National Security (State Threats) Bill

Baroness Verma Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill and look forward to making sure that its passage is as quick as the Minister wants, but of course, there will be amendments that need to be addressed.

I want to focus on two or three questions that I will put directly to the Minister. My concern is around AI, which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, raised. The use in this country of AI in two or three areas really concerns me. The social contract between the people and the state has broken down quite a lot in recent years. Technologies are being used through people born and brought up here to attack their own country. Can the Minister explore the way we protect our critical infrastructure? How do we ensure that those who manage and run it are well-versed in how to protect it, and that internal or external influences do not attack our country and bring it to a standstill? The energy sector is a prime target, but we have seen attacks on Marks & Spencer and on hospitals. These attacks can be carried out by people sitting in our own country, using artificial intelligence and other means to get into our systems.

This takes me to the other point I want the Minister to consider. Given that we are outsourcing so much of our work to other countries, how do we make sure that, while we are not directly impacted in the UK, information that belongs to the people of this country is not being targeted by foreign actors outside the country, in places where we are utilising outsourcing?

Finally, I am concerned about how we ensure that information is being protected, and how this legislation is going to work. Proscribed groups such as the IRGC and others are beginning to use people in this country as their proxies. My worry is that we have failed to proscribe them simply on the basis of arguments that have never made sense to me—I know the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and I agree on this. Time and again, people have been attacked on our soil by the Islamic guard, and we have failed to proscribe it and to protect our own nationals here.

It is about trying to understand why we have not got to that stage yet, not just with that grouping but with others that are now taking shelter under the umbrella of where we have not proscribed. Other groups are now beginning to utilise their own proxies, and I am afraid that those proxies are going by the wayside at the moment, because our attention is not on them. It is too much focused on China and Russia, when other actors are beginning to also come into our systems and utilise our young people in particular, through technologies. We must be very careful.

I have come in on this debate only because we get caught up in the matter of the day and fail to see the wider issues bubbling underneath in all our communities. The Minister knows that I raise this with him here often, and every time I see him outside the Chamber. Communities that we know have issues bubbling are very vulnerable to the sorts of attacks we are trying to protect against here. This is an ideal time—in this legislation—to make sure that we also cover those.