Commons Chamber
Wednesday 17 June 2026
The House met at half past Eleven o’clock
Prayers
[Mr Speaker in the Chair]
The Secretary of State was asked—
Let me begin by congratulating all the Welsh recipients of King’s birthday honours, which were announced over the weekend—particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden).
We are doing everything we can to tackle the cost of living. We are increasing wages faster than inflation, creating thousands of jobs, helping people into work, and increasing pensions and universal credit, and we are going even further to ease the pressure on families this summer, because tackling the cost of living is the core purpose of this UK Labour Government.
The Great British summer savings scheme announced by the Chancellor will have a positive impact on families across my constituency of Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock. More people will be able to save money while taking up opportunities to visit businesses and contribute to the local economy. Can the Secretary of State update the House on the impact that these measures will have in Wales?
My hon. Friend is right. What matters for families is not just getting by, but being able to enjoy time together without worrying about the next bill. The Great British summer savings scheme is cutting VAT on, for instance, children’s meals, tickets for cinemas and theatres and other attractions, and we are cutting the cost of the weekly shop by lowering tariffs on more than 100 staple products. All of that will ease pressure on household budgets, support parents during school holidays, and back Welsh businesses.
This Government removed the two child cap, which took 5,000 children in my constituency out of poverty. Will the Secretary of State please explain how that is helping children in Wales?
As my hon. Friend knows from his constituency experience, poverty scars children’s lives and life chances. That is why we announced the child poverty strategy, including the removal of the two child limit, which will benefit nearly 70,000 children right across Wales. We have also increased universal credit for 320,000 families in Wales and raised the minimum and living wages, and, as I mentioned earlier, we are slashing VAT on days out to help families not just get by but enjoy the summer, as everyone should. Meanwhile, what can Welsh families expect from the new minority Plaid Government in Wales? Well, the First Minister has announced a steering group, and has promised to come up with a plan at some point soon. That is the difference between Labour and Plaid: we act and they talk.
Funnily enough, in the first 100 days of this Labour UK Government the Prime Minister cut winter fuel payments for vulnerable pensioners, whereas in the first 100 days of the Plaid Cymru Welsh Government, an extra £55 million is being invested in free childcare for parents. Does the Secretary of State concede that, unlike Labour, Plaid Cymru is focusing on making a difference to people’s lives and lowering the cost of living for households in Wales? Actions speak louder than words.
I have to say that it has been rather amusing to hear the new minority Plaid Cymru Welsh Government bragging about what they have done since the election. They have started a review, they have set up a steering group, they are working on a plan for another plan, they have set a target, and they are thinking about things. Meanwhile, this Government have invested £134 million in the Cardiff capital region, approved seven new youth hubs across Wales, launched the summer savings scheme to cut the cost of living, announced a new ban on social media to keep our children safe, given a pay rise to over 3,000 armed forces personnel in Wales, and expanded the Valour programme for veterans. That is the difference between us and Plaid: we are getting on with the job.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
A few months ago I met farmers in Merthyr Cynog, in Brecon and Radnorshire, who warned me about the growing pressures that they were facing. Since then, Trump’s reckless war with Iran has sent fertiliser prices soaring by up to 45% and red diesel prices by up to 30%. Does the Secretary of State accept that unless urgent action is taken, higher costs for Welsh farmers will ultimately mean higher food prices for families across Wales and the UK?
As the hon. Lady will know, red diesel has been slashed to its lowest rate for over 20 years. We have protected farming budgets, all the trade deals that we have signed have helped farmers, and we are looking at all the measures that we can introduce to tackle the cost of living and the impact of the Iran war—in which we did not want to get involved, and we decided not to get involved, despite the protestations of some parties in this House. We are making sure that the economic impact is mitigated.
Creating high quality jobs across Wales is a priority for this Labour Government, which is why we are backing major growth sectors across the country. We have delivered £2.5 billion for small modular reactors at Wylfa, supporting at least 3,000 jobs. Alongside that, new AI growth zones in north and south Wales are expected to create more than 8,000 jobs.
The UK Labour Government are investing across the UK in initiatives that are creating jobs and fuelling economic growth, such as Parkwood Springs and Special Melted Products in my constituency of Sheffield Brightside and Hillsborough. Will the Minister update the House on the difference that UK Government growth funding is making in Wales?
The UK Government growth funding has been transformational across Wales, delivering jobs in local communities across all parts of the country. Last week, we announced £134 million for the Cardiff capital region, which has already created 7,000 jobs and is fast on its way to delivering 25,000 jobs for the region. This latest investment will help cement Wales’s place at the forefront of technology and innovation, helping even more businesses to thrive and grow the Welsh economy.
Universities in Wales and Scotland are engines of job creation through the crucial role they play in fostering innovation. Will the Minister please update the House on what the UK Government are doing to fuel innovation in Welsh universities?
Universities are a core part of our industrial strategy, as countries that lead in research and innovation also lead in growth and investment. Welsh universities play a unique role right across Wales by building and investing in our industries and businesses of the future. As a Minister in the Wales Office, I am bringing all the Welsh universities together in collaboration to help maximise R&D funding, deliver stronger results, and ensure that the impact reaches the communities that need it most.
I have repeatedly asked the Government to publish their assessment of Scotland’s nuclear potential, without success. Perhaps the Minister can help me in the meantime. What does she regard as the greatest benefit of the Wylfa site in Wales: the long term, skilled jobs, the local investment that it draws in, or the contribution to our energy security? Does she believe that Scotland would be able to share in the same benefits?
There are absolutely huge benefits right across Wales. Wylfa is expected to support 3,000 jobs across north Wales. This is a generational commitment to the future of clean energy right across the country.
Does the Minister agree that a strong and effective UK internal market is critical to creating jobs in Wales, and will she work with Cabinet colleagues to secure frictionless east west trade so that businesses in Wales and Northern Ireland can more easily supply each other in key sectors, such as manufacturing, food and construction?
Absolutely. Through collaboration and working together, we are creating tens of thousands of jobs right across Wales. Our Welsh freeports and investment zones have the potential to deliver at least 25,000 new jobs in Wales. Our generational commitment to modernise Welsh rail will bring 12,000 jobs in Wales. This is about a collaborative effort right across the United Kingdom to help and support Welsh communities, but also communities right across the UK.
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
Boarded up windows, derelict buildings and deserted towns are increasingly common on high streets in Wales, as highlighted by North Wales Live and its readers. Our hospitality sector is being hollowed out thanks to Plaid Cymru and the last Welsh Labour Government’s disastrous tourism tax. The Conservative and Unionist party believes that this tax should be urgently scrapped to support the approximately 150,000 people in Wales who are employed in this crucial sector. Does the Minister now regret her party’s decision to impose the tax, and will she join me in calling on the new Welsh Government to scrap it?
I will take no lectures from the Conservatives and the hon. Member when her party presided over completely unprecedented wage stagnation and businesses took blow after blow, with—to be specific—the worst wage growth performance of any decade since Napoleonic times. On our side of the House, the Chancellor announced just last week the great summer savings scheme, with a reduction of VAT from 20% to 5% over the summer to help families enjoy the summer and use hospitality venues. This will boost local spend and boost the local economy.
I call the Plaid Cymru Westminster group leader.
The Secretary of State had some cheek earlier, but Wales had 27 years of Labour and has had less than six weeks of a Plaid Cymru Government, so we have work to do, and we are getting on with it.
The Port Talbot steelworks fire caused huge damage, but not a single penny of Labour’s £2.5 billion steel fund has been guaranteed for steel in Wales. Instead, millions are being spent from this fund to support steel at Scunthorpe, leaving Welsh workers fearing they have been pushed aside. Will the Government stand up for Welsh interests and guarantee a fair share of the steel fund to all steel sites in Wales?
Our steel strategy will revitalise the UK steel sector, restoring domestic production, 50% of which will come from Wales, and securing supply for key sectors and national infrastructure. I really hope that the minority Plaid Welsh Government will support this work to support our Welsh steelworkers.
I am interested to hear the Minister’s response, but she is muddying the waters, because what she said does not relate to the steel fund. I am specifically talking about the steel fund and the contribution it will make to Wales; we know that that money is going to Scunthorpe.
On another matter, next week it will be a decade since the EU referendum, and the promised Brexit dividend is still a fantasy unicorn. The Welsh economy is at least £4 billion smaller and exports are down £1.1 billion. Over the same period, Northern Ireland—still in the single market, remember—has seen gross value added per head grow 20% faster than in Wales. We see the damage, and we know the solution. Wales, of course, is very much an exporting economy. Surely the Minister knows that the right thing to do by Wales and the rest of the UK is to rejoin the single market and the customs union.
I am proud that this Government are resetting our relations with European partners to improve our economic and security co operation following Brexit. The historic first UK EU summit last year marked that turning point, and striking a deal is good for bills, good for borders and good for jobs. Our focus is on driving that forward and delivering a very strong EU UK relationship.
I call the Chair of the Welsh Affairs Committee.
I thank the Minister for her responses. I want to raise the issue of young people not in education, employment or training. We know that the Conservatives failed our Welsh young people for 14 years, so I am really pleased that this Labour Government are investing £2.5 billion in the youth guarantee. How many Welsh young people will benefit from this scheme?
Far too many young people are not in education, employment or training, which is why we have committed to a youth guarantee to grant young people right across the UK, including Wales, the choice to learn or to earn, backed by £820 million of funding. This week, we announced seven more youth hubs for Wales, helping young people build critical skills and find jobs. Those measures will be life changing opportunities for young people, significantly reversing the increase we inherited from the Conservative party in the number of those not in education, employment or training.
Wales has a crucial role to play in our national security. Wales is home to a dynamic defence SME base, as well as major companies such as QinetiQ, BAE Systems, Airbus, General Dynamics and Thales. The increased defence budget will support thousands of jobs in communities across Wales, help to grow our economy and keep the UK safe.
In the King’s Speech, the Labour Government made it clear that our key priorities are national security, economic security and energy security. Those three priorities have one thing in common: the promise of jobs for communities across the whole UK. The defence growth deal stands to unlock some 50,000 new jobs across the UK, including 500 well paid skilled jobs in Wales. Will the Secretary of State tell the House how defence spending is having a positive impact in Wales?
The Welsh defence sector is central to the security of the United Kingdom. I am proud that our defence growth deal, backed by £50 million of UK Government investment, will transform our nation into a centre for defence innovation, creating highly skilled jobs and driving economic growth across the country. It has been a real pleasure to see at first hand the opportunities the defence sector is bringing to people and communities in Wales, such as the talented young local apprentices I met recently who are starting out on their careers at General Dynamics in Oakdale.
National security is the No. 1 priority of this UK Government, and businesses in Redditch are proud to support our armed forces. Does the Secretary of State agree with my assessment that, at this time of global uncertainty, it is more important than ever that parties across the House champion the value of our Union and our nations standing together against global threats?
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Government are undertaking the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war. We know that the increase creates not only a defence dividend but a Union dividend, too. It will boost prosperity, create high skilled jobs and strengthen security for working people in every corner of the UK, while at the same time bolstering the resilience of our defence industrial base. My hon. Friend is right to say that every nation and Government of the United Kingdom should stand together and play their part in our national security.
This Government have a NATO first approach, meaning that our strength is reinforced by global allies, so that, in an increasingly dangerous world, the UK will not stand alone. It is vital that colleagues from across the House and Governments across the UK remain united in that approach. Will the Secretary of State provide an update on any discussions she has had with the new Welsh Government regarding their contribution to the UK’s national security?
The strategic defence review reinforces the importance of close collaboration between all Governments on defence, particularly where key levers such as skills and planning are devolved. I can confirm to my hon. Friend that I have written to the Cabinet Minister for Finance in the new minority Plaid Welsh Government on Wales’s role in the defence of the UK. I regret to inform the House that the Minister did not respond to my request for confirmation that the Welsh Government will support the UK’s full membership of NATO, but I can assure the House that the UK Labour Government are wholeheartedly committed to our defence and security.
The increase in spending for Wales should encourage us all, as it does across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Does the right hon. Lady agree that the extra money for defence spending underlines the importance of being a member of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland? Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland all have the advantages of the Union. Does she also agree that our friends, the Plaid Cymru MPs in front of me—and they are my friends—should recognise that being part of the United Kingdom brings benefits?
I could not agree more. As I said earlier, the increase in defence spending creates not only a defence dividend but a Union dividend, too. That is why every nation and every Government in the United Kingdom should stand together and play their part in our national security.
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
“Inadequate…failing…unable”. Those were the damning words used to describe this Labour Government’s approach to defence by the former Defence Secretary, the right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey), after his dramatic resignation. The defence industry in Wales is vital for the defence of us all, as well as for local jobs. Will the Secretary of State acknowledge why, after a recent defence visit, the Wales Office used the incorrect figure on X of a £270 billion increase in defence spending in this Parliament? Was that post deleted because it was disinformation and factually inaccurate?
I am reassured to hear the Conservative party finally acknowledging the importance of defence spending. This Government are undertaking the biggest sustained increase in defence spending since the cold war. We are doing that to keep Wales and UK safe, and to create thousands of new, well paid jobs. The hon. Member’s party left office having hollowed out our armed forces, leaving military homes in a disgusting state, so I am glad that she has finally learned the lessons of previous Tory failures.
The UK Government are strengthening the Welsh economy, helping businesses grow, and supporting thousands of good, well paid jobs. Whether it is nuclear energy in Wylfa, offshore wind in Port Talbot, or connecting our communities with a £14 billion pipeline of rail projects, this Government are building a stronger Welsh economy for generations to come.
Monmouthshire’s high streets welcome the £1.5 million Pride in Place funding, especially Monmouth, after November’s devastating floods. I recently wrote to the landlord of 20 Monnow Street—more commonly known as the “pigeon poop building”—as part of my campaign to fill empty shops. But we need deeds, not words. The commissions and the taskforce that Plaid says it is planning will not cut it, so will the Secretary of State make representations to the Welsh Government? They need to act on our high streets as soon as possible, not just establish quangos.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that regenerating our high streets and town centres is vital to creating jobs and supporting local businesses, restoring pride in our communities. That is why we are investing over £300 million in Pride in Place funding for Wales, alongside over £500 million through the new local growth fund. It is vital that this funding, which will be delivered by the Plaid minority Welsh Government, is operational as quickly as possible. I have written twice to the Welsh Government Minister responsible about how we can get that funding out to communities, and I look forward to his eventual response.
I call the shadow Secretary of State.
The previous Welsh Labour Government spent more than £100 million developing plans for the M4 relief road, only to scrap the project before construction began. Congestion at the Brynglas tunnels continues to cause significant delays, hampering economic growth. The previous Conservative UK Government offered funding to back that crucial scheme. Will the Secretary of State urge her colleagues to make a similar offer to the new Welsh Government, and does she regret her party’s decision to cancel this vital project in the first place?
This Government have delivered the biggest financial settlement for the Welsh Government in devolution history, with nearly £6.5 billion more spending power for public services in Wales, and that includes funding for transport. That contrasts with the activities of the hon. Member’s Conservative Government, who, through austerity, starved public services in Wales of funding.
The Prime Ministe has announced a generational funding commitment to Welsh rail and a pipeline of projects worth up to £14 billion. That long term plan will transform connectivity across Wales. We will deliver that at pace, building on the strong start of the £445 million of investment already secured at the spending review.
It is brilliant to see you wearing your Yorkshire rose, Mr Speaker.
The UK Labour Government are investing in our railways to boost economic growth right across the country. In my constituency, we are seeing continued investment through the trans Pennine route upgrades in Huddersfield. Will the Minister set out what rail upgrades are coming to Wales, and how they will deliver economic growth and boost employment across the nation?
I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent question. We have agreed a £14 billion long term plan for Welsh rail, with work starting immediately, spanning 43 projects in every corner of Wales and unlocking around 12,000 jobs. New stations and faster and more reliable trains will connect people with communities and jobs right across Wales, benefiting the whole UK.
The Prime Minister was asked—
I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Prime Minister, who is attending the G7 summit in Evian.
May I first pay tribute to two giants of the Labour party. Roy Hattersley was a formidable deputy leader who never stopped fighting for a more equal and fair society. We also remember our beloved colleague Jo Cox and honour her memory in working to bring our communities together, celebrating the decency and compassion that defines this country. I also want to remember the 72 lives lost at Grenfell tower. The legacy of that appalling tragedy must be a safe, secure home for everyone in this country.
Finally, let me congratulate Scotland on their first win at the men’s world cup in 36 years—that, Mr Speaker, is what happens when your captain signs for Spurs. I wish England the best of luck for their first match this evening.
This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.
I associate myself with the Deputy Prime Minister’s remarks and pay tribute to Jo Cox. I also wish the England men’s team all the best tonight—may they follow the winning example of the Lionesses and the Scotland men’s team.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that our town and local centres, particularly our independent small businesses, are the lifeblood of our economy, and will he confirm that this Labour Government will do what it takes to unlock the potential of our local economies? One such example would be supporting the campaign by me and my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) to restore the Gravesend Tilbury ferry, which was cut by the Conservatives.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her campaign to restore the Gravesend Tilbury ferry. I agree that town centres are the heart of our communities, and we are determined to help them to thrive. Our high streets strategy, backed by more than £300 million of investment, will build on our work to rejuvenate high streets across the country. We are also putting power into the hands of local communities through our flagship Pride in Place programme, which includes £1.5 million for Gravesham. Her local council can make use of the integrated transport funding for local priorities, including ferry services, and I know that Ministers will be happy to help.
I call Claire Coutinho, shadow Secretary of State, acting for the official Opposition.
On behalf of the Conservatives, I extend our condolences to the families of Jo Cox and Roy Hattersley. I know how much pain we on the Conservatives Benches felt when we lost Sir David Amess, and so we share Labour’s pain today. I also pay tribute to those who lost their lives in the Grenfell tower fire. I would also like to congratulate Scotland on their stunning win and wish England the very best of luck for tonight.
It is a great privilege to be standing at the Dispatch Box across from one of the few survivors of Labour’s original Cabinet who has not resigned on principle or been sacked in disgrace—I feel honoured. Will the right hon. Gentleman start by telling me this: why are the Labour Government happy for Britain to get its oil and gas from Russia or Qatar but not from Aberdeen?
I welcome the shadow Energy Secretary to the Dispatch Box. It is always good to hear from someone who was at the heart of the Treasury during the biggest fall in living standards on record, who was the Children’s Minister in the Government who plunged hundreds of thousands of children into poverty, and who was the Energy Secretary who showed an unwavering commitment to the cause of net zero, even though she has now forgotten that.
The right hon. Lady should not believe everything she reads in the papers. The Prime Minister and the Energy Secretary have been discussing cutting bills by over £100. Our warm homes plan is lifting millions of families out of fuel poverty, and we are securing enough energy projects to power 23 million homes. The right hon. Lady was the Energy Secretary who left our country exposed to global fossil fuel markets. We are delivering clean energy security.
Bills came down by £500 under me. They have gone up £300 under these guys.
This is nonsense. Labour is banning new oil and gas licences in the North sea, and the guys over there in the SNP are no better, because this is the same policy that the SNP championed for years. It is pointless virtue signalling, and it is destroying well paid jobs. Will the Deputy Prime Minister tell the House how many jobs have been lost in Aberdeen since Labour came to power?
I remember when the right hon. Lady championed net zero as Energy Secretary. She said in 2023: “We cannot prosper… Nor can our children flourish if we don’t decarbonise energy”.
The Tories used to believe this three years ago. The right hon. Lady has forgotten that, because the Tories are desperately chasing Reform and we know it.
Over 700 jobs were lost in the last 10 years that the Tories were in power, and production fell 75% over the last 25 years. We have secured over £900 billion of investment to support more jobs by taking control with renewables, and over 100,000 jobs in Scotland are supported by clean power. We are building on that, led by Great British Energy, which is headquartered in Aberdeen.
Let me help the Deputy Prime Minister out. One thousand people are losing their jobs every month in places like Aberdeen South because of Labour’s policies. The Government say that those oil and gas workers can get new green jobs, but what they do not say is that those salaries pay half as much. Can he tell the House how he would feel if the Government forced him to take a 50% pay cut?
The right hon. Lady used to be an investment banker, and she has got her facts wrong. Oil and gas are coming out of the North sea 24/7. In the first three months of this year, 52 million barrels of oil came out, and the equivalent of 44 million barrels of gas came out. We are not turning off the taps. This will be part of a mixed economy that will support existing oil and gas fields throughout their lifespan, making changes to exploit neighbouring fields. We do want to create more jobs, which is why we will continue to invest in renewables. She knew this three years ago. She has changed her mind because she is chasing Reform.
I asked the Deputy Prime Minister about pay cuts, which the Government should care about, because if the Mayor of Manchester gets his way, I am pretty sure that half of the Front Bench will be getting a pay cut pretty soon.
This is serious. The world is getting more dangerous, yet last week the Prime Minister asked the Energy Secretary to help fund the defence of our country and he ghosted him. Let me repeat that: the Energy Secretary refused to meet the Prime Minister on a matter of national security. Why has he not been sacked?
Stop reading the papers, is what I would say to the right hon. Lady—or certainly the right papers. When the defence investment plan is published, it will set out—[Interruption.] This is important. It will set out how every Government Department is contributing to defence, including the Energy Department. We will always put national security first. The Conservatives still do not get it. Families are worried about their bills going up because of a war in the middle east that the Leader of the Opposition said she would jump into feet first.
