National Security and Investment Bill (First sitting)

Mark Garnier Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

[Peter Grant]

Q I think this is the first time I have had to stand further away from somebody to speak to them. Thank you for your attendance today. We have heard a lot this morning about the threat from China and a bit about the threat from Russia. There may well be other hostile states out there that have their eyes on us. There are certainly hostile non-state enterprises that have their eyes on us. Is the Bill wide-ranging enough to allow the Government to respond to all those different kinds of threat? Does it allow enough flexibility to respond to the threats that we have not yet discovered, that we do not know about or have not yet been invented?

Sir Richard Dearlove: Obviously, the threat scenarios shift and change. I think I accept that. Clearly, at the moment, what is driving our considerations is mainly China, but you are right. It applies to others—Iran, North Korea—and there may be other states.

A good example in the past, not a current one, is Pakistan. The Pakistani bomb built by A. Q. Khan—the Khan Research Laboratories—was created by sending 600 Pakistani PhD students to do separate bits of research in different universities around the world. That is the origin of our thinking on counter-proliferation, and it is another very clear example of where you have to have control from the security services. Now, I believe, we register PhDs in relation to the nationalities studying in certain areas.

The Bill should be able to accommodate a changing set of scenarios, and you are right to say that non-governmental organisations can become problematic. The proliferation issue, whereby Khan was trying to sell his technology to other countries, happened around the time of my retirement and the disarmament of Libya. That was all based on Pakistani technology, but there was a commercial network run by a family of Swiss engineers called the Tinners. This is an example of how dangerous things can be. The Tinner network had several semi-clandestine factories dotted around the world that were all making different parts for nuclear centrifuges. Okay, that network was eventually dismantled by the UK and the Americans, but the problem of national security goes into some pretty odd areas, and you are right to identify those as not necessarily just being China or, in the past, Russia. There are still aspirations on the part of certain powers to break the non-prefoliation treaty and become nuclear weapons states.

[Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)]

Q It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. Sir Richard, I want to ask some questions about how the Bill and the mechanisms that make it operate cut across certain other parts of Government Departments. That is clearly looking at how we can scrutinise investments coming into the UK, but we also have a department with respect to export control. Broadly speaking, this is quite a similar type of problem. Although it is not necessarily looking at intellectual assets, it certainly looks at the ability of countries that are buying certain things to reverse-engineer, and therefore to try to steal our intellectual property in that way.

I am interested in your view on how the department that is proposed to be set up within BEIS to scrutinise this cuts across the Export Control Joint Unit, which is obviously a combination involving four Government Departments. Is that complementing it or contradicting it? Can they cut across each other? How do you see those two departments working together? They ultimately have the same aim, although they come from slightly different objectives.

Sir Richard Dearlove: I cannot give you a detailed answer to that question. From my experience, I would say that on some of these issues the co-ordination of Government Departments is one of the really big challenges, particularly when they ultimately have different objectives. The sophistication of our co-ordination mechanisms in the UK has not been highly developed, so we have run into problems in the past. My suggestion would be that this be given forethought rather than afterthought—that there is some arrangement to avoid those clashes of departmental interest.

[Mark Garnier]

Q I would not want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like you would suggest that this Committee urge the Government to look at the possibility of developing relationships between those two departments, so that they are not contradicting each other.

Sir Richard Dearlove: Yes, because they could be pulling in different directions. You have to have some degree of co-ordination. It is always better if these things are anticipated and something is put in place in advance, rather than scrabbling around to sort it out afterwards. I have seen that happen a lot.

[The Chair]

We are back to facing the front now, Sir Richard. Most members of the Committee wish to speak and I want to get everyone in, but I will have to cut them off at 11.25. Keep questions as succinct as possible.