Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament

Lord Janvrin Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Janvrin (CB)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Anderson of Ipswich, and I pay tribute to his work both as the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation and on the extra reviews that he carried out during and after that period. I too thank the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, for securing this debate. It is a long time since we have been able to have this kind of discussion. I regret that it is not on the Floor of the House, but I welcome this opportunity to put on open record some comments on the recent work of the committee, which inevitably conducts its business in secret.

Before doing that, I follow directly from where the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, ended his speech, by putting on record my admiration for and gratitude to all those who work in the intelligence community. The noble Marquess mentioned the dedication and courage of those working under great pressure and in challenging and sometimes dangerous circumstances. I wholeheartedly endorse those sentiments. In doing so, I also add a particular word for the families of those who serve in our agencies. They face their own blend of stress and pressure, day in and day out, in supporting their loved ones who work in the agencies. They too deserve our thanks.

My colleague, the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, commented on some of the reports published since 2015. I offer comment on some of those reports that he did not have time to mention. In particular, the importance of the committee’s oversight role is perhaps most effectively captured by the issues addressed in our annual reports. The 2016-17 report was a particularly full one and, among other subjects covered, highlighted the importance of detecting and countering high-end cyberactivity, which is and must remain a top priority for the Government. The current cyber threat to the UK is an issue that remains an important focus for the committee—a threat that ranges from individual criminals to organised crime groups and from terrorist organisations to state actors such as Russia, China and Iran. One notable development since the publication of our report has been the attribution by the UK over the past year of malicious cyberattacks to these state actors, notably the Russian GRU and APT10 acting on behalf of the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

The committee also took evidence on the administration and expenditure of the agencies, as it does annually. We questioned the heads of agencies and organisations about their spending, on their resources and priorities for investing in people, capabilities and major projects, and on areas such as IT and accommodation. This is an important part of the committee’s scrutiny role. Issues such as the use of contractors and consultants, or the percentage of staff working in certain areas, are important to our oversight of current spending.

Last year, the committee published its findings on the state of diversity and inclusion across the intelligence and security communities. We found that there had been significant progress recently and were impressed by the work being done by staff of the intelligence community through their own staff networks, as well as through strong and effective partnerships with organisations such as Stonewall. However, as many we spoke to during our visits acknowledged, there is still much to do. At senior levels in particular, the intelligence community is still not gender-balanced and does not fully reflect the ethnic make-up of modern Britain. There is a particular lack of black, Asian and minority-ethnic staff at senior levels across the community. We also drew attention to the vetting process, which appears to be bureaucratic, takes too long, and is widely considered by many of the staff we spoke to as an inhibitor to diversity. It is imperative that the intelligence community continues its focus on creating a diverse and inclusive workforce which reflects our society.

Also in 2018, we published a major report on the 2017 terror attacks in the UK. Countering the threat of terrorism remains a primary focus for all seven organisations that we scrutinise. The scale and pace of the terrorist threat continues at an unprecedented level. This challenge was brought into sharp focus by the terror attacks of 2017. The committee undertook an inquiry into the attacks on Westminster, the Manchester Arena, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Parsons Green. MI5 and the counterterrorist police launched internal reviews in the immediate aftermath of these attacks, and this process was overseen by my noble friend Lord Anderson of Ipswich. The committee commended MI5 and the police for taking the initiative but, nevertheless, regarded it as essential to ascertain for ourselves whether mistakes were made and to ensure that the changes and improvements required had been identified.

We considered each attack in depth, with the exception of the Parsons Green attack, where, despite numerous requests, the Home Office failed to provide full evidence in sufficient time for it to be included in the inquiry. As we said at the time, the committee found this unacceptable. From what we did see, there appeared to have been failings in the handling of this case by the Home Office, the police and Surrey County Council. For the four remaining attacks, we considered the actions of MI5 and counterterrorism policing in relation to a number of cross-cutting issues that played a part in the actions of two or more of those who perpetrated these attacks. These issues included: extremist material online, extremism in prisons, vehicle hire, chemicals and explosives, joint working, closed subjects of interest, travel, disruptive powers, families and Prevent, protective security and data and information. That is quite a shopping list, and I just want to focus on one or two of those areas.

