Schedule 5 to the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (Modification) Order 2012

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Wednesday 21st March 2012 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, once again, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for his full explanation of the order before the Grand Committee this afternoon. I support the general thrust of what he said and will support the order. I just want to ask a couple of points. Could he say a little more about the consultation process? I note from paragraph 8.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum that,

“Laboratories and law enforcement staff were consulted”.

Were other agencies also consulted that might have an interest in this area? I also want to ask him about paragraph 12.2. Very helpfully, the Explanatory Memorandum points out,

“The outcome will be subject to expert review in 2013”.

Obviously these are sensitive issues, but I wondered whether the outcome of that review in general would be made available in the public domain and whether there might be an opportunity at that point for further debate in Parliament.

Clearly the UK remains in a state of alert against the threat of the use of biological weapons, and that is absolutely right. The Minister will know that his own department and the police have suffered reductions in their budgets. Will he confirm that that has not had an impact on our capacity to deal with the particular threat posed by these biological substances?

The impact assessment, which I found helpful, makes it clear that, in relation to biological agents, inspections are carried out by the Counter Terrorism Security Advisors, who are located within police forces and are responsible for providing specialist protective security advice to local organisations, with their work co-ordinated by the National Counter Terrorism Security Office. My understanding is that the CTSAs have the responsibility to undertake security assessments of laboratories holding Schedule 5 substances and, as stated above, have the power to require improvements to their security arrangements operation. These are located within police forces.

I want to ask the Minister about police and crime commissioners. Will he assure me that the Home Office is satisfied that police and crime commissioners would not be in a position to inhibit the work of these people to carry out their security assessments of laboratories? What would happen if a police and crime commissioner sought to intervene with a chief constable to say that they did not think that this was a particular priority? If the noble Lord thinks that I am on a flight of fantasy, I would remind him of the actions of the Deputy Mayor of London, Mr Kit Malthouse, who has sought to interfere with the Metropolitan Police in the exercise of its operational responsibilities when it comes to phone hacking. The noble Lord was not, alas, able to be present for our debates on the police and crime commissioners except, I think, at the very end, but we raised those issues. So I think that it is entirely relevant for me to ask that question in relation to ensuring the integrity of our national security and ensuring that any perversity that might come from certain elected police commissioners would not in any way interfere with overall government responsibility for national security.

[Baroness Hamwee]

My Lords, rather like the debate that we had on the drugs order yesterday, I think it is quite hard for lay people—certainly such as I am—to judge proposals such as this. We have to rely on the experts and are grateful that they are there to advise. My noble friend the Minister has referred to the balance that has been struck. I take the point about the need for there to be a balance, although I was interested to read in the notes attached to the impact assessment the list of criteria used by the Lightfoot review as to which biological agents should be included or excluded from the list. In particular, it was quite interesting that ease of production was one of them, since a substance, a pathogen or toxin was of a level of danger or not. I do not see that as affected by the ease of production, but I suppose that the whole area of risk is quite tricky.

Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I looked at the paragraph on consultation and cannot believe that the health services were not consulted. The impact of any of these getting loose, as it were, is clearly relevant to them. Could the Minister say a word about their involvement in the process?

Apart from those questions, I support the order.