If everything is so hunky dory, why did half the Defence team quit last week? The Government will not find the money to keep our country safe, so let us go through some of the things they can find money for. They can find millions of pounds to build solar farms in the Congo, and tens of millions of pounds for an experiment to dim the sun, but they are turning down £25 billion in tax revenue from the North sea to please their out of control Energy Secretary. Does the Deputy Prime Minister really think that any of that is more important than defending our country?
We have said that more spending on defence is our No. 1 priority in this spending review and the next spending review. The right hon. Lady wants to talk about resignations. Let us remind ourselves of the Tory Defence Secretary in the last Government—the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson)—who was sacked for breaching national security; the Tory Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, who resigned over sexual harassment; and the Tory Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who admitted hollowing out the armed forces for 14 years. We have a Prime Minister securing jobs and investment at the G7, we have a Chancellor raising the minimum wage, we have an Education Secretary cutting costs for childcare, and we have an Energy Secretary cutting energy bills by over £100. We are proud of that record.
If everything is fine, why do we have a new Defence Secretary? [Interruption.] He was not here last week, was he? Let us face it: this is a Government on life support. What is their grand plan now? Let me get this straight: they want to make the job destroying Energy Secretary Chancellor; they want to bring back the former Transport Secretary, who resigned for nicking phones; and they want to replace the Deputy Prime Minister with the former Deputy Prime Minister, who resigned for dodging taxes. Those are all pointless distractions. Here is a better idea: why do they not cut welfare, fund defence, make energy cheap and back the North sea?
It is very thin gruel. I am here, like the right hon. Lady, because I am standing in for the leader of my party. I am proud to serve the Prime Minister and proud of what the Labour Government are delivering: more rights for working people—the biggest upgrade to workers’ rights in a generation—the biggest boost to defence spending since the cold war, and lifting more children out of poverty in a single term than any British Government in history. [Interruption.] The Conservatives can make all the noise they want. They do not want to talk about the economy because it is growing, they do not want to talk about the NHS because waiting lists are falling, and they do not want to talk about immigration because they lost control of our borders and net migration is down under us by 82%. They had their chance and they blew it. We are building a stronger, fairer Britain.
I, too, wish to pay tribute to Jo Cox and her family, and to the commitment in her name that we tackle division and extremism. We saw extremism play out on the streets of Belfast last week—a pogrom where families were burned out based on the colour of their skin; health workers were stopped and asked for ID by masked thugs; and small businesses were ordered to close. Many minorities are still living in fear after a list of their addresses was circulated widely online. They deserve more than sympathy and warm words; they deserve to know that Governments are serious about confronting hatred online and offline.
The UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive spend millions each year on programmes intended to tackle paramilitarism, but, decades after the troubles, individuals linked to loyalist paramilitaries had a role in directing and fuelling the disorder last week, including menacing a senior journalist on tape. Will the UK Government commit to reviewing how the Northern Ireland Executive are gripping—or failing to grip—paramilitarism? Will they ensure that public money never reaches individuals or groups who fuel, orchestrate or benefit from intimidation and hate?
I join the hon. Lady in utterly condemning the violence. People are right to feel sickened by the sight of people being burned out of their homes because of the colour of their skin. That is racism, and those responsible will face the full force of the law. We must never go back to 1950s Britain, where my father arrived to signs saying, “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish.” We are focused on bringing people together, and that includes by providing a further £24 million to help to tackle paramilitarism and by acting to tackle those who incite hatred online; our social cohesion plan is about bringing our communities together. I am happy to work with all parties in that endeavour.
I call the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats.
May I associate myself and my party with the Deputy Prime Minister’s tribute to Jo Cox? We extend our condolences to her friends and family, and to those of Roy Hattersley as well. I also join the Deputy Prime Minister in remembering the horrific tragedy of Grenfell, and that the families still await justice. I congratulate all those named in the King’s birthday honours list, congratulate Scotland and wish good luck to England this evening.
The right hon. Member for Rawmarsh and Conisbrough (John Healey) is respected across the House. When he says that he was forced to make decisions that could make the country less safe, we should all take heed. It is now becoming clear that the Treasury’s refusal to consider new ways of funding defence is undermining our national security, so will the Deputy Prime Minister join with us to make the case in Government for new defence bonds, which could raise £20 billion over two years to defend our country?
We believe we should work with our allies to join up defence, procurement and funding. That is why we are exploring the most effective mechanisms for multilateral co operation, which is of course a topic of discussion for the Prime Minister at the G7.
We are pleased to hear that the Government are looking at that, but they need to act far quicker.
It is now more than five years since the Prime Minister originally set out his famous red lines on Europe when he was in opposition: no customs union and no single market. But since then, the world has changed. Putin has launched a war on our continent, an unreliable Donald Trump has returned to the White House and, here at home, the cost of living has got worse and worse, so does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that the Government should rip up those red lines now—or is that just another job to be left to the next Prime Minister?
I was proud to be the Labour Foreign Secretary who returned to the meeting of European Foreign Secretaries, and to work alongside my colleagues in the Cabinet Office to ensure that we were at last year’s summit and that it was successful. I can confirm that the next summit will take place on 22 July. Our red lines remain, but we are focused on a sanitary and phytosanitary deal to cut prices on the shelves, a youth experience scheme and cutting red tape for exporters.
I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Sir Kevin Sinfield. He is an inspirational fundraiser and a champion for his sport and, of course, for the MND community. I know that Mark Sommerville runs an excellent foundation that campaigns on MND in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We are committed to improving care for people with motor neurone disease. We are looking at the current system to ensure that care is truly focused on the needs of individuals, and we are investing in cutting edge research, including a world first clinical trial to test remotely monitored portable ventilators. I know that the Minister for Care would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter further.
We have the fastest growing economy in the G7, borrowing is down and we have just signed our fifth major trade deal. I must say this to the Tory deputy chairman: yesterday he was on television laughing and joking about the arson attack on the Prime Minister’s home, laughing about a firebomb targeting the Prime Minister and his family. Not only that, he joined with promoting conspiracies about the attack and laughed along to demeaning homophobic remarks. He should be ashamed of himself—absolutely ashamed. My advice to him is to grow up, apologise and do considerably better.
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. The Prime Minister has rightly put tackling violence against women and girls at the heart of this Labour Government. By contrast, I have been utterly appalled by what we have heard from the Reform candidate in Makerfield—from the vile, sexist comments to saying that Putin was within his rights to invade Ukraine. When the Reform leader was asked about them, his answer was, “So what?” This speaks volumes about Reform. The only way to stop its politics of grievance is to vote Labour.
I attended the AI summit in India, and right across the world all countries and many companies—certainly tech companies—are at the forefront of this opportunity. We have to get the governance right, and of course we have to test and re test to ensure safety. Anything on our roads would of course be tested and licensed by the Department for Transport. I do not think we can stand in the face of innovation.
I am so grateful to my hon. Friend. We all miss Jo—a dear friend and a valued colleague. Three years ago, I had the great privilege of opening the Jo Cox More in Common centre in Huddersfield alongside Jo’s sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater), and her parents Jean and Gordon. It was one of the great honours of my life. We all have a duty to live up to the values that Jo stood for. She was a trailblazing campaigner against loneliness and inspired the Great Get Together taking place this weekend. In the words of the Jo Cox Foundation, holding or attending a Great Get Together “in your local area is a simple but powerful way to honour Jo’s legacy”— neighbours coming together, differences set aside and communities choosing unity over division, because that is what Jo stood for.
I am hugely grateful for the work of the Home Secretary and the previous Home Secretary in putting neighbourhood policing back at the heart of our communities and putting in extra policing across the country. We on the Labour side remember the decisions by Boris Johnson to cut policing across the country—I will take no lectures from the hon. Gentleman.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for campaigning on this issue. I am very proud of the fact that this Government have restored the UK’s position as a global leader on climate action. That includes ambitious targets to reduce climate emissions and restore nature, and seizing the opportunities of clean, renewable power.
“The net zero economy now supports 1.1m UK jobs and generates £105bn in economic value—proof that tackling climate change & growing the economy can go hand in hand.”
Those are not my words; they are from Baroness Theresa May in the past fortnight. The Tories used to believe in this agenda, but they have forgotten because they are chasing Reform Uk.
The hon. Gentleman raises a serious issue. He might have forgotten that this House legislated for emergency measures to save steel across our country. We will continue to do more—and, of course, this is on the agenda for the Prime Minister at the G7.
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this issue. She makes a powerful point, as someone who has worked in public health for many years. I have met Ella’s family, including her mother Rosamund. Her death was a tragedy, and this is an issue close to my heart. Through our environmental improvement plan, we are taking action to cut pollutants, including through new targets to cut exposure to harmful particles by a third, and by reforming industrial permitting to reduce emissions. A Minister will be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this further.
I never thought I would get a request from the hon. Gentleman to look at his tattoos. I know that Eastbourne pier is a much loved iconic local landmark. I believe he is meeting the Under Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Barking (Nesil Caliskan), to discuss his campaign. I am pleased that we have allocated £20 million of Pride in Place funding to regenerating Eastbourne. It was one of the first seaside towns I visited as a young child. This summer, his constituents will be able to enjoy their day at the pier for less with our Great British summer savings, with free bus travel for kids, cheaper meals and cheaper tickets to amusement parks.
I thank my hon. Friend for her dedicated work on this. I am on the side of the people who elected us to clean up our rivers, our lakes and our seas. I and this Government are on the side of consumers, who are paying the price for years and years of failure by the Conservatives. We do not want Thames Water customers to have to pick up the bill for the company’s failures. We stand ready for all eventualities. The Labour Government have already blocked bonuses and introduced criminal sanctions for polluting water bosses, and we will go further by creating a new powerful regulator to hold all companies to account and clean up our waterways.
May I say to the Deputy Prime Minister that he is looking very prime ministerial today? He certainly has my vote if he decides to run for Labour leader on Friday. [Interruption.] Trust me, it is a deliberate ploy. On a serious note, Stoke Heath is a small rural settlement in Shropshire, in my Wrekin constituency. Over the past few hours, I have been informed—at a very late point, I think, by the way—that 121 asylum seekers will be going into that settlement. That is a 35% increase in the population in a matter of weeks. It is equivalent to 44,000 asylum seekers coming into the Deputy Prime Minister’s constituency. While this is a tolerant, compassionate and understanding nation, does the Deputy Prime Minister agree with me that that level of dispersal into a small, isolated, rural community is just not fair?
The right hon. Gentleman and I have made common cause on a range of issues, cross party, over the years. On the central issue, I am proud that we have seen a reduction in net migration of 82% over the 23 months that we have been in power. We cannot both grip this problem and say, when it comes to ensuring that people are detained—most often so that they can be removed—“Not in my patch.” I do not know the detail of his circumstances, and of course the immigration Minister will look at this matter, but we have to be honest about what the British public expect us to do on their behalf.
I agree 100% with my hon. Friend. I know that she has worked closely with families affected by harmful content in her constituency. Our decision to ban social media for under-16s is a landmark moment that will ensure that we better protect children and young people across our country. We will absolutely hold platforms to account for the harms that they can cause. That is why we have asked Ofcom to review their capability to enforce the social media ban and publish a clear enforcement strategy.
Earlier this week, in Westminster Hall, we had a debate on brain tumours, brain cancer, and the inequity of the service across the United Kingdom. The issue has been highlighted by my constituent Archie Goodburn, a Commonwealth swimmer who will compete in Glasgow next month. He got the treatment he needed only after I approached the Government and they supported him. Will the Government look at how we ensure that people in all parts of the United Kingdom, regardless of devolution, get the best possible treatment for cancers?
There is a new target that 75% of patients diagnosed from 2035 will be cancer free or living well after five years. That means that 320,000 lives will be saved. The cancer plan will end the postcode lottery on cancer, introduce a new three year neighbourhood early diagnosis fund, and cover the cost of travelling for cancer treatment. I know that Ministers are happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss that further.
My hon. Friend is a former schoolteacher, and I know how much he cares about this matter. I am delighted that we have announced the locations of 180 new youth hubs, which include Harlow; it means that more young people across the country will benefit from skills and training opportunities. This week, we have shown that this Labour Government are working to transform the lives of our young people. I thank my hon. Friend for all his campaigning on behalf of his constituency—and I know that a lot of the young people support Spurs.
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Points of order come after urgent questions.
Today is a very important day. This is about Jo Cox, bringing us together, and unity. I hope that we will have more temperate, tolerant language and respect for each other. The Jo Cox great get together is taking place at lunchtime in Speaker’s House.
12.40 pm
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade if he will make a statement on steel tariffs.
May I start by giving the apologies of the Minister for Trade, who is in Turkey, negotiating further trade deals for British industry?
On 19 March, the Government set out the UK’s plan to introduce a robust new trade measure from 1 July. It will limit tariff free steel imports, as compared with the steel safeguard measure. Any imports above the levels in the measure will face a 50% tariff.
Protecting primary steel production is crucial to the UK’s critical national infrastructure and defence. That is why we have published a long term plan for steel and are introducing a new trade measure countering the unprecedented and damaging effect of global overcapacity. It is simply wrong that only 30% of the steel that we need in the UK is made in the UK.
Steel is essential for advanced manufacturing and engineering, and the interests of the domestic steel sector and downstream industry are best served together. A thriving steel industry strengthens supply chain resilience for downstream businesses and limits their exposure to global supply shocks. We need to balance the need to protect domestic steelmaking with maintaining secure, reliable supply chains for downstream businesses.
Imports will remain important. The Government have engaged extensively with businesses across a range of sectors, including manufacturing, when developing this measure. Indeed, last week, I held a roundtable with downstream industry, together with my hon. Friend the Minister for Trade. We, and the Secretary of State, also heard from several colleagues about the concerns of businesses in their constituencies. We are listening carefully to companies throughout the supply chain as we finalise the measure.
We have introduced a transitional arrangement; the new measure will not apply to goods under contract before 14 March 2026 and imported between 1 July and 30 September 2026. We have introduced a carry over mechanism to give importers more flexibility. We will review the measure after 12 months to ensure that it remains fit for purpose.
We are also engaging intensively with the European Commission on our respective steel measures, and are working to find a bilateral solution that protects vital UK EU steel trade. This engagement reflects the unique structure of our trading and security relationships and the interconnectedness of our supply chains, but we need to be clear: if we do not act, we will not have steel making in the UK. The US, Canada, the EU are all acting; we must too.
I thank the Minister for that statement.
Aerospace, the automotive sector, Formula 1, the construction sector, and manufacturing businesses that use steel, which employ 300,000 people, are all being impacted by Labour’s botched tariffs. Many specialist steels—the Minister may have heard this from manufacturing businesses—are not, as it stands, even produced in the UK. That is a real issue when it comes to, for example, categories 14 and 27, which are used in aircraft wings, or in defence applications that we need to make ourselves safe. Where defence companies have cost plus contracts, the tariff on steel that is not made here will just get added to the bill for the Ministry of Defence.
Will the Minister listen to Stephen Morley, president of the Confederation of British Metalforming, who says: “The UK risks accelerating the decline of its manufacturing base rather than preserving it”, or Simon Boyd from REIDsteel, a British steelmaker, when he says that these measures will kill off “downstream customers of steelmakers in the UK”?
I am sure that is not the Minister’s intention, but with just two weeks to go, with respect, it is time to stop listening and start acting.
Will the Minister answer three questions? First, will he confirm today that the measures will not be applied retroactively throughout the whole life of existing, agreed contracts? Secondly, will he exempt steel—especially in categories 14 and 27—that is simply not made here in the necessary volumes? Thirdly, after listening to industry, will the Government please delay these tariffs for at least six months so that they can get this right?
In line with your guidance about constructive debate, Mr Speaker, I am sure we will have some constructive debate now. The shadow Minister has raised some legitimate questions, and I am very happy to provide the answers.
I think we all recognise the importance of the steel industry and the downstream sector—there is definitely a point of agreement there. The point about timing is a critical one, and on the face of it, the request for a delay is not unreasonable. The important thing to recognise is that our steel safeguard measure expires on 30 July. It is not possible for us to extend that measure; it has lasted for eight years, and under World Trade Organisation rules we cannot extend it, so new measures are required. Of course, the EU is introducing a new measure on 1 July, and the US and Canada have also introduced new measures. If we were not to introduce a measure, the UK would become the global dumping ground for subsidised steel. That would be the end of our primary steel industry, so something needs to be done.
In designing the measures, we have been very careful to ensure that they are targeted at those steels that are made, or could be made, in the UK. However, the categories are quite broad, and we acknowledge that some steels that are not, and could not be, made in the UK could be swept up in them. That is the point of the quotas. Since our draft measures were published, we have consulted extensively with industry—I have known Steve Morley for a very long time, and I listen very carefully to what he says, but more than that, we have carried out extensive consultation. The Minister for Trade and I have met the downstream group on three occasions, and I have met the Aerospace Growth Partnership, the Construction Leadership Council and many other businesses. We will be publishing our final measures in line with our EU negotiations when they are completed, in time for 1 July.
I call the Chair of the Select Committee.
I am grateful for this urgent question. Today, I am publishing the Committee’s correspondence with Ministers after the roundtable we held with steel producers, expressing a very high degree of alarm that these measures were not in the right place and thousands of jobs are now at risk.
There is a loophole for the import of fabricated steel. Canada and the United States have both moved to close that loophole; there is a question about why we have not taken the same steps. Twelve months is too late. There are no exemptions for steel products that we do not make, as we have heard, and there is no clarity on the use of procurement to drive domestic production. It also appears that a number of the quotas have been set in the wrong place, so will the Minister look again at the advice the Select Committee provided and come back to the House urgently—within the next week—with some adjustments to help safeguard a brilliant industry with a brilliant future ahead of it?
I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for both his work and that of his Committee on this issue. I recognise the concerns that were raised in his Committee earlier this week. On the point about timing, though, while I recognise the uncertainty this causes for business, it is impossible for the Government to announce the final arrangements until our discussions with the EU have concluded. I am reliably informed by those people with knowledge of negotiations with the EU that these things tend to run to the wire, so while I appreciate that it creates uncertainty, we need to wait until that point. However, the feedback from industry about quota levels has been heard by Government, and we are looking at those quota levels. That was the point of publishing the draft measures in the first place.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
The steel sector is a vital UK industry. We must support it in the face of numerous challenges, including China’s unfair practices and Trump’s trade war, but I am extremely concerned about the impact on parts of the steel industry supply chain if these proposed tariff changes are implemented. We all want businesses to buy British, but that is just not an option if there is no domestic supplier that can meet the grades and certifications that its customers require. Businesses simply cannot buy British, and will be punished by new tariffs as a direct result. The specialist steels needed by aerospace, defence and precision engineering are not made in this country in the grades or volumes that those sectors require, and qualifying a new source takes not a fortnight, but several years. The Government are already having sufficient difficulty funding their defence investment plan without loading additional costs on to the defence manufacturers. Tariffs on steels not available in the UK will materially damage downstream manufacturers, with serious implications for their competitiveness, as well as for investment and jobs.
What response did the Minister give experts in the manufacturing industry when they warned him about these matters? What conversations has he had with Tata Steel in determining the Government’s tariff position? Will he remove categories from the regime where no domestic production capability exists, such as product codes 14 and 27, which are critical for the viability of many aerospace and defence manufacturers? Will the Secretary of State commit to delaying or tapering implementation until proper mitigations have been put in place?
I thank the hon. Member for her constructive engagement on this issue with me over the past few weeks. The nub of her question is, I think, about domestic suppliers and the availability of domestic supply. As I said, the measures have been designed to cover those steel categories that are made or could be made in the UK. She raises the particular issue of speciality steels. We all understand the position with Speciality Steel UK in Stocksbridge and Rotherham. That business is going through administration, and it was impossible for it to compete in the UK while there was an influx of subsidised steel.
The hon. Member asks about the conversations I have had with industry. I will tell her what I said to the Aerospace Growth Partnership. When I met it this morning, I said that clearly we would not want to start from this point, but that it is about choices. This Government have decided that we want to have a full aerospace supply chain, including our own speciality steels production. That is a different choice from the one that the previous Government made when they were approached by industry, offering to co invest in that site and keep it open. They rebuffed all those responses, because their view was, “Leave it to the market, let the steel plants close.” We are making a different choice.
As the Minister knows, I represent Llanwern, which produces galvanised steel. I repeat my ask to the Minister to be mindful of the impact of the scale of the allocations for non EU countries on Llanwern. Will he continue to liaise directly with Tata and the unions on this issue?
I am particularly concerned about the allocations for galvanised steel, as my hon. Friend says, particularly given the country’s reliance on the ZODIAC galvanising line in Llanwern. That is a critical part of our steel and our national infrastructure. It is the only process route that we have to make car auto body and various construction and coating steels. A lot depends on that plant, and I am considering the issue seriously.
Engineering firms in Kingswinford and South Staffordshire are integral to automotive and aerospace supply chains, so how can it be right or in the national interest that they pay a tariff of 50% on the steel they import and use, while European producers making those parts with the same steel pay low or no tariffs?
I have just been alerted to the fact that I said the current measures will expire on 30 July. It is actually on 30 June. It was hopefully correct in the context, but I am happy to correct the record. On the specific point raised by the hon. Gentleman, these measures are clearly designed to support primary steel production. That is their purpose and what they have been designed for. It is about getting the balance right so that we support that level of primary production in the UK while dealing with the issues with the downstream steel producers so that they can get the steels they need within the UK or perhaps more broadly within the EU, as we discuss our market arrangement measures with it.
