National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this Bill is clearly necessary. I welcome the intentions behind it, but I want to focus on some of its weaker provisions, specifically Clauses 13 and 14, Clauses 29 and 30 and Part 3.

In Clause 30, the definition of “foreign power” is extremely broad, covering all foreign states except Ireland, including political parties in government and agencies that are subject to effective control by government. Last week in Westminster Hall, I was talking to some Canadian Liberal MPs, currently in the governing party. On the face of it, under the provisions of Clause 30 and Part 3, I in should have declared that interaction to the Home Office. Do I need to fill in a form every time I go to meetings with like-minded politicians from foreign Liberal parties? We need to find some way of narrowing the definition of “foreign power” to prevent overwhelming the Home Office and confusing the many, many British people who interact with representatives of other foreign states. Should we not amend the Bill to exclude all members of NATO, or all states with which the UK has a security relationship?

How do we tackle foreign powers that are deeply embedded in British life, such as the Gulf states? These are anti-democratic monarchies, with a record which includes kidnapping their nationals on British soil and murdering their critics in third countries, but they are visibly present at Ascot and Newmarket, with houses in Belgravia and estates in Surrey, mixing and conversing with British society at the highest level, including MPs and Members of this House—more difficult to disentangle than the Russian connection of which the ISC report warned.

Clauses 13 and 14 deal with foreign interference in British politics and elections. I find it astonishing that action is now proposed in response to what the Government rightly recognise as a serious threat without their having followed the recommendation of the Intelligence and Security Committee to publish a substantial part of the evidence it had collected on Russian interference. When I asked an Oral Question about this last year, the noble Lord, Lord True, told the House that the Russia report had found no evidence of “successful interference” in UK elections—an admission that they had indeed found evidence of attempts to subvert our democratic processes but were nevertheless refusing to publish it.

This is not a dead issue. Mrs Justice Steyn, giving her judgment in the libel case Arron Banks brought against the journalist Carole Cadwalladr in June this year, stated that Mr Banks had lied about his meeting with the Russians, that at least some of the meetings were covert, and that more investigation was needed into whether the Brexit campaign had accepted any funds from Russia. Earlier this year, Mr Banks reportedly wrote off a further loan of £7 million to Leave.EU when it went into liquidation. The source of the funds for his remarkable generosity over the last seven years remains unclear, except that it came from somewhere foreign. If we are to have an informed debate in Committee, the Government must now publish what the ISC recommended we should be told.

The Minister in the Commons spoke in Committee of the importance of Parliament and the public understanding and the nature of the threat. That would help us understand the nature of the threat that we recognise so far.

I have asked for advice on the interaction between Clause 14 and the Elections Act, which this House considered earlier in the year. That Act extends the right to vote in UK elections to all UK citizens resident in all other states in the world for their lifetimes. There is little provision to check the identity or status of overseas citizens applying for the register; personation will be easy, the origins of donations almost impossible to verify. This Act takes a much tougher approach, against personation, misuse of proxies and acting as a channel for funds from a foreign power. I welcome that, but Tom Tugendhat’s new Defending Democracy Taskforce, which he announced the other week, will need to rewrite parts of the Elections Act.

The Act’s references to undue influence in UK diaspora communities also raise delicate and sensitive issues that we will need to examine. I speak as someone who has done a lot of politics in Bradford. The Israeli embassy and the Indian and Pakistani high commissions, for example, work actively to maintain the links between British diaspora communities and the states they represent. Britain has many diaspora communities, and many dual nationals who have settled here, from hostile authoritarian states as well as from Commonwealth members and democracies—Iran, for example. So far as I am aware, the UK has no coherent policy on the legal rights and obligations of dual nationals, either when in the UK or in their other countries of citizenship. This suggests that greater clarity there is badly needed.

Part 3, which establishes a foreign influence registration scheme, was added in Committee in the Commons. Sir Iain Duncan Smith remarked in Committee:

“The Government seem almost to have cut and pasted some of the US legislation and possibly the Australian legislation.”—[Official Report, Commons, 16/11/22; col. 747.]


The Minister must be aware that the Australian legislation led to an unanticipated surge in reports of “foreign activity arrangements” by Australia’s eight research-intensive universities, which overwhelmed the Government’s capacity to process submissions. The UK has a great many more research-intensive universities than Australia, which are actively involved in research partnerships across the world. We also have world-renowned research institutes in Chatham House, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, the Royal United Services Institute and others. As it stands, Clause 62 would lead to a flood of reports from all of these to the Home Office, far beyond its limited capacity to cope.

I speak with passion on this subject because it would have hobbled my own career. I was director of research at Chatham House for 12 years from 1978 to 1990, and thereafter taught international relations at Oxford and then the LSE. At Chatham House, among other things, I was the British secretary of the Anglo-Soviet Round Table, a forum for dialogue with the Moscow institute for world affairs—a state-controlled entity close to the Politburo. Our engagement was supported by the Foreign Office but repeatedly attacked as subversive by the Murdoch press throughout that period.

My wife would still be caught by this clause. She keeps in touch with, and visits, several former students who are now in government in several countries across Europe. Some of her visits have no doubt been paid for from state funds in those countries. My son would be caught, too. He is a systems biologist at Edinburgh University, involved in a number of international collaborations with universities in Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, and with the government-funded Institut Pasteur in Paris. When attached to an American university, he was working closely with Russian mathematicians. They and thousands more academics and researchers will be filling in forms and sending them off to the Home Office. What do we do about the many foreign nationals working in UK universities? Over 40% of the staff in some of our top universities—the figure is higher in the London School of Economics—and a good deal more of the students in some of our universities are from a wide range of friendly and unfriendly countries.

I have been told that the proposals in Part 3 were floated by the Home Office before and then withdrawn after sustained criticism from other Whitehall departments and outside bodies. I have the strong impression that the Home Office has not considered the overlap and duplication of this provision with clauses in the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which the House will consider on Report tomorrow. I understand that there has been very little consultation with universities so far. One academic told me yesterday that the Bill as currently drafted will transform the UK from a science superpower to a scientific bureaucracy superpower.

A concern with real threats must nevertheless consider that Britain’s universities are among its greatest international assets and that Clause 62, as drafted, could severely damage their reputations and future operations. Can the Minister assure the House that Part 3 will not be considered in Committee until the Home Office has ensured that other Whitehall departments are content with what is proposed; that it does not contradict other Bills or Acts; and that our research universities, our leading international institutes, the Royal Society and the other academies have all been properly consulted on its implications?

The Bill focuses on state threats, rather than on non-state threats. It is fuzzy on quasi-state enterprises—companies owned by sovereign wealth funds in Malaysia or Qatar, or companies with a substantial and sometimes controversial presence in the UK, such as DP World—and does not touch on the role of immensely wealthy private persons, whether Russian, American, Arab or Asian, attempting to influence events in the UK by penetrating British society and through money.

Right-wing authoritarians such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary have made much of what they regard as the malign influence of George Soros and his open society foundations. I am concerned about the malign influence of the American Koch family foundations and their attempts to influence British politics through their close links with right-wing think tanks here. I read footnotes to Koch foundation publications in the Policy Exchange papers that shaped the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill. Policy Exchange does not publish where its funds come from. Nor does the Institute of Economic Affairs or the Adam Smith Institute, which together exerted such strong and malign influence over the Truss Government. We know, however, that they have received funds from American multinational companies and foundations, and we have a right to know more about all their foreign funders.

The Boardman review of the fallout from the Greensill scandal in 2020 recommended to the Government that they

“should consult on whether think tanks, research institutes and lobbying academics should be required to disclose their sources of funding and whether there are circumstances when they ought to be required to register as consultant lobbyists.”

I am surprised that this proposal is not in the Bill, at least as far as foreign funding is concerned. I will attempt to amend the Bill to force political think tanks to declare all overseas sources of funding.

This is an important and necessary Bill but it has been badly drafted and inadequately thought through. It is better to get it right than to rush it on to the statute book.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to all who have contributed to what has been a very constructive and instructive debate. I welcome the broad support that has been shared across the House. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Evans of Weardale, for his supportive comments on the foreign influence registration scheme. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, and others in this House who engaged us in such a constructive and supportive manner, in both this debate and the engagement sessions we have run over recent weeks.

I turn to some of the specific points that have been raised. I ought to crave your Lordships’ indulgence because this will not be a short speech; it will be a sincere effort to address all the key points in full, and not a cynical attempt to bore all noble Lords to tears. Starting with interaction between this Bill and the Online Safety Bill, which was referenced by the noble Lords, Lord Stevenson of Balmacara and Lord Ponsonby, the Government are obviously aware that we have overtaken that Bill in its passage, and we will ensure that the links between the Bills have the desired effect.

A central element of a number of offences in the Bill, alongside the foreign power condition, is the test of the safety and interests of the UK. This test is one way that legitimate activity is excluded from the scope of relevant offences. In considering any prosecution in relation to the offences to which the provisions regarding prejudice to the safety and interests of the UK apply, the court will consider the nature of the risk to the safety or interests of the UK. Case law already makes clear that

“the safety or interests of the United Kingdom”

should be interpreted as the objects of state policy determined by the Crown on the advice of Ministers. This is notably different from protecting the particular interests of those in office.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, questioned the scope of the foreign power condition in the Bill. The foreign power condition provides a single and consistent means by which a link to a foreign power can be made for the purposes of the offences of obtaining or disclosing protected information, trade secrets offences, sabotage, foreign interference and the state threats aggravating factor. The foreign power condition can be met in two scenarios: first, where a person is acting for or on behalf of a foreign power and, secondly, where a person intends that their conduct will benefit a foreign power. I reassure the House that this will not capture people who do not know, and could not possibly know, that they were acting for a foreign power. Rather, Clause 29 requires that a person knows, or ought reasonably to know, that their conduct is being carried out for or on behalf of a foreign power, or they must intend to benefit a foreign power. Of course, where our authorities consider a person to be carrying out harmful activity with a state link, this can be drawn to a person’s attention, providing a strong deterrent effect against a person continuing with that activity.

The Bill follows the Law Commission’s recommendation to replace the existing link of an “enemy”, as set out in the Official Secrets Act 1911, with a definition of a “foreign power”. We agree that incidental or tangential links to financial or other assistance from a foreign power will not suffice to meet the foreign power condition in relation to harmful conduct. Those who receive funding from foreign powers to carry out legitimate activities would not meet the foreign power condition if they were entirely separate to that funding to undertake activity covered by one of the offences in the Bill. The other place passed an amendment on Report to put it beyond doubt that any financial or other assistance must be clearly linked to the illegitimate conduct in question.

The noble Lord raised the matter of the Home Secretary. All I will say is that she has provided a detailed account of the steps she took in her letter to the HASC. I will not make further comment as this matter has been dealt with in detail at other times.

Oversight was discussed at length in the other place, as it has been today, and in the helpful engagement sessions I have held with colleagues. Although we already have oversight mechanisms in place for Part 2 of the Bill, the Government have committed to consider whether any additional oversight is required for state threats legislation. We have been considering whether it is possible to extend oversight beyond Part 2 in a way which does not duplicate or unhelpfully interfere with the responsibilities and functions of the existing mechanisms governing both the UK intelligence agencies and the police. Should we decide to extend oversight of the Bill beyond Part 2, it is important that we do not create any confusion or uncertainty. We are currently exploring the different options for appointing an individual to oversee Part 2, along with our work to consider whether there is merit in expanding oversight beyond it. It is crucial that whoever is appointed has relevant experience and skills and can provide an objective assessment of the offences and powers to ensure appropriate and transparent scrutiny.

Many have raised concerns regarding the Serious Crime Act amendment in Clause 28 of the Bill. I know there will be general understanding of why I cannot go into detail on operational issues in this place; however, let me reassure the House that the Government have been working with the UK intelligence community—or UKIC—which has now provided an operational briefing to the Intelligence and Security Committee outlining examples of why this measure is needed. The committee has acknowledged the need for the SCA to be amended and appreciates our reasoning for seeking changes, though it is not yet in full agreement on the way the problem is being addressed. I thank the committee for its engagement on this matter and welcome a collaborative dialogue going forward. I want to be clear that the Government have heard noble Lords’ concerns and will look carefully at what can be done to tackle these issues. I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke on this clause and thank them for their thoughts. I look forward to further discussions to find the right way forward.

Let me turn to why the SCA amendment is necessary. Collaboration with international partners is a vital element of the national security work carried out by the Armed Forces and UKIC. To support this crucial work, a number of safeguards and processes are in place to ensure that this collaboration is necessary, proportionate and prevents potential wrongdoing. For example, the Government remain committed to the Fulford principles and overseas security and justice assistance guidance, which exist to ensure that our officers do not knowingly support unlawful activity. Further, UKIC’s regulatory compliance is monitored by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s office via regular inspections and routinely scrutinised by the Intelligence and Security Committee.

The UK has one of the most rigorous intelligence oversight regimes in world. There are several internal safeguards and processes in place which manage the way that UKIC and the Armed Forces work with and exchange information with international partners to prevent potential wrongdoing. Operational decisions are carefully recorded and made with the benefit of regular advice from specialist legal advisers to ensure compliance with domestic and international law. Intelligence officers receive mandatory training on the legal frameworks and policies which govern UKIC and Armed Forces activity. These policies include the Fulford principles, the compliance with which is assessed by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner annually and reported to the Prime Minister. UKIC’s regulatory compliance is also monitored by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s office via regular inspections and routinely scrutinised by the Intelligence and Security Committee.

The Serious Crime Act offences mean that individuals who have complied with all those safeguards—working under authorisation and in the interests of UK national security—may fear personal criminal liability. It is not right or fair to expect this risk to sit with trusted individuals who are acting in good faith and on behalf of our intelligence services or Armed Forces for authorised purposes. Instead, responsibility should sit with those organisations at an institutional level, where it is subject to executive, judicial and parliamentary oversight.

I want to be absolutely clear: Clause 28 is not a broad, general immunity from criminal offences and not about allowing the Government to carry out torture or commit murder. Rather, the Government are making an amendment to provide a targeted protection which better facilitates co-operation with our key overseas partners. At present, despite being satisfied that all other domestic and international law obligations are met, essential intelligence sharing with partners has been delayed or prevented in order to protect individual officers from potential liability for SCA offences. This is a having a chilling effect across UKIC and the Armed Forces, reducing the confidence of officers who make vital national security decisions every day. As a country, that means that we are less safe, because reciprocal access to intelligence facilitated by joint working is crucial to responding to the threats we face, such as terrorism.

This amendment is not about letting UKIC and the Armed Forces do whatever they want. It is about ensuring that we are protecting those working for us from prosecution and giving them the confidence that the Government have their backs. When things go wrong, it is entirely right that there is scrutiny of and accountability for the organisation’s activities, and I commend the important work of the ISC and IPCO in this space. Meanwhile, any individual found to be working beyond the proper functions of the security and intelligence agencies or the Armed Forces will remain personally liable for those actions. That is right and fair.

I have full confidence, however, in those to whom we are providing protection, including our intelligence agencies. They are expert, professional and highly trained individuals, whose judgment and skill we respect and have faith in. Not taking the opportunity to provide those individuals with assurances that they are protected would be an abdication of our responsibility to support them in keeping our country safe.

The noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, asked why the SCA is necessary, given Section 7 of the Intelligence Services Act, which authorises the “reasonable” defence. The noble Lord, Lord Carlile of Berriew, also raised a point on those matters, so I shall try to deal with them now. While we consider that properly authorised activity to protect national security should be interpreted as being reasonable for the purposes of the existing defence to the Serious Crime Act offences, the application of the reasonable defence to UKIC and Armed Forces activity is untested. The Government believe that UKIC and the Armed Forces should have a targeted protection that provides far greater clarity and certainty to those tasked carrying out important national security work. Section 7 ISA authorisations are not available in all the circumstances in which the SCA risks arise. Those authorisations primarily apply to overseas activities, meaning that Section 7 could not generally be used to protect officers when carrying out activities in the UK. Section 7 authorisations may be sought only by SIS and GCHQ, and not by MI5 or the MoD.

