Toby Perkins
Main Page: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)Department Debates - View all Toby Perkins's debates with the Ministry of Defence
(1 year ago)
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James Heappey
I am happy to make that undertaking. As we conclude our internal reviews, we will make sure that if there is further information to offer to the House, we do so. Similarly, I have made a number of commitments to offer assurance through written answers, and we will make sure that those are shared with the Library.
Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The arrest of a fairly junior 21-year-old National Guardsman in relation to this leak begs the question of who has access to top secret information. Pentagon officials say that thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people would see this kind of document. The Minister is right to say that it is a matter for the Americans who has access to their documents, but on the basis of this worrying development, what reassurance can he give us about the level of seniority that British information shared with the Americans goes to?
James Heappey
We certainly draw no boundaries based on seniority around the information that is shared bilaterally—UK-US—or within the Five Eyes, NATO or elsewhere. Information flows to where it is needed. An analyst who is the expert on a particular Russian capability might be a relatively junior non-commissioned officer, but they might be the best in the world at that area of expertise, so rank is probably not the right boundary to set.
But what we are very careful about—I think the United States and other Five Eyes partners are similarly clear about this—is that information goes to where it is needed, not where it is necessarily wanted. That level of compartmentalisation gives enormous assurance. Leaks such as this one are exceptional, rather than the norm, and it is important that we put this—no matter how grave it appears to be—in the context of the vast amount of information that is shared between the UK and the US and within the Five Eyes routinely, and which is never, ever seen by any eyes other than those for which it was intended.