We all support greater production here in the UK, but the details of these tariffs need more work. Black Country MPs, such as me and my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes), have heard huge worries from our downstream industries, including stockholders such as Amari, fabricators such as Angle Ring, and trade associations such as the British Constructional Steelwork Association and the Cast Metals Federation. Will the Minister go away and review the details? We need protections for fabricated steel, like those Canada and the US have in place. Once again, we are seeing projects in receipt of massive public funding importing fabricated steel. We need a detailed look again at the categories and the quotas. We need proper consultation with UK Metals Council members, and we need to look at the detail again to ensure that it is right and that it supports a great future for manufacturing in the Black Country and elsewhere.
I thank my hon. Friend for the strong work that she has done advocating for businesses in her area. Across the whole west midlands, there has been strong support from west midlands Members of Parliament for their businesses, and quite right too. She may recall from the roundtable discussion we had with the Secretary of State and the Minister for Trade earlier this week that her concerns are being heard and taken into account, and I want to reassure her about that. I neglected to mention earlier the engagement we have had with the British Constructional Steelwork Association, which she mentioned. I reassure her that I and my officials are talking to the BCSA, too.
The Minister says that the concerns about fabricated steel are being taken into account. Can he be a bit more specific about why other countries have protections for fabricated steel in their economies, but we do not yet have any in ours?
I can give a specific example, if that would be helpful. A number of Members have mentioned the specific situation in Canada, for instance, and I have looked carefully at the situation there. Fundamentally, it has a completely different tariff regime, which would not necessarily be straightforward or legal to apply in the UK. However, I continue to look at that. I reiterate the point that this measure is designed to support the steel industry. If other concerns fall outwith that, they need to be raised and dealt with appropriately.
May I add my voice to that of other Black Country Members? On behalf of Stourbridge, Brierley Hill and Netherton, I am grateful to the Minister and the Department for Business and Trade for their ongoing engagement with me and local businesses. It is much appreciated, but can I also add my voice to those calling for a review of quotas? In some places, those have been reduced by more than 80% on products not currently produced here. Equally, we have fabricated products being imported that are not subject to any tariffs, which could impact on local downstream supply chain industries.
I thank my hon. Friend not just for her question, but for the invitation to visit Stourbridge and have this discussion with businesses in her constituency. I am looking forward to that, and I thank her. To reiterate the point that I made about the quotas, the Government have published draft quotas and we are engaging in consultation. We listen carefully to her representations and those of others, but the final quotas, when they are published, will ultimately be dependent on that consultation and the negotiations we are having with the European Union.
I am greatly concerned by this issue. I spoke in the consideration of the steel Bill, and I raised the concerns of some of my businesses. The Minister rightly said that the measures expire on 30 June, but there is less than two weeks to go and huge amounts of uncertainty. Businesses are having to stock up on that steel, so costs are already going up. How did the Government let this happen? Did the impact assessment not show that there would be a huge impact on steel? What will happen next?
As I mentioned to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), the Chair of the Select Committee, I am sympathetic about the uncertainty. It is a difficult position for businesses to be in. To be clear, the reason for the uncertainty is that the publication of the final measures is dependent on market access negotiations with the European Union. It is to be expected that the negotiations with the European Union will go very close to the deadline.
UK steel sector voices and Cabinet officials met to back procurement of British made steel at Tata Steelpark in Wednesfield, rather than in offices in Whitehall, which I welcome. I also met Walsall Wheelbarrow, a family owned business started by Fred Thacker in 1939. It is the only UK manufacturer of wheelbarrows left in the UK. Will the Minister look at ensuring that imported steel that cannot be made in the UK remains tariff free?
The design of the steel measures, because of the different steel grades, means that the combined nomenclature codes fall into large buckets, so although the Government have targeted the measures at steels that are or could be made in the UK, some that are not or could not be made in the UK end up being caught up in the measures. That is the point of the quotas. It is important that we ensure that those quotas are in the right place, including for businesses such as Walsall Wheelbarrows. I have slightly lost count of the number of wheelbarrows that I have, but I will be sure that the next one I buy is from Walsall.
From Yeovil’s cutting edge defence manufacturers to Thorn Wood Forge, which makes hand crafted tools in Hinton Saint George, businesses in my constituency need steel that is currently not produced here. A 50% tariff would be disastrous. Will the Minister commit himself to exemptions for specialised steel grades that are not made in this country at the scale and spec needed by businesses in Yeovil?
The hon. Gentleman and I have engaged significantly on the industrial base in Yeovil, and I know how important it is to his local community. This takes us back to the point about steels that are or could be made in the UK. The issue raised by the hon. Gentleman and by many other people primarily involves the Speciality Steels plant. When we designed the trade measures, we were expecting a very quick move into new ownership, but it has taken about seven months longer than expected, and I am aware of the concern that that is causing businesses. I am, however, unapologetic about our determination to create the right market conditions, so that the production of speciality steels in the UK is a viable business proposition.
It is absolutely right in principle for the Government to try to defend the steelmaking sector, particularly Liberty at Stocksbridge and Rotherham. However, there are downside implications for smaller firms, particularly manufacturing firms such as Ansell Handtools, Special Steel Group and Crown Hand Tools in my constituency, all of which have said that they cannot buy precisely the steel that they need, or the quantities of steel that they need, from British manufacturers. That is the challenge. I know that the Minister has been doing a great deal of work on this; can he tell me how he will leave a channel open for concerns to be raised by those companies if the further measures that he has taken do not address their particular grievances?
Order. May I ask the Minister to keep his responses short? Back Benchers should keep their questions on point as well?
I will endeavour to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Let me say to my hon. Friend that I will do exactly what I have done since the day these draft measures were announced: engage with Members on both sides of the House and with all businesses. I hope Members will feel that I have endeavoured to do that. We have had had cross party discussions and I have had many meetings with businesses, trade associations and individual colleagues, and I am determined to continue to do so.
The real reason for the rise in the steel problem is the energy price—the input price. Has the Minister had any challenging conversations with his colleague the Secretary of State, and will he consider exemptions for the defence industry as well? As he knows, the new Defence Secretary is now trying to balance a very difficult budget, and I am sure he would be happy to do what he can to help.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that link with defence. I know that he cares about it deeply, as I think we all do, but that has not really come out until now. He also mentioned energy. As he will know, we increased the supercharger rebate from 60% to 90%, and the British industrial competitiveness scheme will come into force next year—but there will be a refund for this year as well. That will affect many of the downstream businesses. However, I believe—as, I am sure, does the right hon. Gentleman—that the crucial point about defence is that we need the capability to make aerospace deals in the UK, and our measures are designed to ensure that that happens.
The imposition of tariffs on black painted and zinc painted steel banding—products that are not manufactured in the UK, and are therefore imported from the EU—and the scramble for quota at the beginning of the year will increase costs for our steel producers, and will have a serious impact on importers’ cash flow. Will the Minister look at the tariffs again and do all that he can to ensure that those particular tariffs and quotas do not go ahead?
This issue, which my hon. Friend has raised with me before, relates primarily to category 4 products. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) earlier about the importance of that in Llanwern. I am very concerned about category 4, and it is one of the issues that I am looking at.
Northern Ireland manufacturers—and, indeed, metal traders—who rely on those specialist grades, including stainless steel box section, are already impacted by EU tariffs, and the additional tariffs being imposed by the Government will have an adverse effect on those manufacturing sectors in Northern Ireland. What consideration will the Government give to them?
The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on exactly the issue with which the Government are dealing at the moment, which is the interaction between our own measures and our own market and the EU measures and the EU market, and the market access that we can negotiate between the two. Unfortunately, that is the issue that is causing uncertainty for businesses such as those that he mentioned.
The Minister has mentioned the negotiations with the European Union. The elephant in the room is the fact that we would not be in this position if we had not left the European Union on the terms negotiated by the last Government, which has left us isolated and vulnerable to trade wars of this kind. The British Chambers of Commerce says that this is “self inflicted damage to the economy”, given that “sectors rely heavily on imported steel”.
What lessons is the Minister taking from that, and from his conversations with his colleagues as they negotiate our future relationship with the European Union? We need to sort out not just matters such as the carbon border adjournment mechanism, but a sector by sector deal to help our British businesses in the future.
I am afraid that I am the ultimate pragmatist. I would not have wanted to start here, but starting here, I am determined that we will do the best we can.
The Minister is right to point to the uncertainty that businesses are facing, and my constituents and local businesses repeat that message to me regularly. The Minister has indicated that there may be a chance that some of the tariffs or the categorisations will be changed. Will he undertake to come to the House and make a statement as soon as that is announced?
As soon as the measures are finalised, the Minister for Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda and Ogmore (Chris Bryant), will want to report them to the House in the usual way.
This week I hosted a meeting between officials from the Department for Business and Trade and representatives of Hanson Springs, a brilliant family manufacturing business in my constituency that exports across the world and whose specialised products are made from steel. I thank the Minister for his personal interest in the case. My I urge him to ensure that nothing the Government do, particularly in those negotiations with the EU, will harm brilliant British businesses such as Hanson Springs?
I thank my hon. Friend and Hanson Springs for their interaction with my officials. I know that the specific issue of 13 or 14-metre lengths of rod is a problem for him, but I can assure him that in all our negotiations, whether with the EU, India, Turkey or the United States, this Government are putting British industry first.
The Minister says that the Government are listening to the concerns of businesses. May I be so brazen as to suggest that we need action and need it urgently, given the timescale of these changes—changes that will cripple steel using businesses across the manufacturing, construction and infrastructure sector in my constituency, which have no domestic steelmaking industry in Northern Ireland on which to rely? Will the Minister meet businesses from Northern Ireland as a matter of urgency to discuss the devastating impact that this will have?
I shall be happy to meet businesses in Northern Ireland, as I have met businesses throughout the United Kingdom.
This issue has raised a great many concerns in my constituency and across the Black Country. I have been working closely with my colleagues in Sandwell in particular, and we have had many meetings with local companies and communication with my hon. Friends the Member for Tipton and Wednesbury (Antonia Bance) and for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes).
Hadley Industries, a large employer, is already considering downscaling its number of employees. Pargat Housewares in my constituency, another large employer, is a significant manufacturer of pots, pans and bakeware—in fact, it is one of the largest manufacturers in the UK, supplying most of our superstores and exporting. However, steel suitable for kitchenware is not manufactured in the UK in significant quantities and at competitive prices. What advice would the Minister give you give companies that are facing a 60%—
Order. I call the Minister.
I am familiar with the issue of kitchenware, which is very similar to some of the other issues that have been raised. If a particular kind of steel falls within a tariff area, not because it is made or could be made in the UK but because it is grouped in that way as part of the trade measures, the quota is designed to resolve that. If the business in question feels that there is a problem with setting the quota, I ask my hon. Friend to write to me. Alternatively, representatives of those businesses could come and meet my officials.
Order. If Members have prepared a long question, I suggest they cross most of it out.
On Monday my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Dame Harriett Baldwin) asked the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, the hon. Member for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard), about the impact of these new steel tariffs on the defence investment plan. His answer was not particularly clear, which surprised me, given the strong representations that both he and I will have had from the Plymouth Manufacturers’ Group. What conversations have the Minister and his colleagues had with the Ministry of Defence about the impact of tariffs on the DIP, and will he agree to meet me and the Plymouth Manufacturers’ Group?
I should be happy to meet the hon. Lady and representatives of businesses in her area. As the Minister for Industry, I am responsible for ensuring that we have adequate productive capacity to defend the nation, and in that respect these steel measures will provide the steel that we need for defence.
I thank the Minister for his personal engagement on this matter. As he knows, time is of the essence. Businesses are already telling me that they are cancelling orders, and that these quotas and tariffs create uncertainty. I cannot understand why we would put tariffs on our own British businesses when they cannot obtain the size and grade of steel that they need, and that includes non speciality steel in categories 1 and 7. Will the Minister apply tariff exemptions when there is no ability to buy British?
There are issues with category 1, and I am looking at that. As I mentioned before, the uncertainty is unfortunate, but my hon. Friend will understand why it is there. I am aware that some businesses have been told by their stock holders that all their steels will be subject to a tariff, but that is not always the case. I can be generous and say that stock holders are perhaps also suffering some uncertainty and want to protect their own businesses, but I ask them to look very carefully at the codes. If they need some help with that, my officials stand ready to support them.
Firms such as Hewland Engineering in Maidenhead face a 50% tariff on their specialist steel, but there is no approved British supplier to make the grades they need. That is not a steel strategy, but a tax on British manufacturing. I know the Minister understands their concerns, so will he go further and exempt categories for which there is no realistic British manufacturing or supply?
I can go further than understanding and offer some practical advice, if that is helpful. The first thing to check is whether the steels that the hon. Member mentions are made, or could be made, in the UK—the “could be made” is important. He is shaking his head, so I assume that they are not made in the UK but are caught in a category group simply because the groups are so broad, and they might represent a small part of that group. That is the purpose of the quota. If the hon. Member’s businesses feel that the quota is too small for their needs and for other businesses in the sector, they should urgently get in touch with me.
Local manufacturers in Huddersfield have raised real concerns with me, particularly about the unintended consequences of this policy, the lack of a level playing field for raw materials and finished imports, and uncertainty around supply. Some are already seeing cost inflation in key steel outputs. Can the Minister please look at these matters again? Categories 14 and 27 have also been raised with me, and we must communicate better with our local companies.
My hon. Friend mentions categories 14 and 27, and perhaps her businesses could share their views with me. She says that we must communicate better. I am absolutely determined to communicate as much as possible, so if she gets her businesses to get in touch with me and my officials, we will take their representations into account.
That is exactly what I did on behalf of my constituent Paul Kenchington: I wrote to the Secretary of State about the specialist steel that he uses, and I have not had a reply. Why can the Minister not say today that, until we are producing this steel ourselves, he will exempt from these tariffs all the steel that is not currently made in this country? It must be simple to do that.
If it was simple, we would do it. Of course, it is not that simple, because, as I have described, the category groupings for steels are much broader than individual grids. There are 20-odd categories, covering a whole range of grids, and that is why the quota size is particularly important. If there are issues with the quotas, we must deal with them. The hon. Gentleman says that he has not had a reply to his letter, for which I apologise on behalf of the Secretary of State. I can assure him that I will get my officials to look into that immediately.
In my constituency, Xtreme Stainless builds exhaust systems and would always want to buy British steel. The company believes it is better made, and wants to back British jobs and manufacturing, but the owner is watching firms get around the tariffs by sending finished products to the UK, which undermines British manufacturers. Could the Minister please tell me what the Government are doing to close the gap so that the tariffs protect the whole supply chain, not just the first step of it?
The issue there is category 14, because we want to protect the stainless production that we have in the UK. I am not particularly familiar with exhaust systems manufacturing, but it largely uses flat stainless steel, which we do not make in the UK. As I mentioned, it is about making sure that we have a sufficient quota for that business, so that it does not need to pay the tariff. If my hon. Friend could share the information with me, I would be very grateful.
Order. I am going to let colleagues in on a secret: I cannot read their minds. If you are not continually bobbing, I do not know whether you are uninterested or want to be called.
May I ask about jobs? I appreciate that the Minister has answered a lot of questions about tariffs, but a lot of my constituents work in Trostre, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for Llanelli (Dame Nia Griffith). We have talked a lot about the £2.5 billion steel fund. Nearly two years later, sites such as Trostre are still waiting, with no commitments, no timelines and no certainty on investment. No answers were found in the steel strategy, which was published in March. Can the Minister give me a straight answer on when Welsh steel sites will see investment from the steel fund?
I can indeed give a straight answer. Welsh steel sites will see money from the steel fund when the businesses that own them make a successful application for the money. Some £1 billion of the fund currently sits in the National Wealth Fund, awaiting such proposals. Tata Steel is particularly relevant to Trostre. I cannot say whether there is a project under consideration for Trostre, but I do know that Tata is bringing forward ideas. If the hon. Lady would like to talk to colleagues at Trostre and Tata Steel, they may well be able to share any ideas with her.
I thank the Minister for recently meeting me to discuss my two brilliant downstream steelmaking companies in Monmouthshire, CMF and STAPPERT. Can I ask him to look at their cases again? If he is meeting my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden)—my constituency neighbour—at Llanwern, perhaps he could consult these two companies and hear exactly what their issues are.
I do not think I have a visit to Llanwern in the diary, but perhaps I will do soon enough. I am certainly happy to take another look at those cases. If there is an opportunity for my officials to have a discussion with the businesses, I would be very happy to set that up.
I recently met Littlewood Fencing, a company in my constituency that makes specialist fencing for secure and sensitive locations, and it is facing crippling increases in costs. It might be noble to try to save jobs in the steel industry, but if jobs are lost in other parts of our economy, we are not really achieving anything. It is all about the rate of change that the Government are seeking to introduce. It is clear to many Members of this House that the rate of change currently proposed is not right. Will the Minister rethink and, if necessary, pause to ensure that we do not lose jobs in constituencies like mine in order to save jobs in other parts of the country?
The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on the issue that we are all grappling with: how we manage the transition. I recognise the importance of the business in his constituency producing secure fencing. There is a supply chain in the UK that could support that, leading from British Steel through the wire drawers, but he is right: it is about managing the transition. Unfortunately, we have a hard stop at the end of this month, and we need to put something in place beyond that and manage it over the course of the next few years.
FMC and Dynamic Metals, both of which are in my constituency, have no alternative but to import specialist steel, because if it is not made in Britain, they cannot buy in Britain. What message does the Minister have for those businesses, and will he look at changing harmonised system codes so that customs can better distinguish between generic and specialist steels?
My hon. Friend puts her finger on a particular problem: the grouping together of various steels in the measures, which I recognise is an issue. As I have mentioned before, the quota is designed to solve the problem. I would appreciate it if she could share the issue with my officials; tonnage grade product specification is particularly helpful. It would be very helpful if she could share those details.
Like other Members, I have met businesses in my constituency that will be severely impacted by what is being proposed in agriculture, and they do not want to put additional costs on farmers, who are already struggling. In one of his earlier answers, the Minister said that the overall strategy of trying to increase steel production is progressing more slowly than he would like—I think he said it has taken seven months. How long does he think these changes are going to be in place?
There are two things there. Our steel strategy said that we had an ambition to increase domestic steel production from 30% to 50% of market share. I have mentioned that the Speciality Steel sale has been delayed by a few months, but that component of the UK steel market is not the largest part. There are about 1 million tonnes of capacity there, whereas British Steel and Tata Steel each produce about 3 million tonnes. I realise that we are talking about different grades, but to answer the hon. Lady’s specific question: the overall capacity issue is very much about those two larger companies.
I fully support the need to buy British, but companies such as Springmasters, KM Products and Accurate Laser Cutting Ltd—all of which are based in Redditch—cannot source the grade and size of steel required for their machines entirely from the UK; in fact, most comes from the EU. Will the Minister meet me and representatives of my local businesses to hear their suggestions about how we can protect local businesses but also meet the good intention of this Government to support British steel?
I am aware of the challenges for spring steel businesses. Spring steels are incredibly difficult to produce and use high quality, high value steel. They are clearly within the capability of Speciality Steel, but the business is not operating. Given the number of requests for meetings, we might do a roundtable or something similar, but there will certainly be an opportunity for my hon. Friend to speak to officials. Perhaps we can get together with the Minister for Trade.
Prototype Productions in Long Crendon, Gibbs Gears in Stoke Mandeville and Aircraft Materials in Stokenchurch are all businesses in my constituency that categorically rely on grades of steel not made here in the United Kingdom. We have heard countless examples from around the Chamber of such businesses in other parts of the country. I have heard the Minister say “if” there is a problem with quotas; I would put it to him that there quite clearly is a problem with quotas. As we approach this cliff edge, I urge him, as so many others have, to stop, pause and ensure we get this right, or jobs will be lost.
The hon. Member talks of tool steels. As I have said, this is about steels that are made or could be made in the UK. Clearly, for the steel businesses to be profitable, we need to—[Interruption.] Well, the phrase “could be made” is actually quite important, because the Speciality Steel business was unable to compete with subsidised steel coming in from China. If the Opposition say they want our steel strategy set by the Chinese Government, that would be why our steel industry is in the position it is. I am sympathetic to the calls from UK businesses to manage the transition, and I am trying to do that. Understandably, however, I do not believe that our steel strategy should be set by the Chinese Government.
Although I do not sound quite like the distinguished Minister, I did in fact grow up in Teesside in sight of the mighty Redcar works, which closed in 2015 with the loss of 2,000 jobs. The Conservative party did not stop that. Does the Minister agree that we finally have a Government acting to protect our steel industry?
As my hon. Friend knows, I very much have an emotional attachment to that plant, having worked there myself, and what he says is right. We can contrast the situation in 2015 with the Steel Industry (Nationalisation) Bill that we are passing—opposed every step of the way by the Opposition—and the action we are taking on Speciality Steels. When the plant he refers to closed, I was in the business of looking for a buyer, and I was told by the Conservative Government that I had just 10 days; we have given months of support to Speciality Steels, and we are determined to see that process through.
North Norfolk businesses, including PSS in North Walsham, have written to me to share their concerns about these tariffs. One thing that has been raised is that there are tariffs on raw materials, but not on the import of finished and machined products. This creates a bit of a perverse incentive to move manufacturing abroad, only to then re import it and undercut British manufacturers. Has the Minister considered this unintended consequence, which could harm businesses in North Norfolk and elsewhere?