The foreign influence registration scheme, or FIRS, is being created to tackle covert influence in the UK. It will strengthen the integrity of our systems and enhance the transparency of our political processes, delivering a key recommendation of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 Russia report. As I am sure noble Lords will agree, it can be only right that the UK public and our democratic institutions are appropriately protected from political interference from abroad and better informed as to the scale and extent of foreign influence in our affairs. Russia’s recent attempts to undermine European stability has brought the need for action into sharp focus. That is why the scheme will require the registration of all political influence activities where they are to be carried out in the UK at the direction of a foreign power or entity. It is important to note that the scheme will not impose restrictions on the legitimate activities of people or business. Indeed, it is there to encourage openness and transparency. To be clear: we continue to welcome open and transparent engagement with foreign Governments and entities, and we will ensure that the administrative burden of the registration requirement is kept to a minimum.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, raised two key concerns. First, he suggested that the political tier of FIRS would have a disproportionate impact on academia. That would be the case only when those bodies undertook political influence or activity. Further, no countries are now specified on the enhanced tier, so there is no activity to be registered as it now stands. If the Government list a country, we will consider what activity should be registrable, ensuring that any such registration would be proportionate.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, before Committee, could we be told how this new proposal will interact with the National Security and Investment Act, which already acts on universities? Universities are concerned that there will be a double effect, increasing the problems they face and the amount of time they will have to spend on them.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I shall get back to the noble Lord on that point.

To conclude on that issue, these decisions will be subject to parliamentary approval.

Secondly, I assure noble Lords that all the policy in the Bill is subject to collective agreement and has the support of the full Government. It is also important to note that the Government undertook a consultation on the Bill, including FIRS, in the summer of 2021, and ran targeted engagement with industry this summer.

With regard to the specified person measure included in the foreign influence registration scheme, it is important to clarify its necessity. It will offer us three key benefits. First, it will provide the Government with a greater understanding of the scale and extent of activity being carried out on behalf of specified foreign powers and entities. Secondly, it will increase the risk to those who seek to engage in covert activities for specified foreign powers, either directly or through entities. By requiring the registration of relevant arrangements and activities, the risk of engaging in state-threats activity against the UK is increased. Finally, the specified person measures provide a potential option for earlier disruption when there is evidence of a covert arrangement between an individual and a specified foreign power or entity but not disclosable evidence of a more serious state- threats offence. Crucially, this provides an opportunity to prevent harmful activities at the earliest possible stage.

On Clause 3, the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, gave the example of an individual working with Mossad in the UK to recover artefacts looted by the Nazis. In his example, we would expect that the UK would have been made aware of such activity and it is possible that the UK would have made an arrangement with Israel. As such, the activity would have a defence in Clause 3(7)(c)(i).

A number of noble Lords raised the Official Secrets Act 1989, including the noble Lord, Lord West, and the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford. As the House knows, the Government are not planning to reform this Act. It is worth noting that the Law Commission, in evidence to the Bill Committee, clearly explained that it did not envisage that any one statute would implement all its recommendations at once, even if the Government were minded to accept them all. It also did not recommend that a public interest defence be created in relation to the espionage offences in the Bill. We continue to consider the Law Commission’s recommendations on the Official Secrets Act 1989.

On the specific issue of a public interest defence, or PID, to overcome a PID, the Government would need not only to show that the disclosure was damaging but that any harm from a disclosure outweighs the public interest in the disclosure. This would likely mean that in a prosecution, even one where a person clearly had malicious intent, the damage of the original disclosure could be severely compounded. This could lead to even egregious breaches of the Act not being prosecuted due to the sensitive nature of the evidence that the Government would have to reveal to defeat the PID. The Government recognise that there may be situations where an individual has a legitimate need to raise a concern—for example, in situations where there may have been wrongdoing and where they think there is a public interest in disclosing that information—but disclosing information protected by the Official Secrets Act 1989 and then relying on a PID is not the safest or most appropriate way for an individual to raise these concerns and have them rectified. Nor would this address the underlying wrongdoing.

The offences in the National Security Bill target harmful activity by states, not leaks or whistleblowing activity. There are safeguards that prevent the Bill capturing whistleblowers and negate the need or utility of PID. For example, to commit an offence of disclosing protected information, the conduct must be done for or on behalf of, or with the intention to benefit, a foreign power and with a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK. A genuine whistleblower would not meet this bar. Including a PID in any of the offences in Part 1 strongly implies that acts of espionage could be in the public interest. Clearly, acts of espionage against the UK can never be in the public interest.

There are also already several existing internal and external routes in government through which individuals, including government subcontractors or contractors, can raise a concern about information relevant to the Official Secrets Act 1989 safely. The number of routes has increased since 1989. The Government consider that these routes provide safe and effective options for disclosure, although the appropriate route would of course depend on the disclosure in question. These routes include, among others, government departments’ internal policies and processes; a staff counsellor for the national security community; organisational ethics counsellors; the chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee; the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s Office; the Attorney-General’s Office; the Director of Public Prosecutions; and the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police in instances where an individual suspect’s criminal activity is taking place or has taken place. To sum up, the introduction of a PID would carry significant risks to our national security and do nothing to create a safe or effective route to raise a concern, compared to the many legitimate routes the Government are actively maintaining and improving.

Turning to the report published by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, the Government are clear that the offences and powers introduced by the Bill are proportionate and necessary. Through the use of appropriate safeguards and conditions, and reflecting on the need to protect national security and public safety, the offences have been crafted to catch only legitimate activity, ensuring that they remain proportionate. The Government disagree with the overall position of the committee and maintain that the measures in the Bill are appropriately drawn. Our ECHR memorandum, updated on the introduction of the Bill into this House, outlines the government assessment of how our measures comply with human rights law. I look forward to engaging with the committee as the Bill progresses through this House and the Government will respond to the JCHR report in due course. I am sure the noble Baroness would not expect me to speculate on the Bill of Rights Bill and its future.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, asked when the Government will publish the Russia report. I am pleased to be able to tell her that the Government did in July 2020. In fact, I can tell the noble Baroness that our response was published on the very same day; the Bill is a direct response to the recommendations in that report.

In conclusion, I will repeat my earlier thanks to all who have participated today. I look forward to further examination and challenge as we move to Committee, but for now I beg to move.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 19th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Pannick (CB)]

I am very sorry. I apologise to the noble Lord and the Committee; I thought he had sat down, and I was not the only Member of the House who thought so.

I have made my speech. The only point that I was going to add was that if we retain Clause 2, it includes the preparatory acts under Clause 16 and the powers of search under Clause 21. For all those reasons, I think Clause 2 should not be included in the Bill.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord obviously did not know that the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, had not sat down, but he perhaps ought reasonably to have known.

This exchange has focused my mind much more on the following question: part of the grey zone that we are dealing with is whether or not economic security is now part of national security. To a considerable extent, it is. I have not yet fully understood the relationship between the Bill and the National Security and Investment Act, passed last year, which deals with, among other things, some aspects of intellectual property. There may well be—but I am not sufficiently expert on it—a degree of overlap between that Act and what is proposed here.

[Lord Carlile of Berriew (CB)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. The National Security and Investment Act 2021 deals with investment and the transfer of more than 25% of the equity in certain types of companies, and it is very clear. A unit has been set up, in two departments at least, to deal with those provisions. There is no real relationship between this provision and the NSIA.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I am reassured. I declare a certain interest: I have a number of relatives in aspects of scientific research. My son tells me that he is a systems biologist, but I note that engineering biology and synthetic biology are defined in the NSI Act among the strategic areas, and they are in some ways very similar to systems biology. So that is part of my active interest in this area. I am well aware that, in our universities, we have a large number of multinational teams working on the cutting edge of advanced science in a number of different areas. That is part of the grey zone with which we are now dealing and which it is extremely difficult to come to grips with.

I will speak to my Amendment 11, which is very much a probing amendment, raising the question of how we handle the very substantial number of dual nationals we have in this country, both living here and living in other countries—in some cases, they are long-term residents in other countries. If we are moving towards an increasingly unfriendly and difficult international environment, as we are already seeing, dual nationals will come under increasing pressure, not just from what we may do, mildly, within the Bill but from the other countries of which they have citizenship and with which they have connections. We have seen the pressures that the Iranian Government are willing to push on to the family members of dual nationals or single British citizens living in this country, and we have seen the same in China. Therefore, there are a number of questions about whether we need to take on board the presence and complexity of our dual-national citizens as part of the complications of the Bill.

I am also conscious that, unless the Minister can reassure me, we have no idea how many dual nationals we have, who they are or where they are. All the questions I posed during the passage of the Elections Act about our overseas citizens, and potential overseas electors, have told me that we have very little idea of who and where they are. I raise this because I simply do not know whether there is a problem or how serious it may be. But it seems to me that we should pay more attention to a world in which some hostile foreign states will do their best to bring all the pressures that they can on British citizens with origins in their country or dual citizens.

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

I will not take very long; I will just correct the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that economic pressures on national security are a new addition. The Security Service Act 1989—the noble Lord, Lord Beith, who is not in his place, referred to this—talked about protecting the

“economic well-being of the United Kingdom”.

This is not a new issue. That is a point of clarification, for which I have not taken too much time.

--- Later in debate ---

Basically, this part of the Bill requires a considerable amount of work, as suggested in the amendments that I have tried to describe, to make it compatible with people’s normal human rights, civil liberties, freedom of expression, freedom of association and ability simply to go about their normal business. The Government ought to respond positively to these amendments. I beg to move.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I have three amendments in this group. I suppose I should declare interests in relation to the amendments of my noble friend Lady Ludford. I have been stopped by the MoD police twice in my life: outside RAF Fylingdales when walking with a local Liberal Democrat councillor, and outside RAF Menwith Hill, where I had stopped to address a meeting of splendid Quaker women who constituted the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases. We were watching American servicemen in the ceremony in which they took down the union jack. There are no British servicemen on the base most of the time.

I want to talk about the probing amendments I have put down on why the Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories do not appear here. I explain my interest—and form—on this, which dates back to the Royal Commission on the Constitution of 1970-74, on which I was a very junior witness. I learned about the deep ambivalence surrounding the relationship between the Crown dependencies and the UK in particular, and about the British Overseas Territories.

I note that, in the Procurement Bill, which we have just passed through this House, the Crown dependencies are included under the definition of “a UK supplier”. However, under a number of other Acts that we have passed through this House in the last few years, they exclude themselves. They move in and out in various different ways.

In a number of these territories and dependencies, there are places of considerable concern to our security and interests: the Falkland Islands, the British Indian Ocean Territory, Ascension Island, Saint Helena, et cetera. The Crown dependencies I am much less sure about, although I know there is a Territorial Army base on Jersey. The last time I looked at the official Guernsey website, it still said that Guernsey’s contribution to British defence is the maintenance of the Alderney breakwater. That is a very interesting conceit. When, nearly 20 years ago, I asked the Ministry of Defence a Written Question on the importance of the Alderney breakwater, an official phoned me up to say, “We don’t understand your question”. On further investigation, he said that they had ceased to be concerned with the Alderney breakwater at the time of the Second World War.

There are many ambivalences here but surely, they should be part of this Bill. They are neither foreign nor entirely British. They are of importance to the UK, in financial terms and, when it came to the Falklands, in military terms. I am assured that there are some facilities on Ascension Island. There are certainly facilities on the British Indian Ocean Territory, although they are of course primarily American, and I think there are fewer than two dozen British servicemen there. However, they should be in the Bill and are not. I merely wish to ask why.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, anybody watching a wonderful BBC documentary series about Ordnance Survey maps a few years ago would have seen the rather amusing part about a gap in the centre of London on the Ordnance Survey map as result of the Official Secrets Act. That was because it was forbidden to have the Telecom Tower on the map because it was a prohibited place for national security, so none of our foes were able to know where it was by studying the Ordnance Survey map. I hope that we avoid such absurdities with this Bill.

In Committee in the Commons, the Minister stated that there is not, nor will there be, a register of prohibited places. I hope the Minister can provide some more clarity with regard to that today. The offences under the Bill are so significant and potentially draconian that some of the issues that my noble friend Lady Ludford indicated might well come about, because the Minister in the Commons was unable to state in clear terms how people will know where a prohibited place is. Some might be perfectly obvious, such as some of the bases which my noble friend Lord Wallace approached with a Liberal councillor, but others are not. I understand entirely that there will be some areas where the Government do not wish to promote the activities or make it clear where they are, but how will they approach inadvertent activity, given that someone statically observing a prohibited place through an iPhone lens or a binocular lens could inadvertently be committing a criminal offence? I simply do not know how the Government intend to ensure that people are aware that they are potentially falling foul of this legislation.

Not only that but the Bill allows Ministers to move quickly to extend prohibited places. It does so by general description, as the Minister said in the Commons. Prohibited places do not have to be specified, as I understand it. They can be categorised, so that all areas that meet the general specification will become prohibited places. Is there a mechanism so that local authorities or local police are informed, even if no local communities are going to be informed? The Minister in the Commons said

“some sites will not want people to know exactly where they are and what they are doing because they will become targets. Once again, there is a balance to be struck in relation to provision for the intelligence community”.—[Official Report, Commons, National Security Bill Committee, 12/07/22; col. 107.]

Of course there needs to be a balance but, as with some other elements of the Bill, we see no other part of the balance. We see no mechanism that will protect the interests of people who are inadvertent.

The Government have also indicated that they might have to move very fast. There is of course merit in understanding that if there has been an alert about a threat, certain areas might need to be prohibited. I am not advocating it, but I am curious about the choice that has been made. The Government have not chosen to go down the route of the “made affirmative” procedure, which other legislation has if something has to be done urgently. They say that if there is a threat risk, to allow a prohibited place to be put in place they will bring it forward using the negative procedure and consult on it. It does not really ring true as far as how urgent a response that would be to a national security threat.

However, there are significant wider concerns when it comes to the powers that the Government are seeking. Where are the limits for the extension of prohibited places? Would it be, for example, that an immigration centre could not become a prohibited place under this Bill? Would it be that local government department buildings could not be prohibited places? What is the limit? Unless there is a limit, notwithstanding if there is an immediate threat—I think there are procedures anyway with regard to securing areas where the police think that offences are to be carried out, and for the safety of the public there are mechanisms that can secure places under existing legislation—how do we know how far Government want to extend those prohibited places? Unless we are clear, that raises the considerable concern that they can be used to prevent peaceful protest or concern.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on Amendments 43 and 44 and Amendment 45A is in my name. I welcome the clarification in the government amendments and stress that this is an important area in which getting the language right is particularly difficult. I speak as a non-lawyer.

When I read the original text, I had my doubts as to the use of “misrepresentation”. I also have serious doubts about the use of the offence of spiritual injury. I recall being a candidate in a very Irish area of Manchester in 1974. My wife and I spent a long evening with the nine Roman Catholic priests in the constituency during which we discussed what were the important issues in the election to them; of course, they were Northern Ireland, abortion and Catholic schools. We certainly hoped that their sermons the weekend before the election would not have a particular bias against voting Liberal. Spiritual injury is an extremely difficult area to get into; I am not sure that it should be in the Bill but I bow to the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and others to say whether they really think that this is an area where one could prosecute.

We need to be concerned about enforcement and enforceability in this area. I have a strong memory of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, coming to supper with us in Saltaire in the middle of a general election campaign. He had come up as an official of the Labour Party to look at some of the problems of election campaigning in Bradford’s constituencies, in particular within the diaspora community in two or three of those constituencies. He was furious about the police’s refusal to intervene because of what they regarded as not only the difficulties of prosecuting but the dangers to social cohesion of attempting to prosecute in such difficult circumstances. We recognise that this is part of the problem we get into in these important clauses.

