Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Bill

Lord Sikka Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

The amendment seeks to limit the definition of criminal conduct in that way. I think it is a matter of tightening it up and getting rid of material in the Bill that should not be there. I beg to move.

[Lord Sikka (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to speak in this debate. My concern is about authorising corporations to commit criminal acts and the consequences for the individuals who have been somehow enrolled to commit criminal acts and subsequently discarded. Through this amendment, I seek to address those issues.

The Bill permits the relevant authorities to enrol and authorise state and non-state actors to commit criminal acts. None of the relevant authorities listed in the Bill is hermetically sealed; they are not self-contained. They use corporations—private organisations—to further their aims. They interact with others, and there is evidence to suggest that over the years corporations have been authorised to commit what some would say were criminal acts, while others might perhaps say those acts were dangerous. Corporations have become an arm of the state, and all Governments in recent years have had an appetite for outsourcing things. I can see nothing in the Bill that would prevent a Government from outsourcing the commission of criminal acts.

There is a fair bit of research into some of these companies. I want to draw attention to an article, dated 20 December 2018, that is easily accessible on the openDemocracy website. I shall quote part of it:

“G4S, one of the UK’s biggest private military companies, provides pivotal ‘operational support’ to Britain’s military in Afghanistan and such incidents bring back into focus the extent that private military and security companies are present – and sometimes directly involved – in combat … Britain has led this privatisation of modern warfare. It leads the world in providing armed contractors to ‘hot spots’, be it combating terrorism in the Middle East or fighting pirates off the Horn of Africa. Some of their biggest clients are governments; since 2004, the British state has spent approximately £50 million annually on mercenary companies.”


I would add that lots of details are very rarely provided by government officials to Parliament or the public. Over the years, I have tried to look at some of these companies, but it is almost impossible to track them. They are formed and then very quickly dissolved. It is very difficult to track their operations. The article that I have referred to goes on to say:

“Despite the size of this mercenary industry, the entire sector is marked by secrecy. Men trained in the arts of subterfuge and counter-intelligence dominate this sphere, and the result is an industry that operates from the shadows.”


How will the CHIS Bill make this industry accountable? There is clear evidence that these companies have been used for the commission of criminal acts.

One example of this is that in 2007, employees of Aegis Defence Services, based in London, posted footage on the web showing its guards firing their weapons at what was reported at the time as “civilians”. The company said the shootings were legal within the rules of protocol. That company has also been criticised for allegedly employing former child soldiers from Sierra Leone as mercenaries in Iraq. This is a company that is headquartered in London.

As far as I am aware, there is no central database of private military and security companies operating from the UK, and I do not think that there is even any legal requirement for them to register with a governing body. Yet these companies, both in the past and possibly even now, are authorised to commit criminal acts. There is nothing in the Bill to prevent a relevant authority from authorising such companies to conduct these acts.

My concern is that we must not authorise private profit-maximising corporations to commit criminal acts. You could argue that, the more terror they unleash and the more criminal acts they commit, somehow the higher their profits will be; their executives and shareholders will be that much richer. This is simply unacceptable. Their victims receive virtually no compensation or justice, and Governments have simply pretended that they know nothing about the criminal acts being committed in their name. The murk surrounding them was touched upon in the 1996 report of Lord Justice Scott’s inquiry into the arms to Iraq affair, but there was very little clarity.

Corporations provide not only mercenaries and related services; they also operate much of the local infrastructure, including the operation of prisons. Their employees may be persuaded to go undercover into a prison to learn about drug dealing and much more. Presumably, they would need to be authorised to do so by the Home Office to commit such acts. These undercover agents can, intentionally or unintentionally, injure others. In those circumstances, who exactly is to be held accountable? Is it the corporation which has been authorised to commit the criminal act, or is it the relevant authority? As far as I am aware, the Investigatory Powers Commissioner does not have access to the documents and the personnel of these corporations.

There is also the unedifying scenario of a relevant authority authorising a corporation to commit criminal acts, which in turn holds training sessions for its employees, training them to commit murder, torture and other heinous acts. What would happen to those individuals who refuse to obey the instructions of their employers? Would they be able to say that they cannot go along with that? Would they be able to access an employment tribunal to secure redress? I cannot see anything about that in the Bill.

At the moment, people can refuse to commit criminal acts but if the Bill becomes law certain criminal acts would be normalised, though they would need to be authorised. That presents an enormous danger, and we have not sufficiently discussed the implications of corporations being licensed or authorised to commit these acts. Over the years, government departments have not come clean at all about how they have interacted with such corporations.

Today, and in previous debates, many noble Lords have drawn attention to the fact that children and vulnerable people may be enrolled to commit criminal acts. They can be used by the relevant authority and then discarded, perhaps being paid a small sum. However, many of these individuals will have flashbacks for years. They will have nightmares and suffer mental health problems; where exactly will they be able to turn for help? On the other hand, if these individuals are employees of the relevant authority, the employer will owe them a duty of care. They will then have recourse against the employer—namely, the relevant authority—so that they can be supported and compensated. Again, that is an issue.

Corporations should not be authorised under any circumstances to commit criminal acts. In the UK, we do not even have a regulator to enforce company law, never mind anything else the corporations might do—there is no central enforcer of company law in this country. Another benefit of restricting the commission of criminal acts to persons employed by the relevant authority is that that would protect very young children: children under a certain age cannot be employed at all. This will provide extra protection for those individuals. If the vulnerable people are used, the relevant authority has to be accountable for their action.

It is with this kind of issues in mind that I have proposed Amendment 53, which suggests that only individuals directly employed by a relevant authority can be authorised to commit criminal acts. We do not have the power to fully look into what corporations do, and, as I said earlier, there is not even a central regulator.

[Baroness Chakrabarti (Lab) [V]]

I can be brief. My noble friends pose two very important questions that become even more unnerving when run together. I look forward to what the Minister says about, first, the exact detail of this conduct in relation to CCAs—it is vague language; can it be sharpened?—and, secondly, the ability under the legislation as drafted for corporations, rather than individuals, to be licensed to commit criminal conduct or to run CHIS and criminal conduct themselves. If she thinks that the Bill is too broad compared to government policy, will she consider ruling out on the face of the legislation that kind of sub-delegation or outsourcing to corporations?