National Security (State Threats) Bill

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and John Hayes

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I am grateful to be called. I welcome the Minister to her place. It is a great job—I enjoyed it, and I have no doubt that she will, too. Though she may have shorter fingernails at the end of the day than she started with, it is worth it for the opportunity to serve with some of the finest people in our Government. The intelligence services and the police that she will be working with are truly exceptional, and it is worth putting on the record the gratitude of the whole House for what they do.

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the death of my friend Jo Cox, and many of us have been wearing white roses in memory of her. When we last met, Jo and I were in one of the Committee rooms working on a report together entitled, “The Cost of Doing Nothing”. What we were talking about in that report was the action in Syria, the way in which the extremism in that country had torn it apart and how we had not acted in ways that we felt we should have done. I welcome very much what the Government are doing today, because they are demonstrating another response: they are not willing to stand aside and watch as the country gets torn apart in different ways. I will make criticisms in a moment, but I would first just like to place on the record my gratitude for the way in which the Government have approached this legislation. I agree with the broad sweep of it; I just wish they had given it a little bit more time, and I understand that the Minister will almost certainly agree with me.

Unusually, I would like to praise the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards). He made an absolutely outstanding speech and spoke brilliantly, not just for this whole House but for the country, on the threat to a particular community, which is actually a threat to us all. It is absolutely true that in too many ways the Jewish community are the canary in the coalmine of any society. When we see Jews under threat, when we see Jewish homes frightened, when we see Jewish sites vandalised—as sadly we are seeing too much—we know what is coming, and what is coming is not pretty.

But let us get back to the Bill because, while it is welcome, it makes that tragic error that we often make in this place—I know we made this error in our time as well—which is to seek the rapid answer rather than the complete one. In doing so, the Bill misses very slightly the challenge that is bound to come, because I am afraid that we do know what will come. By the way, I will no doubt support the Minister when she decides to use the powers, because she will be well advised by the teams we both know so well, but we know that when an organisation is designated, it will lawyer up, go to court and challenge her, and we will find ourselves going around the houses.

This is where I confess a failure of my own. One of the organisations that I sought to work on was the Islamic Centre of England. That organisation has the same connection to Islam that Christian organisations that claim the crusader cross, and that far-right baggage, have to the church of Christ. Let us be absolutely clear: it is a vile political organisation dressing itself up as a religious movement—there is nothing religious about it all—yet that organisation enjoys charitable status, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) identified, and sadly, despite irregularities in its business and the way that it operates, it is still able to operate.

Let me list a couple more such organisations. Darul Hikma has praised Qasem Soleimani, the late head of the IRGC, whose death is certainly not mourned here, and it praised 7 October and the IRGC. The Abrar Islamic Foundation has praised Hezbollah and Hamas, and has run antisemitic and homophobic events. There are also the Ahl al-Bait Society Scotland—sadly, this reaches across the whole of the United Kingdom—Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission and Al-Ikhlas. They have all run, in various different ways, sessions praising the IRGC and supportive of Qasem Soleimani, which is entirely against not just the interests of the United Kingdom, but very particularly the interests of the Muslin community in the United Kingdom. Let us be absolutely clear about what the natural consequence of this will be: it will stir up sectarian and religious hatred. As the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley mentioned, we are first seeing the effect in the Jewish community—of course we are—but we all know where this will lead.

There are those of us who value all communities in our society, as I know the Home Secretary does, and who want Islam treated exactly the same as any religion. I think we Catholics are the only ones who are still lawfully discriminated against, but given that that excludes us only from the monarchy, I think we can be pretty comfortable with our position. Those of us who want to see all religions treated equally know that we simply cannot have poison poured into a few ears and pretend that does not happen.

I mentioned PressTV today, as well as the vile rumours being spread about the Prime Minister and others by Russia Today, among others, to show that we need to be conscious of what we are dealing with. Let us be quite clear: this is not a freedom of speech issue. This is no more a freedom of speech issue than the invasion of a hostile army is a right-to-roam issue. This is fundamentally about the deliberate actions of a state organisation—either the Russian, Chinese or Iranian state—to undermine us and tear us apart.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. Many people say that he was the second best Conservative Security Minister, and I tend to agree with that. Might he continue to build the bridges that have already been formed across the House during this debate by inviting the Minister, when she winds up, to re-examine the charitable status of a whole range of organisations that have intimate connections with the Chinese, Iranian or Russian state, as a parallel exercise to the consideration of this legislation? That would seem to me to be a sensible move that we could agree today.

[Tom Tugendhat]

My right hon. Friend, demonstrating why he leads the list of Security Ministers past and present, pre-empts me; I was coming to China. Here I declare various interests. I am a patron of United Against Nuclear Iran, an organisation that campaigns, just as the Government do, and as everybody does, against Iran having nuclear weapons. I am not sure that it is a contentious organisation to be a member of; I hope it is universally supported. Also, I am sanctioned by the Chinese, Russian and Iranian states. I want to highlight some of the issues that we are dealing with that have not quite come through in the debate so far.

Let us be honest: this Bill is shaped around the IRGC. It is shaped around a state organisation—a part of the Iranian constitutional structure—that is behaving like a terrorist group, because it is the sponsor of terrorism around the world. However, it is not alone; for example, we know that the so-called little green men who operated in Crimea were actually part of the Russian armed forces. There are Russian groups, such as the Wagner Group, that act as state-sponsored terrorist organisations in countries such as Mali. I am looking at the Home Secretary, here: I hope that those groups will be encapsulated in the Bill. It certainly reads as though it will cover them.

