preventing Russia becoming too close to China. It was interesting that it was the Chinese president who stood alongside Putin at the recent VE Day celebrations in Moscow when we short-sightedly refused to go. Whether these failures were political misjudgements or the results of inadequate official advice is unclear. However, what is clear is that we cannot afford to go on getting it wrong.

Now we are faced with another great threat—potentially the gravest of them all—of major population shifts caused by a mixture of civil conflict, drought, deprivation and persecution, all of which could directly affect our national interests. I see little sign of a real strategy to deal either with the causes or the effects of this threat. I have to say that shooting holes in boats off the Libyan coast is hardly a long-term plan and in any event is a pretty strange response, given that our original involvement in Libya was to protect the people there. We must urgently, and with purpose, develop a realistic strategy for meeting this growing challenge, which will not go away.

Finally, we need to look more closely at our own potential for soft rather than hard power—the pursuit through diplomacy and Special Forces of hearts and minds and not just half-baked military intervention. Within that, we need to build a clear strategy which can place us once again at the centre of the international stage. Above all, for too many years we have not, as we must ensure that resources match military commitments and vice versa. This is not a matter of political choice for a Government but one of moral duty, and one in which we have failed for too long and which we must now put right.

European Union (Referendum) Bill

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Friday 10th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian (Con)]

My Lords, I support the Bill for two reasons. First, it seeks, finally, after 40 years, to re-establish the rights of the British people to decide their own future in or out of Europe. That is to be welcomed. Never in the history of democracy has there been such a large bureaucratic empire built over nearly half a century without once consulting the peoples who are affected by it as to whether they wanted it or whether they liked the shape of it. The Bill really establishes a principle which has to be welcomed.

I have been interested in this debate to try to analyse why the dog that should have barked has not barked or perhaps dared not bark—expect that it almost barked in the case of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Oakeshott, but he withdrew from it just before its sound was fully heard. That bark is that there are, and have been all over my political career, people who are passionately in favour of Europe and believe that it is too important and complex an issue to trust the British people to decide. Those same people, and there have been one or two today, will say, “Well, they have the right to do that in a general election”. Some of us who have fought many general elections know that a general election cannot be fought on a single issue. There are many issues, so to say after a general election, “Part of our manifesto touched on Europe, and you voted for us and have therefore made your decision”, is actually nonsense. We have to have a clear decision taken, and I believe that this is the right way to do it.

The other thing that I have learnt in my political career is that this issue, however hard we have tried, is irresolvable by political parties. It is irresolvable between political parties and within them. In the end, when you have a situation like that, the only answer is to let the people themselves decide.

The second reason I support the Bill is that it gives us time. It gives us until 2017 to prepare. That is the one distinction between the 1975 referendum and this one. In 1975, we had very little time to prepare. We were told, if I remember rightly, that there had been a renegotiation. In fact, when we look at it in retrospect, the renegotiation was not worth a row of beans, but some of us were taken in. We regret that now, and we voted yes in that referendum.

The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, touched on an important point: on this occasion, when the referendum comes, we must have established fully the cases for and against, so that the British people can make a sensible decision. I have heard the arguments for the reforms that are needed. They have to be fundamental, reversible only by further referendum, and must ultimately return to the people of this country the sovereignty which we have given away without asking their consent over many years.

The noble Lord’s second point was to make the case as to what would be the situation of this country were we to come out of the European Union. That equally requires time. The argument so often used on Europe is, “You may not be very happy with Europe, but look what it will be like if you come out. You will be cast into the outer darkness of isolation”. Well, we must fill that outer darkness of isolation over the years between now and 2017 by exploring what other arrangements can be made.

I hope that we will explore with some of our Commonwealth colleagues, some of whom have some of the larger economies in the world, what free trade or further trading arrangements can be made. We need to take part in further discussion about the future of NATO, which is a crucial issue whether we are in or out of Europe. It has to be part of what would be there were we to come out of Europe. We also have to start discussing with our European partners what trading arrangements we can have with them if we did come out of Europe. There is no question that they are going to need to continue to trade with us just as much as we are going to need to continue to trade with them.

We have the ability over three years to start filling that vacuum. If we do that, when we get to the referendum—and I think we will, because I am confident that there will be a Conservative Government which will deliver a referendum—then, for the first time, we will be able to ask a sensible question of the British people, to make a decision between two viable alternatives: “Which way do you want to see your country going?”. I hope that, if we do that, they will decide that governing our own destiny must be the right answer.

