National Security and Russia

Liam Byrne Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

We have been looking at the overall question of the threats to national security; we do that within the national security capability review. Of course, the modernising defence programme has come out of that, and it will look at the threats that we face and at the capabilities that we need in relation to that, but that will be set in that wider context of the overall national security capabilities that we need to defend ourselves in the future.

[Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister will know that, since General Gerasimov updated the playbook of Russian active measures, intervention in democracy abroad has been one of the mainstays of Russian activity around the world. Our national security strategy does not include an explicit objective to defend the integrity of our democracy, and our election law defences are hopelessly out of date. Will she now update that national security strategy and, crucially, update the election law, so that our regulators have the power to keep our democracy safe?

[The Prime Minister]

We take very seriously the need to ensure that we keep our democracy safe and that we have free and fair elections at all times in this country. The right hon. Gentleman is right—as I was about to go on to say—that Russia has meddled in elections elsewhere. We do look at, and are updating, the arrangements in our electoral law in a number of ways.

It is absolutely right, as I have said, that we have updated the national security issues. We responded to the terrorist attacks that we saw here in the United Kingdom last year by setting up the national security capability review, but that review and, of course, the modernising defence programme will look at the overall threats that we face.