Cyber-security and UK Democracy

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 25th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

The work is pretty much complete, and as soon as parliamentary time allows we will be bringing forward those measures.

[Sir Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am sorry, but I find the Deputy Prime Minister today utterly unconvincing. The idea that “swift” means taking three years to publish something that has already been published by a Committee of this House is utterly preposterous. It means that if there were an attempt this year, we would hear about it long after the general election and possibly after another general election after that. The truth is that, if he actually thinks this is the sum total of all the Chinese state’s attempts to disrupt the British democratic system, he is wilfully blind and is therefore dangerous.

There are two things that the Government could do immediately to enhance confidence in this area: first, bring forward the motion to allow the Foreign Secretary to answer questions in this House from Members of the House of Commons; and secondly, publish the full unexpurgated Russia report.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am sorry that the hon. Member is not happy with the Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who is sitting to my right, and who I think does an excellent job of answering questions in this House. On the time that this has taken, there is a difference between acknowledging, as the Electoral Commission did, the fact that an attack has taken place, and the process of attribution, which takes a longer period of time for the reasons I have set out repeatedly from this Dispatch Box.