National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Greg Clark

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

Unfortunately, and I am afraid unusually for my right hon. Friend, he missed one little part that was missing in turn from the Minister’s answer, because the MOU as it stands does not include the Investment Security Unit. The MOU has a list of seven organisations that we can currently scrutinise. The whole point about flexibility is that, as these units are set up in other Departments, they can be added to the MOU, but the Minister has given no undertaking to add the ISU to the MOU. I am happy to give way to the Minister. If he would like to say that he will add the ISU—the new unit within BEIS—to the organisations listed in the memorandum of understanding, I will stop my speech immediately and say, “Well done, Minister,” but I fear that that is not going to happen, so I will continue with my speech.

The Government’s second argument is that the BEIS Committee is both capable of providing and best placed to provide the necessary oversight. I have the greatest respect for the work and experience of the BEIS Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), from whom we will hear later. He and his Committee are indeed best placed to provide oversight of the business functions of the new Investment Security Unit, and there can be no doubt that that Committee will do an excellent job in that respect, yet it is simply impossible for it to provide substantive scrutiny of the highly classified national security elements or of the overarching decisions taken about how to balance them with the commercial elements.

Select Committees cannot be given proper access to top-secret material in order to scrutinise effectively. Ministers have suggested that the BEIS Committee can substantively scrutinise such material, but that is impossible. While it is true, as we have heard tonight, that the provision of classified information can be negotiated with Select Committees on a case-by-case basis, the laying out of classified material in a secure room in the Department for Members to come in and read for an hour or so—but without allowing them to take any notes, without allowing them to retain it, without allowing them to share it with their staff, without allowing them to discuss it and without allowing them to report on it since any one of those would constitute a very serious security breach—does not amount to effective oversight.

Proper oversight of the national security elements of any decision under this new regime within BEIS must include the ability to access, analyse and discuss top-secret material frequently and fully. The Government already have one body, and only one body, that can do all those things and that they created for that express purpose: the ISC. Members of the ISC are all subject to the Official Secrets Act and have a dedicated office with appropriate security facilities to store and discuss top-secret material freely, and staff who undergo the most stringent Government clearance processes before they are allowed to handle such material—I said in an intervention earlier that the staff of other Select Committees of this House are not so cleared. There is also a lengthy process through which the Committee’s reports must go ahead of publication.

[Greg Clark]

My right hon. Friend will know that the call-in power and the power to refuse permission for mergers to proceed on national security grounds is long standing. It is vested in the Business Secretary and sometimes in the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. During all this time, scrutiny has been available to the ISC on those decisions. Has my right hon. Friend found that deficient in some way?

[Dr Lewis]

I am not sure that without concrete examples of what my right hon. Friend has in mind, I am in a position to give an answer to that question. What I do know is that it is the work of the ISC, on a basis of professional, full-time constant monitoring, to be able to look at the activities of those agencies that cannot be looked at by other Select Committees. He seems to be talking about the power of Secretaries of State to call in decisions, and I am not sure quite how that relates to the work of either Select Committees or the statutory Committee, which is the ISC.

[Greg Clark]

Perhaps I did not explain myself well. What is proposed in the Bill is an amendment of the current powers. There is a long-standing power for mergers to be blocked on national security grounds. It is one of three grounds on which an intervention can take place, so this is not a new power or a novel departure. The ISC is able to scrutinise the security services’ input into that now, as it will be in the future.

Retail Energy

Debate between Julian Lewis and Greg Clark

Thursday 12th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

As I said earlier, that is being considered as a separate exercise.

The hon. Gentleman referred to pre-legislative scrutiny by the Select Committee. I think that that is necessary so that we can establish a consensus and allow the technical scrutiny that is needed, so that once the Bill has passed that scrutiny and been introduced to the House, it can proceed with the strongest possible consensus.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Given the time that will elapse before the cap is introduced, is there a danger that the energy companies will raise prices as much as possible in the hope of influencing the level at which the cap will be set? What will the Government do to prevent such a tactic from succeeding?

[Greg Clark]

Ofgem has powers, and that is one of the reasons why it is responsible for setting the cap. The prices must reflect the actual costs, and extensive powers are available to Ofgem to prevent that kind of abuse.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Julian Lewis and Greg Clark

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The right hon. Gentleman does not have a shred of credibility, because Labour voted against the proposals that would have blocked that. Of course, we all know that 408 peers were created under the previous Labour Government.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend have any idea whether the Deputy Prime Minister has adopted a new year’s resolution to stop blocking the eminently sensible proposal of his own former party leader, Lord Steel, for modest but necessary House of Lords reform?

[Greg Clark]

I have a post-Christmas gift for my hon. Friend: the Government are indeed supporting—[Hon. Members: “Hurrah!”] Ah, we are back. The Government, including my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister, have announced that we will support the very sensible and modest, common-sense proposals in the Bill proposed by our hon. Friend the Member for North Warwickshire.