National Security

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Thursday 14th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

My hon. Friend raises an important point, and let me reiterate the Government’s position that the targeting, harassment and coercion of anybody here in the United Kingdom, including, of course, the Iranian community and journalists, is completely unacceptable. On what we are doing to counter the threat from Iran, we have now sanctioned more than 550 Iranian individuals and entities and have placed the whole of the Iranian state, including Iran’s intelligence services, the IRGC and MOIS—the Ministry of Intelligence and Security—on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme. Importantly, we have also rolled out new training for all frontline police officers on state threats, so at a localised level—of course, this will be the case in Scotland as well—police forces have the insight and knowledge to identify and investigate the type of activity that he describes. But I give him an assurance of the seriousness with which we treat it, and we will stand firmly against the threat from Iran.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

I want to touch on state threats. I appreciate what the Minister said about the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme as it applies to China. Could he inform the House whether Bill Yuen and Peter Wai were registered on FIRS for their role as Chinese state employees? On Russia, on 5 May the Amur-class repair ship PM-82 was spotted around the Galloper wind farm. What steps is he taking to ensure that our offshore infrastructure is protected from Russian-state threats?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for his continued advocacy of FIRS. It is an important operational tool. It is still relatively new—it will be a year old on 1 June—and it is the Government’s intention to bring forward an annual report to update Parliament on the progress that we are making with it. I cannot get into the specific registration of the two individuals that he has referenced, but I can tell him—I think he will know this, because he knows a lot about FIRS, but I say it for the benefit of other Members—that countries are considered separately, and decisions are made on a robust evidence base. I am not able to get into speculation about what further decisions may be made, but those will be communicated to Parliament in the normal way.

On the hon. Member’s second point about our wider resilience, that relates to my Cabinet Office responsibilities, but I give him an assurance that we are working across Government, including with partners in the Ministry of Defence, to guard robustly against the kind of threats that he describes.