We on these Benches are in the unusual position of thinking—others might think it too—that this is an area where the Bill is not yet strong enough and where threats to democracy, of which we are now much more aware than we were a few years ago, clearly need to be countered. We have seen the threats to democracy in the United States, with the efforts of former President Trump and his sympathy for authoritarian regimes across the world. We have seen some on the right of the Conservative Party—certainly in what was UKIP but is now Reform UK—who are much more sympathetic to Orbán than they are to the French or Dutch or other countries on the continent. We therefore all need to be sure that our democracy is protected as strongly as it can be from foreign interference.

At Second Reading, I said that I regretted that the Government have refused to follow the recommendation made by the ISC in paragraph 47 of its Russia report: that the Government should agree to publish a further account of the experience of attempted Russian interference in British elections and the referendum campaign, to alert the public to the threat and demonstrate that it is real. We all understand that to do so would be embarrassing for the Conservative Party, but it should accept the embarrassment and publish. We still do not know where the huge amounts of money that Arron Banks has given over the years came from, including, most recently, writing off another £6 million of debt. We are talking about something in the order of £10 million to £15 million that has come from abroad. I have been assured by others who say they know that it must have come from Russia but I—indeed, we—do not know that.

There are some major issues here. I will focus on the money dimension. It does not have to be amounts of that size, although we are all well aware that the British-citizen partners of Russian oligarchs in London have given some very large donations to the Conservative Party in recent years. Again, that is something about which we should be concerned, but think about someone wanting to influence the outcome in a particular constituency. The sums would not have to be that large. For example, if you are concerned about a candidate who is critical of human rights in the particular foreign power from which the diaspora community comes, those sorts of interventions are relatively easy.

We then come to the question of how we make sure that our overseas voters are who they say they are. A large gap was left on this by the Elections Act. I wish to stress to the Minister that a great deal more needs to be done. I raised a question on this the other week. Yesterday, I received a letter answering my criticisms from the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which now deals with elections. I suggested that overseas voters do not have adequate checks on who they are and that they will not have them when we extend it to lifetime. The letter said:

“Similar to domestic electors, overseas electors will be subject to identity checks when registering to vote and, if they choose to vote in person, will be required to show an approved form of photographic identification.”


The idea that any significant number of overseas voters would wish to vote in a British election in person is laughable. Many of them live thousands of miles away—for example, on the west coast of California, in Bermuda, in Azad Kashmir or in northern Nigeria.

On several occasions, I have visited the Bradford electoral registration office to discuss these questions. Bradford currently has 1,000 overseas electors from more than 30 countries in its five constituencies. It is difficult to check back on whether the identity verification offered in those countries, which is looser than that now required under the photo ID requirements for domestic voters, is real or not.

When someone says that they lived in a particular constituency 30 years ago as a child and are therefore now entitled to vote, and you are doing it all online, verification is not easy. It would be reasonable to ask the consular dimensions of British embassies abroad to play a role in this. I tabled a Written Question for the Foreign Office last year about what role it would be playing in checking the identity of overseas voters. The answer was none. The French have a very different attitude to this; they attempt to maintain some clear links and checks on their citizens in other countries.

The letter from the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, goes on to say that if an overseas elector chooses to vote by post—under the Elections Act, et cetera—then, as this Bill and the Explanatory Notes make clear, they will vote by proxy. Proxy votes will therefore be an important part of this. Rightly, the Elections Act limits the number of proxy votes that any elector can hold to two for domestic voters and four for overseas voters. However, if I were an authoritarian regime in a foreign power with a significant diaspora in the United Kingdom and a significant number of dual nationals back in their country, I would not find it difficult to add several hundred alleged voters to a particular constituency where I wanted to get the MP out, and to arrange for the scattering of those proxy votes among enough people to make a difference—perhaps 500. Some metropolitan constituencies already have over 1,000 overseas voters.

As it happens, there was a fundraising event for the Cities of London & Westminster Liberal Democrats last night. It was a very interesting mix of people, with a range of international links, some of them born in Russia, Kazakhstan, Greece and elsewhere. They have over 1,000 overseas voters on the register already. One could imagine the estimate in general is that the numbers would double as we relax the limitation from 15 years to a lifetime. This is a serious issue.

Amendments 44 and 45A address this serious issue and suggest that it needs further consideration. It may not be of advantage to the Conservative Party to apply tighter controls on where the money comes from. I recognise that, but all of us who are interested in maintaining the quality of our democracy must ensure that money that comes from someone who says that they are a long-time British resident now living in Dubai, Singapore, Bermuda or Panama must be checked very carefully, and the identity of that person must be checked even more carefully if they are giving substantial sums of money. All these issues must be investigated further, and I suggest to the Minister that we need further dialogue on this.

I have a couple of other points to add. One example given in the Explanatory Notes is troll farms. I do not entirely understand that, since troll farms do not have to be in this country, nor do I understand how that comes within the scope of this Bill. Perhaps we could discuss that off the Floor. I strongly support Amendment 45 on introducing the concept of a critical incident, since we understand that, in the age of social media, bitcoin and other things, the potential for foreign interference in our elections has grown exponentially. I hope that this will not be pushed through by the Government without further amendment.

I end where I began, by welcoming the Government’s clarifications in the amendments that they have tabled. But we need considerable further amendment and greater concern about how these intentions are to be caught and enforced before this becomes an adequate part of a new Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Several speeches have stressed the importance of informing and educating the public about the dangers of foreign interference in British elections. One of the reasons why people like me go on so much about releasing the additional information in the ISC Russia report is precisely to alert and inform the public. The amendment that the Minister has just been discussing is about alerting the public, in the course of an election campaign, if that should be a problem. He mentioned the defending democracy task force. I have found a small number of references to it, but it is not exactly a public body and what it does is so far extremely unclear. What about the public information and public education dimension of what we are discussing?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am dredging my memory a little bit here, but I remember the Security Minister about a month ago outlining much more about defending democracy. I will have to refer back to the comments he made in the other place, but I am pretty sure they deal with the questions that have just been raised by the noble Lord.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I will certainly have to read all the various information that I can find on the defending democracy programme, which I am pretty sure deals with most of the issues that have just been raised. If I am wrong on that, of course I will make that clear.

Amendment 44 was spoken to by the noble Lords, Lord Coaker, Lord Carlile, Lord Purvis, Lord Evans and others. The amendment seeks to enhance checks on the source of political donations in two ways. First, it seeks to introduce a requirement for political parties to release a policy statement to ensure the identification of donations from foreign powers. Secondly, it requires political parties to include in their annual statement of accounts a statement detailing their risk management approach to donations and the measures in place to prevent the acceptance of impermissible donations. While I understand the intent behind this amendment, let me be clear that UK electoral law already sets out a stringent regime of controls on political donations to ensure that only those with a legitimate interest in UK elections can make political donations and that political donations are transparent. Given that it has been spoken to by most speakers, I am going to go into a bit more detail on this, with the indulgence of the Committee.

Only those with a genuine interest in UK electoral events can make political donations. That includes registered UK electors, including registered overseas electors, UK-registered companies, trade unions and other UK-based entities or otherwise eligible donors, such as Irish citizens meeting prescribed conditions who can donate to parties in Northern Ireland. Parties and other campaigners are prohibited from accepting donations which are not from a permissible or identifiable donor. Failure to return such a donation, either to the donor or the Electoral Commission within 30 days of receipt is an offence and any such donations must be reported to the Electoral Commission. Furthermore, the Elections Act 2022 introduced a restriction on ineligible foreign third-party campaigning above a £700 de minimis threshold.

It is an offence to attempt to evade the rules on donations by concealing information, giving false information or knowingly being involved in an arrangement to facilitate the making of an impermissible donation. This provides a safeguard against impermissible donations via the back door. Political parties must already register donations over a certain value to the Electoral Commission; they are then published online for public scrutiny.

By requiring political parties to detail publicly their approach to mitigating the risk of impermissible donations, proposed new subsection (3) of the noble Lord’s amendment has the effect of providing such donors with the details of mitigations they need to overcome to make an impermissible donation. I am sure that is an unintended consequence, but it is important to oppose this amendment on the grounds that not only do the existing rules mitigate these risks but the amendment itself risks undermining the already strong rules.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening again. The Minister has not addressed the ease with which someone who has not lived in this country for three or more decades can now register, and the difficulty of verifying that they are who they say they are. If he will not address it now, can he write in detail to some of us, or perhaps invite us to a briefing, and make sure that that area will be tightened by the Bill?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, that is more properly a DLUHC area, in the light of the Act passed recently, but I will certainly have the conversation with my counterpart there and see what that Act says. I am not an expert on that Act, as the noble Lord will probably appreciate.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

As I outlined in my answer earlier, I believe this is a stringent regime. I am afraid there is a significant difference of opinion. It specifies that only those with a genuine interest in UK electoral events can make political donations. Any donations that are not permissible and not reported will constitute an offence.

I am afraid I will not address the comments by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, about support for Mr Orbán over the Dutch and French; that certainly does not apply here. His Amendment 45A seeks to add requirements relating to proxy voting. It would be odd and somewhat undemocratic to seek to apply such measures solely to overseas electors, when the same issue could arise for domestic electors. In any event, proxy voters and those seeking to use a proxy are not in a position to determine whether someone is seeking to support a foreign power. It is an impossible ask of them. Adding such requirements risks disfranchising individuals by blocking their ability to find a proxy and undermining the very point of a proxy voting system.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for intervening yet again. My point was simply that the level of controls and identity verification we have now introduced for domestic voters under the Elections Act is noticeably tougher than those for overseas electors. Given that overseas electors are also potential donors, this seems to be a hole that needs to be filled. The Minister says it does not need to be filled. That does not satisfy us.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am sorry to disagree with the noble Lord, but on this one I do. However, I commit to discussing this further with my counterpart at DLUHC. I will come back to the subject.

Spiritual injury was raised by the noble Lords, Lord Wallace, Lord Anderson and Lord Purvis. I will commit to write on FCDO engagement on this subject; I do not have the answers to those questions. What is spiritual injury and why is it part of this offence? Basically, it mirrors the Elections Act 2022. The term “spiritual injury” covers the potential harmful impact on an individual’s spiritual or religious well-being that could be directly caused by another individual—for example, excluding a person from the membership of an organised belief system or banning them from attending a place of worship. The term “undue spiritual pressure” could include, for example, pressuring a person to commit an act by suggesting that doing so is a duty arising from the spiritual or religious beliefs that a person holds or purports to hold. In addition, “undue spiritual pressure” could refer to conduct by a person that alters, or has the potential to alter, a person’s spiritual standing or well-being.

Reference to “spiritual injury” already exists in the definition of “undue influence” as set out in Section 114A of the Representation of the People Act 1983. Undue spiritual pressure is a new element of undue spiritual influence in the clarified offence in Section 8(4)(e) of the Elections Act, as part of efforts to clarify what types of conduct amount to an undue influence. I hope I have answered that question.

For these reasons, the Government cannot accept this set of amendments. I ask the Committee to accept the Government’s amendments to improve the foreign interference offence.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 11th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chairman of the Communications and Digital Select Committee. It was because I was chairing a meeting of that committee that I was unable to speak at Second Reading.

I will speak briefly about the potential effect and unintended consequences of this important legislation on investigative journalism. Before I go any further, I should say that I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, for the opportunity to debate this matter. As my noble friend Lord Black already explained, comprehensively and very powerfully, the potential chilling effect on legitimate journalism is of particular concern. That is real and we must find a way of avoiding it, without diluting the intentions and objectives of this Bill, which I, like other noble Lords, support.

I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for meeting me and others, with some of his officials, in December to discuss our concerns. I look to him for reassurance that the Government remain alive to this problem and open to discussion. I am not sure whether Amendment 66A from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, is the answer to the problem; it may need to be combined with Amendments 65 and 66, which have already been debated. As my noble friend Lord Black already said, what we need here is a holistic approach to the point in question, which is around making sure that important investigative journalism is able to continue.

As a result of this very important legislation, I would not want, for example, deficiencies in military equipment that cost the lives of our Armed Forces not to be exposed. That example was put to me by some of the media organisations that have been in touch. They reminded me that that particular piece of journalism led to a change in the then Government’s commitment to defence expenditure and, subsequently, a ministerial apology—albeit several years later in a public inquiry. I do not want us to legislate in a way that risks journalists not exposing these important matters, if they fear that doing so would lead to them committing a crime that would attract serious penalties. I support the arguments that my noble friend Lord Black has put forward, and I look forward to my noble friend the Minister’s response and, as I have already said, to our continuing discussions on this matter.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on Amendment 70 and I want to speak to Amendments 68 and 71. I stress that, in getting this Bill right, we need to make sure that it does not lead to a level of overreporting that swamps the Home Office, with a great deal of cynicism and a negative reaction from those who are asked to do the reporting. In the last week, I have received a dozen representations, not just from media and academic sources—the liberal metropolitan elite, whom the Minister may regard as not terribly important—but from the City and commercial enterprises, which are as worried about the negative impact that the Bill could have on their international activities as those in universities are.

I admire the speed with which the Minister talks when he responds to our questions, but I hope that he is carefully considering the reasoned and sometimes expert criticisms that we have of this Bill, that he is more concerned to get the Bill right than to get it through and that, between Committee and Report, we will have some long, further conversations on particular aspects of the Bill about which the House has been concerned.

To expand on that a little, I thought the Minister was a little flippant about my suggestion that there were non-state threats from the right in a number of countries, including the United States. He may have been following the attempted coup in Brazil. The reports of it that I read suggested that the Conservative Political Action Coalition in the United States was actively tweeting in support of Bolsonaro and may well have provided funds, and that Steve Bannon and his organisation were also actively in support of Bolsonaro. These things should worry us as much as terrorist and state threats, and this is another dimension that we need to think about in this Bill.

We know that foreign money has come into this country, that there have been some very odd things, such as the Conservative Friends of Russia element, in which the right has appeared to work with what we regard as the foreign left. Those sorts of things need considering. I look forward to the letter that the Minister will be sending me shortly—I hope—on the question of spiritual injury, which the discussion last week suggested is unenforceable and almost undefinable, and therefore should not be in the Bill. I also hope that we will have further discussions on the impact on diaspora communities and dual nationals, because the extent to which our diaspora communities have relations with parties in the other countries to which they have links, and with the Governments of those foreign countries—be it Pakistan, Israel or wherever—is going to be complicated further by the Bill. We need to get to the end with an Act which commands public acceptance and public consent. Incidentally, it is likely to come into effect just before the next election, and if there was an adverse reaction to its implementation, the Government are likely to suffer.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I am afraid I do not accept the Minister’s idea that these things cannot be criminalised, so I will bring my amendment back on Report. I thank noble Lords for contributing to my amendment, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Black, with his expertise—which goes way beyond mine. I ask the Minister for a meeting to discuss this, because it is quite a fundamental point and bears further discussion. In the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we need to come back to the question of a definition of a foreign power. The idea of a potential threat from Canada, Australia or the Netherlands, let alone the United States—which already has military forces in bases in this country—appears to be entirely disproportionate. We know there are serious threats from a number of hostile countries. That is what the Bill needs to focus on. If it spends a huge amount of time and demands a huge amount of effort from all those affected by it, reporting on the conversations they have had in Paris, Copenhagen, The Hague, et cetera, it will be less able to work out what is happening with Afghanistan and others—the real threats. That seems to be part of what is mistaken in the design of the Bill, and we need to come back to that before Report.

Amendment 66A withdrawn.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

The Minister will understand that I cannot possibly answer this question because then we would have to record the conversation. To be serious, in fact, my letter to the Minister, which included a lot of questions, did ask that he circulate it to the Committee and not just to myself.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on several of these amendments. I should perhaps say that I welcome and support those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. Two amendments of mine are also concerned with ensuring that the interests of charitable bodies, commercial bodies, universities and policy researchers should be specifically catered for and excluded from some of the purposes of the Bill.

