Papers Relating to the Home Secretary

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Gary Sambrook

Tuesday 8th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The Labour party has set out a whole series of policies, both on what needs to be done to get neighbourhood police back on the beat—I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman’s party has cut 6,000 neighbourhood police from our streets over the last five years—and with the measures to set out a National Crime Agency unit to take on the criminal gangs who, unfortunately, the Conservative party has allowed to proliferate and set up a multimillion-pound criminal industry in the channel.

There is also a responsibility on the Government to maintain standards, including security standards. It is not just about what happened before the Home Secretary’s breach; since she was reappointed, a Home Office review has found that she had, in fact, sent Government documents to her personal IT seven times in six weeks, which is quite a rate. There have also been reports that when she was Attorney General she was involved in not one but several leak inquiries, including one involving briefing to a newspaper about a security service case. Notably, that briefing was later quoted in court against the Government and made it harder for them to get the injunction they were seeking. Another case involved the leaking of legal advice on the Northern Ireland protocol and another involved the early leaking of a court judgment.

It has also been reported that both the Cabinet Office and the Cabinet Secretary advised against this appointment. Obviously, this is serious. The Home Secretary is in charge of security and has to show leadership on this issue. She has to be trusted by the intelligence and security agencies, and by senior police officers, not to be careless with information. She has to show that she takes security and standards seriously, because that is what she has to expect of others.

So this is an exceptional situation, which is why we have laid this motion. If the Prime Minister does have confidence in the Home Secretary not to be careless with public safety or with issues around security, he should release the facts. What other security lapses by the Home Secretary was the Prime Minister informed about before he reappointed her? Did he ask whether there had been other lapses in the Home Office or as Attorney General before he reappointed her? What information was he given about the other reported leak inquiries and whether she might have had a role in them? Was he advised against reappointing the Home Secretary on security and standards grounds? If the advice and the information he was given was all fine, tell us, show us. If it was not, start explaining why on earth the security and public safety of our country is put in careless hands.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

Talking about “careless hands” is an appropriate way of starting this intervention, because before 2019 the then Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), actually cast doubt on our security services by questioning the intelligence on the Salisbury poisoning. Did every Labour MP not try to make him Prime Minister of this country? Is the real threat to our national security not Members on the Labour Benches?

[Yvette Cooper]

Members will know that, at the time of the Skripal crisis, I disagreed with some of the words used by the right hon. Member for Islington North, and I was very clear about that in this House and about the importance of backing our security services. However, I would say to the hon. Member that I have a lot more concerns about his right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, who, at the height of the Skripal crisis, chose to go to a place called the Russian Mountain, to a villa in Italy, where he met an ex-KGB agent without his officials. He took a guest, but he did not report who that guest was. He did not report the meeting with the ex-KGB agent to the Department when he returned, nor can he remember whether any Government business was discussed. I suggest to the hon. Member that he should be extremely worried about his right hon. Friend’s careless approach to security and to our national security.