National Security Bill

Holly Lynch Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the detailed and powerful contribution by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). It is an honour to close this debate for the Opposition. While all debates in this Chamber carry weight, no legislation can be more serious than that which concerns our national security.

Before moving to the substance of the debate, which has been exceptionally well informed and well managed, I want to pay tribute to our security services and police forces who worked so hard to make sure that the platinum jubilee could be celebrated safely, as it should be, this weekend. I have never been prouder to be part of our great nation than when seeing and taking part in the celebrations this weekend. From street parties across our communities, the lighting of beacons and the celebration of the emergency services at the magnificent Piece Hall in my constituency to the world-class performances and execution of the Platinum Party at the Palace and the royal pageant, it has been a people-powered celebration to mark 70 years of Her Majesty the Queen’s loyal service to the country. She has provided a masterclass to all of us in public service.

Yet behind those celebrations was a policing and security operation like no other in recent history. I was grateful to the Metropolitan Police’s gold commander, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Barbara Gray, for briefing on those efforts last week. I pay tribute to those on duty this weekend on the frontline of keeping us all safe. The police and security services work around the clock, ever-vigilant to the constantly evolving threats that we face as a country, whether in times of national celebration or on any other day of the week. We are truly grateful for their service, their bravery and their sacrifice.

As outlined by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, in her opening contribution, we welcome the National Security Bill, which builds on the recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Law Commission and delivers long-overdue updates to our current legislation. As threats and technologies have evolved and been exposed, so too have the gaps in the legislative defences necessary to keep our country safe from hostile state threats.

As my right hon. Friend outlined, however, the Bill still poses a series of serious questions as we seek to work through the detail. There are measures that we expected to form part of the Bill that are missing, as well as genuine questions about the oversight of the powers within it and the appropriate scrutiny of how and when those powers are used.

The measures proposed in the Bill have been a long time coming; the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee outlined just how long some of the measures in the Bill have been called for. The Home Secretary raised the appalling 2018 Salisbury poisonings and the need to update our laws to provide the legislative cover necessary in the face of the contemporary threats we face as a nation. While Russia’s illegal and despicable invasion of Ukraine has certainly focused minds, it would be wrong to say that the provisions in the Official Secrets Act became outdated overnight.

In his annual threat update, MI5’s director general Ken McCallum stated:

“The Official Secrets Act 1911…remains a cornerstone of our espionage legislation…in 1910, just six months into MI5’s existence, founding Director General Vernon Kell included in his first progress report a plea for strengthening the Official Secrets Act, as it was proving hard to prosecute espionage cases. Kell’s push led to the Official Secrets Act 1911…it is now—obviously—hugely out of date.”

Our security services need to have confidence in the legislation that underpins their vital work. They need a justice system that is ready and able to respond to those they identify and expose as acting on behalf of hostile states and to the tradecraft of their intelligence operatives.

I assure the Government of our commitment to engage constructively as we work to fortify the Bill, so it successfully ensures that the UK’s law enforcement and intelligence community has the modern tools, powers and protections that it needs to keep us all safe. In turn, however, we expect to be heard in the same spirit when we raise genuine concerns and issues. I suspect that it will not come as a surprise to the Minister when I say that perhaps the most glaring omission from the Bill is the absence of a foreign agents register. As hon. Members have already said, particularly those who have served on the Intelligence and Security Committee, not least my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones), it was promised by the Government in 2019 and repeated formally in the 2021 integrated review. Britain is lagging behind its allies and Five Eyes partners Canada, America and Australia, who all have variations of such schemes in place.

As recent events have unfortunately shown, a register is urgently required to ensure that individuals in this House, and leaders and decision makers across the country, know whether the lobbyists, PR firms or other professionals they encounter are acting in good faith to further genuine business interests or causes, or are instead acting on behalf of hostile states. I was particularly interested in the contribution of the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Bob Seely) and some of his detailed proposals on that. As the notion of elite capture increasingly becomes a form of creeping corruption that all MPs and decision makers have a responsibility to steel themselves against, the legislation before us fails to deliver the transparency and clarity that a register would bring in assisting lawmakers and others in high office to protect themselves from becoming soft targets for those acting on behalf of foreign states.

