National Security

Yvette Cooper Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement from the Minister for Security. I know this is an issue that he personally takes very seriously. It is the first job of every Government to defend our national security from hostile states who wish to do our country harm and who strain every sinew to do so with the most sophisticated technology and resources, and from malign actors and extremists, both here and abroad, who want to do us harm and undermine both our democracy and everything we stand for. We pay tribute to the remarkable work of our intelligence and security services who work so hard to keep us safe.

I welcome the Minister’s announcement. We will support the taskforce and its work to defend democracy against a wide range of threats. I welcome the work on physical threats. We remember with great sadness our lost friends Jo Cox and David Amess. Can the Minister clarify that the taskforce will work on how to protect all our democratic institutions against foreign interference? Will it look at cyber-security and, in particular, the way the Government have been operating? While I welcome the seriousness of the statement and the seriousness with which the Minister has delivered it, he will know that it is a far cry from the way successive Cabinet Ministers have responded, and from the lack of seriousness and the carelessness and complacency that we have seen on some of these cyber-security issues.

Conservative Ministers were all warned in guidance after the 2019 election:

“You should not use your personal devices, email and communications applications for Government business at any classification”.

Yet many of them at the highest level ignored it. If we take the last Prime Minister but one, who left office just a few months ago, the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) took a trip without officials at the height of the Skripal crisis to a villa in Italy described by locals as the “Russian mountain” where he met ex-KGB agent Alexander Lebedev. He did not declare it to Foreign Office officials on his return and says he does not remember what was discussed. He had a guest with him, but he travelled home alone and has never said who the guest was. He reportedly took his phone with the same number that he still did not change even when he became Prime Minister and sent private messages on it. If this is a new era of defending democracy and security, can the Minister tell us whether the former Prime Minister took his personal phone with him on his Italy party weekend? Who was his guest and what action is now being taken to prevent that kind of thing ever happening again?

Can the Minister tell us, too, whether that Prime Minister’s successor, the next Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) used her private phone for Government business, including contacting other international leaders? If she did, what is being done to prevent that ever happening again?

There are now questions about the current Prime Minister: he reappointed to the Cabinet as the Minister without Portfolio the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), who was sacked after a leak investigation over Huawei; and he reappointed the Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), just six days after she was sacked over a security lapse and who yesterday admitted she had used her personal email not just once but six times in the space of 43 days, all apparently because she could not make her Government IT work properly or did not have it with her. That is not adequate. And we still do not have any answer to the serious allegations about potential leaks when the Home Secretary was Attorney General, which include a briefing to The Daily Telegraph in January about an injunction that the Attorney General was seeking against the BBC in a security service case, which was then used in court to argue against the injunction. Again, if this is a new era, can the Security Minister give us a categoric response as to whether the Home Secretary when she was Attorney General—or her adviser—was involved in that leak?

The Minister will know, too, that there have been briefings and stories around with national security implications. Does he agree how incredibly unhelpful it is to our security services to have national security issues briefed in a way that appears to be about putting party interest before the national interest, and that it does not serve democracy if all these issues are not taken seriously by the person most in charge of defending our national security—the Prime Minister, followed by the Home Secretary he appoints?

Yes, we will support the Minister’s taskforce, but he will need to show us that there is some kind of grip at the heart of this Government on attitudes towards security. When we have one Prime Minister who puts security at risk to go to Italy for a party, another who allegedly used a personal phone for contacting Government Ministers, and a third who is defending his predecessors and reappointing as Home Secretary someone described on the Government’s own Back Benches as “leaky”, that undermines our national security. Our national security is too important for this kind of chaos, so what will the Minister do to ensure that the Government get a grip?

[Tom Tugendhat]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for her very kind comments on joining the taskforce and assisting with it, because this is clearly not just a matter for the Government. As she correctly set forward, all of us in this House have responsibilities and the potential to be influenced in different ways. That is why so much of the legislation going through, on which the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch) is being incredibly co-operative, such as the foreign influence registration scheme legislation, will help us to address many of those challenges. The right hon. Lady will also be aware that the National Security Bill, of which the Opposition have been so supportive in so many areas, will be important in enabling us to challenge some of these different issues.

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right to highlight the fact that we all have such responsibility. Sadly, this is not just a UK matter. Sadly, it is not even a single Government or a single party matter. The reality is that we have seen the intrusion or attempted intrusion into different aspects of all our communications at different points over many, many years. This issue has grown in importance.

I am not going to comment on individual cases, because as the right hon. Lady rightly said, that would be absolutely unhelpful. It would be completely wrong of me to use, for any private party advantage, comments on anything that the agencies have told me in private. She herself has been extremely gracious in accepting briefings on Privy Council terms, and she has, completely correctly, guarded the privacy of them. I know that she has responded to those in exactly the appropriate way, so I place on record my enormous thanks to her for her extreme co-operation in what is fundamentally a matter of national security.

I will bring forward further proposals on the taskforce and would welcome the right hon. Lady’s thoughts, because there is an awful lot that we must do together. Sadly, the next few years are likely to be more challenging than the last. The indications are not great, as she knows. We need to work together. This is not about one party or one Government; it is about defending the British people’s right to choose their future democratically and freely, without the influence of foreign states.