National Security Bill

Rosie Winterton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention on this very point. This is an area of great interest, primarily because of the type of cases we have seen. There is no question about that. I am afraid I have been subject to too many examples of cases of this nature. I am more than happy to speak to him and others about this. We need to get the approach right, and we will. People do move forward and change in life, but that is a separate issue. As was mentioned earlier, currently we are trying to address specific lacunae.

This Bill will amend the Serious Crime Act 2007 to better protect those in the security and intelligence agencies and the Ministry of Defence when discharging vital national security functions. It will also enable more effective joined-up working with international partners to improve not only our operational agility, which my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) has already touched on, but how we can be flexible going forward to address the changing landscape of threats.

It is worth remembering that things and situations can change for the better, as well as for the worse. Some of the UK’s closest allies today are countries with whom we have fought wars in the past, and we regularly develop new tools to keep us safe. The point is that none of this happens by chance. We should all reflect that when the Berlin wall fell back in 1989, some people thought that liberal democracy had won and history as we knew it then was at an end, yet this year, as we all know, Russia launched an unprovoked war against a neighbour.

It is right that we are vigilant, and we have to be vigilant every day, all the time. We cannot think in terms of just keeping up—we have to be several steps ahead. That is why the Bill is state-agnostic, but we need to be ready to face threats from wherever they may emanate, and the threat landscape is changing.

Keeping our country safe is not exclusively a matter for Government. It is also a matter for us as legislators. It is vital to come together on these measures and, as I have said several times, the measures in the Bill were drawn up after extensive consultation. They will mean that our courageous law enforcement and intelligence agencies will have the powers they need to keep us safe. We will have the ability to bring those who mean us harm to justice and, at the same time, to evolve and respond in an agile way to those threats. I urge the whole House to send a clear message to our adversaries that we will put the safety of the British people first by getting behind the Bill. I commend it to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the shadow Home Secretary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

There is a very strong case for having the same independent commissioner to cover espionage and terrorism. That is obviously a matter that the Home Secretary would need to consider, but clearly, especially with the STPIMs and the TPIMs, there are overlapping issues that it would make sense for the same framework and the same independent reviewer to cover. My understanding is that at the moment the independent reviewer covers only terrorism legislation and that the provisions of this Bill will not be within their scope. It would be very easy to amend the Bill—I hope it would receive cross-party support—to allow either the same independent reviewer or a parallel independent reviewer to look at espionage legislation. That would also allow for ongoing review of whatever changes we end up concluding are needed to the Official Secrets Act 1989. Again, there will be an important need for further review to make sure that we have the right measures to protect our security and support the public interest. We can cover our many other issues with the Bill in Committee. We look forward to those exchanges and to having further discussions directly with Ministers.

I am conscious that other Members with great expertise in this area want to contribute to the debate, so I will conclude simply by saying that at a time when across Europe we are all coping with the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia, and supporting Ukraine’s immense bravery in standing up and responding to this appalling Russian threat; at a time when we have seen hostile state activity not just from Russia but, as the director general of MI5 has said, from countries such as China and Iran; and at a time when we all know we need to stand up for our democracy, historic freedoms, liberties and democratic values, I hope that we will be able to come together to support our national security, and continue to defend our democracy and democratic values.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee, Dr Julian Lewis.