EU: Prime Minister’s Speech

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Noakes rightly emphasised the central importance of the Prime Minister’s five principles, but I hope that they are more than just words and aspirations. I believe that they should form the bottom line of our negotiations in the months ahead. We must start and finish with them, not drawing down or clawing back towards them but building up within them.

However, we should be under no illusion from past experience that when the referendum eventually arrives there may still be no progress in negotiation, and that without a positive alternative the choice might still, in the Prime Minister’s words, be false. We must therefore, at the same time, urgently explore alternatives.

We live today in a network world. Tomorrow’s relationships will not be between blocs but between peoples and interests and common values offering new trading opportunities and new markets. In this regard, a refreshed, refunded and re-empowered Commonwealth, bound together not by wealth or military might but by shared values in democracy, the rule of law and human rights, embracing significant economic players such as India, Canada, Australia, South Africa, and Singapore, could have enormous potential. We would be going with the flow of our island history and the choice at a referendum would at least then be a real one.

I wish the renegotiations well but, if the principles are not achieved, I will have no qualms in campaigning and voting no. Of course we could survive and prosper outside the EU; to argue otherwise is to stray into the wilder realms of EU propaganda. But that is not the real question. Whether it is in our national interest is what matters—and that is not just about wealth.

Europe is changing and so are we. The flood of the tide is with us. We must take it.

Iran

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Tuesday 24th January 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, will my noble friend tell the House what active consideration is being given by the Government to the proposal made this week by Prince Turki al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia that the international community should pursue the concept of a totally nuclear-weapon-free zone, properly policed, that would include both Iran and Israel?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

This is an idea, an aim and an ambition that the Government fully share. The idea of a WMD or nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Middle East is one to which we certainly subscribe, and this must be a longer-term aim. How we get from here to there is, of course, the problem. Prince Turki al-Faisal is an extremely wise and perceptive commentator and certainly I read very closely everything he had to say on the matter. That would be the ideal. How we would get from here to there would certainly include how we deal with the situation not only in Iran but also in Israel.

Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for 2010-11

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Monday 12th December 2011 Grand Committee

Moved By

[The Marquess of Lothian]

That the Grand Committee do consider the Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for 2010–11.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, I understand that these proceedings may be interrupted. Having served for many years in the other place, I am quite used to being interrupted and to coming back to where I was at the start. I think this is perhaps the best way to get our business done.

This is the first opportunity I have had to speak in this House on the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee, on which, both in the other place and in this House, I have had the great privilege to sit since January 2006. I am not the longest serving member of it—George Howarth remains the longest serving member—but I am one of the longest serving members.

I note that when the previous report was considered by your Lordships on 30 March 2010, a number of representations, including one from the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock, were made for an increase in the number of representatives from this House on the committee. At that time, there was only one, the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes of Cumnock—a much valued colleague on the committee—who on that occasion moved consideration of the report, as I am doing today. I am delighted that those representations were heeded and that there are now two Members of this House on the committee. I am even more delighted that the other, who has not yet joined us—but I am sure he will shortly—is my noble colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who represents the Cross Benches and brings with him the broad knowledge and unique insight that come from not only having been Cabinet Secretary but having conducted the 2004 review of intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

I was going to raise this point in my speech, but it is perhaps better raised now. The noble Marquess is right, we argued on both sides of the House that the number should increase. He is also right that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, will bring a unique and interesting perspective to the work of the Intelligence and Security Committee. However, is it not strange, ridiculous and unacceptable that there is no Member of the Opposition in the House of Lords on the committee? It is quite ridiculous. The total number of members of the committee, including those from the House of Commons, is nine, of which only three are Members of the Official Opposition. This is a scrutiny committee which challenges the work of the intelligence agencies from time to time, and to have such a poor representation of Labour members—and not one from the House of Lords—is quite unacceptable. That point was made by the Opposition Chief Whip of this House at the time and, unfortunately, was not accepted by No. 10 Downing Street.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

I am sure that what the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has said will be heard more widely. I would answer him in this way: as he will see from the report, we are at the moment seeking to have the nature of the committee reformed in a fundamental way. That process is being undertaken at the moment through the Green Paper and I shall come on to it later in my remarks. However, it would be premature to get involved on this before the process has at least got under way and the kind of points made by the noble Lord can be considered.

Even though he is not in his place, I must say that it is a great pleasure for me—as I hope it is for other noble Lords—to have the noble Lord, Lord Butler, on the committee. It means that I can speak more briefly in this debate than otherwise might have been the case because I am confident that he will, with far greater skill, cover all the areas which I fail to cover and may indeed correct me on those areas where I get it wrong.

