National Security (State Threats) Bill

Debate between Angela Eagle and John Hayes

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Security (Dame Angela Eagle)]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken in today’s Second Reading debate. We have had a very powerful and relevant debate, with a great deal of expertise in the Chamber from both sides of the House.

State threats are overt or covert actions by foreign Governments that fall below the level of armed conflict, but go beyond legitimate diplomacy to harm UK interests. They present a persistent and evolving risk to the UK and our allies, and that evolution and the hybrid nature of the threats we face today has come across in all the many excellent contributions we have heard from Members on both sides of the House. There is cross-party recognition that the threats we are dealing with are increasingly complex, and rapidly changing and evolving. They manifest across a wide spectrum of activity, including interference in democratic processes, acquisition of sensitive information, threats to public safety and disruption of economic security. We all know—it has been mentioned by many hon. and right hon. Members—that certain states have the intent and capability to conduct such activity to advance their objectives. We have talked about Iran, Russia and China. Such activity is often opportunistic. It is adaptive, and it is increasingly integrated across multiple domains, combining physical, cyber, economic and international tools. Increasingly, as has been pointed out, it involves new and emerging tools such as AI, as well as TikTok, cyber, AI and a range of other things.

In December 2024, the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), commissioned the independent reviewer of state threats legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, to conduct a review into the tools available in terrorism legislation to see how they might be applied to the problem of state threats. He proposed that there should be legislation to create a state threats power equivalent to that of proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000, and although the Bill does not deliver the recommendations of the entire Jonathan Hall report, it does deliver that proposal. To that extent, it is a narrow, not a comprehensive Bill. It is important that Members from all parts of the House understand that that is what the Bill does.

Rather than trying to shoehorn everything else into this Bill, it is important that we understand the nature of the Bill and what it actually does. It strengthens the Government’s ability to disrupt hostile intelligence services and their proxies by adapting counter-terrorism tools to tackle state-based security threats to the UK. It seeks to close that loophole. It creates a new power for the Secretary of State to designate organisations involved in foreign power threat activity, modelled on the Terrorism Act 2000. It introduces three new criminal offences of supporting, assisting or obtaining benefits from designated bodies. The Bill will enable proxy organisations to be treated in practice like foreign intelligence services, making it easier to prosecute those acting on their behalf. It strengthens the overall national security framework so that the UK becomes a more difficult operating environment for foreign intelligence services and their state-linked proxies.

Individuals acting for a designated body will feel the full force of our national security legislation and the potential accompanying prison sentences of up to 14 years. Designation will send a clear public signal to bodies and those prepared to assist them that their malign behaviour will not be tolerated in the UK. Our manifesto committed to adapt the approach used for dealing with terrorism to state-based security threats, and that is precisely what the Bill does.

The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) is a passionate responder at the Dispatch Box, and her interest in this area and her commitment to getting it right are clear. The Government have been working on this legislation since Jonathan Hall made his recommendation. The Prime Minister, in the light of the arson incidents that we saw in north London earlier this year, gave a firm commitment to legislate in a matter of weeks, and we are doing just that to close this loophole on state or proxy-based threats.

To be clear, this legislation is no less robust than the Terrorism Act 2000. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, Jonathan Hall said that using terror legislation is

“shopping in the wrong department”.

This Bill will ensure that we are shopping in the right department.

[Sir John Hayes]

I accept what Jonathan Hall said, but what he did not say was that a higher statutory bar was needed to achieve a prosecution. What worries some of us, including my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) and me, is that the addition of that will make it quite hard to achieve a prosecution under the proposed law, not least because the Bill suggests that there must be a criminal purpose—an illicit purpose—involved in the association with a designated body. Will the Minister address that specific point?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I think that there are some necessary differences between a terrorist organisation and a state-influenced or state proxy organisation, which the differences between the Bill and the National Security Act—which deals with terrorism—seek to bring out. Jonathan Hall said that the Bill “does the job” in closing that loophole. He also told the House that he thought it would be harder to achieve the prosecutions for designated organisations than those for terrorist organisations. The Bill builds on a tried and tested series of measures in the National Security Act, and we have developed it closely with operational partners. It does the job. We do not believe that it is tougher to get appropriate prosecutions up and running in this context.