However, I want to talk more generally about Part 3 as a whole. I thank the noble Baroness for her back-handed compliment. There are, of course, parallels between the transparency of lobbying Bill in 2013 and this Bill. There were those who pushed me as the then Minister to exclude a substantial number of bodies and persons from that Bill; others were pushing for the inclusion of a lot more than we had. It was not easy to strike the appropriate balance between ensuring full transparency on what was going on and not pulling too many people into the net. The question of identifying who the lobbyists were was one of the more difficult elements with which we had to be concerned. On that occasion we agreed to pause the Bill.

I should also say that it was not simply the Labour Opposition; indeed, concern about that Bill was very much on the Cross Benches, led by Lord Ramsbotham, sadly no longer with us, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. We paused the Bill for three months, consulted more widely and came back with amendments. The Bill was then carried in an improved form. It was not perfect; it is impossible for a Bill of that sort, or this sort, to satisfy all accounts because we are trying to strike a balance between a range of different objectives. It would be wise for the Minister to manage the policy statement and the pause for greater consultation; they should take up rather more time than is currently considered.

The Minister will have seen the Politico report last Thursday that suggested widespread concern in commercial and business circles about this Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, has already said how many comments and criticisms we have had from a range of different circles. I came to the Bill entirely from the point of view of think tanks, universities and the policy research sector. I had not expected to get such immediate responses from the City, law firms and others. We are now all aware of the widespread concern that the Bill will catch more than it was originally intended to. But there is more than that. I shall quote from one of the letters I have had: the Bill

“is essentially the proposed bureaucratisation of lawful and useful non-hidden international engagements. Influence is not covert just because it is not public: all policy makers and organisations rely on private interactions.”

I was thinking, as I looked at my newspaper this morning, what those Brits who will be attending the Davos Forum will do about what they report back, as one has private conversations with a range of people. Perhaps we should make sure that Keir Starmer and whoever else is going do indeed fill in all the forms as they come back.

Before I go further, I should comment on the Minister’s insistence, in our last sitting, that the Daniel Houghton case justifies the inclusion of the Netherlands alongside North Korea, China, Iran, Russia and others in the primary tier of foreign powers. I see that the case was in 2010. I have said at previous sittings that the issue of dual nationals and diasporas, both in Britain and elsewhere, is one of the complications of the Bill that I hope the Minister will address in our consultations. I mark, in passing, that Daniel Houghton was a Dutch-British dual national. He was a computer engineer employed by the SIS. He downloaded some SIS files and tried to sell them to the Dutch intelligence authorities. They immediately informed the British and he was arrested, convicted, given a 12-month sentence and served six months in prison. I am not sure that this one case justifies the imposition of the full regime on the Netherlands, in the same way that it is imposed on other countries.

I pick the Netherlands because traffic between it and the United Kingdom is probably closer than any other county apart from Ireland, even more than the United States, because it is so near. I recall being told by some senior Dutch politicians that a great many members of the Dutch elite have second homes in the south-east of England and send their children to British universities. I remember being told by a chief constable from North Wales Police that he needed to have more than one police officer who spoke Dutch because, when camper-vans break down in the summer, they need to have someone who can interpret. The extent to which British companies depend on the Netherlands has been increased by our leaving the European Union. I was told at a meeting of donors to my party the other week that several of them have opened offices or warehouses in the Netherlands to be inside the EU. It is not a country with which we have limited interaction.

To say that we need to have all the interactions which may involve political influence recorded is almost to suggest that, to find the needle in the haystack, you need to examine each strand of hay separately and then in time you will find the needle. You would of course destroy the haystack and damage the hay, and detract immensely from the normal business of the farm. To that extent, it is grossly disproportionate, and our concern with the Bill is that aspects of it are grossly disproportionate.

I read again through the supplementary Explanatory Memorandum over the weekend and I remain confused about many aspects of the Bill. I am worried about the imprecision of some of the language—the “informal” arrangements, the indirect control and those other phrases which, not being a lawyer, I do not entirely understand. I seek some reassurance from our legal colleagues that it is possible to make sense of some of these provisions. There is a reference at one point to the “scheme management unit”. I wonder if the Minister could tell us how large the Home Office thinks the scheme management unit will need to be when all these reports flow in. I suggest that it will need to be extremely large.

I am not entirely clear on how the specified persons come into the expanded bit. Can the Minister give us any rough idea of how many of the 190-plus UN member states it is envisaged would be specified by the Secretary of State in this? Would it be 10? Would it be 100, 150 or 190? That would clearly make a great deal of difference to the sort of regime which we are likely to have imposed. These are real concerns for those who are looking at the Bill from the outside.

The examples did not reassure me in understanding the Bill. Funding for UK think tanks is mentioned, as are NGOs from abroad attending all-party parliamentary groups and some of the activities of foreign academic institutions. All apparently come into the net. This requires much further consultation. We all recognise that there are serious foreign threats to this country, that some of these threats are new because technology and communications have enabled new methods of subversion, and that we need to deal with them. But we also recognise that the United Kingdom is an open society and an open economy, and we need to preserve the best aspects of our openness to the rest of the world. That is the balance that we have to strike.

One category left out appears to be multinational companies not controlled by foreign states, along with foreign foundations and the super-wealthy. I argue again that these are also, potentially, sources of severe foreign interference in UK politics which may well be hostile to UK interests. If one is talking about British interests in the broadest sense, as the Bill does, I recall that major tobacco companies have funded institutes in Britain to lobby against tighter control of tobacco selling and health regulation. Oil companies have funded think tanks and others to lobby against measures on, or even to deny, climate change. Foundations with political agendas have supported the establishment of new right-wing societies in British universities. Those are also threats which we should not necessarily ignore.

I suggest strongly to the Minister that, in view of the concerns which have been so widely expressed across the commercial and non-commercial worlds, we should take the time now to ensure that the Bill strikes the right balance, that we get it right and that we do not get it through necessarily as fast as the Government would have liked.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I reassure the noble Lord that the Minister absolutely understands exactly where he is coming from. I will come on to the confidentiality aspects of the question he just asked in a second.

The process will require information about those party to an arrangement, as well as a description of the arrangements and activities to be undertaken. We would not expect a detailed account of every activity to be undertaken either as part of an arrangement or by a foreign principal, but the full process will be set out in regulations, which will be laid before Parliament.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Are those regulations to be laid before Parliament before the completion of the Bill, or will we have to wait until after it becomes an Act?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I will come back to the noble Lord on that shortly.

I will go on to the commercial sensitivity aspects—in effect commercial confidentiality, mentioned just now by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. We believe that ensuring that information can be publicised where it relates to the carrying out of political influence activities will help to strengthen the resilience of the political system, but Clause 77(2) allows the Secretary of State to specify or describe information or material that is not to be published. We intend this to include where publishing the information would, for example, threaten the interests of national security, put an individual’s safety at risk, or result in the disclosure of commercially sensitive information. The registration system will allow a person to flag where they think they meet such an exemption, which will not be considered by the scheme management unit.

In accordance with our data protection obligations, we intend for the information to be published to be limited to what is necessary to achieve the transparency aims of the scheme, particularly where that information is personal. I have heard all the concerns and, as I said, the Government will give further consideration to these points ahead of Report.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I assure the noble Viscount that I shall come to the substance of his comments and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, shortly.

I turn to the probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that provides for a public health emergencies exemption to the political influence tier. I agree that where an event such as a coronavirus pandemic arises, it is imperative that the sharing of key information does not face unnecessary regulatory red tape.

The scheme does not intend to impede the sharing of information relating to public health emergencies. Governments speaking to other Governments, and experts speaking with other experts, will not be caught by the scheme. Only where communication is carried out to influence a political matter will it be registerable. Where it is done to influence a political matter but the information is shared as part of an arrangement with the UK Government, the UK arrangements exemption will apply and no registration will be required. We would be happy to consider further the point that the noble Lord raised. As an aside to one of his other points, I say that the enhanced tier will be used only for those countries or entities responsible for the greatest state threats. I do not know how many that will be.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Does the Minister accept that issues of public health can often be highly political? One of my colleagues at the London School of Economics who was looking after a number of exchange students in what was then the Soviet Union was expelled from the Soviet Union for having collected some dust in a part of Ukraine where it was rumoured that there had been a nuclear accident. We all know that the provision of public information about Covid-19 in China has become highly political and highly sensitive. We cannot quite put things into neat categories in the way he suggests.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

84: Schedule 13, page 175, line 33, at end insert—
“(3A) Condition 2A is that the foreign power contributes, directly or indirectly, more than 25% of the annual revenue of the person.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment adds an additional condition to determining if a person is controlled by a foreign power. It is intended to further increase transparency.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, some of my colleagues will probably feel that further discussion on Part 3 is, in a sense, almost redundant. The clear sentiment of the House is that Part 3, as it exists, is unfit for purpose, and that we need to pause the Bill to consult more widely and, in the light of those consultations, revise very considerably. That being the case, I merely wish to flag in my probing amendment some of the sheer difficulties of defining “foreign control”, and what is controlled by a foreign entity, using indicators of how far or otherwise it is indeed influenced by a foreign power or owner.

Noble Lords who read the football pages, as I occasionally do, will have noted the current controversy as to who actually owns Everton Football Club. The question is whether the real owner, carefully disguised, is a sanctioned Russian oligarch. If you cannot tell who actually owns Everton Football Club—the idea that you can carefully discover the foreign company based in Panama, itself owned by a controlling company that is partly in the Bahamas and partly in the Cayman Islands—it is not entirely clear how we might define who owns what.

The UK contributes a great deal to the confusion over who owns what. Our overseas territories and, to a certain extent, our Crown dependencies, and the way in which Companies House operates, often make it very difficult to discover even that companies registered in this country may be owned by a chain of other owners; the ultimate owner therefore becomes extremely unclear.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I thank both noble Lords for their contributions; it is indeed a complex issue. Amendment 83 seeks to provide that, where an entity receives 25% or more of its revenue from a foreign power, it can be considered as subject to control from a foreign power and eligible to be specified under the enhanced tier of the scheme. I commend the spirit with which this amendment has been made. The noble Lord’s aim of increasing transparency supports the objectives of the scheme, but it is vital that we strike the balance of proportionality.

It is important that we maintain a distinction between funding, or donations, and control. However, I hope the noble Lord will be reassured that where, in practice, funding does result in a foreign power directing or controlling the activities of the entity, a condition for foreign power control already given in Schedule 13 will still be met. Where this condition is met, it will be possible to specify the entity under the enhanced tier.

We recognise that it is imperative that this scheme maintains the flexibility to adapt, should a foreign power seek to take action to evade the scheme’s scope and requirements. Part 3 of Schedule 13 provides this necessary flexibility by allowing for the conditions of control to be amended for permitted purposes by regulation. For these reasons, the Government cannot accept the proposed amendment and invite its withdrawal.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I foresee yet another bout of litigation over who really owns what as this is implemented. We have seen a fair amount of argument among different Russian oligarchs about who owns what, and what political influence may or may not have been involved, in the London courts. This is one of the many ways in which the Bill, in its current form, is not proportionate. This is, again, why we need to move slowly, carefully and cautiously as we complete our scrutiny of the Bill.

We must not put too much of a burden on the individual business man and woman, or the individual customer, but, at the same time, we must do our utmost to ensure that foreign money, as it comes into British politics and British political life, is identified as vigorously as possible. Incidentally, I am not convinced that the Bill does that, as I said in an earlier session. That is one of the ways in which the Bill needs to be strengthened rather than weakened. This will, I hope, form part of the discussions that we will have off the Floor, during the process in which the Government will produce their promised policy statement, and before we come to Report. I beg leave to withdraw.

Amendment 84 withdrawn.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

I say to the Minister, before he sits down, that in view of what the noble Lords, Lord Pannick and Lord Carlile, have said, it is not satisfactory. We do not have a policy statement, we cannot see the regulations and, when the regulations are passed, the Government will pass them through the negative procedure. I would have thought, at the very least, given the worries and concerns that have been raised, that the affirmative procedure, as the Delegated Powers Committee said, in these circumstances in particular, might be something the Government would consider. I ask the Minister to reflect on that.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

I hope the Minister will agree to draw the attention of his department to the debate held in this House last week on delegated legislation and to the very strong sense across the whole House, including on his Benches, that this House is meeting a Government who give us less and less information about regulations and prefer to leave more and more out of Bills so that Ministers may act as they are. This is an abuse of Parliament and should not be pursued further. That message is particularly important for a Bill such as this, and the Government should consider it.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I have no doubt that the department will reflect on those points. We are all very aware of last week’s debate, in which the Leader participated.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on Amendment 113, and I commend the intentions of the amendments put down by colleagues on the Labour Benches.

What we are talking about here is how we alert the public to the nature of the threat. The Security Minister in the Commons indeed said that one of his greatest concerns in approaching this Bill was to make the public aware of the threats which we face. In the Minister’s absence, one of his colleagues on the Bench, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, said that the overriding purpose of several clauses in the Bill is to convey a message. He said that this is above all a declaratory Bill, rather than a Bill which actually intends to do things, but these amendments are about the Government failing to send a message and, indeed, preferring not to talk about some of the threats which we face. After all, the Bill should alert us not only to the nature of the threats but to where those threats are most likely to come from. I note that the Minister said very little about Russia and not that much about China, North Korea or Iran but did his best to defend the idea that what we regard as friendly foreign powers should be included in our potential concept of threats, as if the message of this Bill should be “Beware of foreigners, particularly those associated with Governments whether democratic or not”. I hope that is not the intention of the Bill, but that is what it looks like at present.

The ISC report states very clearly that there are a number of threats—of course it is concerned with Russia —and that

“it is … the Committee’s view that the UK Intelligence Community should produce an … assessment of potential Russian interference in the EU referendum and that an unclassified summary of it be published”.

The Government have refused to do that, and the only statement in their response about why not is that they have received no evidence of successful interference in British politics, which means that they are aware of a whole range of attempts to interfere in British politics. It might be quite helpful to inform political parties and the public about what those could be.

The Government’s July 2020 response to the ISC’s Russia report is very interesting in a range of ways. It has a section which it entitles

“Defending UK Democracy from Foreign Interference”


and flags up the new defending democracy programme, which was established in 2020, about which, so far, Parliament has been told remarkably little. The Security Minister made a speech about it some weeks ago which was not that much more informative, but he assured us that the defending democracy task force had held its first meeting in November last year, two years after July 2020. I think it would be helpful in informing and alerting the public if we were all told a little more about the defending democracy programme and the defending democracy task force.

The Government’s response goes on to state:

“The Committee will also be aware that … the Government has concluded that it is almost certain that Russian actors sought to interfere in the 2019 General Election.”


The public were not told about that very much either. We all understand that this is mainly because the interference was towards the Conservative Party and the Conservative Party has many links with Russia, Conservative Friends of Russia and so on, which it prefers not to spell out, which may be partly why we are talking about so many other different countries. We remember Boris Johnson’s attempt as Prime Minister to hobble the Intelligence and Security Committee. Thankfully, that has now passed, but the issue of foreign interference in UK politics and public life is an important part of what we are focusing on and should receive more attention.

I have on a number of occasions in recent years argued for a proper review of the golden visa scheme—the tier 1 investor scheme. The Government finally closed it last year and promised to conduct a review. Instead of publishing that review, we had a Written Statement on 12 January 2023 with which the Minister will be familiar because the Statement to this House is in his name. It has no reference to national security risks under this programme. It talks entirely about illicit finance and criminal effects, and in a short two pages it says really very little about the problem as a whole. It states:

“The route attracted a disproportionate number of applicants from the countries identified in the UK’s National Risk Assessment of money laundering and terrorist financing 2020 as particularly relevant to the cross-border money laundering risks faced and posed by the UK.”


The Statement does not say, as the Wikipedia entry on Ben Elliot says, that Ben Elliot raised £2 million in and around the 2019 general election from Russians resident in Britain who were close to the Putin regime. That is something which ought to concern us and about which the Government certainly ought to have been a great deal more concerned. The ISC Russia report indeed talks about the growth of a community of “enablers” in London to service the Russians who had penetrated British political and public life. Ben Elliot’s company, Quintessentially, was one of the leading aspects of this and declared that it specialised in servicing Russian clients.