This is the first annual report of this committee produced under the chairmanship of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who I am sure all other members of the committee would also like to thank for his excellent leadership over the past year. I should also like to thank the members of the committee from the other place.

As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, knows, the ISC is unique in many ways, but perhaps the one that strikes you most when you first join it is the level of consensus on the committee and the absence of party politics from our discussions. That is an important part of the nature of the committee and makes serving on it an even greater pleasure. The abiding ethos of the committee, as noble Lords here today who have served on it in the past know, is one of trust—trust between members, of course, but also, and more importantly, between the committee and those who it is the committee’s responsibility to oversee. We work in an environment where secrecy is often required by the national interest and where, if oversight and scrutiny are to be comprehensive and effective, trust in that secrecy is of the essence.

The same stricture of secrecy also means that the full report, which we are required to submit to the Prime Minister, has to be redacted in certain areas before it is more widely published, to protect that same national interest. As noble Lords will know, these redactions appear as asterisks in the report before your Lordships and have in the past—I must plead guilty of this myself in a previous political incarnation—been the cause of not just complaint but often ridicule. However, in truth, redactions are inevitable and necessary if the committee is to produce a comprehensive report for the Prime Minister. We have conscientiously striven this year to keep redactions to the minimum consistent with the production of that comprehensive report.

This year we have also preceded our report with a section on key themes, which we hope will provide a more structured introduction to the rest of the report by indicating those areas of particular interest to the committee and explaining why they were of such interest. In the past, I always found that these reports tended to be very piecemeal and quite difficult to follow. We felt that it would be for the benefit not just of this House and the other place but of the wider public as well if we produced an introduction of themes that at least gave some shape to the rest of the committee.

I am delighted to see that my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has now joined us. At the risk of repeating myself, I said earlier that it is a pleasure to have him on the committee. It makes my speech today shorter, and I am sure he will fill in the gaps and correct me where I have got things wrong.

In general, noble Lords will see from our report that it has been a very busy year for the committee. Indeed, we made a record number of conclusions and recommendations. The report covers several important issues. I do not want to take too much time today; I just want to highlight a few of them.

The first relates to funding for the single intelligence account. In the current economic climate, the committee recognised that the flat cash settlement that the intelligence agencies received in the spending review was fair. This was reflected in what the agencies themselves told us. They will, in broad terms, be able to maintain their key coverage and capabilities. Nevertheless, the committee has recommended that the settlement must be kept under review. The Government must be willing to revisit the funding available to the agencies if there is a significant change in the threat. We cannot prioritise budgets in advance if the security of the country is at stake. The Government’s response to the committee report responded to this and mentioned agility, flexibility and reprioritisation—wonderful words, but I am not certain what exactly they mean in practical terms. It did not mention the possibility of an adjustment in the settlement should that be necessary. In the light of events that are coming over the next 12 months and beyond, we believe that this is important. I would therefore welcome the Minister’s confirmation that, should the threat change significantly—that is the condition—there is scope to revisit the single intelligence account.

I should also like to draw the Committee’s attention to the recommendations on cybersecurity. The threats that exist in cyberspace are familiar ones: theft, fraud, exploitation of the vulnerable and espionage, to name just a few. However, the internet provides criminals and spies with a new avenue of activity, where these deeds can increasingly be carried out with greater anonymity behind a cloak of binary digits and encryption. It is a rapidly growing threat to our security and prosperity, and the ISC in previous reports had urged the Government to increase the funding and priority of this work. Therefore, we welcome the Government’s decision to list cybersecurity as a top-tier threat in their national security strategy, and we welcome the new funding that has been made available to fund cyber-related work. Half of this new money will go to the intelligence agencies, which is very much in our view to be welcomed. However, there is still a great deal of work to be done in this area.

While the committee has welcomed the increased priority being given to cyber, the downside has been the proliferation of new teams and units working in this area. There are at least 18 departments, units and agencies involved in this work in some way, and the committee remains concerned at the risk of duplication and lack of co-ordination in this essential field.

Many other important matters are mentioned in our annual report, including the very welcome establishment of the National Security Council itself, matters relating to detainees and rendition, counterterrorism work and Olympic security, to name but a few. I do not propose to cover them now, as the report sets out our views clearly, and no doubt your Lordships will wish to raise some of them during the course of the afternoon, as I am confident will my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Butler.

