National Security Bill

Baroness Manningham-Buller Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

My Lords, may I add one footnote to the powerful speeches by my noble friends on these Benches? To confer blanket immunity may well have a counterproductive consequence, which is that the alleged victim may well be able to provoke the procedures of the International Criminal Court to be applied against persons in this jurisdiction. That would be extremely unfortunate.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I had not intended to say anything on this part of the Bill, not least because all these lawyers at various levels of leading counsel, pupil-master and so on do so much better than me. It seems to me that it is wrong in principle for members of the security and intelligence services to have immunity from the law.

I think that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis—the Minister may deal with this in his summing up—has confused the authorisations that are approved for CHIS activity involving criminality with what this part of the Bill seeks to do. I hope that in his reply the Minister will acknowledge the wide concern within the Committee, including from people such as me who have spent a career in the Security Service, and will consider an amendment to address some of these problems.

I quite comprehend that it is not necessarily easy to explain what the problem is that we are trying to address without revealing secrets but, again, I endorse the view that it would be helpful to hear what the ISC has thought on these matters. We heard from the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, at an earlier stage, that he and the ISC recognised that there was a problem that needed addressing. For my part, I am unable to support this as a solution.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness and of course defer to her very considerable expertise in this area. The point I am seeking to make is that, from my understanding of the CHIS authorisations under the 1994 legislation, some of those will now no longer be necessary because of the blanket immunity under this clause. In fact, many of them will not be, because the authorisations for SIS to act abroad will now be expanded by this clause, with SIS being able to act here for supporting acts that are unlawful abroad as well as officers operating abroad, which is unlawful. The point that I was trying to make is that this clause brings the two together.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I will have a short word with the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, afterwards in the dinner break, if he does not mind.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

Terrifying—please, no.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

The noble Lord may have confused covert intelligence sources as agents—I am sorry; this is terminology—and agents are not full members of the security and intelligence services. The Minister will answer this better than I can anyway; I am sorry to intrude again.