I stress this not simply to raise a particular name but, after all, he was co-chairman of the Conservative Party—with James Cleverly, the current Foreign Secretary—for 18 months, so we are getting fairly close in to influence and interference here with someone who was described as the Tories’ main fundraiser. Much of this was informal, of course, but the Bill talks a great deal about informal arrangements.

These amendments ask for proper information to Parliament, a stronger role for the Intelligence and Security Committee—which the last Prime Minister but one attempted so ignobly to cut down—and the publication of the review of the golden visa scheme so that we can understand just how far these people penetrated into British public and political life. I remind the Minister that the ISC Russia report says at one point that the penetration of rich Russians into British society and public life had gone so far that it was difficult to disentangle and that we now had to be concerned to mitigate those risks rather than to remove them.

All that the Government say on illicit finance and money laundering in their response to the ISC Russia report is:

“The Government agrees that the transparency of information about political donations is important.”


They then go on to talk about links to Members of the House of Lords. They say nothing about the duties of political parties to ensure that they know where they are getting donations from. No doubt we will come back to this before and during Report.

There are a number of holes in what needs to be done in the Bill to make sure that we strengthen our national security against foreign interference. I trust that the Minister will have some good answers and will come back to us off the Floor to discuss some of these concerns further.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak primarily to my Amendment 120A but I thank the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, for his Amendment 112, signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, which raises some extremely important points around the Russia report published by the ISC in 2020 and the frustration that many of its recommendations either have not been implemented yet or simply will not be implemented by the Government. It would be helpful for the Committee and for us all to know the Government’s intention with respect to all that. As the noble Lords, Lord Purvis and Lord Wallace, said, many important points were raised and it would be interesting to see the Government’s view on that. With respect to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and Amendment 113, some very important points were made about tier 1 visas, where all that has got to and what progress we have made.

Amendment 116 from my noble friend Lord Ponsonby, which has been referred to in passing by other Members of the Committee, deals with reporting on disinformation originating from foreign powers. I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, who referred to the issue of how far this country is witnessing attacks from foreign powers that wish to pollute and infect our system, whether businesses or our electoral system. It would be interesting for us to know the extent of that and what the Government are doing about it—as far as the Minister can say within the constraints of this.

It is a question worth asking, because one of the things I think the public want to know is who is responsible for co-ordinating the activity across government to ensure that our country is protected. Is it MI5? Is it GCHQ? Is it the various security parts of different departments? Who brings all that together? I think it is legitimate and does not compromise national security in any way to ask who is responsible for that. How is the activity co-ordinated between a national level, a regional level and a local level? The integrity of all our databases requires action not only in Westminster but in a rural village in the middle of nowhere. Those are legitimate questions, and I think the public would like to know about that.

What is the Government’s view of how far they can inform the public of the threat, in so far as the public can then help with respect to maintaining their own security and, by doing so, that of our country? That was the purpose of Amendment 116. It is obviously a probing amendment, but it seeks to understand something about the scale of the threat we are facing regarding this information and what can be done about it.

My Amendment 120A—which I should say at the outset is supported by my noble friend Lord West, who for personal reasons is unable to be with us, and, as I understand it, by the ISC—would require the Government to revise the memorandum of understanding between the Prime Minister and the Intelligence and Security Committee to reflect any changes to the intelligence and security activities undertaken by the Government as a result of this Bill. In other words, it seeks to update the ISC’s remit to ensure that it has the power to effectively scrutinise intelligence and security activity that will be taking place across government under this new national security regime.

Alongside the Justice and Security Act 2013, the ISC’s Mo outlines, among other areas, the ISC’s remit and the organisations that it oversees. This includes the expenditure administration policy on operations of the agencies, as well as several organisations that form part of the intelligence community. The Bill modernises the offence of espionage and creates a suite of new tools for the intelligence community and law enforcement to defend the UK against state threats.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords very much for contributing to this relatively short debate. Let me first address Amendments 112, 117 and 120A.

Amendments 112 and 117 seek to impose on the Secretary of State a duty to implement the recommendations of the ISC’s report on Russia and to produce a report setting out the action taken. The Committee will already be aware that the Government published their response to the Russia report on the same day that the report itself was published, 21 July 2020. All the recommendations that could be identified within the report were addressed.

On the point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, a majority of the ISC’s recommendations had already been implemented by the Government before the report was published: for example, those covering co-ordination of government work on Russia, close working with international partners, and continued exposition and attribution of malign Russian activity. The then Home Secretary reiterated this in a Statement made in the other place on 17 January 2022. I also say that there is ongoing engagement with the committee on these recommendations. The Bill is itself a part of that response, by introducing effective new tools and powers for the police, and security and intelligence agencies, to use against the sophisticated range of threats and actors that we face in the modern day.

I turn to Amendment 118, explained by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, as a probing amendment. Section 3(2) of the Justice and Security Act already provides, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has just noted, for the ISC to make reports

“as it considers appropriate concerning any aspect of its functions.”

This provides the ISC with the ability to report on aspects of the Bill which fall within its remit. Furthermore, the amendment as proposed might be taken to imply that the ISC requires explicit legislative nomination to conduct oversight work on a relevant area of security and intelligence policy. The Government therefore cannot support this amendment.

Amendment 120A seeks to mandate the Prime Minister to update the memorandum of understanding between the ISC and the Government. The Committee will be aware that the MoU is subject to continuous review, as again noted by the noble Lord, Lord Coaker. We welcome the ISC proposing changes that it would like the Prime Minister to consider, whether due to this legislation or other aspects of its security and intelligence remit. The Prime Minister will consider the proposed changes in due course. The MoU itself states that it is important to avoid duplication. Some of the organisations that the ISC has proposed that its remit should include are very new, and there are discussions under way regarding whether they are best overseen by other parliamentary Select Committees.

I am sure that answer will not particularly please the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, but I hope he would accept that it is a reasonable answer, given the current state of affairs.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting. I am sure the Minister recognises the damage which was done to the relationship between the ISC and Parliament, and to maintaining public trust, by the various manoeuvres while Boris Johnson was Prime Minister. There was the delay in the publication of the Russia report and the attempt to have a chair appointed by the Prime Minister rather than elected by the committee, et cetera. We need to be reassured—and by “we” I mean Parliament and the interested public—that the ISC has a very clear and respected role, and is not subject to the whims of changing Prime Ministers.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, with the greatest respect, this is a different Government and we have moved on. The ISC very much has the respect of certainly this part of the Government. If I may say so, I have answered the principal question that was being asked: the Prime Minister will indeed consider the proposed changes in due course.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very fair point. I will certainly make sure that that message is conveyed. As I have said, the Government do not think it would be appropriate at this point to mandate the Prime Minister to update the MoU as proposed, therefore we cannot support this amendment.

I now turn to Amendment 113. The Committee will be aware that the Government committed to a review of visas issued under the route between 2008 and 2015. The Home Secretary made a Written Ministerial Statement on 12 January setting out the findings of that review, including that the review had identified a minority of individuals connected to the tier 1 investor visa route who were potentially at high risk of having obtained wealth through corruption or other illicit financial activity and/or being engaged in serious and organised crime. The Government have set out the findings of the review of the operation of this route and acted to close it. I think it was in February 2022. I therefore submit that the amendment is not necessary.

I note that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, was selectively quoting back to me various aspects of the WMS. I might selectively quote back to him—I suppose I am quoting myself here. I also said:

“Given the importance of ensuring the independence of the law enforcement process I am unable to say more on the operationally sensitive work being taken forward in this area. Whilst unable to comment specifically due to operational sensitivity of work - as an example of the range of actions we are taking I can say that we have already sanctioned 10 oligarchs who had previously used this route as part of our extensive response to Russian aggression in the Ukraine.”


I think that gives answers as to why we have perhaps not commented in the detail the noble Lord would like.

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has also accused me of not talking enough about certain states and talking too much about our allies. He, I think, suggests that this is for party-political reasons. I am disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, would think so little of the Government Front Bench in this House. I gently remind him that, when I am talking about our allies, I am usually responding to questions he has asked me.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, that I am afraid I do not have all the stats he asked for about Russian money, but I will endeavour to find them. I do not know if they sit within the Home Office, but I will find out where they are, and I will happily write to him.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise if I have gone—as the Minister is advising me—a little far. The point I am making is that the lack of distinction in “any foreign power” is one of the fundamental faults in this Bill. The ISC Russia report on several occasions refers to the threats mainly coming from China, Russia, Iran and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. That is what I understand as well, although I am well aware that there are other potentially hostile states. One of my strongest memories is watching a demonstration outside the Libyan embassy and a policewoman being shot. These things happen; there are hostile states out there. However, that does not mean we cannot distinguish between allies with whom we work and open societies, and those from which there are likely to be threats. It is very important that we do so.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

This Bill does exactly that. We have been talking about FIRS over the last couple of days—the foreign influence registration scheme. There are different tiers specified in that. There is no doubt that this Bill acknowledges where our principal threats come from. Other countries, unfortunately, are also sometimes used as proxies. That is another discussion we have had at considerable length from this Dispatch Box with various noble Lords who have raised that point. I think it has covered very widely exactly what the nature of the threats are and where they come from.

--- Later in debate ---

I am asking the Government to get to grips with this now, and to at least make sure that there is a single place where people can go to to speak out, and that every member of every related organisation has that confidential number and contact information. The office that they go to—it cannot just be an individual, as that is far too narrow—has to have the power to set whistleblowing policies, procedures and reporting structures that include confidentiality and anonymity, the power to investigate and, significantly, because confidentiality is so fragile and so impossible to enforce, the power to redress where a whistleblower suffers detriment. In that way, there would be a system to catch wrong behaviour early. I would like to see it open not just to employees and contractors but to anyone who has relevant information. That information, coming early and going to the right people so that there is guaranteed follow-up, means that misbehaviour and wrongdoing are stopped in their tracks early. There is no better protection for the public interest.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to stress the importance of how the Bill, when it becomes an Act, will relate to the Official Secrets Act. I am almost in a minority in my own family in not having signed that Act, although I note, looking at the dates, that the version my wife signed in 1979 was the 1939 version, and the version my daughter signed is rather more up to date. It is worth noting that it was 28 years from the first Official Secrets Act to the first revised Act in 1939, and 50 years from then to the second revised version, in 1989. We are now approaching 34 years since the last revision. As the Law Commission suggested, we really need to update the Official Secrets Act.

Part of the disappointment that many of us have with the Bill is that it takes the place of what might have been an effective revision of the entire Official Secrets Act. We all know what happens with legislation in this House. The time taken up for the Bill as it becomes an Act will mean that it will be another four or five years before we get round to a proper revision of the OSA.

I say this to the Minister: part of the argument for taking our time as we complete this Bill is that, for the next four or five years, this is probably it in terms of legislation dealing with this whole area of national security. So we need to make sure that it is well considered; that it addresses our current, changing threats; and that it feeds into and informs the public debate for those who need to understand these things. It should not be rushed. I hope that, in Committee, the Minister has got a real sense of the disappointment and discontent at the quality of the Bill as it now stands. I look forward to our discussions and hearing about the wider consultations that now need to take place before this Bill finishes its time in this House.

[Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)]

My Lords, I must confess to being rather puzzled by some of the detail in Amendment 120 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer. When I got to proposed new subsection (4), I assumed that the office was intended to be a regulatory body ensuring that the whistleblowing arrangements with regard to national security were appropriate; however, it subsequently became clear in proposed new paragraph (b) that it was intended to be the whistle- blowing channel. Those seems like slightly different roles to me.

I am also puzzled as to why there is a proposal here for a whistleblowing channel that is in fact very narrow. It relates only

“to the commission of an offence under this Act”.

I would have thought that, if there was a need for a whistleblowing channel—

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 1st March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my connection with the Government of Cyprus, as detailed in the register, and, like my noble friend Lord Carlile, I have spoken to the High Commissioner about this. Clause 97, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has said, is a sufficient and constitutionally appropriate way to apply legislation of this Parliament to the SBAs. In light of that power, like my noble friend I have difficulty in understanding why it continues to be thought necessary for Clause 7, by its definition of “prohibited place”, to apply Clauses 4, 5 and 6 to the SBAs directly.

The noble Lord, Lord Carlile, has said nearly everything, so I will make just two points, addressing what I have seen to be arguments that the Government have sought to make in respect of these clauses. Firstly, there is said to be a partial precedent in Section 10 of the Official Secrets Act 1911—well, what may have been appropriate at the height of empire is surely not appropriate now. Secondly, it is said that these clauses are evidently not intended to apply in the SBAs, as may be seen from the fact that the police powers in Clauses 5 and 6 are vested only in UK officers; yet the phrase “prohibited place” in each of those clauses is clearly defined as including the SBAs. The impression given by those clauses is that powers in the military areas, and indeed in adjacent areas lived in and farmed by local people, are vested in British constables.

That impression may not respond to realities on the ground, but it is certainly unfortunate, and I hope the Minister will do what he can to dispel it, hopefully by accepting these amendments.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is also on these amendments, and I have also spoken with the High Commission; my noble friend Lord Purvis has spoken to both the Minister on the Front Bench and to the noble Lord, Lord Ahmad, in the Foreign Office. If I have an interest to declare, it is that 25 years ago I worked on the Cyprus conflict and discovered a fair amount about the complexities of Cypriot politics—and they are no less complex today than they were then.

I will make a number of domestic comparisons. This is in my experience very much a Home Office Bill; it does not appear to take into account diplomatic niceties or the sensitivities of other states. We have some bitter experience in this country of sensitivities about sovereignty and the attempts by other states to exert legislative authority over this country, in relation to the EU. We are still being told that the European Court of Justice has imperial ambitions, and that we had to regain our sovereignty because it was trying to legislate for us, about our country.

Beyond that, of course, we have US bases in this country. I am very familiar with RAF Menwith Hill, which is close to where I live in Yorkshire, and I know a fair amount about RAF Mildenhall. The Minister will remember that when it appeared that the wife of a US serviceman at RAF Mildenhall was trying to evade British law by claiming diplomatic immunity and then going to the United States, there was a campaign of outrage in the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and others over this incursion into British sovereignty.

I remind the Minister that the agreements between the UK and the United States over US bases in this country are extremely discreet: the details have not been published; they are renewed every 10 years without parliamentary debate; and the two countries negotiate quietly about the conditions under which they operate. They do not involve Congress legislating with reference to these extraterritorial bases in the United Kingdom. Indeed, if Congress were to legislate with reference to RAF Mildenhall, RAF Menwith Hill and other bases, I am sure that the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph and others would be outraged on our behalf at this apparent imperial incursion into British sovereignty.

I am conscious that Cypriot domestic opinion has as many elements, from the right to the left, as we have in this country. Of course, it would be a populist, nationalistic, mischievous campaign to provoke a public outrage in Cyprus about this apparent incursion into Cypriot sovereignty, but we in Britain now have some hard-won and bitter experience of how easy it is for populist and mischievous politicians to cause nationalistic outrage.

These references are not necessary. Clause 97 is enough. I hope that the Minister will take advice and consider that the Government should withdraw the references to the sovereign base areas in these other clauses. I repeat: Clause 97 is enough. The good will of the Government of Cyprus, and of the public in Cyprus, is important to this country, and we should not offend them.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

My Lords, this group covers a variety of related topics. The House has heard only about the amendments pertaining to the sovereign base areas, but I will address the other amendments advanced by the Government. The group covers amendments to the meaning of “government department” and changes to Schedule 2 to the Bill, and it deals with the amendments on the sovereign base areas, which I will come to in a second.

I start with a query raised by the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, in Committee. The question at the time was whether the reference to “government department” in the meaning of “Crown interest” in Clause 7 may include the departments of the devolved Administrations. It is the Government’s intention that any reference to “government department” within Part 1 of the Bill, including those falling under “Crown interest”, applies only to government departments of the United Kingdom. This means that we are not seeking to extend the meaning of “government department” to the devolved Administrations. I hope that this goes some way to settling the noble Lord’s concerns.