I want to turn now to the wider issues that we mention in the report. One that has exercised the committee this year and which we touch on in our annual report is the future of the committee itself. The ISC has been in existence under statute for some 17 years now. Since it was established under the 1994 Act, the threats that we face have changed and, in response, the intelligence community has had to change as well. The work of the committee has evolved to take account of this. However, public expectation of transparency and openness has increased significantly during this time, and the committee must ensure that it has the powers and the remit necessary to provide reassurance to the public and to Parliament. We therefore made it a priority in the first year of this Parliament to review the committee’s role, structure, remit and powers. We concluded that the current arrangements are now significantly out of date. The committee therefore produced radical proposals for change designed to increase accountability, transparency and capacity for oversight of the intelligence community as a whole. The timing of our review was fortuitous; the Government were in the process of producing a Green Paper, now published, on the protection of intelligence material in the courts and were considering how, if they were to recommend changes in the power of courts, oversight of the agencies should be strengthened to compensate for that. The committee therefore put its proposals for change to the Prime Minister.

Noble Lords will have seen that the Government’s Justice and Security Green Paper for the most part reflects the committee’s recommendations. Under the proposals, the Intelligence and Security Committee will become a committee of Parliament, something that it has not been in the past; it has been a statutory committee of parliamentarians under the authority of the Prime Minister. We are seeking for it to become a committee of Parliament, with the necessary safeguards, reporting to Parliament and to the Prime Minister. The remit of the committee will reflect the fact that the ISC has for some years taken evidence from and made recommendations regarding the wider intelligence community and not just SIS, GCHQ and the security services, which were its statutory responsibility. It will also reflect the fact that the committee is not limited to examining just policy, administration and finances, which were also part of its statutory remit, but encompasses all the work of the agencies. Further, the committee will have the power to require information to be provided.

However, there are two issues on which the Green Paper does not entirely reflect the Government’s proposals, which I wish to raise now with the Minister. The first relates to oversight of operational activity. The work of the agencies cannot be understood fully, let alone scrutinised effectively, without regard to operational matters. The ISC has for many years had access to operational material and has reported on operations publicly and in confidence to the Prime Minister. That includes reports as far back as the 1999 inquiries into Sierra Leone and the Mitrokhin archive, when the committee was still relatively new, through to more recent examples, such as the 2007 inquiries into the 7/7 bombings and the 2009 inquiry into the Binyam Mohamed case. Some of these investigations were at the express request of the then Prime Minister, and others were instigated by the committee itself. They were all specific operations that gave rise to public concern and significant national interest. They were all inquiries in which the committee had access to specific, detailed operational material.

The committee considers that the arrangements that have taken place in practice should now be formalised and that this work should be placed on a statutory footing. However, the Green Paper is less than forthcoming in this regard. It states only that,

“the Government is giving careful consideration to the ISC’s proposal to extend its remit to include operational aspects of the work of the Agencies”.

I underline once again that this is not something new, but something that has been happening over the past few years. Access to operational information is fundamental to the work of the committee. The Government must recognise that to deny the committee access to operational material would be a major step backwards from the current arrangements at a time when the Government say that they are seeking to strengthen oversight. I would welcome my noble friend’s assurance that he and the Government will look forward in this respect and not backwards.

The second issue on which I would welcome clarification from my noble friend is the committee’s resources. Currently, it has limited personnel resources. However, the changes that are envisaged to its powers and remit will increase that requirement and will involve new ways of working. The key difference will be as a result of the committee’s new power to require information to be provided. At the moment, it is reliant on the agencies themselves considering and summarising their information.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Skelmersdale)]

My Lords, there is a Division in the Chamber. I do not know whether the noble Marquess intends to finish very shortly. If not, we will adjourn the Committee for 10 minutes.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

I have a little more to say, and I think it would be better to adjourn and return.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, after this lengthy adjournment, I fear that I still have a number of issues to discuss from this lengthy and comprehensive report. I will touch on them as briefly as I can.

When we adjourned, I was discussing how the committee must be able to look at operational information in order to carry out its job of scrutiny properly and I was just beginning to touch on the second issue, which was to ask the Government for clarification with regard to the resources of the committee. We currently have limited personnel resources, but we are now looking at changes to enable the committee to require that information be provided. While at the moment the committee is reliant upon the agencies considering and summarising their information, in future the committee’s staff will need to be engaged in this process to assure the committee that it has the information it requires. This is very important, particularly following the inquest that we heard earlier this summer, where the deficiencies in the information provided by the agencies were shown to have put the committee at a disadvantage.

