National Security (State Threats) Bill

Pete Wishart Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 6th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Mr Forster]

I am pleased that, for once, we have cross-party consensus on an issue.

However, it has been more than a year since Jonathan Hall KC first recommended the powers contained in the Bill to tackle state-backed and state-linked threats. The Government and this Parliament have been too slow to listen to his concerns.

The Liberal Democrats welcome the fact that the legislation creates the power for state-backed entities to be designated under the National Security Act 2023. On Second Reading, my Liberal Democrat colleagues, including my hon. Friends the Members for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson) and for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), raised strong concerns that the offences in the Bill might inadvertently capture the activities of humanitarian workers. Tackling state threats and protecting those who provide vital assistance and support to some of the planet’s most vulnerable people are not and should never be mutually exclusive. I therefore highly commend the amendments tabled by my noble Friend Baroness Northover, as well as by Lord Anderson, in the other place, which we are now considering. They will protect those who carry out humanitarian work, which, as colleagues have said, we never intended the Bill to capture. I am pleased and relieved that the Government are supporting the amendments.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and Kinross-shire) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Member not think that this shows that we do not properly consider the inadvertent effects of the legislation we pass in this place? We have had useful amendments introduced in the House of Lords, but surely when we are drafting legislation on issues as important as this, we should get it right in the first place. We should not have to rely on hastily drawn up amendments in a Bill’s last stages to put it right.