The Government have also made a number of changes to Schedule 2 to the Bill. In Committee, they made an amendment so that the Bill makes explicit provision that a Schedule 2 production order can be made to a judge without the subject being given notice of the application in advance. Currently, sub-paragraph (d) of condition 5 of the search and seizure powers at paragraphs 9 and 25 of Schedule 2 outlines that this condition may be met if the service of notice of an application for a production order may seriously prejudice an investigation. Without further change, this condition is no longer operationally effective because a warrant for search and seizure would not be granted in instances where the use of a production order more generally, which had been given without notice to a judge, would prejudice an investigation.

This group of amendments therefore closes the gap by bringing condition 5 closer to the equivalent provisions of Schedule 5 to the Terrorism Act 2000, which sets out that the use of a production order would not be appropriate because an investigation may be seriously prejudiced unless a constable can secure immediate access to the material. It is important to stress that it has always been the Government’s position that the use of production orders should be considered in the first instance, resorting to a warrant where such an order is not appropriate to the investigation.

Finally, government Amendment 60 simply makes it clear that Acts of Adjournal made in relation to the production order powers in part 2 of Schedule 2 would be made by the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland. This is already the case within the current drafting, and we seek only to make this clear. Government Amendments 55 and 59 simply add the offences under Schedules 3 and 4—which were added to the Bill in Committee in the Commons—to the list of offences for which the powers of entry, search and seizure in Schedule 2 are not available.

I now turn to the amendments tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, Lord Carlile of Berriew and Lord Wallace of Saltaire. These amendments seek to remove references to the sovereign base areas from the prohibited places provisions in Clauses 7 and 8 of the Bill. The sovereign base areas are critical for UK defence and include a unique governance structure among the overseas territories given that the administrator, who is also the commander of British Forces Cyprus, has all the executive and legislative authority of the Government of the UK overseas territory.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Is the Minister classifying the sovereign base areas as having the same relationship with Britain as overseas territories? I was not aware that the SBAs were formally overseas territories.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

Clearly, the SBAs are a special structure, as set out in the 1960 treaty. As I say, they have a unique governance structure which I have already described. The unique context of the SBAs is precisely why we are including the option to extend the legislation to the SBAs in their entirety.

The thought behind these amendments is that the power in Clause 97 to extend the legislation to the SBAs is sufficient on its own. I understand the thinking behind this. However, these references are quite distinct and achieve different aims. References to the SBAs in Clauses 7 and 8 ensure that harmful activity taking place in respect of prohibited places will be prosecutable under UK law, in UK courts, only where it constitutes an offence under Clause 4. It is important to stress that the offence under Clause 5 cannot be committed in the SBAs, as this clause does not apply outside the United Kingdom. Similarly, the police powers under Clause 6 are conferred only on constables under UK law, and as such cannot be used in the SBAs. This inclusion of the SBAs maintains the status quo, given provisions of the Official Secrets Act 1911, which already cover prohibited places in the SBAs as part of His Majesty’s dominions.

Clause 97, however, creates a power to extend any provision in Part 1 of the National Security Bill, with or without modification, to the SBAs. Should the power be used, the provisions will then form part of SBA law, and this would allow harmful activity to be prosecuted in SBA courts. Removing references in Clauses 7 and 8 to the SBAs would mean that those sites were no longer protected under UK law. That would reduce the protections currently afforded to them under the Official Secrets Act 1911, which will of course be repealed through this Bill. Furthermore, it is critical that these protections are afforded under UK law given that there is no guarantee that an Order in Council would be made so as to extend this part of the Bill to SBA law, leaving those sites potentially without any legislative protection. To reiterate the point I made in Committee—

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, an Order in Council can be made by His Majesty’s Government. I do not understand when the Minister says that there is no guarantee that such an Order in Council could be made. I hope he is not suggesting that the Government might forget to do so.

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[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 51, which would help increase the transparency and accountability of our political system. The ISC’s Russia report of 2020 recognised that the UK had clearly welcomed Russian money, including in the political sphere.

The Government have previously assured the House that the protections within the electoral financing laws are “sufficient”. However, as other noble Lords suggested in Committee, there are clear differences between the requirement on companies to undertake due diligence when receiving foreign money and that on political parties, which have no such duties. This would help close the gap.

I note that the amendment requires a political party to publish a policy statement within three months of the passing of the Bill. The Secretary of State also has three months to produce the accompanying guidance. It may be advisable for the Secretary of State to publish the guidance before political parties are required to produce their policy statements. I simply raise that as a practical point. It does not affect my support for the amendment.

As regards the government amendments, it is not clear why they seek to exclude parliamentary proceedings from the definition of political processes, thereby moving them outwith the scope of any new foreign interference offence. I appreciate that the Government have said that it is to clarify that the Bill does not intend to interfere with parliamentary privilege, but I do not see that the answer is to remove the concept entirely.

To commit the foreign interference offence, one needs to conduct “prohibited conduct” which has an “interference effect”. “Prohibited conduct” includes a variety of unacceptable behaviours—from a criminal offence to threatening to damage someone’s reputation or causing financial loss. Surely, it is critical to prevent any foreign interference in parliamentary proceedings which involves a person conducting such unacceptable behaviour. Perhaps the Minister could explain how including parliamentary proceedings in the foreign interference offence would undermine parliamentary privilege, given the need for the prohibited conduct of the offence to apply. Even if the amendment is warranted, could the Minister explain why the Government have not replaced it with wording similar to that in Clause 70, as amended. This refers to interference with

“a Member of either House of Parliament, the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Scottish Parliament”

rather than “parliamentary proceedings”, which would ensure that no gap was created.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the all-Peers letter which the Minister sent to us on 28 February states clearly and strongly that what we need is in this Bill is

“transparency on which foreign powers are influencing our politics”,

which it states

“is vital to defending our democracy”.

This reasonable amendment fills one of the loopholes left in the Bill. We are all concerned about the integrity of our elections. We are conscious that foreign donations are part of what can undermine that integrity.

The Minister may have had drawn to his attention a letter in yesterday’s Financial Times which points out that the new proposals for a football regulator include among its duties the need to ensure stronger due diligence and checks on the sources of wealth of those who wish to buy or own football clubs. It is anomalous, to say the least, that we should have stronger checks on people who wish to buy British football clubs than on people who wish to give sometimes very large sums of money to British political parties. I remind the Minister that the question of Arron Banks’s very large donation to the Vote Leave campaign is still being litigated in the British courts. We still have no assurance as to the origins of that donation, since he has refused to give one.

I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has said, by reminding the Minister that there are now 100,000 British citizens living in the United Arab Emirates—some of whom already donate to British political parties. It would be quite easy for some of those to become intermediaries for the sovereign powers concerned. Other wealthy British expatriates live in Thailand, Singapore or Hong Kong. Their business depends heavily on the Chinese economy and state.

It is entirely desirable, reasonable and appropriate to ensure that British political parties play their part in mitigating the risks of foreign interference in British elections by being required to show that they are conducting careful risk management in accepting donations from overseas. There have been a number of instances in recent years of which we are all aware. Some of them were touched on in the ISC report on Russia. It is clear that such management has not been in place. It ought to be. I hope that the Government will accept this amendment as a means of filling this loophole.

[Lord Evans of Weardale (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. In 2021, my committee reviewed the regulation of electoral finance. I have to tell the Minister that “stringent” was not what we concluded as to the rigour of the arrangements in place. We felt that there were a number of loopholes which could quite easily be remedied. We made recommendations to that effect. Regrettably, the Government decided that they did not wish to accept any of those recommendations; therefore, the loopholes are still there.

I have added my name to Amendment 51 because it is a modest step in the right direction. The rules that apply to the financial services industry and, as appears likely, are shortly to apply to the football industry are considerably stronger than those that apply to our elections. A modest step in this direction would not provide a high level of assurance that money from illicit sources of various sorts might not reach the electoral process, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

It is important that we should take that step because we know that the electoral system in this country and in other western democracies has been under attack. It is vital to maintain public confidence in the electoral system; it is still pretty good. The Electoral Commission publishes regular research on attitudes towards the electoral system. At the moment, we are in a reasonably good place, but it is very important for the health of our democracy that we retain that public support. This is a small step in that direction. I have been scratching my head to work out why, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, any political party would not support this for the integrity of our electoral system. It is not massively bureaucratic or intrusive. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s reply.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken on this group.

I will start, if I may, by addressing the question from the noble Lord, Lord West, by repeating something that I said in my opening speech; I think it goes some way to answering him. The majority of what we wish to capture in relation to interference with Parliament will be covered by the effect in Clause 14(1)(b)—the limb relating to public functions—as MPs and other officials in Parliament will be exercising their public functions. It is right that we seek to criminalise activity where, for example, somebody is acting for a foreign power and threatens violence to affect how a person exercises their public functions. I hope that answers his question.

In answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, about Amendment 49, let me say that he is completely right. The reference to

“the activities of an informal group”

in this amendment is, as I think noble Lords know, designed to capture interference activities in APPGs by foreign powers. We are seeking to capture interference whether or however any person participates in the activities of these informal groups. We expect that to cover MPs and people external to Parliament and government who participate in the actions of such groups, but we also envisage informal groups to include things such as “friends of” groups. The use of the term “acting in that capacity” ensures that we do not capture things such as parliamentary book clubs but instead focus on those caught, such as the 1922 Committee, although they could also be covered by the public functions limb of the test. I hope that clears this up.

I know that Amendment 51 is a duplicate of a previous amendment, now tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. The Government do not believe that this amendment is necessary, I am afraid. I was going to quote myself and say again that UK electoral law already sets out a stringent regime of controls, but I am slightly more reluctant to do so after hearing the comments from the noble Lord, Lord Evans. However, we believe that our regime ensures that only those with a genuine interest in UK elections can make political donations and that political donations are transparent.

I will go into more detail on this point, if I may, because I believe that the noble Lord’s ethical matrix is already in existence. It is already an offence to attempt to evade the rules on donations by concealing information, giving false information or knowingly being involved in an arrangement to facilitate the making of an impermissible donation. This provides a safeguard against impermissible donations via the back door. Political parties must already report all donations over a certain value to the Electoral Commission; these are then published online for public scrutiny. Political parties are by law required to undertake reasonable steps to verify whether a donor is permissible and obtain their relevant details for the reporting requirements. Donations that do not meet the permissibility tests or are unidentifiable must be reported and returned to the Electoral Commission, which also produces guidance outlining how the recipient of a donation can undertake these checks.

As I say, UK electoral law already sets out a regime of donation and spending controls to safeguard the integrity of our democratic processes, so only those with a genuine interest in UK electoral events can make political donations; they include UK-registered electors, UK-registered companies, trade unions and other UK-based entities, as well as otherwise eligible donors such as Irish citizens who meet prescribed conditions and can donate to parties in Northern Ireland. Parties and other campaigners are prohibited from accepting donations that are not from a permissible or identifiable donor. The failure to return such a donation either to the donor or, as I just described, to the Electoral Commission within 30 days of receipt is an offence; any such donations must also be reported to the Electoral Commission. The Elections Act 2022 introduced a restriction on ineligible foreign third-party campaigning above a £700 de minimis threshold.

The transparency of electoral funding is obviously a key cornerstone of the UK’s electoral system. All political parties recognise that third-party campaigners and candidates must record their election spending and report it to the Electoral Commission or their local returning officer; that information is publicly available. For transparency, all donations to political parties and campaigners must be recorded and certain donations must be reported to the Electoral Commission; as I said, these include donations from impermissible donors and donations from the same permissible source that amount to over £7,500 in one calendar year. To ensure transparency, donation reports are published online by the commission for public scrutiny.

To register as an overseas elector, a British citizen has to present ID. However, it is a long-standing principle first introduced by the Committee on Standards in Public Life in 1998 that, if you are eligible to vote for a party in an election, you are also eligible to donate to that party. We believe that overseas electors are important participants in our democracy, but it is only right that they should be able to spend in UK elections in the same way as other UK citizens registered on the electoral roll.

I think that this is a reasonably comprehensive set of rules. There may be some debate as to whether it qualifies as a stringent regime but the fact is that donations to political parties from foreign powers, whether they are made directly or through an intermediary, are illegal. Political parties already have a legal duty to check that all donations they are offered are permissible.

In closing, I very much thank noble Lords for engaging so constructively in this debate. I ask the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, not to press his amendment in this group and ask noble Lords to support the Government’s amendments.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Before the Minister sits down, I just want to check one thing with him. He said that overseas electors will have to present ID. I was involved in the passage of the now Elections Act, which does indeed provide stronger, more limited ways in which correct ID has to be presented by people voting in person in British elections. However, I do not recall extra requirements around the presentation of ID for people who are resident overseas and wish to vote.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I think that I made it reasonably clear that to register as an elector overseas, you must present ID.

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Moved by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

73: Clause 32, page 23, line 31, at beginning insert “Subject to subsection (1A),”
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment is connected to the amendment to page 23, line 40 in the name of Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames.

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[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, this amendment comes with Amendment 75, which is the substantive amendment. I suppose I should declare a certain underlying prejudice as I start: more than 30 years ago, when I was in charge of research at Chatham House, the international affairs think tank, when we worked with departments across Whitehall on foreign policy issues, we found that the Home Office was the most resistant to the idea that foreign interests had to be taken into account. I have a vivid memory of a conference at Chatham House convened on behalf of the Metropolitan Police with police from the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Spain and elsewhere, at which a number of Home Office civil servants stood in a corner of the room during lunch rather than talk to foreigners. I am sure, 30 years later, that the Home Office is far better than that, but I think there is a problem of how the Bill, as it becomes an Act, looks to our closest friends and allies.

The aim of the Bill is to guard against foreign interference in British politics and British life by hostile foreign powers—above all, by China, Russia and Iran, but also other non-democratic states that want to undermine open societies and democratic government. Yet the definition of “foreign power” does not discriminate in any way between the more than 190 foreign powers with which the UK maintains political, economic and social relations, except for Ireland as a special case. I understand that there have been critical comments from within the US Administration and several European Governments. Yesterday, the German party foundations were speaking to my noble friend Lord Purvis about their worries about being caught by the new red tape which this threatens to impose on them.

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I think the noble Baroness has received the letter I sent her today which sought to reassure her that the circumstances where parliamentarians will have to disclose their work with foreign political parties are likely to be narrow: only where a foreign power—including a foreign ruling party—is directing the parliamentarian to influence others.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, may I ask a question of clarification? I understand much more clearly what the noble Lord is saying: governing political parties are in effect acting as intermediaries for the state. However, certainly in the international relations which I have been engaged in over the last 40 years, many think tanks in other states also operate as intermediaries in that respect. In particular the Washington think tanks, which are very close to the Government, act as intermediaries, but foreign-funded ones in other democratic and non-democratic capitals often also do so. Should that not be included in the Bill for the same rationale that he has just given us on dominant political parties?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, ruling parties are the foreign power. As I have tried to be clear and have stressed twice now, registration will be required only where an individual or entity is directed by a foreign power—that is the condition. Therefore, if a think tank was being directed by a foreign power, the answer would be yes. If it was not, the answer would be no.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, in answer to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, I cannot make any promises but I will certainly try. In answer to my noble friend Lord Balfe’s question, as I said in my initial answer to him, we have engaged extensively with the German Government.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I am not convinced by the Minister’s argument. That he has to go back to the single case of Daniel Houghton shows the weakness of the ground on which he stands. We recall that case, which involved a Dutch-British dual national who was uncovered by our allies, the Dutch, with whom, of course, we have a close intelligence relationship as well as a number of other things; it was therefore resolved. No such things have happened with a hostile foreign power. If we have to go back to that case, it simply shows that there is not very much evidence on which the Government can make this argument.