Yes, I am concerned about that. As I have said, these measures are primarily about supporting the production of steel in the UK. I do not know if this is specific to the business mentioned by the hon. Gentleman, but many of the businesses we have heard about rely on supply from the EU, and that is where our discussions with the EU—linking discussions, essentially—are so critical.
While I am grateful for the Minister’s engagement, I think both he and the House are learning the dangerous domino effect that begins when we start mucking about with tariffs. I find it unbelievable that I am placed in the position, as somebody who believes in free trade, of urging him to consider consequential tariffs on the fabricated products with which businesses in my constituency are competing in a desperate attempt to hold on to at least domestic markets, given that international markets will evaporate. My question is this: he has said that he is going to review whatever emerges at the end of this process after 12 months, but the impact will be immediate, so could he please review it after one month?
The right hon. Member is quite right that there is a 12-month review. I thank him for his engagement, particularly with Stannah Stairlifts, but also for his further suggestions to me privately about how we might manage the transition. I want to reassure him that I am looking very carefully at the ideas he has raised.
To be clear about this, I think everyone in this House believes in free and fair trade, and we all wish we lived in a world where there were no tariffs. UK Steel has welcomed these measures, but has also said it would prefer it if there were not any tariffs. Unfortunately, this is the product of the world we are in. I do not think this is “mucking about with tariffs.” Essentially, we are responding to the global trading situation, and trying to ensure we have a strategy for a viable UK industry.
I call Sir John Whittingdale, who, after hearing the answer, may wish to get into the private Members’ Bills queue.
Indeed. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can Minister state what assessment he has made of the grades of steel that are simply not produced in this country? What is his message to companies such as C&M Precision Ltd in my constituency, and all those mentioned this afternoon, that face an immediate increase in their costs, because they have absolutely no alternative except to import their steel?
The Government have done a very detailed assessment of the steels that are not made and could not be made in the UK. Unfortunately, because of how the categorisations are set, some steel grades are swept up in a tariff measure along with other steels that are made in the UK. The quotas are designed to deal with that, so this is really about getting the quota level right, and that is very much part of the discussion we are having today—but I do understand the problem.
For Northern Ireland, there is both a key sovereignty question and a key economic question. Because of the iniquity of our being subject to EU law, we are already under EU tariffs when it comes to steel imports and quotas, paying 25% once we cross the quota. I have a simple question: can the Minister assure my steel importers that the writ of the United Kingdom will govern their imports, not the writ of the foreign EU?
The trade arrangements for Northern Ireland will be the same for steel as they are for anything else. I have already committed to meeting businesses in Northern Ireland, and if the hon. and learned Member has businesses in his constituency that would like to join that meeting, from my perspective they would be most welcome to join it.
We have talked about large and small businesses being affected, but my constituent Joe, who is a sales director in an SME likely to be affected, is deeply concerned about his livelihood. I have a very simple question for the Minister: if he is taking on board industry feedback, will he publish detailed information on safeguard quota allocations and anticipated utilisation rates before those measures come into place on 1 July?
The hon. Member is right to bring this conversation back to the people involved in the industry. We have had a lot of discussion about steel and quotas and so on, but this is very much about people, and about the steel communities and communities, such as those in the Black Country, where there are lots of downstream users. The Government will of course publish the details as soon as they are available, but as I have said, that is very much dependent on our concurrent negotiations with the European Union.
A specialist manufacturer in my constituency employs 26 people designing and fabricating foundation tooling systems used in piling and construction across the country. None of the steel it needs can be sourced in the UK. Can the Minister explain how a policy that taxes raw materials but exempts imports of fabricated products does anything other than make British fabricators less competitive than international rivals?
I referred to exactly that point earlier, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman could share that with the company concerned. If it needs a steel that is not made or could not be made in the UK but has been swept up because it is part of a larger product categorisation, we need feedback about the level of quota in relation to the tonnage it would normally purchase. If it is involved in piling, I imagine the tonnage could be quite high. It would be very helpful if that information could be shared with me.
The Minister has repeatedly referred to steel that “could be made” in the UK, but these tariffs come in in two weeks’ time. That is of no use to the manufacturers I have spoken to in North West Norfolk, where grade specification and volumes are simply not available. Why are the Government failing to recognise this, and why will they not guarantee that tariffs will not apply where people cannot get the steel in the UK?
Perhaps I could address the point about the phrase “could be made”, which I think is at the nub of what the hon. Member is saying. The issue here is latent capacity in the UK. Some of that steel could be made at an existing steel plant that stretches its product range, but that is not the primary concern for me. This is about latent capacity, which is where we have steel capabilities in the UK that are not operating due to unfair competition from overseas. Fundamentally, we have to make a decision to correct a market failure to ensure that those businesses are investable for the private sector and are profitable, can operate, and can deliver those products to the market.
The Minister will be aware that Northern Ireland operates a dual market economy, relying on the same supply base in GB and the Republic Ireland for structural steel sections. GB buyers are aggressively competing for the same limited pool of steel, making steel sourced from GB or imported directly from Northern Ireland substantially more expensive. How can the Minister ensure that Northern Ireland has access to safe and affordable steel when the odds are clearly stacked against us?
I want to reassure the hon. Member that I am concerned about the issue in Northern Ireland. In fact, just this morning I had a discussion about this with Short Brothers—I know he is a strong advocate of that business in this House—and I am giving careful consideration to the impact on Northern Ireland.
Bills Presented Infants, Parents and Carers Bill Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Sir Desmond Swayne presented a Bill to make provision about support for infants, parents and carers of infants, and prospective parents and carers, including provision relating to assessment of needs and to reporting requirements relating to such support; and for connected purposes.
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Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 December, and to be printed (Bill 26). Cancer (Reporting and Strategy) Bill Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Clive Jones, supported by Dr Scott Arthur, Helen Morgan, Mary Kelly Foy, Helen Maguire, Lee Pitcher, Charlie Maynard, Cameron Thomas, Mr Will Forster, Adam Jogee, Christine Jardine and Vikki Slade, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on performance in relation to specified targets and measures relating to cancer and to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer; to require the Government to publish a strategy for improving cancer outcomes; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 13 November, and to be printed (Bill 27). Planning (Solar Power Generation) Bill Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Victoria Atkins presented a Bill to make provision about the granting of planning permission and development consent in respect of the building or installation of provision for solar power generation on agricultural land; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 15 January 2027, and to be printed (Bill 28). Child like Sexual Abuse Dolls (Offences) Bill Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Munira Wilson, supported by Alex Davies Jones, Dame Karen Bradley, Max Wilkinson, Jess Phillips, Damian Hinds, Jess Brown Fuller and Marie Goldman, presented a Bill to make certain acts involving child like sexual abuse dolls an offence; to make provision for the seizure and forfeiture of such items; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 4 September, and to be printed (Bill 29). Coastal Communities (Health) Bill Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57) Steff Aquarone, supported by Edward Morello, Andrew George, Rachel Gilmour, Caroline Voaden and Richard Foord, presented a Bill to require the Secretary of State, in exercising functions in relation to the health service, to have regard to the need to reduce inequalities between people in coastal and inland areas; to require the Secretary of State to prepare and publish a strategy for improving the health and wellbeing of coastal communities and for reducing health inequalities between people in coastal and inland areas; to require the Secretary of State to report annually to Parliament on the implementation of that strategy; and for connected purposes.
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Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the following provisions shall apply to the proceedings on the National Security (State Threats) Bill:
Timetable
(1) (a) Proceedings on Second Reading and in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall be taken at today’s sitting in accordance with this Order.
(b) Proceedings on Second Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion four hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order.
(c) Proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion six hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Motion for this Order.
Timing of proceedings and Questions to be put
(2) When the Bill has been read a second time:
(a) it shall, despite Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of bills not subject to a programme order), stand committed to a Committee of the whole House without any Question being put;
(b) the Speaker shall leave the Chair whether or not notice of an Instruction has been given.
(3) (a) On the conclusion of proceedings in Committee of the whole House, the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.
(b) If the Bill is reported with amendments, the House shall proceed to consider the Bill as amended without any Question being put.
(4) For the purpose of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph (1), the Chair or Speaker shall forthwith put the following Questions in the same order as they would fall to be put if this Order did not apply:
(a) any Question already proposed from the Chair;
(b) any Question necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed;
(c) the Question on any amendment moved or Motion made by a Minister of the Crown;
(d) the Question on any amendment, new Clause or new Schedule selected by the Chair or Speaker for separate decision;
(e) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded;
and shall not put any other questions, other than the Question on any Motion described in
paragraph (15)(a) of this Order.
(5) On a Motion so made for a new Clause or a new Schedule, the Chair or Speaker shall put only the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.
(6) If two or more Questions would fall to be put under paragraph (4)(c) on successive amendments moved or Motions made by a Minister of the Crown, the Chair or Speaker shall instead put a single Question in relation to those amendments or Motions.
(7) If two or more Questions would fall to be put under paragraph (4)(e) in relation to successive provisions of the Bill, the Chair shall instead put a single Question in relation to those provisions, except that the Question shall be put separately on any Clause of or Schedule to the Bill which a Minister of the Crown has signified an intention to leave out.
Consideration of Lords Amendments
(8) (a) Any Lords Amendments to the Bill may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly.
(b) Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement; and any proceedings suspended under sub paragraph (a) shall thereupon be resumed.
(9) Paragraphs (2) to (7) of Standing Order No. 83F (Programme orders: conclusion of proceedings on consideration of Lords amendments) apply for the purposes of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph (8) of this Order.
Subsequent stages
(10) (a) Any further Message from the Lords on the Bill may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly.
(b) Proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement; and any proceedings suspended under sub paragraph (a) shall thereupon be resumed.
(11) Paragraphs (2) to (5) of Standing Order No. 83G (Programme orders: conclusion of proceedings on further messages from the Lords) apply for the purposes of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph (10) of this Order.
Reasons Committee
(12) Paragraphs (2) to (6) of Standing Order No. 83H (Programme orders: reasons committee) apply in relation to any committee to be appointed to draw up reasons after proceedings have been brought to a conclusion in accordance with this Order.
Miscellaneous
(13) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to proceedings on the Bill.
(14) Standing Order No. 82 (Business Committee) shall not apply in relation to any proceedings to which this Order applies.
(15) (a) No Motion shall be made, except by a Minister of the Crown, to alter the order in which any proceedings on the Bill are taken, to recommit the Bill or to vary or supplement the provisions of this Order.
(b) No notice shall be required of such a Motion.
(c) Such a Motion may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly.
(d) The Question on such a Motion shall be put forthwith; and any proceedings suspended under sub paragraph (c) shall thereupon be resumed.
(e) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to proceedings on such a Motion.
(16) (a) No dilatory Motion shall be made in relation to proceedings to which this Order applies except by a Minister of the Crown.
(b) The Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.
(17) (a) The start of any debate under Standing Order No. 24 (Emergency debates) to be held on a day on which the Bill has been set down to be taken as an Order of the Day shall be postponed until the conclusion of any proceedings on that day to which this Order applies.
(b) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to proceedings on such a debate.
(18) Proceedings to which this Order applies shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.
(19) (a) Any private business which has been set down for consideration at a time falling after the commencement of proceedings on this Order or on the Bill on a day on which the Bill has been set down to be taken as an Order of the Day shall, instead of being considered as provided by Standing Orders or by any Order of the House, be considered at the conclusion of the proceedings on the Bill on that day.
(b) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to the private business so far as necessary for the purpose of securing that the business may be considered for a period of three hours.—(Shabana Mahmood.)
Let me be clear from the outset that the Opposition support the Bill and want it on the statute book, but we cannot support the manner in which the Government are seeking to pass it. This motion, for something that seeks to make a permanent change to the criminal law of our country, was laid only late on Tuesday, and with it the Government are seeking to drive through every single stage in one afternoon. The months of debate that the Bill should have had are gone, and the line by line scrutiny and votes on amendments in Committee have all been taken away, so the first test of this law will be in a court room, where it may well collapse. The case for these powers was made well over a year ago. The House does not exist to waive through legislation; it exists to test it and to find weaknesses before our enemies do. A motion that forbids us that duty does not strengthen the Bill but imperils it. Therefore, with regret, we will seek to divide the House.
I will be brief in my remarks. I regret the approach taken by the official Opposition. They know full well that this is a very tightly constructed Bill that takes forward a specific set of recommendations made by the independent reviewer of terrorism and state threats legislation. It will be fully scrutinised by this House and the other place. The reason for moving quickly, as the hon. Lady well knows, is because we need the wider power to designate bodies, which we will debate in due course, so that we can move quickly, given the threats the country faces. The need for speed, I believe, is made by recent events, and I think the Government are doing the right thing. I ask her to think again. Of course, if we must divide then so be it, but I would have expected better from someone with her experience.
Will the Home Secretary give way?
I will not give way, given the time.
Do any other Members wish to contribute? I call Sir Jeremy Wright.
I am bound to say that the Home Secretary, for whom I have huge respect, is wrong to suggest that she cannot take interventions because of a lack of time—she has decided that there is a lack of time. I want to make one simple point to her, which my hon. Friend on the Opposition Front Bench has adverted to. Jonathan Hall KC produced an excellent report, most of which we will all agree with, but he did that in May last year. The Home Secretary cannot have it both ways. Either this is a desperately urgent matter, in which case the Government should have brought forward legislation long before now, or it is not, in which case we should have longer than a day to consider it, should we not?
Question put.
28|13:38|233|94|The House divided:|Question accordingly agreed to.||0|0
Second Reading
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The first responsibility of a state is to protect its citizens. The security of our nation is the basis upon which our democracy, our prosperity and our way of life depend. If a state cannot guarantee the safety of its people, every other promise it makes rings hollow. Today we debate a relatively short Bill, but its brevity should not be mistaken for unimportance; it is essential to meeting the sacred responsibility of protecting this country and our fellow citizens.
This Bill comes at a time when the need is great. We live in an increasingly dangerous world—one in which many of our old assumptions no longer hold. The boundaries between war and peace have blurred; the tactics employed by hostile actors have become more sophisticated, more deniable and more insidious; and the threat has grown in scale. The director general of MI5 recently revealed that the number of individuals under investigation for state threat activity had grown by more than a third in the space of a year. After many years in which the Security Service was focused overwhelmingly on counter terror work, it must now also respond to threats from foreign powers that are greater in number than at any time in a generation.
The nature of the threats posed by foreign powers will be known by many in this House. We have seen physical threats against individuals and property; we have witnessed attempts to interfere in and influence our democracy; and we have experienced cyber attacks targeting both the state and the private sector that disrupt critical infrastructure and compromise sensitive data. The source of these state threats has come predominantly, although not exclusively, from three countries: Russia, China and Iran. I should emphasise that the threats from each present differently, both in scope and nature, and I will take each in turn.
The Russian state, as we know all too well, is responsible for deaths on British soil. What began with the murder of Alexander Litvinenko was repeated in Salisbury with the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal. The Russian state’s wanton disregard for human life was evident in the risks it was happy to pose to British citizens, which led, tragically, to the death of Dawn Sturgess—an innocent British woman killed by the Russian state.
Putin’s Russia has also sought to influence our politics, as demonstrated by the guilty plea by Nathan Gill, Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, who accepted bribes for peddling pro Kremlin narratives. Russia is also a prolific and malevolent force in cyber space. A recent targeting of politicians, journalists, universities and civil society organisations was disrupted by our security services in December 2025, resulting in the sanctioning of eight Russian cyber intelligence officers.
As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, our approach to China is nuanced: we will co operate where we can and challenge where we must. There are areas on which we will engage with China, including the economy, the environment and, indeed, on certain shared security challenges. Choosing not to engage with China is no choice at all. However, national security is the first duty of Government, and China does pose real national security threats to the United Kingdom. We have seen cyber attacks, foreign interference, and espionage targeted at our institutions. Just days ago, MI5 and fellow Five Eyes members issued an alert warning of the threat posed by China’s military intelligence services. The Hong Kong police force has also encouraged transnational repression on our soil against a community to whom we are proud to have given sanctuary.
I commend the Minister for bringing forward this legislation. I am concerned on behalf of my constituents of Chinese descent who still have families living in Hong Kong and China and who are still subject to persecution and human rights issues. The pursuit of my constituents by Chinese officials in Belfast and elsewhere in Northern Ireland has to be stopped. What can the Minister do through this legislation to stop the pursuit by Chinese officials—clandestinely, or in whatever way it may be—of my constituents, who are law abiding citizens, just because they happen to be Chinese and just because happen to have relatives in Hong Kong?
Both the National Security Act 2023 and the measures we are debating today will ensure that we have the strongest suite of measures available to us to take action against those who come after people on our soil, including dissidents from other regimes and people to whom we have given sanctuary. Transnational repression will be caught by the measures in this Bill.
As the Home Secretary will know, this is the fifth or sixth national security related Bill in the past few years—the most Bills on national security issues that we have seen in any Parliament. She will also know that the UK intelligence community has more powers as a result of these Bills, as well as bigger budgets and more responsibilities than ever before. I commend all those serving in our agencies for their distinguished service. However, I am concerned that there are parts of Government that are currently not covered by aspects of the oversight of our intelligence community by the Intelligence and Security Committee. I commend the excellent members of that Committee; I am a former member, so I can commend them in the House today.
It is absolutely vital that the intelligence services have independent oversight. Unfortunately, the legislation that oversees the ISC is 30 years old and 10 years old. We are having all these national security Bills, but we do not have commensurate Bills to improve oversight and accountability of our intelligence agencies. It needs to change, because we cannot have an echo chamber in the UK intelligence community. There needs to be parliamentary oversight with the power of sanction—summons and sanction. At the moment there is no power.
Let me first associate myself with the right hon. Gentleman’s tribute to the excellent work and service of all those in our United Kingdom intelligence community, wherever they serve, and indeed all those who serve and put their lives at risk in order to keep the rest of us safe. I also pay tribute to the tremendous work done by the Intelligence and Security Committee—one of Parliament’s most august Committees—to provide vital scrutiny of our legal frameworks in this important area.
I must say to the right hon. Gentleman that, personally, as someone who signs warrants every day that are subject to both Secretary of State decision and judicial decision, I think that we have a legal framework that is sufficiently robust to provide oversight, without getting into the operational choices that must be made. Of course, these matters are always kept under review, and I take that review process seriously. If there are proposals that he wishes to make, I would be happy to discuss them with him.
On oversight, will the Secretary of State confirm that proposed new section 33G of the National Security Act 2023, which would be added by clause 3, is not intended to limit access to justice, or prevent challenges through the courts to future decisions made under human rights principles? That seems to me to be a measure that her Government would not want to bequeath to future Governments, who might misuse the legislation.
I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s construction of proposed new section 33G, but I am sure that we can pick up that point in Committee, when we do line by line scrutiny. The Bill is intended to be read alongside all our other pieces of international and human rights legislation, and the Bill is compliant with our domestic and international human rights obligations.
The Bill gives considerably more powers to the Home Secretary and the Government, so it results in greater Executive power. Further to earlier interventions, is she not concerned that the Executive, and this branch of the Executive, are to have much greater power, but there is no commensurate increase in bodies’ accountability to Parliament for deciding what organisations and which individuals are to be sanctioned, and what the system will be for making those decisions? We have been through this process many times, going right back to the Prevention of Terrorism Acts in the 1970s. Does she not feel that there is a danger of our moving too far away from parliamentary and public accountability for the very important decision to deny liberty to various individuals, who will have difficulty challenging that legally?
I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman almost entirely. The Executive have a responsibility to protect and maintain this country’s national security, and we have to move when we see that hostile actors are employing new methods to put our people and interests at risk. We have seen an increase in hostile activity from those who are not directly related to foreign powers, but have a relationship with them. That is why we are bringing forward the designated body condition in the Bill. It rather sounds as if he questions the basis for us having counter terror legislation, or this legislation, at all. I disagree with him on that. I think we have a suitable legal framework, under both the Terrorism Act 2000 and this new Bill, to deal with all the threats that this country faces, including those that are emerging as new ways for people to put our citizens at risk.
Let me turn to the threat posed by Iran. We are debating this Bill in the shadow of a recent surge in hostile activity by the Iranian state. In just a single year, MI5 has tracked and disrupted over 20 potentially lethal Iranian plots. These have targeted dissidents, media organisations and critics of the Iranian regime, and they pose a real and enduring threat to our Jewish community here at home.
The right hon. Lady has already spoken powerfully about attacks on politicians, and the Prime Minister’s home was recently attacked. One point she has not raised, but hopefully will come to, is the nature of the media engagement that follows attacks. Lies and distortions have been used to suggest all number of different abuses by the Prime Minister—all of them false—when this was simply a Russian paid attack on his home. Does she agree that it is not just Russia that is doing this? PressTV and anybody who has taken money from it have been active participants in the hate filled propaganda that we see spreading, online and offline, in our country, encouraging murder and attacks on Jewish people, and attacks on our entire democracy.
The right hon. Gentleman is right. It is incumbent on all parliamentarians to reflect on the platforms we appear on, and what those platforms are seeking to do. There will always be a balance to be struck with freedom of speech and other matters, but where activities lead people to fall foul of the law, they will be pursued with the full force of the law—whether that is this Bill, the National Security Act 2023, or any other part of our criminal legislation framework.
On the attacks on the Prime Minister’s home, let me just say, factually, what happened in the criminal justice system. It was not part of the prosecution’s case that there was any additional direction of that activity. That was not part of the evidence. I would not want to let that stand without making that clear about the prosecution.
