Catherine West
Main Page: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)Department Debates - View all Catherine West's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(1 year ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
James Heappey
We certainly draw no boundaries based on seniority around the information that is shared bilaterally—UK-US—or within the Five Eyes, NATO or elsewhere. Information flows to where it is needed. An analyst who is the expert on a particular Russian capability might be a relatively junior non-commissioned officer, but they might be the best in the world at that area of expertise, so rank is probably not the right boundary to set.
But what we are very careful about—I think the United States and other Five Eyes partners are similarly clear about this—is that information goes to where it is needed, not where it is necessarily wanted. That level of compartmentalisation gives enormous assurance. Leaks such as this one are exceptional, rather than the norm, and it is important that we put this—no matter how grave it appears to be—in the context of the vast amount of information that is shared between the UK and the US and within the Five Eyes routinely, and which is never, ever seen by any eyes other than those for which it was intended.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
There are clearly issues with the process of vetting individuals. What reassurances can the Minister give? He says lessons are being learned, but does something not ring a bell on the vetting problems we have seen in UK policing? What can be done holistically to look at the vetting of individuals who have access to information held by the state and to top-secret processes?
James Heappey
I looked anxiously for reassurance from the Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp), but my sense is that the police vetting to which the hon. Lady refers is a background and character check for a person’s initial employment, and therefore somewhat different from the developed vetting process that is used within Government—and particularly within the MOD and the security agencies—to assure access to top-secret and compartmental information. That process is extraordinarily rigorous, involving in-depth background checks that go back a number of generations, plus interviews and other evidence gathering that allows us a relatively high level of assurance about the people with whom we share information. The exact process is perhaps not something that should be set out in public, but it is one in which I and other ministerial colleagues have great confidence.