Many of us who know that this is an important Bill and wish it well are concerned about the unnecessary offence given to friendly Governments. The Minister has not assured us that all our friendly Governments have been consulted and are happy with this Bill. I hope that, in informal conversations between now and Third Reading, he—or at least one of his Foreign Office Ministers who actually talks to other Foreign Ministers—will be able to assure us that we will not treat all foreign powers or contact with them on a similar basis.

On that basis, I will not divide the House but I remark that I am unsatisfied with the Minister’s response. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 73 withdrawn.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Sharpe of Epsom) (Con)]

My Lords, the amendments in this group clarify the intent of the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme —FIRS. They ensure the tier remains proportionate, while achieving its national security objectives. FIRS was recommended by the ISC in its 2020 Russia report, and the Government committed in their response to bring forward such a scheme.

The enhanced tier of FIRS is a targeted regime, allowing the Secretary of State to require the registration of arrangements with specified foreign Governments or entities subject to foreign power control where she believes it is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom. The scheme will play a significant role in the deterrence and disruption of state threats activities by those countries, and entities linked to them, which are of greatest concern.

We know that these states will make use of a whole-of-state approach to covert activities, not just relying on traditional routes of intelligence organisations and undeclared agents. FIRS will be essential to gaining a greater understanding of the scale and nature of activity being undertaken for countries and their proxies that pose the greatest risks to UK interests and national security. The penalties for non-compliance will increase the risk to those who seek to engage in covert activities for specified foreign powers, either directly or through specified entities. It forces them to choose between registering openly or facing prosecution should their activities be known to the intelligence community. Finally, it offers potential for earlier disruption of state threats activity, where there is evidence of a covert arrangement between a person and specified foreign power or entity, but it is not yet feasible to bring charges for a more serious state threats offence.

Government Amendments 89 and 100 make clearer that the Secretary of State can narrow the activities requiring registration under this tier. This will allow us to tailor the registration requirements to the threat posed by the country or entity being specified.

I turn now to government Amendments 95, 104, 125 and 133 and supporting amendments. These amendments make changes to ensure that a proper provision is made for offences committed by those in unregistered arrangements, and employees and subcontractors who are carrying out activities under those arrangements, in both tiers of the scheme. The Government do not wish to unfairly criminalise those who reasonably believe an arrangement is registered and have taken all reasonably practicable steps to check that it is. This is particularly the case with employees of an entity which has made an arrangement with a foreign power or specified person, or for subcontractors carrying out activities under arrangements.

These amendments seek to address this issue by enabling a person—for example, an employee—to avoid committing an offence where they can demonstrate that they took all steps reasonably practicable to determine whether the activities were registered, and they reasonably believed that the activities were registered. We consider that in practice this will mean checking the public register or receiving evidence of registration from their employer in the form of confirmation from the registration portal.

Finally, government Amendments 147 and 151 also modify the individuals to whom an information notice may be issued under both tiers of FIRS. There are circumstances where a person may be arranging for another individual to carry out the activity. In these circumstances, it is important for the Secretary of State to be able to issue an information notice to an individual whom they reasonably believe is carrying out an activity pursuant to a registerable arrangement, even if they are not the person who has made the arrangement.

I have considerable sympathy with the aims of Amendment 91, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire. Wherever possible, Governments should strive to share what they know to reduce the regulatory burden on ordinary people and businesses. However, I believe that the schemes he has listed have different purposes and requirements, with relatively little overlap. Where there is a risk of unnecessary duplication, registration requirements can be targeted to avoid this.

Amendment 106, also tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, seeks to require the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on the impacts of the enhanced tier, including on international research collaborations. Again, I seek to reassure the noble Lord on this point, as the Government will keep the impacts of the scheme under review.

Amendments 166B and 203A, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, seek to require the Secretary of State to produce guidance within six months of the Act passing, and to prevent regulations made under the scheme being brought into force until three months after the publication of the guidance. Again, I agree with the spirit in which this amendment has been made but, as I will seek to reassure noble Lords, the Government have already committed to producing guidance during the implementation period, prior to bringing the scheme into force.

I come to Amendment 154A in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Anderson and Lord Carlile. This contains reasonable points which would bring certainty to the provisions and the Government support it.

I hope noble Lords will support these amendments.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I speak to Amendments 91 and 106, which the Minister has mentioned. In this case, I speak very much on behalf of the academic and policy research communities, with which I was professionally engaged for some 40 or more years.

We are concerned not to impose too great a burden on those who are engaged in international research. The Minister will be very well aware of the commitments that have already been made for researchers engaged in international co-operation to provide information to the Government, and the concerns that there have already been, particularly about collaboration with countries such as China and Russia. That information is provided to government, and I remind the Minister that, as a member of a Government who are strongly against adding to bureaucracy and red tape, it should be possible for government departments to share information, rather than require it to be given twice to different departments.

I am conscious that the Home Office has a poor record in this regard; indeed, the entire Windrush affair happened because the Home Office refused to ask other departments for information on whether or not the people concerned had been in this country. This was clearly available at the DVLA, the Department of Health, the national insurance scheme, et cetera. There is a real problem in government about asking for the same information twice. The information asked for indeed overlaps, and I ask the Minister to assure us that the Government will look at this matter again and do their best to make sure that it does not add to the burdens to which those of us who are concerned with international co-operation have to relate.

The Minister will be well aware that the Government are also negotiating to rejoin the Horizon European international collaboration scheme for science, probably the most impressive and important network for international co-operation in the world. All the members of the European Union and the various other countries associated with it are listed as foreign powers, with the exception of Ireland, so this is a live question. I declare an interest: my son, a scientist at the University of Edinburgh, is currently engaged in international co-operation with universities and research institutes—one or two of them government-sponsored and financed—in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. That is a small snapshot of the extent of that collaboration, if one were to go merely to the biology faculty at the University of Edinburgh. I suspect that there are some 30 or 40 other countries with which 100 scientists at the university are involved in various collaborative activities.

The purpose of Amendment 106 is to gain the strongest assurances from the Government that they will look at whether additional burdens are being imposed by the legislation on those who are unavoidably and actively—and desirably—engaged in international collaboration with institutes, universities and other bodies that are part of, or dependent on, foreign Governments in one way or another. We need active assurance on that. If the Minister is able to give that, we will not press these amendments further but I emphasise that it is important that this legislation does not over-add to the requirements to report normal activities. I remind the Minister that we are talking about a country that is determined to become a science international superpower, and that needs to be sure that it does not put obstacles in its own way that deter those in other counties from collaborating as it ensures its security.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the Minister’s response to the amendments I tabled, supported by my noble friend, on the need for the publication of timely guidance on how the schemes will operate. He has been true to his word from the first day of Report and taken away many of the issues raised in Committee and come back with a number of amendments to address them. They relate mainly to the next group and the political tier but, given that my amendments fall within this group, I wish to put on record how grateful I am to him for the way in which he has engaged and responded.

The government amendments have addressed many of the significant concerns of those seeking legitimate activity—I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who raised the issue of economic activity, is in her place—and those concerned about human rights. The areas where some questions remain include those we raised on the first day of Report, such as the German Stiftungen and other organisations that will not fall within the scope of the FIR schemes but are nevertheless concerned that they may do so. Much of that will be resolved in the guidance provided to them and therefore, the timeliness of that is of utmost importance.

In Committee I quoted at length from the Government’s impact assessment of the Bill, which suggested that the initial scheme could cost up to £48 million and many thousands of people would have to be informed about the scheme’s operation. Given that it is to be welcomed that the Government have reduced the scope of that, I am not sure what status the impact assessment now has. I should therefore be grateful if the Minister told us whether the guidance to be provided will also be informed by some revision of the impact assessment.

There will be businesses wanting to carry out legitimate activity that have to operate under a set of rules in the current regulations on countries at risk of money laundering or financing terrorism—we have a list of over 30 such countries—and there may now be an enhanced tier under FIRS. There will also be others, making it quite a complex environment for businesses operating in the political sphere.

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[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this short but constructive discussion. I will turn straight to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire.

Amendment 91 seeks to ensure that registration under FIRS is not required when the arrangement is registered under other legislative requirements. However, somewhat contrary to the noble Lord’s assertion, I think there is a clear difference between FIRS and the National Security and Investment Act, the academic technology approval scheme and the export control regime. The Government are clear that FIRS fills a gap in our toolkit. It is worth highlighting that the focus of this enhanced tier is to provide scrutiny to UK activities directed by specified foreign powers—it is worth emphasising this; we are talking about the enhanced tier—and foreign power-controlled entities.

We consider that there will be limited circumstances where there is a risk of duplication, but we will work closely across government departments and potential registrants to keep the burden of registration to a minimum and inform our approach to using this tier of the scheme. The Government do not want to impose unnecessary burdens. We have committed to a consultation on the guidance ahead of bringing the scheme into force. If that process identifies risks of duplication, the power to target what arrangements and activities will need to be registered can be used to reduce unnecessary duplication. This will be considered on a case-by-case basis when specifying foreign powers and entities.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Can the Minister give us an assurance that he will consult with the academies, the Royal Society and Universities UK to make sure that the element of duplication is reduced to the absolute minimum? When I was in government, we talked about trying to introduce the principle of “Tell us once” when people were in touch with government. In some other areas, that has now been introduced. The principle is a very good one; we do not want universities having to fill in forms unnecessarily widely. If he can assure us that there will be active consultation with those affected, I will not pursue this further.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am happy with the reassurance that we are committed to consulting, but I cannot say at this precise moment who we consult with. As I say, if that process identifies a risk of duplication, the power to target what arrangements and activities need to be registered can be used to reduce unnecessary duplication. Again, I stress that we are talking about the enhanced tier of the FIR scheme in the National Security Bill so, if there is a little bit of duplication, I am sure he will understand that in the context of the overall Bill.

Amendment 106 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, would require the Secretary of State to produce an annual report on the impacts of the enhanced tier; the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, also questioned me on this. I reassure both noble Lords that the Government recognise the importance of keeping the impacts of the scheme under consideration. Clause 82 already requires the Secretary of State to produce and lay before Parliament an annual report every 12 months after the scheme goes live. The legislation will also be subject to the usual post-legislative scrutiny process, which will consider how the scheme has worked in practice and how far its objectives have been met. I therefore ask that the noble Lord does not press this amendment.

Amendments 166B and 203A tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Purvis of Tweed and Lord Wallace of Saltaire, seek to require the Secretary of State to produce guidance within six months of the Bill passing, and to prevent regulations made under the scheme from being brought into force until three months after the publication of guidance. In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, I say that the Government recognise the importance of ensuring guidance for the public to support the implementation of the scheme. However, it is important that there are not undue restrictions placed on the development of this guidance, to ensure that the guidance produced is clear and targeted to those complying. I can say to him that a revised impact assessment is required before Royal Assent, so that will be forthcoming. He also raised the point about the German Stiftungen. If he bears with me, we will address this directly in the next group. I will also go further: the Government have committed to establishing expert panels to produce sector-specific guidance on compliance with FIRS. With that, I think I have answered all the questions.

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[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, I have my name on a number of amendments in this group. I will start by saying, which I had not prepared to say, that when the Minister looks at the speech he has just made, I think he will find that there were some drafting errors—I hope there were—at the beginning. He said that FIRS would apply now only to a foreign Government. I think he said that twice and afterwards went on to talk about a foreign power. He knows very well why I pick up on the difference because one of my ongoing concerns is about the definition of a foreign power, which includes political parties. I hope that was just an oversight because I think that this captures political parties as well as foreign Governments.

There are two or three points I want to make very briefly but before I go on, I want to add my thanks for what the Minister has done, not only in the incredible change. The Minister has sent me the Keeling schedule that shows that we have ended up with a FIRS that is very different from what we started with. I should declare my interest, as I sit on the board of the ABI and it is very content with where we have got to. It did however make the point that this is no way to make a sausage—I have to say that they were not its words; it was far more polite. The way it started was not the best way to make legislation. The ABI and others are very content with where we have got to, and it is right to record that we have ended up with something very different, so I thank the Minister.

My name is on three amendments. I will not press Amendments 114 and 121 in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Carlile. But on Amendment 115 I am second to the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, and I think it is an indication of the approval of what he has done that one of the delete clause amendments is in his name—only because he got there first because I was about to do that. I think it is a symbol that we do it.

I have that one remaining query about a foreign political power that happens to be in government engaging with any of us or councillors or parliamentary candidates, even on internal, party-to-party issues, using an intermediary such as the conference arrangement. I have looked at the draft regulations again as the Minister helpfully said. There is no de minimis there, even if they pay £1,000 to a conference organiser to book the stall at a Labour Party conference or a Tory Party conference—I am sure they have stalls; I have been to their conference and they do in the same way as we do. There is no de minimis for a political party abroad seeking to engage with a political party or anyone else here using an intermediary which is simply a facilitator. Therefore, I wonder whether there is a possibility of looking at the guidelines or the forms. There will be a contract. It may be only for £1,000 but there are the implications of having all that to be declared. I am not saying that simply because we have stalls at our conference, it could happen to the Government as well. It captures things that I know the Minister never intended. I know that at the moment he will not give me an answer and a promise written in blood, but some acknowledgement that there is a small ongoing problem would be very helpful. For the moment, I think we have ended up in a much better place than we started.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 166A in my name. I also thank the Minister for the way in which the Bill has been discussed and amended between Second Reading, Committee and Report. It is a model of the way in which the Lords should operate, and we all appreciate the way in which the Minister and his team have responded to reasoned criticisms as we have moved forward.

Amendment 166A merely draws attention to some of the definition problems we have all struggled with, wanting to catch all the problems but not to overload the necessary and highly desirable international co-operation with other Governments and other countries, many of which are governed in ways we do not entirely approve of. As somebody who used to work for an international think tank, I am particularly concerned with the opacity of the funding of some of our political think tanks, which as charities do not have to declare their revenue.

In the United States there is much concern with the extent to which some foreign Governments, in particular the Gulf states, put enormous amounts of money into institutes operating as political think tanks, intending to influence and therefore reshape the American political debate. Although that is outside the scope of the current Bill, I and others are much concerned to insist that there should be much greater transparency about the funding of think tanks that set out to deliberately influence the way in which our politics take place.

That is an example, but we all know that there will be a substantial grey area between direction and influence, which we and the Minister have all grappled with. We are not entirely sure that we can draw the line clearly as we go. This amendment asks the Government actively to keep under review and to consult on where that line needs to be adjusted as we move forward in implementation. I hope the Minister will respond in that way.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, I got involved in Committee—my only appearance on the Bill—because of concerns brought to my attention about the impact of the registration scheme on huge swathes of ordinary, everyday business and commercial activity. I was much encouraged that at that stage my noble friend the Minister said that this was under review. I am more than pleased with the actual outcome. I know that once a Bill has been published it is very hard for the Government to do a radical overhaul, so we have to pay tribute to my noble friend the Minister and the Security Minister in the other place for having the courage to say that what we started with would not work well enough and to come back with such a significant set of revisions on Report. I thank him again for all he has done to achieve this.

--- Later in debate ---

The ISC is an important committee and becoming ever more so. As such, its MoU needs updating. It is a simple request which the Government are resisting for no good reason. It is an increasingly disappointing and concerning response. At a time of higher levels of national security concerns and increasing and changing threats, the Government refuse to give the ISC—our parliamentary oversight body—the updated remit that it needs and requires. Therefore, I ask noble Lords to support the memorandum of understanding put forward in Amendment 193. It is a sensible amendment requiring the MoU to be updated and, as such, I would have thought the Government would have accepted it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, my name is on Amendments 192 and 194. I also support Amendment 193. I remind the Minister that the Conservative 2019 manifesto states:

“We will protect the integrity of our democracy, by introducing … measures to prevent any foreign interference in elections.”


This Bill partly does that—not in my opinion sufficiently, but it takes us some way in this direction. There are questions of transparency and of accountability, about which the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, has just been speaking, and broader questions about public information and public education into the nature of the threat and the experience which we have so far had of that threat.