The Home Secretary will know that I am an admirer of hers, and we tend to agree about much. We certainly agree about the threat posed by Iran. She will be familiar with the report produced by the Intelligence and Security Committee, of which I am pleased to be a member—indeed, I am basking in the glory of the compliments that the ISC has already received—which said: “Iran poses a wide ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat to the UK, UK nationals, and UK interests. Iran has a high appetite for risk when conducting offensive activity and”— this is the critical point— “its intelligence services are ferociously well resourced with significant areas of asymmetric strength.”
Iran is a particular threat, and the Home Secretary will well understand that the way it uses its intelligence services is entirely different from the way that we see our intelligence services in this country. I have no doubt that she is mindful of that fact in relation to the Bill. I see this Bill as quite closely associated with how we deal with Iran. Will the Home Secretary comment on that?
On a point raised by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and my right hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), one way of dealing with oversight would be for the ISC to be pre briefed by a Minister when proscription was considered, rather than it having to play catch up afterwards.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his contribution. The Bill seeks to create the legal framework by which designations will be made in future. The Bill will hopefully be approved quickly by Parliament, and I will seek to move forward with designations as quickly as possible, to deal with the threats that I am discussing in the House today.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman would agree that the fact that I have spent some time considering the different nature of the threat posed by these three states in particular shows that we are very alive to the ways in which they use their unique positions to pose a threat to us in the United Kingdom. He is right about the way in which Iran operates; it is different from how Russia and China operate. The Government have to be alive to the different type of risks posed by these three countries in particular. At the moment, those countries account for a large proportion of the hostile activities that are monitored by our security services, but those activities are not exclusive to those three countries.
On matters of oversight, I will repeat my starting position. I do think that our current framework is robust and has stood the test of time. Of course, things change, and we would review the framework all the time anyway. I repeat my general offer—I suspect that I am making it to the whole of the ISC, given how well represented it is in this debate—of a conversation to pick up any concerns that its members have. The Minister for Security and I will make sure that we consider any additional proposals fully, but I am mindful that we do not want a position in which the Government cannot act quickly, or to over regulate what is necessarily an Executive function, as speed is often of the essence. With that understood, a sensible conversation is always welcome.
In relation to Iran, Members will be aware that two men await trial under the National Security Act for the surveillance of Jewish sites. While investigations remain ongoing, the police are exploring potential links between Iran and the spate of arson attacks directed at our Jewish community in London. Faced with this intolerable hostility, our nation has bolstered its defences. The National Security Act, brought forward by the previous Government and supported by Labour, rightly commanded support from both sides of the House. It has given our authorities new tools and provided the legal underpinning for a series of complex and sensitive investigations, and it has secured important convictions, including of two men for gathering information and conducting surveillance to assist the Chinese state.
In addition, the foreign influence registration scheme has been in force for close to a year. Russia and Iran are placed on its enhanced tier. Anyone now conducting activity on behalf of those states faces a clear choice: identify themselves and register their activity, or face the prospect of prison.
Sanctions remain a vital tool in our action against hostile states. The UK now has more than 550 sanctions against Iranian linked individuals and organisations, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in its entirety. Through measures like these, we have made this country a harder target. However, as we improve our defences, our adversaries respond and change their behaviour to pose new threats to our country. That has been particularly evident in the rising use of proxy groups—criminal gangs, professional enablers and front companies that do the bidding of a foreign power, against the interests of this country, in exchange for money.
There has long been a desire to ban state linked organisations from operating in this country, and to target those who facilitate them. That is why the Government made a manifesto commitment to deal with state backed domestic security threats in the same way that we tackle terrorism. The question was how to create the right legal power to do so. My predecessor, now the Foreign Secretary, tasked Jonathan Hall KC, the Government’s independent reviewer of terrorism and state threats legislation, with answering that question.
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way again; she has been generous. Does she believe that the Bill sufficiently covers the areas of non state actors and non kinetic activity, which are being used more and more?
The combination of what we already have on the statute book in the National Security Act and this Bill means that all aspects of that activity will be covered. It obviously depends on how the activity presents. The Bill closes the loophole where a designated body is responsible. Where proxy groups are responsible, they will be caught by the measures in the Bill, and that activity will be liable to both prosecution and conviction.
Jonathan Hall KC examined whether tools available in our current terrorism legislation might be emulated or adapted to address state threats. He determined that we could not use the existing terror legislation to proscribe a state entity. He memorably described that as “shopping in the wrong department.”
He said: “For the Secretary of State to have or purport to have power to prohibit the existence of foreign State entities would be well beyond what Parliament could have intended”
when it passed the Terrorism Act. He went on to conclude that applying the power to a state entity would “appear to overstep the boundaries of the principle of non intervention at international law.”
Instead, he proposed a new regime: a power equivalent to proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000, but specifically designed to tackle state and state linked organisations. Through this legislation, we seek to bring that new power into law.
I will now take the House through the Bill in some detail. Clause 1 introduces a power for the Home Secretary to designate a body. It will insert new section 33A into the National Security Act 2023. Such a designation will be possible if the Home Secretary believes that a body is, or has been, involved in foreign power threat activity and that designation is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.
The definition of a body is purposefully wide; it cannot be targeted at individuals, but it can be targeted at a wide range of organisations, including foreign intelligence services, mercenary groups, front companies and criminal networks. The power to designate is of critical importance.
The Bill’s offences are broad enough to inadvertently criminalise routine humanitarian operations, which could pose a significant problem for non governmental organisations operating in countries where state institutions or public bodies could become designated bodies. Although safeguards for humanitarian operations are in the explanatory notes, they are not in the Bill. Will the Secretary of State think about putting those into the Bill?
I do not think that the activities that the hon. Lady mentioned are caught by the Bill. We have been clear in the explanatory notes to the Bill—I refer her to paragraphs 37 and 43—that diplomatic activity, and indeed humanitarian activity, will not be caught by any of the Bill’s measures. We do not want to create a regime with lots of exemptions as that would enable hostile states to try to play games with our legal framework by dressing up front organisations. I reassure her that the measures in the Bill will not apply to any humanitarian organisation going about its business as a humanitarian organisation.
If there is any doubt, I refer hon. Members to subsection (6)(d) of proposed new section 17B, which makes it clear that anything that has essentially been approved by the UK, or is part of an agreement to which the UK is a party, will not be caught. If humanitarian organisations are concerned, I urge them to talk to the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office—as the hon. Lady well knows, that happens regularly in the humanitarian sector. The combination of all those provisions will ensure that the activity that she wants to see continue, as I do, will not be caught by the Bill’s measures.
I understand that there is some consternation from the Opposition about what I might be intending to say in the rest of my speech. If that is so, let me say first that we might not have needed an unnecessary vote on the programme motion, but I will make quick progress as I explain the thinking behind the measures.
Clause 1 also introduces a new designated body condition. Under the National Security Act, it can be difficult to secure a prosecution, as a link must be proved that runs all the way from the individual to a foreign power, but through the designated body condition more organisations will be brought to justice.
On the so called support offence, clause 2 sets out new offences related to those new designated bodies. Again, it amends the National Security Act, adding new sections 17A to 17C. The first offence is supporting a designated body, which covers inviting or expressing support and arranging, managing or addressing a meeting in support of a designated body. The offence will be triggered when the reason for the supportive act is to prejudice the safety and interests of the United Kingdom in what is known as a prohibited purpose test, echoing the National Security Act.
Let me say again that it should be noted that there will be occasions when individuals and organisations have to engage with some designated state actors. The new designation regime will ensure that diplomats can work on behalf of this country and that humanitarian organisations can continue their lifesaving work.
The second offence is to assist a designated body. It will become an offence to materially assist a designated organisation. That includes both directly assisting such an organisation and assisting a proxy organisation acting on its behalf.
To build on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Monica Harding), if a humanitarian organisation were forced to make payment to a designated organisation to do its humanitarian work, would that lead it to fall foul of the Bill, or is the Home Secretary confirming that it would not be liable to prosecution?
That conduct would not be caught. Again, I point the hon. Member to proposed new section 17B, where the combination of subsection (6)(b) and subsection (4) ensures that the work of NGOs is not caught by the tests set out. We have had specific advice on that point from the Office of Parliamentary Counsel, I have discussed it at length with the Attorney General’s Office, and Law Officers have had a look at it. We believe that the way in which the Bill is constructed does not catch humanitarian activities. It is not intended to do so, and we have made it clear in the explanatory notes that it will not do so. Our reading of how the Bill is constructed means that it will not do so.
Let me move on to the third offence in clause 2, which is of obtaining a material benefit from a designated body. An individual is outlawed from receiving a payment or a gift from a designated body either on their own behalf or on behalf of someone else. The very act of making the agreement would also constitute a crime even if no money were exchanged and no service were provided. That would cover a hacker hired to carry out a cyber attack, a criminal gang commissioned to conduct arson attacks on British soil and a gang recruiting thugs to do their state directed dirty work. Those two offences—assisting and benefiting from a designated body—would carry prison terms of up to 14 years alongside the sentences they may receive for any other illegal activity conducted, with sabotage and espionage offences carrying life sentences.
To trigger the offences of assisting a designated body and of obtaining benefit from a designated body, an individual must know that they are aiding a body that has been designated or, crucially, ought reasonably to know that they are doing so. Ignorance is therefore not a defence. If a reasonable person should have been able to surmise who would benefit from such an attack, the individual will be prosecuted despite their professed ignorance. The new powers are significant—
I was going to ask the Home Secretary later but, as she has raised the matter, perhaps I can ask her this now. On proposed new section 17C of the National Security Act and, indeed, in respect of other parts of the Bill, the knowledge of the person who may be committing an offence becomes important. Can the Home Secretary clarify—because the language in the Bill is potentially ambiguous—that the knowledge required of the person in question is that the body they are supporting or being remunerated by is a designated body? The language could be read simply to mean that the individual needs to know that the body they are supporting is a particular body, not necessarily that they know that that body has been designated. Can the Home Secretary be clear that the language refers to knowledge of designation, not simply knowledge of the particular institution or body that the individual is supporting or being remunerated by?
Before the Home Secretary responds, I remind the House that many people wish to contribute and it is just a four hour debate.
Let me be very clear: it is the former of the right hon. and learned Gentleman’s points. On the construction of knowing or “ought reasonably to know”, obviously the “ought reasonably to know” is both a subjective test of what was known and then an objective test as to what it is reasonable to surmise based on that knowledge. We think that captures exactly the kind of activity that I hope all of us in the House can agree should meet the test for criminal sanction.
Let me make progress quicker than perhaps others might have wanted. As I have noted already, the genesis for the Bill comes from the excellent work of Jonathan Hall KC, whom I thank for the work he has completed. In May 2025, he made further recommendations regarding gaps in our state threats legislation. The Government have accepted all his recommendations in full, and we will legislate for them all in due course, but, in the interests of the pace at which we are required to bring this vital legislation forward, that will not happen in this Bill. As was set out in the King’s Speech, there will be further national security legislation in this Session.
Every day, our intelligence agencies and their law enforcement colleagues make this country safer for their presence. They do so, however, facing a rising challenge. The threat from terrorism is growing and, at the same time, we face foreign powers acting with greater hostility than we have seen at any time since the cold war. In the face of the growing threat, it is essential that we equip those we expect to protect us with the tools they need to do the job at the moment that they need them the most. The need for the Bill is therefore great. It gives us a new and powerful tool to tackle hostile states and those who act on their behalf.
I end with a request to the House. We do not just require this Bill; we require it as quickly as possible. For that reason, the Government have promised to fast track the legislation through both Houses. While we must debate it fully and rigorously, and I know that we will, I hope we can work together in the pursuit of a shared ideal, and one that is greater than our political differences: our solemn duty to protect our country. I hope that, today, the whole House can unite around the first and most sacred responsibility of us all. With that, I commend the Bill to the House.
I call the shadow Minister.
We support the ambitions in the Bill, we want the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated, and we want the Bill on the statute book, so the Government will find no enemies on our Benches today—only an Opposition determined to ensure that this law protects our people and our country. That is not a cause that belongs to those on one side of the House alone.
The Government are right to bring forward this legislation, but they must now have the courage to get it right. The head of MI5 warned us that state based threats have risen by more than a third in a single year, and that since 2022 our security services have disrupted more than 20 Iran backed plots to kidnap or kill on British soil. That is 20 plots in our country, and against people who came to this country precisely because they believed it lay beyond the reach of the regimes they had fled.
There is a national emergency of antisemitism in our country. Jewish families, many of whose parents and grandparents came to these shores fleeing persecution, now find themselves looking over their shoulders once more. They have endured threats, intimidation and violence on a scale that this House swore we would never see again, and Jewish lives have become smaller. The Bill is a step towards ending that, because much of the activity is fomented, funded and directed from beyond our borders.
In the face of that national emergency, and attacks on our Jewish communities, a Bill that confronts hostile state activity on British soil is not just welcome but overdue, because a hostile state is not a gang or a terrorist cell. It poses a different challenge, operating through proxies, the hired gun and the useful idiot, recruited to sow chaos on our streets—but all backed by a foreign state with a flag, an embassy, a seat at the United Nations, and resources beyond the reach of most terrorist groups. That is what makes this Bill so difficult, and why it demands such care.
If the Bill is found wanting, it will handicap our police and the security services in their work—work that is largely unseen and for which they are too rarely thanked. Those officers deserve a Parliament ready and willing to give them the tools required for the task. That is what the Bill is for and why, in principle, it is right.
But—I am sure the whole House heard the “But” coming—the Bill has gaping deficiencies. It was laid in the House at the end of last Tuesday, and the Government want to carry out all its stages in one sitting by the end of today. A law on how we confront the gravest threat, short of outright and declared war, is being published, debated and railroaded through in a matter of days. That is a serious point, not a procedural complaint, because if we get the scrutiny wrong, our country will pay the price. We exist to find the weaknesses before our enemies do, and the Bill is meant to protect more people.
More than a year ago, Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, set out in detail why this sort of legislation was needed, and the Government accepted all his recommendations. But then we saw nothing for a year. When the House is told there is no time to get this right, let me be clear that there was time—14 months, to be exact. There was not the will to use it, until a single day was chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with the tempo of the threat.
I have called for this legislation for years, so no one will accuse us of wishing to delay it, but I say to the Secretary of State with complete candour that the threat did not arrive in a hurry and it will not be beaten by rushing today. There is no prize for being first to the statute book with a law that fails in the first courtroom that tests it. A Bill passed fast but built wrong is not a blow to hostile states; it is a gift to them. That is why we have tabled 13 amendments, not one of them to stall the Bill or to blunt it, but all to better protect us.
I will take the House through the amendments in Committee, but let me now name the gravest gaps, so that we go into this first debate with our eyes open. First, extraordinarily, the Bill is gentler on hostile states than the law currently is on terrorists. Under the Bill as drafted, to convict a person who, for example, supports the IRGC, the Crown must clear a hurdle that it does not face when prosecuting someone for support for the very terrorist groups that the IRGC arms and funds. The IRGC, the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, is being handed protection in law that the terror proxy is denied. I can find no version of that argument that survives being said out loud.
It should not be harder to prosecute the body that trains, funds and directs the terrorists than to prosecute the terrorist themselves. The provision on “prohibited purpose” sets a higher threshold, which lawyers for hostile actors will delight in. There is no reason beneficial to the UK for anyone to be engaging with the IRGC, so our amendments would simply bring the offence in line with the Terrorism Act 2000, from which it was copied and then weakened by the Government. The Secretary of State has just said that she wants hostile states to be treated the same way as terrorists, but that is not the case in this legislation.
Secondly, the Bill risks making Britain a launchpad for hostile acts against our friends—a state terror hub. A cell that conspires here, be it in Manchester or London, while directing its activity at Baghdad, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels or even Hong Kong will slip the net because the harm was meant for another state’s streets and not ours—it is not prejudicial to the safety of the UK. That is not just a hole in our law but an affront to our allies. Britain will not become a safe harbour for plots against our friends due to inaction from our side, and that is why we have tabled an amendment to close that gap.
Thirdly, as drafted, the Bill does not give the police the power to stop state backed threats before they are enacted and therefore to secure a prosecution. Our terrorism law lets us intervene while an attack is still being planned, and that is among the most important powers our counter terrorism police have. This Bill has no equivalent, so we could be powerless to charge a person who plans to assist the IRGC or another terrorist state organ unless they act. Our security services do not wish to clear up after plots; they wish to stop them and prosecute beforehand.
Fourthly, the Bill has not learned the hardest lesson of the last 20 years, which is that the most common danger that our security services have to deal with is no longer the directed plot but the lone individual who absorbs a hostile body’s propaganda and acts on it without specific direction. A hostile state brings sophistication and reach to its propaganda, yet the Bill catches only those commissioned and instructed, rather than those who are inspired by the climate created by the hostile state. It guards us against the plot that is ordered, but leaves us open to one for which no order has been given.
I will press the detail of these points in Committee, but I raise them now because they go to the heart of whether the Bill will work. I am afraid that Foreign Office lawyers, Home Office lawyers and Home Office officials have been unable to reassure me on any of these points. In fact, their answer—[Interruption.] If the Home Secretary wishes to intervene and clarify where I am wrong, she is very welcome to, but her own officials have said that it is “likely” the Bill may cope with these issues. I am not interested in “likely”. If someone is a traitor and they betray our country by supporting a hostile state, I want to make sure that they will be able to be prosecuted. Not one Government official has been able to reassure me or say that our concerns are wrong. I am glad that the Home Secretary of State finds that amusing. She is still very welcome to intervene.
The shadow Minister is making an excellent contribution, as always, and I completely agree with her. I support the Bill, but I think it is thin. I also support the former Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), and the comments about legal ambiguity. That runs through the whole Bill.
The Home Secretary talked about diplomatic cover, saying that diplomats will not be affected by this, yet it is public knowledge that intelligence officers from certain countries operate under diplomatic cover. For example, if an intelligence officer from an embassy in the United Kingdom gave a great big bag of cash to a small criminal—I will not mention where they might be from—and said, “Go and commit some sabotage,” or “Go and commit some arson,” how would that be prosecuted in the courts? How is the Crown Prosecution Service going to disaggregate that? It would have to say, “This bit we can prosecute, but the other bit, the important bit, we cannot.”
The reality is that an individual such as that would not be captured, because they would have diplomatic protections under the Vienna conventions. I admit that I have not been able to find an amendment that would correct that. That is why we have scrutiny of the House, because the shadow Front Bench is not the sole arbiter of where the gaps are. We would have been able to do this if we had had more time.
However, I will use this as a chance to touch on the fact that there is a protection in the Bill that if a person acts “for or on behalf of, or holds office under, the Crown, or is in Crown employment”, they are protected against any interactions they may have with the IRGC. However, there is a slight concern, because that is followed by: “(whether or not they engage in the conduct in that capacity).”
We would all like to say, hand on heart, that no one who works for our country as a civil servant—a Crown servant—would ever betray us, but technically, under this legislation, we could not prosecute anyone who did so, even if they did so outside their official capacity and were therefore genuinely working to abet another organisation. Again, if the Home Secretary would like to clarify how we would prosecute rogue civil servants, I would be happy to take an intervention from her—but there isn’t one.
The Government decided that it was wise to attempt to pass such vital legislation in just one day, but we think that scrutiny is important because the Bill needs to work as well as it can. It is littered with omissions. I have already set out some of them. Additionally, Jonathan Hall said that we should give powers to the police to strip passports at the border, but the Government have not included that. It was proposed that there should be serious police protection orders, but they have removed them. We are gifting defences to would be perpetrators, and the Bill should not be left as it is. These examples are only the gaping holes I could find in the two and a half days and late nights that I was given to find issues and table amendments.
There is one more thing that the Government and the House must hold in mind as we fix our gaze on Tehran. This power is rightly organisation agnostic. We must not write a law for the IRGC alone. We are writing a law for every hostile state organ that comes after it, and the next may look nothing like the last. I think of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party, of whose reach I have spoken often, and I hope the day comes when the Government turn this power on it. I doubt that that will happen, but I set out that ambition. That day will come only if we build this Bill for the second designation, the third and the fourth.
As drafted, this legislation has been written with a single, already sanctioned organisation in mind, and that shows. There is no reference to sanctions read across in the Bill because the IRGC is already sanctioned. The Government said, “We don’t need to do a read across for sanctions because the IRGC is already sanctioned.” I am not just looking at the IRGC. There are more organisations that will need to be designated in future. The law must fit not just one adversary but all. Otherwise, it is a single use power dressed up as a meaningful law.
We support the principle of this Bill without reservation, and we will support it on Second Reading, but we will support it in the right way, with scrutiny, attention and determination to ensure that a rushed process does not result in us not meeting the scale of the threats we now face. It is vital that the Government engage today in good faith and listen to Members on all sides. Their failure so far to accept any amendments does not give me cause for optimism, but there is still time for them to accept some. The delay of the last 14 months should not be undone by haste today, because a half built Bill will not redeem that time; it will simply compound the danger.
The world has clearly entered a new era of geopolitical volatility, with technology and strategic competition for resources driving an increasingly contested and competing world. This has not just happened since July 2024. It has been on the horizon for a good many years, and that intensifying and escalating rivalry between states is now the new normal. The United Kingdom must adapt to this new world, not cling to a dying world order, and this Bill is the latest recognition from the Government that they must and will adapt and respond, and that they will always put the national security of the UK first.
