Enterprise Act 2002 (Specification of Additional Section 58 Consideration) Order 2020

Lord Campbell-Savours Excerpts

Wednesday 15th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab) [V]]

My Lords I want to speak to the share of supply order and take one area of interest to me as a former member of the Intelligence and Security Committee: cryptographic authentication. It is an area where the security services might have a particular interest and might have to intervene in the national interest, and an area where we might be particularly vulnerable.

I believe that, following the introduction of this order, which will survive in one form or another well beyond the Covid crisis, the services should produce a report annually for the ISC to consider, setting out in some detail not only their activities in monitoring this area but their actions which they believe to be countering inappropriate activity. For example, government action arising out of hysteria over China has to be monitored, because it must not go unchecked. It would then be for the chairman of the ISC, following consultation with the services and then the committee as a whole, to decide what material could be included in the annual ISC report to Parliament, with suitable redactions.