National Security Bill

Kevan Jones Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 26th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

The right hon. Lady will be delighted to hear the rest of my speech, in which I answer her wonderful questions.

As this House will be aware, the Intelligence and Security Committee memorandum of understanding can already be revised by agreement, which is one of the points that the right hon. Lady is raising. We do not believe that primary legislation is an appropriate mechanism for making amendments to the MOU. However, we recognise the strength of feeling on the issue, and in a spirit of compromise we have tabled amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendment 122B. The Government’s amendment will achieve a similar result and will create a duty on the Prime Minister and the Intelligence and Security Committee to progress a review of the MOU within six months of the provision’s coming into force.

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

That is fine, but the ISC has been raising this issue for the past two years. It takes two to tango. Unfortunately, the only reason we have this Lords amendment is a sense of frustration—certainly among members of the ISC, but also among a lot of Members of this House.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I assure the right hon. Gentleman that I have heard him. I hope that the amendment will now satisfy the ISC with respect to its concerns. I am sure that hon. Members across the House will support Government amendment (a) in lieu.

I turn to Lords amendment 22B, which would require political parties to make an annual return to the Electoral Commission, setting out the details of donations from foreign powers. It would also create a duty on political parties to write an annual policy statement to ensure the identification of donations from foreign powers. I understand the intention behind the amendment, and I share the strength of feeling behind it.

The Government are very much alive to the risk that foreign interference presents. I am pleased that we have already taken action to address it, and I am pleased with the support that we have received on both sides of the House for our reforms to Companies House, which will deliver more reliably accurate information on the companies register, providing greater powers for Companies House to query and challenge the information it receives. The Government are also legislating, via the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Bill, to enhance data sharing between Companies House and public authorities, including the Electoral Commission. This will help the enforcement of the rules on donations by providing greater confidence in the accuracy of the data held at Companies House.

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Finally, I said at the outset that the threats to us are profound and dynamic. It is in recognition of that fact that members of the ISC go about their work. We should thank those in the intelligence and security services for all they do. They are remarkable people who do a remarkable job. All we seek is the power to help them do that job by holding them to account.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

In a democracy, the ability of Parliament or others to scrutinise the activities of our security services is not a “nice to have” but a vital part of the confidence that our citizens have in them. We have the Investigatory Powers Commissioner and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, and then we have the ISC, which is the parliamentary arm that ensures that there is full accountability.

The Justice and Security Act 2013 extended the powers of our security services and, in return, increased the powers of the ISC. The important thing is that it has to be independent. I have been on the Committee the longest—six years now—and what has happened over the past three years has been an attack on the Committee’s independence and our ability to scrutinise. It started with Boris Johnson’s attempt to rig the Committee by giving the Conservative party a majority on it and the chairmanship of it. That failed. We also had the delay of the Russia report for no apparent reason other than to avoid his own embarrassment.

The Minister asks, “Why have we got this amendment to the legislation?”. The reason is a sense of frustration. Our Committee has been trying for the last two or three years to get the MOU changed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) said, because the remit for considering departmental policy has grown, but at every turn we have been refused. It is not about a lack of willingness on the part of our Committee.

There are other aspects in which the Committee’s work has been frustrated. I mentioned the unnecessary delay of the Russia report, but it is still happening. We have just done a major report on China. It has gone to the Prime Minister and been through security clearance. He had 10 days to publish it; a month later, we are still waiting for a date for it. The report we completed on international partnerships was sent to the Prime Minister on 6 September last year, and we are still waiting for it to be published, so the Government have form when it comes to trying to frustrate the work of the Committee.

We on the Committee get frustrated, but the important thing is that Parliament is being frustrated. For some reason, the arrogance that was around when Boris Johnson was there seems to have continued. The Minister can say all those nice warm words—as he does in his nice, flannelly sort of way—but frankly it does not wash with us. The Prime Minister or whoever in Government is trying to stop this needs to recognise that it is not about whether the Committee gets access; it is about proper scrutiny, as laid down in an Act of Parliament. This is serious for our democracy.

I want to add a few final points about the passage of the Bill, during which I think we have had four Ministers. The Committee approached the Bill in a constructive way and worked with the security services to come up with amendments. However, that was not helped by the Minister’s Department, which frankly did everything it could to stop the positive amendments that we had agreed and that were put forward by the security services. They valued that, but were amused, frankly, that the Home Office was so incompetent, or for some reason did not want to give the Committee any credit for coming up with anything.

All I say to the Minister is that I can agree to this proposal, but frankly it means nothing unless there is a change of attitude among the higher echelons of this Government. The point that needs to be remembered is that democracy is important and our constituents need to have that confidence. Our security services, who work day in, day out in very challenging situations on our behalf, need the security and support of knowing that there is independent oversight and that the public can be satisfied with it. Unfortunately, the way that the Government are carrying on in this area is damaging that oversight.

[Sir Jeremy Wright (Kenilworth and Southam) (Con)]

I want to make a few brief comments about both the amendments before us. Let me start with Lords amendment 22B and the Government motion to disagree with it. I find it very difficult to disagree with this amendment. I was a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life when the 2021 report that has been referred to was produced, and I am a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee now. Both those Committees, as the House has heard this evening, take the view that further measures are required to protect our democracy from the influx of inappropriate foreign money, and I think both would say that the amendment is the bare minimum of what needs to happen.

Lords amendment 22B does two things. It says, first, that a political party should be able to identify donations from a foreign power and, secondly, that it should be transparent with the Electoral Commission about such donations. It is worth stressing that the donations we are talking about are those from a foreign power—not necessarily from an individual, but from a state, perhaps funnelled through an individual. It is surely important to recognise the significance of such donations—potentially, at least—on our democratic process. It seems to me that there are two scenarios here. Either there are hardly any such donations in British politics, in which case the work involved to identify and deal with them appropriately is hardly likely to be onerous, even for smaller parties; or there are substantial numbers of such donations, in which case the case for greater transparency is overwhelming.

Let me turn to Lords amendment 122B and Government amendment (a) in lieu. It is worth being honest: there is very little difference between the Government amendment in lieu and the amendment from the other place, but both, as others have said, are operating on the margins of the real issue. The real issue is that there needs to be the capacity for the Intelligence and Security Committee’s remit, and the memorandum of understanding that relates to it, to adapt as the processes and structures of Government adapt. If that is not the case, all the consequences flow that have been described so well by my Committee colleagues, which I do not need and have not got time to repeat.

My last point relates to a deficiency in both Lords amendment 122B and the Government’s amendment in lieu. Both say that the consideration or the review—depending on which version we choose—of the memorandum of understanding must begin within six months of the passage of the Bill. The problem with that, it seems to me, is that it is far from inconceivable that the Government may make a machinery of government change or a process change beyond that six-month point. It does not seem sensible to artificially limit the capacity for having that review or consideration of the memorandum beyond that point. For that reason, I am afraid, I do not think that either the Lords amendment that we have received or the Government’s amendment in lieu are sensible responses to the challenge we face. In my view, both are flawed.