Due to the sensitive nature of the material involved, the intelligence community is not subject to the same level of public scrutiny as other departments’ agencies. It is not subject to regular debates or questions in Parliament; academic research is limited to matters of somewhat distant history; investigative journalists cannot delve very deeply; and it is exempt from freedom of information. The responsibility for independent parliamentary oversight and security therefore falls to this committee and to the Intelligence Services and Interception of Communications Commissioners whose role is to check the legality of the agents’ activities. That is why both must be adequately supported, so I urge the Minister to accept that this will not be possible unless the committee has sufficient staff of adequate seniority and authority.

I now turn to the thorny and increasingly important question of protecting intelligence material in court proceedings. In the committee’s report on rendition in the last Parliament, we highlighted the importance of intelligence exchanges with foreign liaison partners. We explained that the United Kingdom cannot work in a vacuum and that we depend upon the co-operation of others. We concluded:

“Our intelligence-sharing relationships, particularly with the United States, are critical to providing the breadth and depth of intelligence coverage required to counter the threat to the UK posed by global terrorism. These relationships have saved lives and must continue”.

These relationships are based on confidentiality. Intelligence is shared on the understanding that it will be protected. If our allies fear that their material might be disclosed by our courts—and after this summer they have good reason to fear this—then they may reduce their co-operation. In other words, if we cannot protect it, we will not be given it in the first place. The committee has heard first hand from those within the United States intelligence community that the decision of UK courts in recent cases to disclose US intelligence material has damaged the UK-US intelligence relationship. On a visit earlier this year this was said to us often and—as I am sure my colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Butler, will endorse—with some great force. This is of serious concern. The United Kingdom must honour its obligations to protect foreign intelligence material from disclosure.

We therefore support the Government’s initiative in bringing forward the Justice and Security Green Paper and in looking for a way to honour our obligations. The Green Paper proposes that closed material procedures, including the use of special advocates, be extended to civil cases. The committee considers this to be a step in the right direction. However, it does not on its own provide the answer, nor does it offer certainty to those that we work with that their information is safe with us. The Green Paper recognises that closed material procedures would only “reduce”—not eliminate—

“the risk of damaging disclosure of sensitive material”.

The Green Paper does, however, raise the possibility of a statutory presumption against the disclosure of intelligence material. This would have the advantage of providing a clear indication to judges of Parliament’s intention in relation to such material. Such a presumption would be invaluable to a court in seeking to understand Parliament’s intention in this respect. Any presumption would of course be rebuttable, so the final decision would lie with the courts—we are not trying to take the courts out of it. However, there would need to be a compelling reason for the judge to rule against such a presumption. We regard that as the right balance to strike in these very difficult and important circumstances. Therefore, we consider that this rebuttable presumption should be included in addition to the closed material procedures. The combined package would still not offer a total guarantee to our allies, but it would provide far greater protection than the CMPs alone. In seeking to protect the UK, we must work with others who must feel confident that we will protect the information that they share with us. We must give them that confidence. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will consider our recommendation that a rebuttable statutory presumption should be included as part of a package of measures.

Finally, I want to pay tribute to the men and women who work for our security and intelligence agencies. As we have seen on the committee, it is a difficult job, which inevitably receives little if any recognition, where successes cannot be celebrated and decisions cannot always be easily defended in public. The Intelligence and Security Committee plays an important role in holding the services to account, scrutinising their actions and criticising them where that is necessary. However, we also believe that we must be their champion and congratulate them on a job well done behind the scenes, as I unreservedly do now. I commend the report to the Grand Committee.

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[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Lothian for obtaining this debate and for his sterling work on the committee and the report that has been produced. I declare two interests, one as president of ARTIS Europe, which is a research and risk analysis company that takes an interest in areas of politically motivated violence and terrorism, and the other as a customer of the Security Service during the past seven years as a member of the Independent Monitoring Commission. We spent a good deal of our time working with various elements of the Security Service here in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland and elsewhere.

This is an extremely worthwhile report, which merits considerable study. I want to refer only to a few aspects of it. I could pick up on some of the positive remarks about, for example, the National Security Council, which seems to be an important development. I could pick up also on the concerns expressed about the BBC Monitoring service, an issue referred to in general terms in your Lordships' House but very specifically in this report. I welcome not only what the report had to say but some of the remarks in the Government’s response to it.