Today, I will centre my remarks on the state threats we face, on the Bill and on the wider response that is needed to tackle those state threats. The three greatest state threats facing the United Kingdom are from Russia, China and Iran, and they each pose a distinct and unique threat. Only this week it has been confirmed that Russian proxies set the Prime Minister’s house and car on fire. We need to urgently grasp the seriousness of that. It was abhorrent political violence targeted against the elected leader of the United Kingdom—our country—but that was not all. The individuals spread disinformation, whipped up community tensions and paid for far right posters to be put up and for “Stop Islam” graffiti to be sprayed. We must not tolerate this. That was not an isolated event. We have heard about the assassination of Litvinenko, the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal, the attack on the warehouse in east London in March 2024 by the Wagner Group and many other suspicious attacks on these shores. These include the cyber attacks on Jaguar Land Rover, on Marks & Spencer and on the British Library, which still has not recovered from the attack several years ago.
In October 2025, the director general of MI5, Ken McCallum, said that state threats had risen by a third over a year and were now equal to or even greater than the threat of terrorism. In the last year alone, there has been a 35% increase in state threat activity. For example, between 2022 and 2025, the UK prevented 20 Iran backed plots, all of which were potentially lethal threats. Meanwhile, Chinese espionage and cyber attacks are a continual threat. With China’s thousand grains of sand theory, every piece of information, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant, is of value. In May 2024, the director of GCHQ said that the service “devotes more resource to China than any other single mission”
and that China poses a “genuine and increasing cyber risk”
to the UK.
Those three countries present three different ideologies and three different strategies, but they all represent an intensifying and rapidly evolving threat to the United Kingdom. The Bill is another important step following the critically important National Security Act 2023 to protect the United Kingdom from these state threats. It will introduce a new power to designate bodies involved in foreign power threat activity, as we have heard, and create a new offence of supporting, assisting or benefiting from designated bodies. Of course, that follows the review by Jonathan Hall KC into whether existing terrorism powers could be used to address state threats. He found that the terrorism proscription charges would not be appropriate, so instead this legislation will now designate bodies, including proxies, such as the IRGC or the Wagner Group.
It was clear from the inquiry by the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy into the China spy case that while the 2023 Act was a big step forward, the ever evolving threat landscape means that it would need to evolve, be improved upon and be amended, just as we are doing today. I am pleased that the Government have taken up the recommendation and acted in the national interest. The designation of certain bodies should and must send a clear message to our adversaries that the person will be held responsible for it, with a maximum of 14 years in prison for such an offence.
It is slightly unusual for a Bill to be expedited in this way, but I recognise the urgency and thank the Department for its continued engagement with the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. However, I do have one area of concern. The impact assessment outlines a potential long term consequence that I would like to focus on. The assessment says that a long term impact may be “Detrimental impact of foreign policy objectives/bilateral relationships”.
On the risks to bilateral relationships, my immediate thought is, of course, China. The Chinese state does not take kindly to accusations of espionage, as we saw with the collapsed China spy case whereby, under the last Conservative Government, the deputy National Security Adviser was unable to describe China as the enemy due to Government policy, despite the security threat—this tricky tightrope that we continue to have to walk. We have to engage with China. Its economic might and, quite frankly, our dependence on it, which we have to reduce in the long term, means that ignoring China is not an option, but how does the Minister plan to mitigate the risk to our national security while avoiding damaging that relationship? It seems that the contradiction here is yet to be fully resolved. Could the Minister assure me that there are clear contingency plans for an incident like that and that all civil servants, police forces and intelligence services are clear on the Government’s position regarding China?
I am pleased that this Labour Government have already taken a raft of measures to keep us secure and safe, with today being the latest piece of legislation to meet the moment. Of course, there will be other piece of legislation because the threats will become greater and even more diverse. The Representation of the People Bill, the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill and the Bill before us are all interlinked and should be seen as a co ordinated effort, but there is more to be done.
We need to explain this very real threat to the public and build resilience in our institutions and businesses, and throughout the country for each and every individual. We need a national conversation with the public because the Government cannot do this alone. In this new era of state threats, legislation is crucial, and the Government have an integral role in keeping us all safe, but so does the public. We need to explain that and not shy away from the realities before us.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
I want to begin by making clear that the Liberal Democrats support the Bill. Our country faces co ordinated hostile campaigns by state sponsored and state linked actors who actively undermine our democracy, terrorise our citizens and erode our core values. The Home Secretary has referenced Iran, China and Russia; we know that in future there will be others.
The convictions that we have seen in recent days for Russian linked attacks on our Prime Minister underline the imperative that we act with urgency. The two men convicted of these attacks were recruited online by a Russian speaking handler, and a BBC investigation found evidence that the handler has links to the Russian regime. GCHQ director Anne Keast Butler recently warned us of the rising threat from Russia. She referenced Russia targeting critical infrastructure, our democratic processes, supply chains and public trust, as the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) referenced. Sir Richard Moore, the former head of MI6, has warned that Putin is using sabotage, cyber attacks and arson to be “disruptive, distracting and intimidating to those of us who are supporting Ukraine”.
The Bill is an important step towards ensuring that our security and law enforcement agencies have the powers they need to identify, disrupt and deter those who seek to threaten the safety, sovereignty and democratic integrity of the United Kingdom. The cases and incidents referenced by the Home Secretary form part of a broader and deeply worrying pattern of events that seek to undermine our freedoms and our liberal democracy. It is right that we take measures today to better defend ourselves.
The reality is that threats to the United Kingdom from foreign states are evolving rapidly. They are no longer confined to traditional espionage; today, they include foreign interference in our political system, cyber operations, disinformation campaigns, sabotage and, at the most extreme, assassination attempts. In the past year alone, individuals have been convicted of spying on Hong Kong dissidents on behalf of China, and a journalist was stabbed on behalf of Iran, in addition to the convictions for the attacks on the property of our Prime Minister.
We have seen convictions of individuals for carrying out an arson attack on a Ukrainian linked warehouse on behalf of the Russian Wagner Group. As the Home Secretary reminded us, we should not forget that Russian threats predate the invasion of Ukraine. It is now eight years since the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, which killed Dawn Sturgess, hospitalised others, including the Skripals, and had the potential to harm thousands more due to the potency of the chemical agent used. Foreign powers are increasingly outsourcing operations to proxies and state linked organisations. The evolving threat landscape exposes a critical gap in our legal framework.
The Liberal Democrats have long called for decisive action to tackle the threat posed by hostile state actors, including the IRGC. Time and again, we have been disappointed by the failure of successive Governments to act with the required speed. The previous Conservative Government referenced the threat and suggested that they would act, but ultimately they did not. Even after Jonathan Hall KC recommended these powers over a year ago, progress has been regrettably slow, as the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns), said.
Meanwhile, the threat has not stood still. While the Government may be preoccupied with questions about leadership, the responsibility in this House is clear, and it is a positive that despite that, the Government are bringing forward the legislation today. We must now act to protect the safety and freedoms of the people we serve and the integrity of our democracy, because when it comes to matters of national security, the unity in the House today is something that we should welcome.
Existing counter terrorism legislation was never designed to deal with hostile state actors, as Jonathan Hall KC said. He concluded that there are strong grounds for introducing a new classification power that is equivalent to proscription but specifically designed to address state threats. Crucially, he noted that such a power should sit alongside existing tools, such as sanctions, rather than attempt to replace or distort counter terrorism law.
The Bill provides a framework to address those challenges. It gives the Government the tools they need to keep pace with an increasingly complex and hostile international environment, and it equips the Government to address future threats from state actors if and when they arise. That is reassuring, particularly given the behaviour that the Home Secretary referenced earlier from the three states mentioned, but of course there will be others in future.
Of course, as the Bill progresses quickly today, it will be right for this House to scrutinise its provisions carefully, particularly to ensure that safeguards and oversight are put in place and that matters of proportionality are addressed. But the Liberal Democrats will support the Bill today. We hope that it will pass and make swift progress.
I want to begin by acknowledging what many colleagues across this House will believe: when a Government ask Parliament to extend their powers in the name of national security, scrutiny is not obstruction; it is our duty, as has been said already on the Opposition and Government sides. Civil liberties, the right to dissent, and the freedom to campaign, to report and to advocate—these are the very values that distinguish us from the states whose hostile activities this Bill is designed to confront. I know the Government understand that and, equally, I know that colleagues across the House will hold these expectations firmly.
The threat facing the United Kingdom from hostile foreign states and their proxies is very real—we have heard some examples already in today’s debate—and it is growing, and our existing legal framework has not kept pace with it. I want to take the opportunity to endorse strongly what my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) said about the need for us to have a public conversation about the very real dangers that our democracy faces.
In 2025, the director general of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, reported a 35% increase in state threat activity from the previous year. Over that same period, MI5 tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran backed plots on British soil. We have seen espionage threatening and targeting our Parliament, our universities and our critical national infrastructure. We have seen arson, surveillance and physical violence commissioned by foreign states, and we have seen those states hide behind proxies precisely because our current laws make it easier for them to do so.
Following the start of the conflict between Iran and the US and Israel in February, there have been a number of attacks on Iranian and Jewish targets in the UK thought to be linked to Iranian proxy groups. Those include an attempted arson attack at the London premises of Iran International—a Persian language news channel opposed to the regime in Tehran—an arson attack on a synagogue in Finchley, and the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green.
In a statement on tackling antisemitism on 5 May this year, the Prime Minister acknowledged that one line of inquiry was whether a foreign state had been behind some of these attacks. He said that such “malign threats” from Iran or other states “will not be tolerated” and that the Government would fast track legislation to deal with them. The Bill before us today is a result of that commitment and it is something that I fully support.
As has been said, the National Security Act 2023 was a significant step forward, but as Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of state threats legislation, concluded in his May 2025 report, there remain gaps, particularly in our ability to disrupt proxy organisations acting on behalf of foreign powers, and the Bill seeks to fill those gaps. At its heart, as has been discussed, is a new designation power for the Home Secretary, equivalent to the proscription power that exists for terrorist organisations under the Terrorism Act 2000, but applied to bodies engaged in state threat activity. Crucially, the Bill also covers the aliases and proxy names through which hostile states so often seek to obscure their operations.
These are serious powers and they must come with serious safeguards. The Bill has been drafted to be compatible with the European convention on human rights, and particularly article 10 on freedom of expression, and I welcome that, but compatibility is a floor and not a ceiling. I urge my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to ensure that the definitions of “support” and “assistance” are applied with precision and proportionality, because the offences created in the Bill can, by their nature, reach into areas of ordinary civic life, including journalism, academic research and political advocacy.
I also want to raise a particular Welsh dimension. As well as the security services who work day and night to keep us safe, so too do our armed forces and our police officers. As the Bill progresses, I wish to place on the record my continued support for capital city policing status for Cardiff, with the resources to match the unique security and civic responsibilities that come with being a capital city. I urge my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to engage seriously with that as the legislation progresses and comes into force.
Our constituents ask us to take tough decisions and to ensure that we exercise our judgment responsibly to ensure that our nation is protected. I believe that the measures in the Bill, taken together, will help to keep my constituents safe as it will make the operating environment for foreign intelligence services and their proxies much tougher. I support the Bill because the threats it addresses are real and demand a response. I do so with clear expectations that designation powers are used, as has been said, on solid evidence and building on established legal frameworks, that enforcement is proportionate and that civil liberties are treated as central to the legitimacy of the law, not as an afterthought.
My constituents will be reassured to understand that the Bill provides that designation decisions will be agreed by Parliament, that it will be annually reviewed for efficacy by the independent reviewer of state threats legislation, and that individuals will have clear rights of appeal and access to independent review. These are important and welcome safeguards.
We can be strong against those who threaten us, but we can also be strong in defence of the democratic values they are trying to undermine. The Bill, properly applied, will do all those things, and it is for those reasons that I am supporting it today.
I rise to make some brief comments about this legislation. I agree fully with what the Government are trying to achieve; I just do not agree with the way they are doing it. I will not repeat the arguments for why we need the legislation, as we have heard them from both sides of the House and I agree fully with what has been said. I benefited from the national security measures when I was in government, as I am sure will the new Minister for Security—I welcome her to her place.
When we need to pass this kind of legislation, there is a consensus across the House, but we need time to properly scrutinise it. I say gently to the Minister for Security that the business managers could have set aside more time for Second Reading and perhaps a general debate to follow, with then some time in Committee to scrutinise the Bill properly, looking at amendments and deciding what might improve the Bill. It would be better for everybody if they knew that the Bill had been properly stress tested.
I say to the Security Minister and to the Home Secretary, who is no longer in her place, that I genuinely want them to succeed. I am not somebody who wants to see Ministers fail because we are from different parties. I benefited from that when I sat on the Treasury Bench and had similar support from the Opposition, but I never expected the Opposition just to accept that what I was saying was correct and accurate; I always expected there to be scrutiny, and I welcomed it. The report by Jonathan Hall was published over 12 months ago, so there is no need to pass the Bill in one day. It could have been introduced and considered at many times over the past 14 months.
When I was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I frequently had to take legislation through in one day, because devolved matters could not be considered in Stormont while there was no Executive. When we took legislation through in one day, we spent a lot of time working with the Opposition and interested stakeholders to ensure that they understood why we were taking it through and what it meant, and to listen to them about where improvements could be made.
I regret enormously that the Home Affairs Committee, which I chair, has been offered only a briefing on the legislation after today, so our Committee members will not be briefed by officials until after the Bill has passed all stages in this House. That is very disappointing. It is a shame that the Home Secretary is so far refusing to appear before the Committee before the summer recess for her regular session. I deeply regret that and I warn the Security Minister that the Committee will look at this in detail, because we need to make sure that scrutiny has happened.
The Security Minister will recall that during the covid pandemic we did not always have time to scrutinise the legislation that the Government were taking through. As a member of the governing party, I was concerned about that, but as an Opposition Member, she was incredibly concerned about the lack of scrutiny, and it has to be said that the Government did not always get things right.
Having made those points, I have a couple of questions for the Minister about the substance of the Bill. First, I am not clear about how the various regimes—sanctions designation, the FIRS regime and proscription, which does not apply in many cases—are going to work together, so it would be helpful to understand how she envisages these issues fitting together. I appreciate that she is new to her role and she may be asking her officials the same questions, but it is important that we test the new provisions against the reality of what has been going on in the world. We must check that they will actually work and that the Crown Prosecution Service will be prepared to take cases, because it is only worth having this legislation if law enforcement and others are prepared to use it and legal action comes from it.
My final point is about future proofing. We have talked about evolving threats. The fact that the Government are introducing the Bill three years after the National Security Act 2023, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) took through when he was Security Minister, shows how threats evolve. I know that he will have done as much as was possible at that time, but things have evolved. How confident is the Minister that the Bill is future proof? How confident is she that the powers that I am sure this House will end up giving to the Secretary of State today will not be misused if, in the future, there is someone else sitting in the Home Office as Home Secretary? That person may have a different agenda and may not agree with the consensus that there is in this place today, and they may want to use these powers for ill. Is the Minister confident that these powers cannot be misused in the future?
I pay tribute to the previous Security Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley North (Dan Jarvis), for his tireless work to get us to this position, debating a much needed Bill to tackle the state threats we face. As our new Defence Secretary, he will continue to hear from me—perhaps even more than before—on the need to match the urgency with which we are dealing with hostile states in today’s legislation, with the largest possible uplift in defence spending.
I welcome the new Security Minister to her place. She is a long standing friend and ally of mine from our time together on the Labour party’s national executive committee, as indeed is the Home Secretary, who is no longer in her place but who gave an excellent speech to introduce the Bill. I welcome the Security Minister to her position and look forward to her bringing her wealth of experience to the debate.
I have been campaigning for the Government to take more action against the Iranian regime and its proxies and their activities in the UK for many years. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; before being elected to this House, I campaigned on this issue in my then employment as director of the organisation We Believe in Israel.
I wrote to the Home Office last year, calling on it to follow Australia’s lead in designating organisations such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as state sponsors of terrorism. The Bill clearly is not intended to specify particular states, although three states and particular organisations have been mentioned, but it gives the Government the powers to facilitate such a move. The Bill itself and any proscription measures—[Interruption.] Sorry—we are not supposed to call them proscription measures. The Bill itself and any measures that it takes to deal with such organisations have my wholehearted support.
I was elected on a Labour manifesto that recognised the key duty of Government to keep their people and the country safe. That foundational pillar ought to motivate every Member of the House to support the proposed legislation we are debating. This Bill is a necessary response to the growing and evolving threat posed by hostile states to our freedom, our democracy and our way of life. According to the director general of MI5, MI5 tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iranian backed plots in 2024. The IRGC is Tehran’s prime weapon in exerting influence here in the UK and in many other countries. That influence has targeted the British Jewish community to devastating effect. We have seen proxy groups carrying out a horrific spate of arson attacks designed to terrorise our Jewish communities and normalise antisemitic hate. These are not just attacks on British Jews; they are attacks on the values that we all hold dear as a nation.
Jewish community leaders, including the Chief Rabbi, have demanded robust action to take on the threat that Iran’s proxy campaign of terror poses to British Jews. Today, our Labour Government are heeding those demands and continuing to stand with Britain’s Jewish community. This Bill empowers Ministers to disrupt and deter the activities of state and state linked entities, as well as those working with them, that target and terrorise British civilians. Such a power was recommended by the independent reviewer of state threats legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, as the best way for the Government to achieve their manifesto commitment of dealing with terrorism and adopting legislation to deal with state based security threats.
As Jonathan Hall KC has made clear, traditional proscription is not the appropriate way to deal with state linked entities due to the constraints of international law, which prevents the British state from banning the existence of a foreign state entity. As someone who has previously called for IRGC proscription to be considered, I am confident that this measure goes just as far as proscription to prevent hostile foreign actors from advancing their malign interests here in the UK. It gives Ministers flexible powers to target these organisations without legal constraints that hold us back from taking the right action under existing frameworks.
The Bill does not designate any organisations as state threats to national security. Instead, it will give the power to Ministers to make any decisions based on the intelligence to which they have access. I am aware that the Government do not comment on individual proscription decisions, but I would like to take this opportunity to call on the Government—hopefully for the final time—to use a designation against the IRGC to keep British Jews and Iranian refugees and dissidents resident in the UK safe, and to clamp down on the brutal and oppressive machinery of the Iranian regime.
The legislation before us is not just bad news for Iran; other hostile countries will be set back by the Government’s robust action. The Secretary of State mentioned actions by Russia and China. It was less than a decade ago that Russian operatives carried out a Novichok attack here on British soil. More recently, just two years ago, the Wagner Group, which was already proscribed as a terrorist organisation, co ordinated an arson attack on a warehouse providing critical aid to our gallant allies in Ukraine.
Just this week, it was revealed that appalling arson attacks on the Prime Minister’s home were linked to Russian actors. Whatever other disagreements we may have, I know the House will stand united on this matter, with the Prime Minister and against what a former MI6 chief has described as attempts by Vladimir Putin to intimidate British people on British soil.
Across the world, regimes with values diametrically opposed to our tolerant, democratic society clearly want to make the United Kingdom and its citizens suffer for our values and the role that we play in supporting countries such as Ukraine. Wherever that threat arises, the Government have a duty to defend against it, and today they are stepping up to the plate and doing just that.
This legislation is a welcome step forward in equipping the Government to handle the dangerous threats faced in Britain in 2026. By supporting this Bill, we are supporting the safety of British citizens, particularly British Jews, and opposing a tyrannical regime that is hellbent on disrupting our way of life. It gives us the tools to confront those who seek to terrorise, divide and harm our society, and I urge colleagues across the House to support it.
I pretty much wholeheartedly endorse everything said by the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst). Let me begin by declaring my interests, as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, including those relating to my role as the chair of the United Arab Emirates all party parliamentary group.
I will not restate the arguments for this legislation in the first place, as they have been made eloquently by many other Members. Suffice it to say that we have seen in our lifetimes the nature of the threats facing the United Kingdom evolve from being primarily state based, to terrorist based after 9/11 and 7/7, and to the hybrid of grey zone warfare that we are all familiar with. Many of us struggled with and sought to address that issue when we were in government, not least when I was the Deputy Prime Minister. I sought to co ordinate across national resilience and security and international relations. I worked closely with Members of this House, including the former Security Minister, my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat).
Given that this is a debate on Second Reading, I wish instead to use the limited time available to me to make three points in relation to the application of the powers under the Bill—and, indeed, the inability to use powers under the Bill. The first point relates to Iran and the IRGC. As Members will know, for many years this House has debated whether and how to deal with the IRGC. The essence of the problem has always been that it is not just a conventional non state terrorist organisation; it is part of the Iranian state, but it also operates through military structures, intelligence functions, cyber capabilities, proxy militia and criminal intermediaries. As I read this Bill, and as the Government have strongly indicated, I think that is precisely the sort of body or network of bodies that this legislation appears designed to address. This really does matter, for the reasons set out by the hon. Member for North Durham.
In Hertsmere, I have the privilege of representing one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. For that community, this is not just an abstract debate about legal architecture; it is real. It is about whether people feel safe at synagogue. It is about whether parents feel confident in sending their children to Jewish schools. It is about whether community centres, charities and places of worship can operate without fear.
The Jewish community has long seen the malign role of Iran and its proxies. After the terrible spate of recent attacks, they live in a different world—one in which fear and intimidation have deepened and intensified near to breaking point. I therefore hope that the Government genuinely understand that fear and that they will use the powers granted by the legislation to act and to act fast.