National Security (State Threats) Bill

Debate between Angela Eagle and John Hayes

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Dame Angela Eagle)]

I have to commend the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) for doing her homework. I wish to explain why we do not think these amendments are needed at the moment.

There are a couple of themes that run through my response to the hon. Lady’s amendments. The first is that it is not possible to treat a state body the same as a terrorist organisation, because one cannot abolish a state body. One has to think about the differences between the two, which is why we have called the measure closing the loophole in this Bill designation, rather than proscription. It is also the case that we clearly have other international obligations, both under international law, for the sovereignty of individual states, and under diplomatic law, with the Vienna convention, so that we can enable diplomatic relations or other arrangements with states that we might not approve of particularly. Within that difference lie some of the different approaches in the Bill and in the hon. Lady’s amendments.

The other common theme, which perhaps divides us in our approach to the Bill, as well as explaining the differences and why we will not be accepting the hon. Lady’s amendments, is that we are not trying to put all of Jonathan Hall’s recommendations on to the statute book in this Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in her opening remarks, we have accepted all the recommendations in Jonathan Hall’s report and will be legislating for them subsequently. What we wish to do with this quite narrow Bill is close that loophole with state-sponsored or proxy organisations as quickly as possible so that we can deal with the rising threats present on our streets as we speak. It may help to bear those two things in mind as I lay out the Government’s position regarding the amendments that the hon. Lady has just spoken to.

Through amendments 3 to 6, the hon. Lady seeks to remove the prohibited purpose test. The test is there precisely to cover the difference in treatment between terrorist organisations and states, which we cannot proscribe and with which we may have to have some kind of arrangements. While the Bill is modelled on the provisions in the Terrorism Act 2000, it has to reflect the realities of dealing with state entities. That is what the prohibited purpose test is about. There may be some cases where UK persons need to have legitimate dealings with a state entity; it might be a British diplomat or a non-governmental organisation delivering humanitarian aid. The prohibited purpose test is necessary to protect legitimate conduct without creating loopholes that can be exploited by hostile actors.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am glad that the Minister has addressed that point, because it was raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) and I on Second Reading. Surely the counter-argument is that it will be a sure defence when prosecutions are brought; it will be much harder to secure a conviction, because the necessity to prove a purpose will be tested beyond measure. The association with a state-sponsored organisation such as, for example, the IRGC is ipso facto proof, surely, of guilt.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Action that is prejudicial to the safety and interests of the UK is the test that we are talking about. If one were delivering humanitarian aid and had to deal with part of a state that we did not particularly approve of, that would not be prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK. It would be in line with what the UK wished to do, but if it were prejudicial, because it was hostile activity, the test would be passed.

Rural Communities

Debate between Angela Eagle and John Hayes

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

rose—

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I have given way quite a lot, so I am going to carry on with my speech.

We know that the roll-out of solar generation does not pose a risk to food security. Planning guidance makes it clear that developers should utilise brownfield land wherever possible. Where agricultural land must be used, lower quality land should be preferred. We also encourage multifunctional land use and are encouraged to see plenty of farmers ignoring the hysteria of the Conservatives and combining sustainable energy generation with arable and livestock farmers—

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Debate between Angela Eagle and John Hayes

Report stage
Monday 12th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I wish to get on with discussing the amendments, but because I served with him on the Intelligence and Security Committee, I will give way to the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) .

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

Is not the truth of the matter that showing humanity means recognising, as the Minister has implied, that some people are coming, perfectly understandably, for entirely economic reasons? If you thought you could get a better deal in Britain for you and your family, you would turn up and say you were claiming asylum on all kinds of grounds. That is the real truth of it. The system is being gamed and it has to stop being gamed.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes in some circumstances, but no in others, because some people who come over are genuine asylum seekers. Even under the right hon. Gentleman’s Government—when he, too, was in the Home Office—such people were granted asylum. As always, there are many different circumstances and each case has to be looked at and judged on its merits.