Let us look a little more directly at one question. There is an organisation that should be captured in this Bill but I suspect will not be: TikTok. The Home Secretary may wonder why I raise TikTok, so let me be quite clear. There are many social media platforms around the world, and I am not going to pretend that many of them are any better than a cesspit. They tend to encourage various forms of hatred. As an aside, when I meet people who have posted on those platforms in the flesh at constituency events, it turns out that they are absolutely charming people who would never be quite so rude to one’s face, but they are utterly vile online. That is quite remarkable, but there we go. I mention TikTok for this reason: other social media platforms respond to the triggers involved in advertising. Effectively, they respond to the interests of their shareholders. They may or may not like the product, but we know what they are doing. Unlike other platforms, which are edited for profit, TikTok is edited for effect. That is the difference.

Let us look at the TikTok effect after 7 October, for example. It did not push a particular ideology. It did not try to tell us, as the Soviets did in the 1920s, that more tractors were being produced in Minsk than in Manchester, or wherever. It does not seek to tell us that something is better; it seeks to tell us that there is nothing there—that it is all about hatred and division. It seeks to promote a horrific outcome that some people want, which is effectively a destroyed, torn-apart state that is hostile to itself. I am afraid that is what TikTok is doing, and not by accident. Its algorithm is controlled by the Ministry of State Security, through the Chinese Communist party, in Shenzhen. It is not based anywhere else. That algorithm effectively acts as an editor—just as a newspaper editor would. It quite deliberately promotes not one side, but both sides. If one side is promoted, we may get persuasion, but we still get unity. If both sides are promoted, we get division, anger, hostility and rage. I do not think that the Bill touches on that issue, but I urge the Minister to have a look at it in months to come.

There was a time, 20 or 30 years ago, when we would have said that a state-sponsored organisation was fundamentally human and needed people. It would have needed agents—someone to hire the car, rent the room or whatever it happened to be—but that is not true today. These organisations do not need to cross the border; they can write the code, programme the algorithm, watch the fire start, and shape it. Sadly, we have seen such division inspired in the Home Secretary’s own community, between Indian-origin and Pakistani-origin communities. We have seen the same fire being lit, not because China particularly sides with one side or the other—it does not—but because it just wants hostility in the UK, and this issue is a dividing line. When we look at the designation of organisations, we must remember that those organisations include businesses.

I support this Bill, and I am very grateful to the Minister and the Home Secretary for bringing it to the House. I very much envy the Minister her place, and I am sure that she will enjoy her role.

Water Supply and Housing Targets: West Kent

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and John Hayes

Tuesday 24th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

Tom Tugendhat will move the motion and the Minister will respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge and the Minister. I have had notice that one Member will intervene, which is fine. Unfortunately there will not be an opportunity, Tom, to wind up. That is the custom in these short debates.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered water supply and housing targets in west Kent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John—not for the first time or, I certainly hope, the last. What is less pleasurable is having no water coming out of your taps. Sadly, that could be the reality for more than 13,000 new homes in Tonbridge and Malling if the Government get their way. Planning decisions in the community are, I think we would all agree, best left to local councillors. After all, it is right that those elected at the most local level have responsibility for shaping the place they live in and represent. However, this Government’s planning policies are taking us away from that principle.

Since the general election, we have seen mandatory housing targets reintroduced and increased enormously. They are up by 34% in Tonbridge and Malling and by 63% in Sevenoaks district. Then, of course, there is the grey-belt policy. I have been getting used to Green party and Labour MPs going through the voting Lobbies and making things easier for development to merge towns and villages and create one single, homogeneous, blended whole and for development on previously protected grey-belt land. However, water seems not to have been considered. There are many aspects of water locally that I could focus on, including the excellent work done in Edenbridge on water quality by NEDRA—the New Edenbridge District Residents’ Association—but in the interests of time, I will focus my comments today on water supply only.

This is now a very salient issue for those of us in west Kent. Although Tunbridge Wells has been the worst affected, towns and villages such as Tonbridge, Edenbridge and across the north downs have lost water supply this winter and last winter. Why is that? It is because there is not enough water in the system to supply houses in our area. I am aware that the Water Industry Act 1991 in effect places a legal requirement on water suppliers to ensure that running water appears when the tap is turned on. Although South East Water is not very good at doing that right now, we also need to focus on the future. That means asking fundamental questions. Where is the water—now and in the future? Do housing targets accurately reflect the water infrastructure in west Kent?

I will focus on two authorities in the area that I represent: Tonbridge and Malling borough council and Sevenoaks district council. I emphasise to the Minister that they are two of the very best run councils in the whole country and have been for a number of years. We are very lucky to have brilliant people at both councils, and both are trying to do the right thing for future development and adopt a local plan. In both cases, however, that has been delayed from 2024 because of the Government changing planning policy. It is not the fault of either council that they do not have an adopted local plan; that is because of tinkering and meddling by the Government and, historically, the Planning Inspectorate.

British Indian Ocean Territory

Debate between Tom Tugendhat and John Hayes

Wednesday 26th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

The hon. Lady will be aware, because I have been on the record on this, that I was entirely critical of the beginning of those negotiations when I was in government.

[Sir John Hayes]

I am grateful to the former Security Minister for giving way. I put this question to him:

“How can the base—which serves as an indispensable naval, air, and intelligence asset—be more secure under the sovereignty of another nation, rather than under our own?”

Not my words, but the words of another former Security Minister, Lord West.

[Tom Tugendhat]

As my right hon. Friend knows, the noble Lord, a former Labour Security Minister—and, of course, a former First Sea Lord—knows well that those bases occupy a crucial part not just in our airbases, with strategic reach into the middle east and south-east Asia, but in the intelligence collection business that sadly we need to engage in to keep our people safe. The idea that we should hand over those bases in order somehow to satisfy an advisory ruling is, I am afraid, wrong.