I am grateful to the Minister and his officials for their time last week. Further to the words of the Home Secretary in her opening remarks, it is our understanding that the Government intend to introduce a foreign agents register in the form of a Government amendment to the Bill later in its passage through Parliament. I stress, as others have, just how vital it is that both Houses have the opportunity to scrutinise any such scheme. I therefore urge the Government to grant both the House and such a substantial addition to the Bill the respect they deserve and to bring forward plans for the foreign agents register before the Commons Committee stage, so that we can all do our due diligence in considering the proposals effectively before we get into the somewhat relentless intensity of line-by-line scrutiny of the rest of the Bill. Almost everyone who contributed to the debate made that point.

In addition to the absence of a foreign agents register and reform of the 1989 Act, we are surprised that the Bill does not go further to tackle head-on the online misinformation and disinformation that is being peddled by countries that seek to undermine us—a point also made by the hon. Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins). It has been well documented that for many years now the Russian state has regularly pushed disinformation on social media, as part of its strategy to sow division and stoke tensions in the west. Information on one so-called Russian troll factory was reported in 2017, when journalists identified 118 accounts or groups on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter that were linked to the troll factory. The so-called trolls had contacted around 100 real US-based activists to offer financial help to pay for transport or printing costs to support their protests and action relating primarily to, as we have heard, race relations, Texan independence and gun rights.

Rather than support one side of a particular issue or debate, the troll factories typically encourage and offer financial assistance to groups from opposite ends of the political spectrum to amplify divisions. Disinformation has also been a facet of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A special cybersecurity report from Microsoft found that in the run-up to the invasion Russian actors used disinformation on social media in an attempt to destabilise the Ukrainian Government and Ukrainian society. Just this weekend, The Times reported on how Kremlin trolls are stirring up anti-Ukrainian refugee sentiment online in Bulgaria, and they are no doubt attempting to do the same elsewhere.

Although there are clauses in the Bill that could offer some relevant new powers in very general terms, we are surprised that neither the Online Safety Bill nor this Bill present measures that are aimed at exposing the aggressive online activity I have described, addressing its scale, disrupting it and stopping it at source. We hope that, during the Bill’s passage, we can work together to enhance such measures. Given the evidence base and societal impact, a failure to do so would be a regrettable and massive missed opportunity.

Because of the Bill’s nature, it inherently gives new statutory powers to the police, security services and the Home Secretary. Labour recognises the requirement for the new powers in principle; nevertheless, it is important that within a mechanism that grants such powers there are appropriate safeguards and accountability. We firmly believe that the legislation would benefit from much more clarity on the face of the Bill about the appropriate scrutiny and oversight from either a relevant commissioner or independent reviewer.

As the Minister knows, we have engaged with him and his officials on our serious concerns about the drafting of clause 23, and I am grateful for the note he shared today with me and my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary in response to those concerns. My hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) gave a typically detailed rebuttal of why clause 23, as currently drafted, is necessary, given the existing legislation. I hope the Minister will respond to her and to so many others when he sums up.

In addition to the introduction of a foreign agents register, we believe more needs to be done to protect the Government and their officials from becoming the potential targets of hostile states actors—much in the same spirit as the issues raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). I am afraid there are outstanding questions about the conduct of the Prime Minister—if he still is the Prime Minister; he certainly was when I got to my feet—when he served as the Foreign Secretary, and I have written to the Minister about them.

I have asked questions at this Dispatch Box and tabled written parliamentary questions, simply asking whether the Prime Minister met the former KGB officer Alexander Lebedev in April 2018. The House deserves to know what happened, because if the then Foreign Secretary did not understand how inappropriate such a meeting would be—without officials and without close protection officers—at the height of the Salisbury poisoning, we need legislation that is unequivocal in its clarity. We will therefore table amendments to the Bill to address any such lapses in judgment, which stand to have consequences for our national security, while we await answers from the Government as to exactly what did happen in April 2018.

Once again, we in the Labour party are unwavering in our commitment to keeping the country safe. We will work with the Government to support these measures where they are right and overdue, and we expect to be heard and to be able to work together where opportunities for enhanced protections and greater oversight are necessary, appropriate and responsible. We look forward to Committee stage.