King’s Speech

Baroness Manningham-Buller Excerpts

Monday 18th May 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the maiden speeches of my noble friend Lord Case and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich.

I am not looking forward to the valedictory speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, not because I do not think it will lighten our spirits and we will enjoy his wisdom, but because it is his final speech. I for one will miss him very much from this Chamber. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Wolfson, of the King’s visit to Golders Green, which was endorsed by the House. I will pick up another thing that the King has recently done, for those who missed it: he endowed on Peter—the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy—the Order of the Garter. His qualities have been noticed not just in this House but beyond.

In the gracious Speech, I noticed 17 references to “security”. As the former head of the Security Service, more regularly known as MI5, I thought that was quite a lot and I welcomed it. I will just say a few things about the current national security threat, derived largely from the current head of the service in a speech he made in October.

Russia is attacking us on all fronts through cyber, influence operations, exploring our underwater cables, drone attacks, sabotage and murders, as well as conventional espionage. China is engaging in cyber, in influence operations and politically; it is seeking to exercise influence over the diaspora and is stealing our technology. Iran is sponsoring violence and terrorism and exacerbating antisemitism at a substantial level. Additionally, al-Qaeda and ISIS are still there. While we had hopes that Northern Ireland was peaceful, we had a car bomb there last month. Since I retired, we have also had extreme right-wing terrorism.

The most frightening thing—again deriving from the October speech—is that last year, 235 people were arrested for terrorism in this country, one in five of whom was under the age of 17. I touch on my sadness that the gracious Speech did not refer to under-16s on social media.

I will also say a little word in defence of Prevent at this stage. It is often pilloried; obviously, there was the most recent and notorious case of Southport. However, without it, the efforts to stop young people getting on to violent tracks, whether terrorism or extremism, are likely to be less successful.

I turn to tackling antisemitism and growing threats from states, protecting people from extreme violence and improving cyber defences. I think the whole House would applaud those aims of the Government and we look forward to the legislative frameworks for doing that. I have just one word of caution. The solutions to these problems will come not from law but from people—from the men and women from my organisation and the police, and more broadly—seeking to stop it.

This brings me on to Hillsborough. Who can dispute that the public deserve trust from their public servants? Of course they do. Who can dispute that the families concerned in this and other cases have suffered enormous anguish, from not just the event but the aftermath and the treatment of it? Therefore, the concern I am going to raise is difficult to raise because it sounds unsympathetic. I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Lemos, as I am going to go slightly over four minutes; I know this is a bad precedent, but I need to say these things. Nor is it the case that I think my former service should not expect accountability and oversight—that is why we sought a parliamentary committee long before we got it. However, there are three problems here and the House will need to work hard to ensure that this Bill does not compromise national security.

The three problems, briefly, are these. The first problem is that this will take people off current work, plus lawyers, to deal with the requests. How much and how extensive is hard to judge, but it will remove people from front-line work. The second problem is that we get a great deal of intelligence from foreign services. They may be cautious about sharing that with us if it cannot be protected. Thirdly, human sources who work for us at risk of torture and death may be—it all depends on the detail—reluctant to offer their services if they think that their identity will be compromised. That said, I know this House will consider this important legislation very carefully and scrutinise it closely.