Our inquiry found that there continued to be issues with communication service providers. Following the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013, the ISC was the first to draw attention to the failure of communication service providers to stop their systems being used as a tool for extremism and terrorism. Those loopholes were again exploited by the perpetrators of the 2017 attacks, and the Government need to continue to work on ways to inhibit this insidious use of the internet.

Extremist contact in prison was another area which the committee highlighted in its report. Abedi, the Manchester Arena bomber, visited an extremist contact in prison on more than one occasion, but no follow-up action was taken by either MI5 or CTP. In our opinion, known extremist prisoners should not be able to maintain links with those vulnerable to extremism, and we recommended that the approved visitors scheme be extended to all extremist prisoners.

In relation to explosives, we found that the system for regulating and reporting purchases of the ingredients to make explosives was out of date in dealing with the threat posed. Although the committee welcomed the changes subsequently made to the system and the Government’s intention to improve co-operation and information sharing between retailers and law enforcement, with the benefit of hindsight, this should have been done sooner and must now be kept under review.

The Manchester Arena bombing also highlighted deficiencies in MI5’s systems for monitoring individuals of interest not currently under active investigation. The perpetrator, Abedi, had in fact been flagged for review, but MI5’s systems moved slowly, and the review had not happened prior to him launching his attack. The question of how closed or peripheral subjects of interest are managed, which has been the subject of previous recommendations by the ISC, remains of crucial interest. This has indeed been a focus of the review of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson.

The report also noted that, despite Abedi being known to MI5 from 2014, he was at no point considered for a referral to the Prevent programme. This failure to use the Prevent programme is not a new issue, and we would have expected lessons to have already been learned. We welcome the appointment of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, to undertake a review of Prevent, and he is due to report on his findings next year.

The noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, commented on some of the items for future work. I should like to touch briefly on the China inquiry. On 6 March, the committee announced that, following the current inquiry into Russia, its next inquiry would be into international security issues relating to China. Among other issues, the inquiry was to examine the role of Huawei in the UK telecommunications infrastructure. In view of the considerable parliamentary and public interest concerning the Government’s deliberations on Huawei, the committee decided to prioritise that aspect of its inquiry and issued a statement in July on the issue of 5G suppliers.

Our statement noted that the National Cyber Security Centre has been clear that the security of the UK’s telecommunications network is not about one country or one company. The network has to be built in such a way that it can withstand attack from any quarter, whether that be malicious action from someone within the network, a cyberattack from actors outside, or simple human error. We should therefore be thinking of different levels of security rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

This is essentially about resilience. The NCSC has said that this can best be achieved by diversifying suppliers, as it is important to reduce overdependence and increase competition. However, the telecoms market has been consolidated down to just a few players. In the case of 5G, there are only three potential suppliers to the UK: Nokia, Ericsson and Huawei. Limiting the field to just two would result in less resilience and lower security standards. It therefore follows that including a third company will result, somewhat counterintuitively, in higher security.

However, the committee recognised that this is not just a technical issue but a geostrategic issue of great significance. There are clearly a number of factors to weigh in the balance, including our intelligence-sharing relationships with our closest allies, in particular our Five Eyes partners, and the importance of our economic and diplomatic relationship with China. The committee expressed the view that this debate has become unnecessarily protracted and urged that a decision should be taken as soon as possible on which companies will be involved in our 5G network.

In concluding, I add my thanks to the committee’s staff, who work so hard to provide expert support. I also thank our chairman, the right honourable Dominic Grieve MP, for steering the committee through what has been a busy period. I believe that, as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, so eloquently said, the committee has a vital role to play in ensuring the legitimacy of our intelligence agencies. Effective scrutiny of their work by a body trusted by Parliament and the public is crucial in giving them their licence to operate effectively, under the rule of law, in a free, open and democratic society.

Holding organisations to account means looking for errors, questioning judgments and probing procedures—all inevitably and advantageously with the benefit of hindsight. This is difficult and very time-consuming for those in the intelligence community under scrutiny, but it may never go far enough for those with concerns about the legal and ethical boundaries of intelligence work.

I hope that the ISC gets the balance about right, within the parameters set for us. It is very important that we do, as I am convinced that the UK’s oversight system contributes both to the effectiveness of our intelligence community and to the esteem in which it is held by the rest of the world.