I note what my noble friend said about concerns about confidentiality in respect of our partners and material coming into the public domain. This is a very difficult area to put into structure and regulation. In the Independent Monitoring Commission, we found ourselves meeting at a very early stage, because it was a somewhat unusual body, as my noble friend knows from his own experience in Northern Ireland. Quite quickly, rather more because of the personnel than of the structure, we were able to build up a sense of confidence with our interlocutors. That was able to function adequately over a period in excess of seven years during which we published some 26 reports. That confidence was not maintained purely by the structures in place, though some were important, but because of the personnel and the relationships between them, which are very difficult to legislate for. It is extremely important to come to understand those things which you can, and should, properly put in the public domain and those matters which have to be dealt with in another way. Without that, it is impossible to do serious work in this area. Structures alone will not address that.

Let me come to the more specific areas that I wish to concentrate on. First, on Northern Ireland and republican terrorism, my friend the Minister of Justice in the Northern Ireland Assembly, David Ford, recently remarked to the Assembly in answer to a question that the level of attacks was not currently increasing, which was very welcome news, because, during our period, they had continued to increase. I am absolutely clear, as I think he was, too, that that is not because the level of activity has diminished but rather because of the excellent work of the security services, the police and the Garda Síochána. It is quite clear that there is still a very high level of dissident republican activity, but it is being foiled by excellent work. I take this opportunity, as other noble Lords have done, to convey my own appreciation to those involved, in so far as I can on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland, for the protection afforded to them and other people in the United Kingdom by their extraordinary work. One of the difficulties about it is that, as with good civil servants’ work, when it is successful you do not see anything publicly and people then take for granted that everything is fine. That is a little bit dangerous because people then let their security guard down and something terrible can happen. With good civil servants’ work and good security work, it looks as though everything is going swimmingly, which is only because of the quality of the work that has been undertaken.

I was gratified to note the recognition of cybersecurity as a tier-1 risk, as is recorded in the report. It is important to understand that this is not simply a question of traditional terrorists, whether domestic or international—although they are mostly international—using the modality of cyber to arrange traditional-style terrorism. In other words, cyberterrorism is not about people communicating with each other using the internet in order to plant bombs or all the other things that terrorists traditionally do. Rather, there are new ways of engaging in attacks that are mediated entirely through the internet—for example, the damaging of government infrastructure and the necessary national utilities. These are very real dangers not just in the defence field but in all aspects of life, including things such as water and electricity, not to mention all our own practical activities. That struck me very forcibly some years ago when some Taiwanese colleagues made it clear to me that, in the Taiwanese Parliament, every parliamentarian’s computer was being hacked into every single day. I think that some colleagues in your Lordships’ House and elsewhere might not be quite aware of the vulnerability of many of these things, although I know that that is not the case with noble Lords in this Room.

The whole area of cybersecurity presents an enormous difficulty and challenge, including on a number of elements that I note are mentioned in the report. First, the question of staff retention and pay, which is referred to, is a very difficult issue. In some long discussions that I had on this front, a young man who runs a company in the United States remarked to me that one of the problems with those who are most skilled in this area of work is that they are often—though this may surprise some noble Lords—not qualified with university degrees, but they are extremely skilled in this work and they have a very particular set of personality attributes and a particular way of working. When a number of small companies were established that became very effective in providing anti-hacking services—largely, setting a thief to catch a thief—a number of the large corporations saw this work as an ideal undertaking. There was clear money to be made and the expertise was available, so these large corporations bought over a number of these small firms. As far as I am aware, almost none of them survived because, brought inside a corporate structure, this was not the way that these young men—and they are almost all young men—functioned. Therefore, one of my questions for the Minister is: how are departments finding the challenge of engaging some of these young people who are not the traditional personalities for the Civil Service or the security agencies or the military or the police? In fact, these are the kind of young people who might be firmly outside these structures, yet they are exactly the kind of people that we need inside if we are to deal with this kind of problem. The report talks about this issue in terms of finance, but I really think that it is much more about other things in addition to the question of finance.