The second area I will touch on relates to the question of ideological movements that may intersect with state threat activity. I urge the Government not to treat ideological extremism, particularly Islamist extremism and state threat activity, as entirely separate worlds. We know that the hatred unleashed on the streets of this country often finds its source in Islamist extremists, who have nothing but contempt for the values of this country but who are adept at using our openness and our institutions to undermine us. In that way, a mutual interest is created between this hateful ideology and hostile states. We have foreign funding, ideological influence, proxy activity and hostile state interests overlapping. This Bill rightly targets foreign states and agents, but we must look at the broader ecosystem too.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Select Committee recently looked at new forms of radicalisation and extremism, and we were very struck by how things can be looked at through an ideological lens or not, and that sometimes things fall through the cracks in the middle because they are not looked at as a whole. Does he agree that the Bill could present an opportunity to address that issue?
I totally agree, and it is dangerous for this country that there is a mutuality of interests among extremists who do not share our values and hostile states who are opposed to us. This Bill should seek to deal with that overlap. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood is in certain places backed by foreign states and has an equally subversive agenda here in the UK. Although its relationship with violence on our streets is often more subtle and obscured, the threat to our social cohesion and democratic fabric is no less severe. We have seen in recent months the United States Government designate various regional branches of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organisations, and an excellent article by Lord Godson highlighted today how many European states are taking steps to address this issue. The west is waking up to this reality and we in this country cannot afford to lag behind.
This situation is worsened, of course, by the values we seek to defend being used against us. Fair minded British people want to believe that every side deserves a hearing, so we afford to some groups that do not deserve it a kind of equivalence—on one hand we have the west and Britain and America, and on the other hand we have these other groups. That equivalence is entirely bogus of course, because we are defending an open society and they are seeking to close it.
My right hon. Friend is of course entirely correct. Members on the Labour Back Benches are, given their presence in the Chamber for this debate, at the more hawkish and national security end of the left wing spectrum, but there are elements of the liberal left who succumb to that equivalence argument and it is profoundly dangerous.
The 2015 review of the Muslim Brotherhood concluded that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a possible indicator of extremism. A decade later, in the current far more dangerous geopolitical environment, we need to look again at that assessment. That is why I continue to believe that the Government should take up the opportunity to do so. Some of our closest allies have done so and indeed have taken a much more robust approach. For example, the United Arab Emirates has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. We should ask ourselves why a country such as the UAE has such concerns about the radicalisation of its own students in our mosques that they are restricting their study here. The test under this Bill is rightly a foreign powers threat test, and there may well be other avenues for addressing this issue, but none the less I make the point that where an ideological body or a body linked to an ideological movement is acting to the benefit of a hostile state, this regime, alongside others, should apply.
Finally, I would like to address the future proofing of this legislation, which has been touched on by some Members. Just as threat actors have evolved, so too have their methods, and foreign powers and their proxies no longer exclusively rely on the old school methods of human surveillance, forged documents and so on. They can deploy bots that distort the democratic debate, as we have seen; ransomware to cripple business; cyber attacks to disrupt public services; and deepfakes to impersonate trusted public figures. That list goes on, and AI will accelerate all of that—a point I made at the UN General Assembly ahead of the Bletchley Park AI safety summit. Cross Government co ordination to address this issue is more urgent than ever.
In this country we cannot just look at state threats purely in a physical silo, detached from the digital domain. Hostile states will use AI to automate reconnaissance, scale spear phishing, identify vulnerabilities, and so on. A criminal who once needed specialist skills may increasingly be able to purchase or access those capabilities through AI enabled tools, and hostile states that once needed sophisticated cyber units may be able to outsource, automate or accelerate parts of that work. Many Members will be familiar with the concerns and indeed opportunities surrounding Claude Mythos and its advanced cyber capable AI models. That is a warning to us, but it is a warning of much more to come in this space.
The right hon. Gentleman is making an important point. As AI develops, the threshold for non state actors to conduct cyber, physical and other attacks against our democracy is lowered further, and that is happening almost weekly. Does he agree that we need to move quickly on this legislation, and on the effective regulation of artificial intelligence?
I totally agree with the hon. Member, and that is why we Opposition Members support the legislation. On AI, we can all see these challenges coming. We need to work cross party and support the Government in finding ways to address them, because this is essentially the challenge of our age. Of course, AI will be able to strengthen our defences, but we should not be naive; the same tool that helps a defender to patch faster will of course also enable an attacker to breach faster. We have seen this with hostile states. Russia has already integrated cyber sabotage, propaganda and deniable proxy activity into its campaign against the west. The same can be said for North Korea, which has not been touched on much in this debate, and Iran.
The internet outage in Iran knocked out a large percentage—5% or 10%, depending on who we believe—of Scottish separatist sites on social media. Do we genuinely believe that Iran is the only country seeking to weaponise social media? On one account, for example, someone claimed to be a nurse from Glasgow, but was fluent in Persian. Is it not likely that China and North Korea are doing exactly the same thing?
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Separatism makes a country weaker, and there is no doubt that our enemies will encourage it. The example that he cited, which I also saw, is very telling of exactly that.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way; he is being very generous with his time. On the use of AI on social media to disrupt, is he also concerned about what happens on X, where unidentified and unidentifiable accounts—sometimes bots, sometimes accounts using a dinosaur or other avatar—seek to stoke hatred on our streets against Jewish people, Muslims and others, and against British values? I am very concerned about that. I have been criticised by members of the Conservative party on the internet for raising this point, but I wonder if he shares my concern.
I have great respect for Elon Musk’s ingenuity when it comes to trying to send a man to Mars and set up a colony there. I am slightly more dubious about the activities in relation to X, but that platform should be subject to the same legislation as all others.
As for this Bill, the question is whether the designation regime will be agile enough to deal with not only traditional organisations, but cyber units, hackers for hire, front companies, AI enabled threat and state threat networks, and commercial entities that materially assist hostile state activity. This Bill will not solve the problem of state threats on its own, but it is an important and necessary addition, because the reality is that today’s threat is hybrid; state power, ideology, cyber capability, organised crime and artificial intelligence are increasingly overlapping. That is the challenge before us all. The law must keep pace with this, and the Bill is an important step along the line.
I strongly support the change to the law being proposed today, to better protect our nation and our fellow citizens from those working for foreign states that want to disrupt and attack our way of life. While there has been debate today about the timeline, I personally welcome the swift and decisive approach being taken to protecting our national security. As we have heard from colleagues across the House, state backed threats are evolving incredibly rapidly, so it is critical that legislation passed by this House adapts at the same speed and keeps pace with the complex threat environment. If that puts me at the hawkish end of the political spectrum, to use the words of the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden), that is a badge I will wear with pride. Hopefully, through our discussions today, the House can send the clearest possible message: anyone who supports those backed by hostile states, glorifies or promotes their messages of hate, or is in the pay of foreign states that wish us ill can and should expect to face the full force of the British law. The Government and this House must always take firm action to defend our way of life and protect our citizens.
Why is this Bill so important? As we heard eloquently from my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western), there is clear evidence that hostile states are actively trying to undermine our society by paying proxies to bring violence to the streets of Britain. We have seen this in the attacks on Iranian dissidents by criminal groups linked to Iran’s security services; in the attacks on Jewish volunteer ambulance services in London, for which an Islamist terror group with links to the Iranian regime has publicly claimed responsibility; and in the attacks on Ukrainian linked property and the Prime Minister’s private residence by proxies linked to the Russian state. These acts are appalling, shocking and unacceptable. That is why I am pleased that, in addition to introducing the measures that we are discussing today, the UK Government and 23 other countries issued a joint statement on 10 June that condemned the egregious actions we have seen across Europe, North America and Australia by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other organisations. As the statement said powerfully, “Attempts to kill, kidnap, harass, intimidate, or otherwise attack people on our soil, undermines national sovereignty and international norms. These actions must stop immediately.”
What action must we take to tackle these serious and growing threats? As Members across the House have set out, the Bill before us seeks to give our law enforcement agencies and security services greater powers and flexibility to address these serious matters. The Bill includes three new offences related to supporting, assisting, or receiving benefits from activists or organisations that are threatening the UK. As colleagues have said, it builds on existing legislation dealing with non state terror groups, following the recommendations of the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation.
In a small way, I have seen for myself the growing challenges that we face in the wider threat environment. I am a member of the armed forces parliamentary scheme, which involved the Royal Air Force last year and the Royal Navy this year. Together with colleagues from across the House, I have had the privilege of meeting senior military and security personnel at home and abroad. Having visited operational bases here at home, and been briefed by British and NATO force leaders in Europe, it is clear to me just how complex and rapidly evolving the range of threats we face in our country is. It is clear that conflicts on foreign shores are playing out on British soil. It is clear that the range and sophistication of the attacks we face—physical attacks, cyber attacks and interference in democracy—have grown. It is clear that the military, the security services, the police and other law enforcement bodies needs to work in an increasingly sophisticated way to deal with those hybrid threats. It is clear that hostile activities from state and non state actors are increasingly linked, and that our laws must evolve quickly to give those tasked with defending us the tools that they need in the modern age.
Before I conclude, I will raise some issues with the Minister; I would be very grateful if she would address them in her closing remarks. The first picks up a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington, and by other Members, about public knowledge. The tactics that we have been discussing are intentionally hybrid and hidden; they are designed to complicate and obfuscate, and in some cases, it takes our security services many months to work out exactly what is going on, and to give confident public statements. As right hon. and hon. Members across this House have said, it is critical that we can better explain the nature of the threat to our citizens, residents and constituents, so that the significant investment that we are making in our military and security services is understood, but also so that citizens can help defend themselves and this country, including from individual cyber attacks and other measures.
My second question, which draws on a point made by the right hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley), is about integration. Given the complexity of what we face and the need for the police, the military, the security services and others—not just in our country, but across allied nations—to work together in a much more sophisticated way, are we confident that those organisations have the necessary resources, and is the Minister confident that they have the freedom to break down bureaucratic silos and work across organisational boundaries to get this done?
I hope that across the House today, we can be clear that state backed aggression, attacks and disruption are not just attacks on people, property and organisations, as appalling as those things are; they are attacks on our way of life, on our values, and on democracy itself. I hope we can unite to show that we will take action—decisive action—and will take it today.
I think we agree about the threat we face and about its scale. We do not need to spend the four hours allocated for this debate sharing that agreement, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros Curtis) rightly said. Our job is to scrutinise the Government’s proposed response to the threat, and that is what I want to do with my time. It is especially important to do that when the timescale for consideration of the legislation is compressed, as it is today.
I have huge sympathy with those who have spoken about the IRGC, but I would counsel against using this legislation to make the final decision about its proscription or designation. I do not want to steal the Minister’s lines, but I suspect that she will say to us, rightly, that it is important that we do not set a precedent, under this new system, of making designations in primary legislation, rather than by ministerial decision. There is an important procedural point there, which it will be necessary to maintain if we want to defend the flexibility that I think the Government are seeking in this legislation.
However, it is right to reflect on the problem that the Government are seeking to solve. The problem is clearly the gaps that they, and many of us, perceive in the proscription regime under the Terrorism Act, which does not enable them to deal with damaging behaviour by entities, including state entities, that are not captured by the proscription regime. That is the problem that Jonathan Hall identified in his report, and the problem that the Government are seeking to remedy through this legislation. They have made it clear that their objective is to present a regime that is broadly equivalent—the Government have used the word “equivalent” in their publications relating to this Bill—to the proscription regime. I want to explore that a little, to understand exactly how the Bill is going to deliver on its objectives.
I will start, as the Bill does, with the grounds for designation. The Bill is clear that in order to designate a body under this legislation, the Secretary of State must reasonably believe that it is, or has been, involved in what is described as “foreign power threat activity”, and then must consider that “designating the body is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.”
It is important to understand what foreign power threat activity is. It is defined in section 33 of the National Security Act 2023 as “the commission, preparation or instigation of acts or threats”, which are set out in subsection (3), and include obtaining or disclosing protected information or trade secrets, assisting a foreign intelligence service, entering a prohibited place, sabotage, general foreign interference and obtaining material benefits from a foreign intelligence service. Section 33 goes on to specify other acts: “serious violence against another person…endanger the life of another person, or…create a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public.”
I set that out in detail because it is important to understand that for designation to be attached to a relevant body, it must have been involved in that sort of serious harmful activity. That is what would justify designation in the mind of the relevant Secretary of State: the body’s activities must be considered to be different from those of a normal state or other body engaged in its normal business.
In the explanatory notes, the Government give examples of things that might result in designation, such as, in paragraph 21, “a foreign intelligence service obtaining protected information and inspecting sensitive defence or intelligence sites in the UK…a mercenary group carrying out acts of serious violence on behalf of a foreign power”, or, “a network preparing to carry out sabotage or threatening to commit acts that create a serious risk to the health and safety of the public”.
I set all that out because the Bill creates an offence of supporting a designated body, but in the construction of that offence, it is clear that the Government do not believe that all acts or expressions of support for a designated body are sufficient for that criminal liability. I want to understand why not.
I hesitate to interrupt the flow of my right hon. and learned Friend, but the key point is legitimacy, as he and I have discussed. A state can be conducting legitimate activity by definition, whereas the bodies that have been proscribed previously are never legitimate implicitly. It is a difficult tightrope for Governments to walk, and that is why historically they have tended not to defer to a place where they chose to proscribed state bodies, because the implication is for the state as a whole. Where states take a “whole state approach”—China being a good example—it is hard to walk that tightrope.
My right hon. Friend and Committee colleague is right in what he says, and I will come back to how and why we distinguish what the Bill proposes from the proscription regime.
On what is required to prove at least one of the criminal offences set out in this Bill, clause 2 introduces a new offence under a proposed new section 17A of the National Security Act 2023. The offence involves support for a designated body, but only if such support is given for “a prohibited purpose”, which proposed new section 17A(4) sets out is “a purpose that the person knows, or having regard to other matters known to them ought reasonably to know, is prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.”
That is an additional element that the prosecution must prove. That will undoubtedly make this offence more difficult to obtain convictions under, and there may be good reason for that, but if there is, I want to understand what it is.
I make two observations on the Government’s chosen approach in relation to that specific proposed new offence. The first is that this is not equivalent to proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000. I use that expression because that is the wording the Government have used in setting out their aspirations with the Bill. Although the Government intend designation to be similar to proscription in many respects—I accept it cannot be in all respects—proscription does not require an additional motive for someone who supports a proscribed organisation, but merely that they support the proscribed organisation and know that that is what they are doing. No additional motive, demonstrating some kind of animus against the welfare of the United Kingdom, is needed, and that is an important distinction.
The Government may say that the reason for that difference is to protect those who are engaging with a legitimate entity in a way that, just as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) says, can never be possible with a proscribed terrorist organisation. In that case, however, I am struggling a little with the purpose and effect of designation itself. Surely the point of designation in the Bill is to move an organisation from the acceptable column into the unacceptable column. Surely the list of reasons why someone might be designated, which I read out earlier, is there to show us that those organisations, when they are doing those things, should not be worthy of support of any kind; but that is not, I think, where this legislation leaves us.
That is precisely the point that I made in my opening speech. The Government are saying that it is not legitimate to engage with these bodies. Of course they want a carve out to protect Crown servants, but that is explicitly included in the Bill. What they are doing, essentially, is creating a carve out whereby people could say that it was legitimate for them to engage with the IRGC, and that somehow it would not be inherently dangerous or unbeneficial to engage with it. We are creating a threshold that I do not believe the courts will be able to meet, so we will not get the prosecutions that the Bill is designed to create.
I will come to exactly that point about the carve outs. It is, I think, evident from a close reading of the Bill that the Government’s approach to the first of the new offences it creates differs from their approach to the next two. I want to understand from the Minister for Security—and this is my second observation—why that difference exists. I should say at this point that it is a great pleasure to see the Minister, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), in her place. As a distinguished former member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, she knows about these matters. However, I am also conscious that she has only just arrived. I hope I am setting out these specific concerns in a way that will give her two chances to answer them, on Second Reading and in Committee. If she is concerned about the lack of time between the two, she has no one to blame but her own colleagues—but we will come back to that.
As I was saying, my second observation relates to precisely the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns). There is a difference between the way in which the Bill sets out the first of the new offences and the way in which it approaches the other. For example, new section 17B, which amends the National Security Act, creates the offence of “Assisting a designated body”, while new section 17C creates the offence of “Obtaining…material benefits from a designated body”.
Neither of those requires the additional motive of acting with a prohibited purpose. Instead, both allow for defences to be raised by those accused to establish that they were acting for a proper purpose. That would, of course, include not giving carte blanche to anyone who works for the British Government to behave as they wish, but if that person is acting within the purposes of their public appointment, it would offer them the chance to raise that defence, and would also offer opportunities to present a defence of acting in compliance with a UK legal obligation. I simply want to understand from the Minister why that approach was not taken in relation to the offence of supporting a designated body, because that would have been an attractive way forward.
Perhaps the Government will say that the prohibited purpose requirement matches some of the offences in the National Security Act, where they are carried out for or on behalf of a foreign power, but the National Security Act definition includes any foreign power, benign or malign. This, of course, is different, because a designated body has already been designated by the Secretary of State as a body that is— if I can use unparliamentary language—up to no good, and should therefore, in my view, be in a different category. Perhaps we have already established that demonstrating that they were acting innocently in support of it would be a high bar for any potential defendant to meet. It would be helpful to understand the Minister’s view on that.
Let me finish where I started. I agree with the purpose of the Bill; I think we all do, and it is clearly important for the Government to plug an evident gap in our legislative armoury. However, we must be certain that the way in which the Government are approaching the plugging of that gap is the right way, and that all these parts of the Bill fit together—not least, as we heard from the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley), with other parts of the sanctions and other regimes. It is that process that I hope the Minister will be able to deal with, either when she winds up this part of the debate or subsequently in Committee.
I start by commending the Government for the speed with which they have brought forward this legislation. I understand the charges made by the Opposition about the amount of time available to debate the Bill, but the House will recall that when the Prime Minister spoke to Jewish communities following certain attacks this year, he promised not only that the IRGC would be proscribed, but that this legislation would be brought forward and accelerated. That was just prior to the April recess, the local elections and the King’s Speech, so there has not been too much parliamentary time between then and now, and he has fulfilled at least one of his promises by bringing forward the legislation.
I have been very clear that we must stand by our Jewish communities. Yesterday, I sat down with the Jewish Leadership Council, the Community Security Trust and representatives of other organisations. They do not recognise the need to rush this Bill through the House, and they want us to scrutinise it in order to close the gaps that we discussed in that meeting. Although I wish we could have acted sooner, and I fully support the Bill and want to get it done, they want to get it done right, so that we do not have the gaps that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) has just set out.
I appreciate what the hon. Lady says, and I am glad to hear that she has been meeting those organisations. The Prime Minister made two promises, and this Bill fulfils one of them. Proscribing the IRGC is the other, and I will come to that in a moment.
This Bill captures the sophistication of the entities that it seeks to target: those groups operating under alternative names and front organisations. It targets them to ensure that they are unable to exploit any potential loopholes. Creating the new power of designation—which is almost equivalent to proscription but not quite the same, as we have heard in this debate—is absolutely welcome. The Bill also makes supporting designated bodies for a prohibited purpose—including arranging meetings, professing support for them or materially assisting their activities in the UK—a serious criminal offence. I am grateful to the Home Secretary, the Foreign Secretary, the Prime Minister and the previous Security Minister for enduring my endless questions about this issue, both in this House and in private. I am very appreciative that the Bill does what I have been asking for it to do, and what many other Members of this House have been asking for it to do. I am also very pleased that offences will carry substantial penalties, including sentences of up to 14 years, which is absolutely the right move.
I appreciate what the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) said about this being primary legislation, and he is right to say that today’s discussion has to be about the content of the Bill, not the bodies that we seek to proscribe through it. I absolutely take his point, and he set out a very eloquent argument about what he sees as the problems with the legislation. However, given the impact of the IRGC on this country and on the communities I speak to, I want to take this opportunity to set out not only why this legislation should pass through its Commons stages today, but why it should be used to proscribe the IRGC as soon as possible, as I will not have many further opportunities to do so.
There is no clearer threat to the UK and the British Jewish community than that posed by the IRGC. We know that the IRGC directs terror abroad, and we know it funds Hezbollah, the Houthis and Hamas. We know that it brutally crushes dissent at home in Iran and murdered more than 30,000 people in the January protests, and it continues to repress its people as well as cut off internet access, which makes us unable to update the figures and to know what is truly going on in some parts of the country. We know that the IRGC is a clear and present danger to Britain’s national security. It plans terror attacks here, it tries to radicalise people here, and it promotes extremism here.
I pay tribute to our security services for all the work they have done to protect us against the IRGC and others. As we know, MI5 confirmed last October that it had identified more than 20 potentially lethal plots, backed by Iran, in the previous year alone. On that point, I want to focus my remarks on the threat that the IRGC poses to the Jewish community in this country. As the Chief Rabbi said in April, our fellow citizens are facing a sustained campaign of violence and intimidation. We know that Jews have been stabbed on the streets of Golders Green. We know that Finchley Reform synagogue, Kenton United synagogue, and Jewish organisations and charities have all been targeted. We know that ambulances belonging to Hatzola, an organisation that serves the entire community, were burned.