Asylum Seeker Hotel Accommodation: Reopening

Debate between Angela Eagle and John Hayes

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Border Security and Asylum (Dame Angela Eagle)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. Having sat in the Westminster Hall Chair many a time, I can report that in this Parliament it seems to be much warmer in this room. It used to be freezing, but perhaps my complaints about the heating when I was in the Chair have had a positive effect in this Parliament—for the comfort of us all, I hope.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

I’m going to take all the credit.

[Dame Angela Eagle]

It is a pleasure to respond to this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Windsor (Jack Rankin) on securing it and thank all Members who have contributed.

I remind hon. Members of the strained asylum system that this Government inherited. Listening to all the contributions, I had to pinch myself and think about the reality: we had 14 years in opposition; we have had six months, getting on for perhaps seven, in government—yet everything is somehow our fault. There was a slight nod in some of the contributions, including those of the hon. Members for Windsor and for Stockton West (Matt Vickers), towards the mistakes that were made in the running of the asylum system during the past 14 years. Mistakes certainly were made, and they leave legacies: messes to clear up and difficult things to do.

We inherited a system with massive backlogs. There was an attempt to introduce a completely different system, the so-called Rwanda deterrent and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which distracted the Government from the day job, as I have called it. Because of the design of the Illegal Migration Act, we also had a huge build-up of those who had arrived in the system from March 2023, when the switch was meant to be being arranged. They were put in hotels with absolutely nowhere to go, with no prospect of having their claims looked at and awaiting a theoretical trip to Rwanda. No trip ever happened.

To those who say that the Rwanda scheme was a deterrent, I gently point out that from when it was first announced in the Bill to when it was scrapped, 84,000 people crossed the channel in small boats. If that is a deterrent, it is a very peculiar one. Deterrence is difficult to achieve when people are desperate. We have to look to see whether that worked, and I do not think it did. It led to a huge build-up. The hon. Member for Stockton West hinted at that when he pointed out that the previous Government had more than 400 hotels open at one point. That was because of the build-up in the old system and the build-up in the new system. In the old system, people were in huge queues. With the new system, the previous Government’s idea was that they would not even process any of them: they would just hold them in hotels until the new system was up and running. In essence there were two backlogs.

The previous Government then decided that they would make a massive attempt to clear what they called the legacy backlog: the people who arrived before the Rwanda scheme was designed and announced. They did that for first asylum decisions in 2023. Those who were granted asylum left the system, and many ended up homeless, but those who were not granted asylum appealed. Those who were not granted asylum in that gallop to deal with the legacy backlog are still in the appeals system. The number of people in the appeals system doubled as a result of the previous Government’s work on the legacy backlog. We then had the legacy backlog dealt with at first hearing, with half of those cases going into the appeals system, and a growing number of asylum seekers who had arrived after March 2023, with no prospect of being dealt with at all, just filling hotels. That is why the previous Government had more than 400 hotels.

We can disagree about whether the Rwanda scheme would have worked. Personally, I do not think it was a deterrent—that so many people crossed the channel while it was in prospect demonstrates that it was not a deterrent. It also cost a great deal of money: the National Audit Office said that the payments the Government agreed to make to people who were going to be deported to Rwanda amounted to around £156,000 per person over five years. In theory, they were going to deport 250 people a week. I do not think that was realistic or that it was ever going to be deliverable. Opposition Members are entitled to a different view, but the view of the Government is that the scheme was not going to work.

We are dealing with an issue with no easy answers. There are international agreements that we have signed up to, including the refugee conventions that give protection to people who are fleeing danger and were put into place after the second world war. We are now in an era where we have more people on the move because of events around the world than we have had since the second world war, which has put pressure on the asylum systems of all countries.

There are asylum seekers and there are economic migrants. When listening to the hon. Member for Windsor’s contribution, I was a bit distressed that he did not distinguish between the two; he seemed to think that everyone who arrives is automatically an economic migrant who ought to be deported. That is his view, but it is not the view of the law. The previous Government, under his party, had a system that tried to see whether people who were claiming asylum were actually asylum seekers or were failed asylum seekers—there is a difference.