That leads me to the issue of psychological research in these areas. I have been to a number of conferences recently where it has become clear that huge amounts of money are being spent on hardware and on software, but very little is being spent on understanding the psychology of the kind of people who get involved in these sorts of activities. This was commented on in a recent conference that was promoted by the right honourable Foreign Secretary, at which Misha Glenney—a former BBC journalist who has recently published an excellent book on the subject—pointed out that almost no work has been done in this area. For me, that is reflected in the report, which highlights key themes as: “Organised crime”; “Hostile foreign activity” coming from Governments and so on, which is absolutely true; and “Terrorism”. However, the report does not refer at all to what is commonly known as “hacktivism”, whereby young people become involved in activities that become crime, because they break the law, but their intent is not that of traditional organised crime to make a lot of money; much of it is about gaining respect for themselves as serious operators on the internet. However, they then get themselves in trouble and find themselves on the wrong side of the tracks and on the wrong side of the law. I was struck by the fact that that is not identified in the report as a fourth area. This is not organised crime, or terrorism per se, or foreign activity in terms of Government and armies and so on, but it causes us a great deal of problems. That suggests to me that there is something about the whole psychology of this new space that has been created—as well as land, sea, air and space, we now have a new context for engagement and, indeed, for war.

That leads me to another question about legal research. I submit that if the Stuxnet attack had happened in an equivalent way on land, at sea, in the air or even in space, it would have been regarded as a declaration of war. However, despite the great problems that it obviously caused for Iran, it does not seem to have been regarded in that way. At this stage, without waiting for something to happen, a serious piece of work needs to be done in international law to explore at what point such a thing becomes a declaration of war, at what point can it be responded to only by cyber-response and at what point by other kinds of response. There is a lot of work to be done in that area.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

On that point, this is an important question and the real problem in this area is one of attribution. All the evidence that we have taken suggests that it is very difficult, when you get a worm of the type that Stuxnet was, to find out where it has come from.

[Lord Alderdice]

My Lords, my noble friend is absolutely right. That is why there is a problem, to which there is no simple answer. Great damage is done whether the attribution can be established or not. Sometimes in the past people have not waited to establish the attribution. A doctrine of pre-emption, which I do not in any way recommend or commend, was created by a previous American Administration. The point is that sometimes we have to find a way of dealing with these things. I simply seek reassurance from the Minister that it is being actively looked at by those with the experience and legal expertise to address the question.

To some extent, that leads me to the question of attribution more generally and in regard to research. Some comments were made about the threat of al-Qaeda, including that in the Arabian Peninsula and other places. In looking at it, it seemed to me that there was rather a surface view of the thing. For example, many of those who get involved in Yemen in support of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are concerned about their local situation, as was the case in Afghanistan. There are a small number at the top who have all these notions about the caliphate and so on, but they are not necessarily carried forward because everyone who is involved on the ground believes that. That is extremely important in understanding how to deal with it.

Let me give a specific example from our own country. There are those who have looked at the way of thinking of young people who are potentially vulnerable to being involved in terrorism in this country. I commend the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for pointing out that this is not always a question for foreign policy; it is very much a domestic issue. The view has been taken that it is about fundamentalist views. The job is to persuade young people not to have these hard-line, extreme, fundamentalist religious views. I have always had some doubt that it is possible to persuade young people of anything of the kind. Indeed, the more adults try to do it, the less likely young people are to go along with it. However, research has recently suggested that that is not the best way to deal with it anyway. Even if these people have very fundamentalist views and, at the same time, accept that democracy and the rule of law is the only proper way to change and govern society, they are not vulnerable to becoming terrorists.

That is an extremely important question to be explored, so I seek some assurance from the Minister that research is not necessarily being done only by those inside the services, who may have a particular expectation of research. Those of us with any passing understanding of academic research know that it is extremely important that people do not come with preconceived ideas. Those inside the services cannot but have preconceived ideas. Is there any role for research that is being done externally, on a more objective basis, to inform the work of the security services?

On the issue of being up-to-date with difficult questions, we have had a strategic defence and security review, but we have just come from the Chamber where we have been looking at the dramatic and disturbing changes taking place in our own continent of Europe. Only a couple of days ago, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the United States Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that he was “extraordinarily concerned” about euro survival, civil unrest and the break-up of the EU. Again, this is not a question of distant places but of our own part of Europe. I seek reassurance— I do not ask for anything more—that our intelligence services are paying attention to the real and present danger of unrest in Europe over the next few years as the weight of financial difficulty and political disjunction begins to bear down. That may be, sadly, a substantial part of the work of our security services which is not, as yet—I understand why because the report is now a few months old—focused on in the report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Triesman]

My Lords, that intervention invites a very brief response. I have no aversion whatever to the committee being available to and able to speak to the Prime Minister. Broadly speaking, I believe that Select Committees in Parliament have had that capability for a long time. In my view, the biggest advantage is that these areas which have been regarded as incredibly obscure and difficult, and usually as a means of veiling from the public and parliamentarians some things which are in their vital interests, and in the vital interests of the country, will at least be dealt with on the same basis that much other sensitive material is.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