I remind the Minister, that paragraph 47 of the Russia report has as its heading, “Lack of retrospective assessment”. It says:

“We have not been provided with any post-referendum assessment of Russian attempts at interference … This situation is in stark contrast to the US handling of allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, where an intelligence community assessment was produced within two months of the vote, with an unclassified summary being made public.”


It goes on to say that it is

“the Committee’s view that the UK Intelligence Community should produce an analogous assessment of potential Russian interference in the EU referendum and that an unclassified summary of it be published.”

The following chapter talks about the high level of integration for Russian oligarchs within London society and, in particular, political parties—including mentioning penetration of the House of Lords. In effect, it recommends that some of that should be published. Very little has been, which leads to Daily Mail allegations of all sorts of things about the House of Lords, which I suspect are exaggerated, and to a lack of understanding of the nature of the threat. I understand that many of these issues might embarrass the Conservative Party because the penetration, influence and money has most evidently gone to the Conservative Party. However, I can easily imagine what a Conservative Party in opposition would be saying if it were a Labour Government who were refusing to accept the recommendations of the ISC in this respect. Accountability and public education are important. In this respect, they have failed.

On Amendment 194, I take the same view in terms of accountability and public education on the golden visa scheme, and some of that review should be published. We have heard very little about the problem of Chinese rich people in Britain. I remind the Minister that by far the largest nationality of origin of people who have come in under the golden visa scheme was Chinese. The second largest was Russian, and then there were various other nationalities, including a lot of central Asian nationalities. We need to understand a little better what the experience has been, what the sensitivities have been, and what we should learn from that. The Government, in keeping it all under wraps, are failing not only to account to Parliament about what is going on but to tell the public what sort of world we now live in and where there are sensitivities about which we should be concerned. This Bill, as a whole, is trying to sensitise some of the public to the delicacies of our international relations.

Part of our problem in Britain is that we live in a highly internationalised world, with a very large number of rich people in London living among us. My wife and I have just begun to face up to the dreaded problem of downsizing. As we go around parts of London, we see estate agents who tell us that 20% to 40% of the people to whom they have sold houses in recent years have been from overseas—from the Middle East, eastern Europe, Russia and Asia. Again, many of these are highly desirable people buying second homes in London. However, we need to know where there are problems, what we should have been thinking about, what the government have now learned and what they would like the public to understand.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I support on behalf of the ISC Amendment 193 in the name of my noble friend Lord Coaker. This amendment would update the ISC’s remit to ensure it has the power effectively to scrutinise intelligence and security activity that will be taking place across government under the new national security regime.

The ISC already has the power to oversee much of the intelligence and security activity that will take place. However, as my noble friend Lord Coaker outlined very persuasively, the ISC’s oversight has generally been eroded due to intelligence and security activities often now being undertaken by policy departments which do not generally carry out national security-related activity. He mentioned a list of them and there are many. They were not included in the ISC’s remit and they can—I have to say, they have often—excluded the ISC from looking at the material that we think we should look at. If the Government establish new teams as part of this Bill which sit outside our remit, this amendment will make sure that the memorandum of understanding is updated, and we will be able to have access to do our job for Parliament scrutinising this highly classified material.

Updating the ISC’s MoU is vital, as effective oversight of intelligence and security can be undertaken effectively only by the Intelligence and Security Committee. Unlike Select Committees, the ISC’s purpose is to oversee these highly classified matters which relate to national security on behalf of Parliament. It is therefore the only parliamentary body with the necessary security infrastructure to scrutinise the material that often underpins national security decisions. This issue of having the right material affects the staff. For example, civil servants, who are working with regular access to “top secret” have to have DV. If one looks across government at the moment, I am not sure that that is the case in some departments. They also, including Ministers, have to be read into the STRAP material, and then there is the extra physical security to store “top secret” and STRAP material. It is considerable, and I am not convinced that this is the case across government.

As my noble friend Lord Coaker mentioned, the Government understandably provided a very clear commitment to Parliament, during the passage of the Justice and Security Act 2013, that the ISC’s MoU would be kept updated. Unfortunately—we noted this in our last annual report—this has not been done. They have not stood by this commitment. I cannot understand what difficulty the Government have with this, because I would have thought it was in the interests of the Government to ensure that Parliament has an ability to do this.

I can only repeat the words of the noble Lord, Lord Coaker:

“Each piece of new legislation devolving national security matters away from bodies already overseen by the ISC should come with commensurate expansion of the ISC’s MoU”.


This has been promised by the Government and it should be done. This amendment will seek to do that if, as a result of this Bill, the Government do indeed establish new teams outside the ISC’s current remit. However, as this amendment is linked to this Bill only, it understandably has limited scope; it will not fix the lack of effective oversight in other national security legislation, such as the Telecommunications (Security) Act, where, again pretty much across this House, people argued that the ISC should have the ability to scrutinise that. But it will be a very useful start to help embed the oversight provisions, and for that reason I support this amendment.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

3rd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Stoneham of Droxford (LD)]

My Lords, I must apologise that my noble friend Lord Purvis cannot be here with us today. He was coming down from the Borders, but he was unfortunately grounded by the winds at UK airports, so I am just standing in to pass on his thanks to the House.

At Second Reading, my colleagues raised concerns that, in many areas, this important Bill was not workable and, in others, seriously undermined civil liberties. However, we would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Sharpe, who in Committee listened, acted and then brought forward a series of government amendments to address them. My noble friend Lord Marks is also appreciative of the openness of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, at the Ministry of Justice. The Bill leaves this House a better one than when it arrived, and it is a testament to the cross-party working that went into it. Of course, some issues remain, and we will continue to press on them.

My noble friend Lord Purvis would also like to thank all Members of the House who have participated, including the opposition team and the officials’ Bill team, for all their support and work during this Bill. On his behalf, I thank our own team, led by Elizabeth Plummer, who marshalled all our work supremely.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I saw my role in this Bill as representing the research sector to some extent, and I am very conscious—as I am sure the Minister is—of the delicate balance there is between the desirability of close international collaboration and sometimes having to collaborate with those who come from authoritarian countries that are not entirely friendly to us. The representatives of the research sector—the Royal Society and others—look forward to talking with the department about the guidance, which we hope will strike exactly the right balance in this delicate area between what needs to be done and not imposing deliberate bureaucracy.

I am sure that the Minister is aware from what we have seen in Georgia over the last two weeks—where there have been very serious riots against the Government caused by a foreign agents Bill, which is seen as a Russian attempt to gag the Government and the people of Georgia and to block their contact with the western world—that this is a delicate area. It is extremely difficult to get the right balance, and we hope that we have achieved in this House a much better balance than when the Bill was originally drafted.

[Lord Coaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I hope the Chamber will indulge me. I forgot to thank Ben Wood, who is our adviser. I apologise to him for that.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Wednesday 21st June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, I support Motion A1 from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, and Motion C2. On Motion A1, I spoke in favour of the previous version of this amendment on Report on behalf of the Intelligence and Security Committee. Our position in the committee remains very much the same: we firmly support the introduction of this clause. Indeed, I cannot really understand why the Government continue to oppose the amendment. It is eminently sensible and the previous version received widespread support across this House. Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, said, it was notable that, apart from the Government Front Bench, not a single Peer across the House spoke against it.

The ISC’s Russia report in 2020 recognised that the UK, including political parties, had welcomed money from Russian elites, and the Government acknowledged that. They have, for example, as part of the Bill increased the sentences for electoral offences involving foreign powers. There is no doubt that protecting our democratic institutions should be the very top priority for the Government and parliamentarians, but the Government have adopted a rather dismissive and worryingly complacent approach to this risk. They claim that they oppose this amendment on the basis that the existing protections within electoral law are sufficient, that the amendment would not work in practice and that it would place an undue burden on grass-roots political organisations. These claims are patently not true.

Current protections within the electoral financing law are demonstrably inadequate. As the noble Lord, Lord Evans, the chairman of the Committee for Standards in Public Life, who is in his place, noted on Report, his committee undertook a major report into the regulation of electoral finance in 2021 and provided a series of recommendations to close several loopholes in this space, all of which were rejected by the Government. The report stated that

“we consider the current rules are insufficient to guard against foreign interference in UK elections”.

One of the many problems the committee identified was the ability of a foreign corporation to create a UK subsidiary with the sole function of receiving and channelling money to a UK political party. Further, as extraordinary as it may seem, unlike charities or companies, political parties do not have to examine the source of funds they receive. This means that it is perfectly possible for companies to make significant donations to political parties despite clearly not making operating profits and therefore with limited explanations of how they can afford such donations and where the money comes from. These factors clearly increase the threat of political parties being unduly influenced by a foreign power.

The report also noted that, since 2018, the Electoral Commission has supported the introduction to electoral finance of risk management principles that are used in anti-money laundering checks conducted by companies. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, suggested on Report, this amendment would introduce such principles and ensure that political parties identify foreign money and potential proceeds of crime, establishing a culture of “know your donor” within parties similar to the “know your customer” approach in the financial sector.

Contrary to the Government’s suggestion, this amendment would not place a significant administrative burden on smaller political organisations, and nor would it be too difficult for political parties to implement in practice. As the shadow Security Minister noted in the other place, the Electoral Commission has stated:

“These requirements could be introduced in a way that recognises the need for proportionality … with different requirements depending on the size of a regulated entity’s financial infrastructure, or the size of a donation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/5/23; col. 129.]


Guidance would prevent this amendment, which increases transparency and accountability, becoming a disproportionate burden. The fact that due diligence measures are used in the charity sector and not just by commercial enterprises demonstrates that it would be entirely possible for similar measures to be adopted by political parties.

I find it extraordinary that the political parties currently do not have to check the source of their funding in the same way as charities and businesses—it is extraordinary—and it is inexplicable that our Government or any political party could consider it appropriate to oppose such a sensible and proportionate amendment. It is entirely necessary and it would go a long way to strengthening our democratic institutions, providing greater protection from foreign influence. I am sure that the Government agree that we must protect our democratic institutions from harmful interference and I am sure that, having heard all these arguments, they will change their view—or I hope they will

Moving on to Motion C1, on behalf of the Intelligence and Security Committee—I have been given its approval to speak on this—I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Coaker for introducing this amendment and we fully support it. It is interesting to note that, when a similar amendment was debated in the House, many Peers spoke in favour but only one, on the Government Front Bench, spoke in opposition. It seems to be a trend with these various amendments. Strangely, the same was true in the other place, where many MPs spoke in support and only the Minister opposed the amendment. The Security Minister himself acknowledged the need for the amendment when he stated that an update to the ISC’s memorandum of understanding needed to be made.

Parliament is united in its support for independent oversight of the intelligence agencies; it is only the Government who are seeking to undermine the ability for oversight, for purposes unknown. National security is too important to play party politics with. Members from across both Houses have repeatedly explained the need for this amendment throughout the passage of the Bill, but to no avail.

I intend to do so again to demonstrate the absurdity of the Government’s opposition to it. The ISC’s memorandum of understanding, which sits underneath the Justice and Security Act 2013, outlines its remit and the organisations that it oversees. Its remit encompasses the expenditure, administration, policy and operation of the agencies and four other organisations that form part of the UK intelligence community. As the ISC has made very clear in its most recent annual reports, intelligence and security activities are increasingly undertaken by a wider assortment of policy departments, as the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, mentioned, including those that generally do not carry out national security-related activity, such as BEIS—now the Department for Business and Trade—DCMS and the Department for Transport.

Those teams are not currently listed in the ISC’s MoU. This is solely because, when the MoU was drafted in 2013, they were not responsible for intelligence and security matters. Had they been, Parliament would have included them in the ISC’s remit. Parliament was clear on the remit it wished the ISC to have and the work it wished it to do on its behalf and that of the British public.

Effective oversight of intelligence and security matters can be undertaken only by the ISC. Only it has the security infrastructure to scrutinise effectively those aspects where classified material, such as intelligence, underpins decisions on national security. This is not rocket science—perhaps sometimes it is, but that is a different issue. Intelligence and security matters deal primarily with highly classified information. Parliament established the ISC, supported by security infrastructure such as the appropriate computer systems, storage facilities and vetted staff, to provide independent oversight of classified matters precisely because Select Committees cannot effectively undertake that role. They definitely cannot do it and it is wrong for the Government to pretend that they can.

The sole purpose of the ISC, and the reason Parliament set it up, is for it to hold the Executive to account on behalf of Parliament and the public. Independent oversight in this space is particularly important given the gravity of national security decisions and the significant intrusive powers that the agencies have at the Government’s disposal. The inability for Select Committees to provide effective oversight of intelligence and security matters has already been acknowledged by the Minister on Report.

The ISC’s MoU, which sets out which government bodies it can oversee, is woefully out of date. There is now intelligence and security activity undertaken by government that is outside the ISC’s independent oversight, which means that it is outside Parliament’s democratic oversight. I am sure noble Lords agree that that is unacceptable. In effect, it means that secret activity is being carried out in our name that no one is scrutinising. The ISC’s MoU needs to be updated so that Parliament can ensure that the Government are acting appropriately in the intelligence and security space at all times.

I find it appalling that the Government continue to oppose this amendment. It is hardly controversial. There is no reason to oppose it unless one wants there to be less independent oversight, less transparency and less accountability in relation to classified intelligence and security. Is that really what the Government want? Would they rather keep any problems behind closed doors? If so, we should be very afraid. This is a matter of grave concern. I therefore support this amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Commons reason given for disagreeing to Lords Amendment 22 is:

“Because the law already makes sufficient provision in relation to donations to political parties”.


Yet we have heard that the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Electoral Commission have made it quite clear that they do not believe the current law makes sufficient provision for that. I remind the noble Lord that the Committee on Standards in Public Life and the Electoral Commission, like the Intelligence and Security Committee, are part of the structure of constitutional safeguards in our politics. They are there to remind the Government how the rules need to be kept. A wise Government should accept that advice. When they do not accept it, Parliament should insist that they do.

National Security Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

I beg to disagree and am happy to offer humility. I note that recently the Labour Party returned a donation from a Mr Ian Rosenblatt which it decided was inappropriate. All credit to it. It happens regularly. This is not a political issue; this a cross-political matter. As I say, every donation is listed, so there is 100% transparency. I welcome my noble friend the Minister’s proposals, which I think are extremely sensible and helpful to this argument.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

We on these Benches very much welcome the concessions that the Government have made. I disagree with the rather overoptimistic interpretation of where we are from the noble Lord, Lord Leigh. In the last exchanges, the Minister said that the National Security Bill was about national security and not about donations to political parties, but donations to political parties from foreign powers are a matter of national security.

Indeed, in the last Commons debate on this, a number of rather distinguished Conservatives intervened to say how strongly they supported the amendment as put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, on the last occasion. I recall Sir Jeremy Wright saying that he found it “very difficult to disagree” with anything in the amendment. He is currently on the ISC and was previously a member of the Committee on Standards in Public Life when it was writing its report on public finance.

I have just read a paper on political finance that the Institute for Government has just published. That stresses how rapidly the context is moving and how the law needs to adjust to cope with that. It particularly stresses the extension of overseas voting rights to British citizens who have been resident abroad for a very long time, many of them dual nationals. Checking on where the ultimate source is for those things is going to be extremely difficult and probably impossible, but political parties should be on their guard against undue influence and the suggestions the Government are now making perhaps will help political parties to take further moves in that direction

I was also struck by the speech that David Davis made in the Commons last week about a donor to the Conservative Party who had given £750,000—not a modest donor, even by the terms of the noble Lord, Lord Leigh—who had spoken openly about buying influence and “access capitalism” as part of what he expected. This was a dual national whose fortune appears to have come largely from contracts within a number of post-Soviet states.

There is a problem there, and it requires investigation, and I welcome the Government’s acceptance that there is a problem and that it needs further investigation, and we look forward to reading the text of the amendment that the Government will move in the Commons and to the further work that they will do then—we hope in co-operation with other parties—to last beyond the next election. This is an area where we need to have electoral rules that are agreed by all the participants.