National Security Bill

Theresa Villiers Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Julian Lewis]

It is clear from the opening contributions of both Front Benchers that there is a considerable degree of common ground on this legislation, and I would like to congratulate both of them on the way they have made their presentations. The Intelligence and Security Committee strongly welcomes the National Security Bill. The Committee has long called for reform of the Official Secrets Acts regime and highlighted the grave dangers posed by hostile state actors to the UK’s national security. Most recently, as we have heard, the ISC’s Russia report of 2020 made it clear that the Official Secrets Acts regime was outdated and not fit for purpose. It recommended that new legislation be urgently introduced to provide new tools to help our law enforcement and intelligence community, who work tirelessly to defend the UK’s national security.

The Bill modernises the Official Secrets Acts espionage regime and creates important new offences such as sabotage, foreign interference and assisting a foreign intelligence service. As recommended in the ISC’s Russia report, the Bill also creates the long-awaited foreign influence registration scheme. That must be a cause of particular satisfaction to the Minister for Security, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat), who strongly promoted that policy during his very successful term as Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Together, these changes will increase the transparency of those threats and help to make the UK a more difficult operating environment for foreign intelligence services to act. They will help to deter hostile foreign powers from undertaking harmful activities and disrupt them at a much earlier stage. There have been several justified concerns about the way in which the Bill was handled, but after considerable scrutiny, especially in Committee and in the upper House, it has been greatly improved.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

I very much agree with everything my right hon. Friend has said. Does he agree that we will need to look at further reform of the Official Secrets Act 1989 in order to complete the excellent reform process in this Bill?

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend, a fellow member of the Committee, because that is one of the points I am about to come to and it is good to have it reinforced by someone with her status and experience.

We were very engaged in the legislation and three members of the Committee formed part of the Commons Bill Committee. Since then, the Committee has considered classified information on behalf of Parliament from the Government and held constructive sessions with the intelligence community to explain the rationale behind important parts of the Bill, such as clause 31 as it now is—it was previously clause 28. We have focused on ensuring that the Bill is as effective as possible in providing the intelligence community and law enforcement with the required tools while incorporating the necessary safeguards.