As a matter of information, what we are looking to become is not a parliamentary committee, a Select Committee, but a committee of Parliament—there is an important distinction. Because of the work we do, being a parliamentary committee, a Select Committee, would put at risk some of the committee's ability to look at certain information that it can look at at the moment. We are looking to become something in-between. For exactly what that will be, I think we have to wait to see the outcome of the Green Paper, when the White Paper is produced.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for a very comprehensive reply—one which, indeed, saved me having to say very much. I will try to be as brief as I possibly can. I also thank my colleague the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who also dealt in his speech with a number of the subjects that I thought I might have to deal with in finishing up. Perhaps I may say to my noble friend the Minister that I was disappointed in his response to the rebuttable presumption, as that has been put forward by a number of very senior people. I know that I am a mere Scottish lawyer, as indeed is Sir Malcolm Rifkind, but many lawyers feel that the rebuttable presumption gives some strength and weight to the principle of control and would be helpful to the judges in the long run. I hope that before the consultation is finished, my noble friend will look at that again but I was reassured by many of the other responses that he gave us tonight.

I have two or three very brief items. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, talked about having public evidence sessions in future, something which we are looking at very actively in terms of the reformed committee. It is not easy to do if they are to be genuine because of the nature of the information that we are dealing with but we think—as do the agencies—that there may be areas where we can have very genuine public evidence sessions. As the reforms go forward, we hope to be able to get somewhere towards that.

Secondly, in answer to the noble Lords, Lord Hennessy and Lord Triesman, the committee takes very seriously the question of the intelligence machinery and we will continue to do so. We will be looking in our evidence this year to pursue some of the points that have been made in this debate, and when we come to our report next year we will be reporting on whether we think that the new machinery is working. I assure your Lordships that the committee will take that very seriously.

Finally, there is something which is a slight bee in my bonnet. We were talking earlier about staff retention. I am particularly concerned about GCHQ, which really is a world leader in what it does. Rather than listen to me, perhaps I may briefly quote a little of what the director of GCHQ said, and which we published in our report:

“I need some real internet whizzes”—

he calls them whizzes—

“in order to do cyber … They will be working for Microsoft or Google or Amazon … And I can’t compete with their salaries; I can offer them a fantastic mission, but I can’t compete with their salaries … we do have a steady drip, I am afraid. Month-on-month, we are losing whizzes who’ll basically say: ‘I’m sorry, I am going to take three times the salary and the car and whatever else’”.

That is not really a problem of government or administration but a real, practical problem if we are to retain the valuable work that is done at GCHQ. We all need, together, to try and find a way of addressing that.

Very finally, and I have left this deliberately to the end, can I say thanks to the staff of the Intelligence and Security Committee? After six years, I can say that I have never come across staff who are so hard-working—in fact, they are overworked, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, would recognise—and who constantly produce work of the highest quality and standard, without which we would not be able to operate. I also give my thanks to them.

Motion agreed.

EU: Integration

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

To avoid the debate getting too polarised, of course, there are degrees of integration. In this decentralised age, compared with the 20th century, where centralisation and central state dominance were the fashion, people are looking for more flexibility and decentralisation in all sensibly run organisations, including the EU. There may be some areas, as I indicated in my opening Answer, where a degree of integration is more sensible as an alternative to chaos. However, there may be many other areas where the time has come for decentralisation and a returning of powers closer to the people.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, how would the Minister define a European Union that is more of a network than a bloc?

Middle East and North Africa

Marquess of Lothian Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

My Lords—

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords—

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I suggest that we hear from the noble Marquess, then from the Liberal Democrats. Then there will be time to get back to the Labour Benches.

[The Marquess of Lothian]

My Lords, at this time of emerging democratic awareness in the Middle East, will the Minister and his right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs use their considerable influence to encourage the Palestinian Authority to adopt a true, full and honest electoral process in the months ahead so that those who speak for the Palestinian people in the future do so with a genuine mandate for the Palestinian people as a whole?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I thank my noble friend for that observation. Of course, this is the right way to go. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has spoken on these lines and we will continue to use the influence that we undoubtedly have. We must always use that influence in the most careful and selective way. I believe that the Palestinian Authority is aware of the need to move forward using precisely these methods. It faces grave difficulties but we will certainly do anything that we can do to encourage it.