Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

Baroness Neville-Jones Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th September 2026 Grand Committee

[Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)]

My Lords, I intervene in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. I do not want the Liberal Democrats to be on their own, so I hear the call from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. It brings me back to the coalition days, when I and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, were once Ministers in the same department—so my support is heartfelt.

I support the substance of the amendment. As the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, says, it may not necessarily be the right amendment but the spirit behind it is absolutely one that the Government should recognise. I was a bit concerned when the noble Baroness was outlining the intention behind the amendment whether it could perhaps be seen as a burden on business, particularly when we talk about small businesses and the need to audit their cyber preparedness. However, to recall my contribution at Second Reading, I said at the time that, although we tend to debate cyber in the Chamber and other places as a great threat that we need to address, it is also a fantastic economic opportunity. I should declare that I am an adviser to a company called Digital Futures, which trains software developers. We do not train them in cyber but obviously the need to build up a skilled workforce in cyber is absolutely essential.

The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, referred to the patchwork of qualifications that exist in this area. It seems to me that the Government have a clear opportunity and a clear role to guide us through the maze and to put the National Cyber Security Centre on a statutory footing to give it the ultimate role in deciding the appropriate qualifications in cyber and to begin a sustained campaign to show young people, people returning to the workforce or people who are considering a new career that there is a route through to recognised, well set out cyber qualifications that will contribute to the national economy and our cyber resilience. I therefore wholeheartedly back this amendment.

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, I very much hope that the Government will accept the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. It strikes me as a practical and important contribution to the Bill.

In addition to the points that have already been made by noble colleagues, there is one more thought to be added: one of the weaknesses of the present marketplace in which these skills are operating is the cost and affordability of advice and help for SMEs on security issues. It is costly—security does not come cheap. Many of these small businesses that nevertheless provide sophisticated services are up against it when it comes to making an adequate profit to stay in business. Therefore, a source of guidance and help, of the kind that is being suggested by this structure, would make a real contribution to not only the viability of these small firms but the general security of cyber security services.

We should never forget that these SMEs feed into the bigger ones. Often, it is an outlying service being provided to a bigger provider that is the cause of a fault or of an essential service proving insecure. Helping SMEs in this way would not only make them more secure but make the market generally more secure. This is a very important and helpful amendment, which I hope the Government will accept.

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We all know what the Minister is going to tell us: that this is the wrong Bill for such an amendment and that there is a Home Office review. I hope that we will hold her to account for a date and timeline for when this review might come out, and some semblance of co-ordination between government bodies on all the legislation and regulations that need to be brought together and updated to provide us with a framework that supports the work that needs to be done to protect our digital infrastructure, as well as an explanation of why there has been such a delay from the Home Office on such an urgent piece of legislation.

[Baroness Neville-Jones (Con)]

My Lords, the campaign to reform the Computer Misuse Act is at least 10 years old, not just five. We—including me—have been working to try to get the provision that is contained in the amendment before us from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones. I endorse every single word that he said; he put the case precisely as it needed to be set out. It is absolutely anomalous that we still have this legislation on the statute book, and we need an update to it.

We need to put our researchers, and those who help to protect us and keep us safe, in a safe position themselves, which they are not at the moment. They are subject to potential criminal prosecution, which is stupid and a great disincentive to doing what needs to be done. I very much hope that the Minister will be persuaded to take this opportunity—not to reject it—to put a clause, even if it needs modification to a form that the Government approve of, in this legislation.

[Baroness Harding of Winscombe (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, which he so comprehensively set out. I did not mention this at Second Reading because I thought it was so self-evidently sensible that this needed to be fixed. I should know better, having been in this place for a decade, than to assume that something will happen just because it is self-evidently sensible.

The last three days in Committee have been rather depressing—my noble friend Lord Vaizey is lucky he was not here last week, although he managed to give an excellent speech that suggested he had at least been following us in Hansard or on TV—because it has been so clear that the most important issues are not being addressed in the Bill. This seems like something simple to fix. There are much bigger issues, such as the complete gaping hole of the absence of AI and the huge complexity of all the different regimes that the noble Lord, Lord Birt, set out. I am of the view that you cannot wait for the perfect, and there is a real risk that we are letting perfect be the enemy of the good. This is a straightforward and sensible proposal that I think the Government previously agreed with, but it was just not the right time. Surely, now is the time for us to do things rather than keep kicking the can down the road.