Police investigations are ongoing, and it would not be appropriate for me to comment on all the specific circumstances of each case, but we know that paid proxies are operating here. We also know that the US Department of Justice has identified paid proxies operating in our country that are directly linked to the IRGC, and the threat is not contained to Britain, with a number of attacks across Europe in recent months. The threat is not disputable. Senior intelligence figures such as the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, have stated clearly that the IRGC poses a threat to the British Jewish community, and that threat is of long standing. Over the past decade, we have seen growing evidence of Iranian efforts to radicalise young people here. Senior IRGC commanders have addressed student audiences and urged them to “raise the flag of the Islamic Revolution, Islam and martyrdom”, and calling on them to join an “apocalyptic war”.
The hon. Member is making an extremely powerful speech—I do not find a word I disagree with—and I am very grateful to him for making it. However, this again shows why it would have been rather helpful to have a bit longer on this, because a small amendment around the use of slogans or the wearing of varieties of designated military insignia—IRGC or Hezbollah insignia in this case, but different things in other cases—would have been useful. Sadly, the way this is being rushed through makes that almost impossible. Would he agree?
I am certain that we will get on to the point the right hon. Member has raised in Committee, which is coming up soon. I do think those items are worth discussing, and that such scrutiny will be possible during the next stage. I would also take this opportunity to commend him, because he warned that Iran was recruiting criminal gangs to spy on the Jewish community. I think that was three years ago, and the threat has only got worse since. The reason why I am making this speech is that I want to underline the need to proscribe, or rather to designate, the IRGC as soon as this Bill receives Royal Assent.
I take the points, particularly from the Opposition, about the speed at which we are proceeding on the Bill today. However, does my hon. Friend—by the way, he is giving an excellent speech—agree that, as we have 17 more working days in this place before recess, time is of the essence? To go back to the points made earlier, we want to get this through both Houses and on to the statute book before the summer.
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend’s excellent point. I do not want to repeat myself too much, but the Prime Minister made this promise to the communities involved, and this is the perfect time to accelerate and get the Bill through Parliament before we get to the summer recess, so that we are not dealing with it in September, October or November.
To deter, counter and thwart Iran’s malign activities, we must take this firm action now, in line with my hon. Friend’s intervention, and this Bill will enable us to do so. As was said in the opening speeches, the Government have rightly ramped up sanctions against Tehran, targeting both the IRGC’s architects of repression at home and the pro regime oligarchs overseas who enjoy the very freedoms that they deny to the Iranian people at home. However, sanctions alone cannot and have not curtailed the IRGC’s nefarious activities in the UK. Crucially, while sanctions primarily target an organisation’s or an individual’s financial activities, only designation as described in this Bill will allow us to criminalise those who are members, supporters or agents of a terrorist organisation.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a real concern, particularly given what is going on in the Persian gulf at the moment, that when the Iranian Government were last given access to vast amounts of cash about 10 years ago, they used that money to murder Syrians, Iraqis, Yemenis and, in fact, anybody else they could get their hands on, and to boost their propaganda arms? That did enormous harm not just to the Jewish community—he is quite right to highlight the Jewish community—but to the UK and the whole of western civilisation, including the French, the Germans and many others. Does he not agree with me that the suggestion that billions of dollars may be handed over to the Iranian regime raises concerns that it will be equipped for a new round?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his powerful intervention. To be crystal clear, although we are talking about designation today and that gets into issues that are not covered by the Bill, I have serious concerns about the position the IRGC will be in following any potential peace deal. Peace is always welcome, of course it is—when people stop killing each other that should always be welcome—but the IRGC is the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terrorism. It being in a position of power? I can never be comfortable with that.
Sanctions alone cannot have the impact we want. The Bill allows us to designate those individuals who are operating in the UK. It also allows us to designate their supporters and anyone who chooses to support this terrorist organisation. And let us be in no doubt: the IRGC instigates and stokes terror, it funds terror, it directs terror. The IRGC is a terrorist organisation. It is the terror arm of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Only this legislation will allow us to protect the British people from its nefarious activities on our shores. I commend the Government for bringing it forward. I commend the Prime Minister for keeping his promise. I ask him to keep the second one and proscribe and designate the IRGC.
The “2026 Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community” states: “The global security environment is becoming more complex.”
That complexity is being fed by the increasing sophistication of our adversaries. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) talked about AI and the impact it may have in adding to that complexity and deepening the threat.
It is not just the US agencies that have come to that conclusion. The director general of MI5, in the speech referred to by the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards), said: “My teams are routinely uncovering attempts by state actors to commission surveillance, sabotage, arson or physical violence right here in the UK.”
These adversaries, far from being remote, are real and present on the streets of our constituencies. That is why the Government’s attempts to improve the tools at the disposal of Ministers are welcome. It is why all the considerations made by Governments, of whatever hue, that are sufficient to deal with that rapidly changing threat deserve the hearing they are receiving. That is not an unqualified level of support—I shall explain my qualifications in due course—but in essence it is right that the Government look again at the legislative framework associated with keeping us safe.
There is a weakness in democracies that is not shared by most of our enemies. That weakness is that legislation passes through this House and is scrutinised, debated and considered. That takes time. Our adversaries can, at will and at a whim, change their approach. Keeping pace with that change is difficult in an open and free society. That very openness and freedom is, of course, what we are here to promote and, indeed, to defend.
The director general of MI5 went on to speak about the various enemies we face. For example, when he spoke of Russia, he said that the police have “disrupted a steady stream of surveillance plots with hostile intent”
from the Russian state. He went on to speak about Iran. He said: “Iran’s autocratic regime is likewise frantically trying to silence its opponents around the world, including in the UK.”
The hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley spoke about the number of plots that have been tracked in a single year. The director general went on to say: “The UK was among the first to call out this wave of…transnational aggression”, but in fact the problem is worldwide. On China, he said that “clandestine technology transfer…efforts to overtly influence UK public life…harassment and intimidation of opponents”
are all features of Chinese activity here. Because China adopts a whole state approach, it is not possible to separate the cause—China’s determination to undermine us—and its effect, in terms of the mechanism it uses to do that.
None of that is a surprise to those who have sat on the Intelligence and Security Committee. As Members will know, it commissioned a report into Russia, before I was a member, and then, while I have had the privilege of serving on the Committee, reports into China and Iran. Our China report says that: “The fact that China is a strategic threat is not news…China’s state intelligence apparatus—almost certainly the largest in the world, with hundreds of thousands of civil intelligence officers (leaving aside their military capability)—targets the UK and its interests prolifically and aggressively.”
The Chinese are particularly enthusiastic about their activities in high tech industries and academia. Their ability to gain a head start in the economy is partly as a result of their infiltration of the knowledge sector, their theft of innovation, and the ability to persuade, frankly, naive—I am choosing my words carefully, as I was going to say witless—individualsto be party to the theft of intellectual property.
China is active in its attempts to do harm across the world, and particularly in Britain, as the Government recognises. This and previous Governments have also long recognised that we need to update legislation to deal with that changing and increasingly complex threat—indeed, I note that both my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat), present in the Chamber, and I were Security Ministers in previous Governments. The attempts by China to gain technological dominance, the attempts by Iran to infiltrate institutions, and the perpetual attempts by Russia, both in cyber space and elsewhere, to undermine Britain’s interests and industry are clear.
The Bill is part of a fitting response to those threats, but there are questions that I want to address, some of which amplify the remarks of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright), who sits with me on the ISC. There is an important matter for the Government to deal with about the relationship between the Bill and the Terrorism Act 2006, in particular, as my right hon. and learned Friend said, proposed new section 17A to the National Security Act 2023.
Essentially, the Government are creating a higher bar than that which applies in existing legislation. As was set out in the speech by my right hon. and learned Friend, we need to understand why that higher bar exists in the proposed legislation, and how it will be crossed. The purpose of the legislation is clear, but in practice it will only work if it can be supported in the courts. Designation will undoubtedly be challenged, so it has to stand up to the test of legal scrutiny. I have doubts as to whether the double bar that will be required to make designation practically possible can be straightforwardly met. Some more commentary from the Government on that would be helpful.
I would also be interested to know why a different approach has been taken for designation itself, and why there is no discretionary power in the Bill for the Home Secretary to take action promptly—such action will sometimes be necessary—as she can in respect of proscription. As I know from my time as Security Minister—the Minister, too, will know this—it is sometimes necessary to act quickly on proscription because circumstances demand it. The Bill does not allow that level of discretion and flexibility, and I think the House has every reason to wonder why.
In addition, the new statutory test for designation appears to introduce this cumulative two pronged approach. We understand that proving that designation will protect and safeguard the interests of the UK is necessary, but that is not necessary in the case of proscription in the same way—at least, not in specific terms—and I wonder why the Government have chosen to adopt a different approach in that respect.
There are a series of quite technical challenges to the Government over whether this well intended legislation—which I think enjoys broad support across the House, from those who understand the scale of the threats that I have briefly outlined—will work in practice. I hope that the Minister, during the course of our considerations this afternoon, will be able to address some of those matters, particularly in relation to proposed new section 17A.
The chief of the Secret Intelligence Service said recently: “We are now operating in a space between peace and war. This is not a temporary state or a gradual, inevitable evolution. Our world is being actively remade, with profound implications for national and international security.”
She concluded: “It also means everyone in society really understanding the world we are in—a world where terrorists plot against us, where our enemies fearmonger, bully and manipulate, and the front line is everywhere. Online, on our streets, in our supply chains, in the minds and on the screens of our citizens. We must all stand together against this.”
That means, of course, defending our values at every opportunity, in this House and beyond it; it means recognising that there is no ethical or moral equivalence between those who seek to do us harm and those who seek to defend us—whatever some of those who are either naive or malevolent might tell us—and it means being responsive to that threat, in the way that this legislation is intended to be, by having adequate resources for our security and intelligence services, and the right powers too. This Bill is an attempt to get those powers in place in order to protect us all. I wish it well, but I also press the Government to ensure that it is as effective as it needs to be.
As everybody in this House knows full well, protecting our national security is always the first duty of any Government, and we have heard a consensus on that today. The reality today is that the threat from hostile foreign powers and the proxies on which they rely has grown significantly in both scale and complexity. We cannot make the mistake of thinking that the threat is theoretical; it is real, it is evolving, and it is happening right here in our very own country. We have heard many examples of that today.
A lot of the focus has rightly been on the IRGC. Time and again, where we have said, “That organisation should be proscribed,” we have heard, “Can’t touch the IRGC, I’m afraid.” We have struggled with that. I am very pleased that our Government are today holding on to the Prime Minister’s promise that we will make good our defence of our country from organisations such as the IRGC.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) eloquently set out, the IRGC is at the moment—it could change in future—the prime example of a state backed organisation. It was initially set up to defend the Islamic Republic of Iran, but what kind of defence is that? Iran is hardly a friendly power to us—it has an extreme ideology, and it seeks not just to defend its own country but to export that ideology across the world, including to our own shores, as it has done time and again. This legislation seeks to end that. We have had debates in which it has been argued, “Well, is it the equivalent of proscription, and what does the test of knowledge mean?” Those questions are right, and I am sure that the Minister will respond, either in this debate on Second Reading or later in today’s proceedings.
What I want to get across is how real the threat is. Everybody here in the Chamber gets it—I hope we do—but my big worry is that our fellow citizens in the wider United Kingdom have not necessarily got it yet. It begins with someone thinking, “I read something online that doesn’t seem right”, and then they are taken down a pathway, and behind that pathway are hostile threats—the IRGC and others.
As legislators, we have to make use of the legislative tools to try to catch up with that, but I think we also have another job: we are not just legislators but representatives and communicators. I really hope that this Bill passes, but whatever happens, we have an obligation to say to our fellow citizens, “Be vigilant. Be resilient.”
Organisations, whether the IRGC or others, will not present themselves for what they really are. They will hide behind the proxies we have heard about today and do all they can to take the people of this country and use them, either knowingly or as dupes, for their nefarious ends—and we do not always know what those nefarious ends are. Whatever the country may be—Iran in this case—those ends are not consistent with our values. We have heard about differences of views or opinion, but in this case they are not of moral equivalence. I totally agree with that point. We in this country rightly struggle to make sure that other voices are heard, but at the same time we ensure that everyone is protected. That is certainly not the case in countries like Iran, Russia or China.
Let us pass this Bill today, but let us not stop there.
The hon. Gentleman is building to a crescendo, so I wanted to intervene before he sits down. The vigilance he calls for, which echoes what I said about us coming together to make a strong case for our values and to defend them against those who assail us, is going to become more difficult because of artificial intelligence—my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) made a telling contribution in that respect. It is really important that we are not so fascinated by the novelty of innovation that we wait too long to regulate AI. It took us 25 years in this House to work out that the internet might have malign effects. Finally, the last Government introduced the Online Safety Act 2023, and this Government have now taken that further—quite rightly. For heaven’s sake, let us understand the risks that this poses in weakening the very resilience that the hon. Gentleman has called for.
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He makes a powerful point on AI. I was about to set out that we are already engaged in new legislative tools in this regard, including the Representation of the People Bill and the Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill, which passed through this place yesterday. But we cannot just say “Right, job done; We’ve given the Government as much flexibility as we can, so let them now get on with it.” It will hit the wall, and we do not know as of today just how powerful AI in its widest forms can be.
I have thought a bit about AI and about how in many ways in this place we are always catching up. Occasionally, we make laws that push society forward—we have made some great social reforms through legislation—which is great. However, too often we are reacting to a problem that has grown out of control. Our procedures in this place will not necessarily work in the future with things like AI. That is not a debate for today. However, I take the right hon. Gentleman’s point strongly in mind.
Although I support the Bill, I make the point that it is part of a much broader governmental, parliamentary and—I hope—whole society approach. When we think about the tools that the Government need, from what I have seen the Bill will give the Government of the day broad ranging powers, but I hope and pray that this Government, or any future Government, know full well that they will have to move far quicker than before to do what is needed. We as legislators in this place must be willing to support that Government in doing the job in hand. I support the Bill and hope that, as a result, it will make our country safer for all our communities.
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia), who made a thoughtful speech on the threats we all face. I listened carefully to the Home Secretary’s speech and those made by colleagues across the Chamber. I noticed that the Home Secretary was careful not to name any organisations that will be caught by the Bill—and quite right, too, because as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) made clear, the Home Secretary will need to make decisions after it has been enacted. But a number of issues of concern have clearly been raised during the debate, and I want to raise some others that do not appear to be caught by this legislation.
I am concerned that we have had no pre legislative scrutiny of the Bill, and indeed that we will have only a small amount of time in Committee, relatively speaking, to consider the large number of amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns). The Home Secretary made it clear that this is one piece of legislation and that further legislation may well follow, which assures me to a certain extent that some of the potential gaps in this legislation can be picked up at a later date—or they may be picked up when the other place considers the Bill.
I do not know any state sponsored organisations in Russia or China that would be caught by the Bill, but I do know that the IRGC will definitely be caught by it. In doing a bit of research prior to the debate, I noted that I first raised the threat from Iran back in June 2010, a month after I had been elected to this place. Indeed, Iran has posed a threat to the middle east for many years, and it has not reduced; in fact, it has increased.
In March 2011, I first called for the UK to put pressure on the Iranians to stop arming Hezbollah—here we are, 15 years later, reaping the rewards in the war between Israel and Lebanon—and I am told that I have raised the subject of Iran 56 times in debates or questions since I have been a Member of Parliament. I declare my interests in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as co chairman of the all party parliamentary group on UK Israel and chairman of British Committee for Iran Freedom, which opposes the current theocratic regime in Iran.
The hon. Member for Stevenage raised the founding of the IRGC back in 1979. I was at university when the Islamic revolution came to Iran. The IRGC was set up to make sure the revolution continued—and how they have brutally made sure that that has been the case through many activities ever since.
We need to understand that the IRGC is not just a military force but a method of repression around the globe, including in the UK. In Iran, the IRGC holds political prisoners and imprisons activists. Any movement in opposition to the regime faces persecution, prosecution and death sentences. Today, there are members of the Iranian opposition on death row in Iran simply because they object to the regime. That is one of the reasons why we have to look at how this organisation acts.
More than 2,000 executions have taken place since President Pezeshkian took office—that is a short period of time. I know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that that is not necessarily the subject of the debate, but we have to emphasise the threat that the organisation poses to this country.
Of course, the IRGC’s activity extends beyond Iran and across other national borders. People might wonder what it has done. There is concern that there is a gap in this legislation when it comes to diplomats. Back in 2018, I was going to an Iranian opposition conference in Paris. An Iranian diplomat in Belgium used a diplomatic bag to transfer a bomb to Brussels to be put in the hands of terrorists, so that they could then take it to the conference that I was due to attend. That diplomat was tried in the Belgian courts, found guilty and imprisoned. If the same thing happened here, presumably that diplomat would get off scot free, because such activity is not mentioned in this legislation. The diplomat was eventually freed in a prisoner exchange with Iran and returned to Iran as a hero. That is one of the gaps in the Bill.
We understand the direct threat to our country and, indeed, to the dissidents and those in the resistance movement in this country. They have suffered their headquarters being firebombed; very brave individuals who call things out through journalism have been forced to leave this country because we could no longer defend them; and opposition figures have been threatened by the IRGC. We cannot just recognise that; we have to do something about it.
I led the debate in this place on proscribing the IRGC more than 10 years ago. I heard the excuses then: “We can’t do anything because they are a state actor,” and, “The Americans want us to continue to co operate with Tehran so that there is continuous dialogue between the two countries.” I heard all the excuses. I could not convince my party’s Government that we should do the right thing. This Government’s Members promised to do it when they were in opposition, and I applaud the Bill as a step in the right direction.
The IRGC is the head of the snake that controls terrorism around the world. We have rightly proscribed Hamas, Hezbollah and other terrorist organisations, but the IRGC continues to exist. I recall the fact that, on or around 2 October 2023, there was a meeting where the IRGC either gave permission for or ordered Hamas to attack Israel. We saw the devastation that then took place in Israel, and we have seen what has happened with the wars since.
Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit the Nova exhibition, which I recommend all colleagues visit. It is very personal for the individuals involved. I had the opportunity to listen to and speak to a survivor. Those terrorist operations were inspired and ordered by the IRGC and directly communicated from Iran. That is the threat posed not only to Israel, but to UK citizens. People from around the world went to that festival just to hear music, dance and have good company. That threat can come to this country unless we take action. We should be clear, and I hope the Minister will be clear, that in proscribing or taking action against any organisation, we are not taking action against the Iranian people. We are taking action against the regime and the IRGC, and the way in which they have consistently operated.
We know that protest movements in this country and across Europe have been threatened by the IRGC in all sorts of guises. We are behind the curve, because the United States, the European Union and many other countries including Canada have proscribed the IRGC in its entirety. Individual members of the theocratic regime that runs Iran own multimillion pound properties in London. They do not occupy them, but they keep them as assets to be used. We know that Iranian diplomats have operated in this country to stir up trouble, threaten people of the Jewish religion and cause all sorts of concerns for other colleagues.
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to Iranian activity in Britain. In the report that our Committee produced on that, we said: “The Iranian Intelligence Services have shown that they are willing and able—often through third party agents—to attempt assassination within the UK, and kidnap from the UK…There have been at least 15 attempts at murder or kidnap against British nationals or UK based individuals since the beginning of 2022.”
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention.
Another issue, which the Committee also referred to, was that certain charities in this country are linked to or directed and funded by Tehran. At least 13 charities are under investigation by the Charity Commission. I have asked continually for action from the Government and the Charity Commission to close down those charities to prevent them from acting against the interests of this country. At the moment, there is a lack of action and co ordination, and it is not clear to me that this legislation will catch those charities, or whether there is sufficient legislation to do so. I would appreciate the Minister addressing that issue.
One of the powers that the Government could look to take—outside this Bill, because it is not within its scope—would be to give the Charity Commission the power to wind up a charity. It currently does not have that power, but we can be absolutely certain that states are creating brand new charities across our country specifically to infiltrate them. That might be my hon. Friend’s best course of action to get that done, and I am sure he would have the full support of most of the House for it.
It is clear that this is one of a series of actions that need to be taken. If we had had the opportunity to give the Bill pre legislative scrutiny, suggestions could have been made to increase its scope to deal with these issues once and for all.
It is pretty clear to me that action needs to be taken to defend our people and the people who come here fleeing the Iranian republic. Following this legislation, we look forward to the proscription of the IRGC or whatever sanction we are going to take, as well as specific sanctions against the commanders. The assets of the IRGC and its various bodies should be frozen and subject to enhanced security, and we look forward to seeing protections for the Iranian dissidents and opposition figures living in Britain.
Let us make sure that we send a clear message. Members of all parties agree that this legislation is necessary, but further legislation is also necessary. This Bill could be improved, provided the Government were willing to listen to the proposals that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) has put forward. I hope that we will hear those arguments in Committee and ensure that the Government take note of that. I also hope that, if the Government do not act today, they will agree to act in the future on the sensible proposals that my hon. Friend has made.
This is a moral and national security necessity. We know that operatives from Iran, whether it is the IRGC or other state based organisations, are taking action right now on our university campuses to stir up trouble and antisemitism. They are taking direct action, as has been said, against Jewish businesses, synagogues and, indeed, even now places where Jewish people live. That is absolutely unacceptable, and the people responsible obviously have to be brought to justice, but the organisations that they are part of must also be brought to justice and prevented from operating. All we can do is pass this legislation and hope that the Home Secretary can take the necessary decisions.
I draw attention to one final issue: the operation of the communications. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is a propaganda arm of the regime. It is tied directly to the IRGC. It is not clear to me that it will be caught by the provisions of the Bill. It has a hub in Acton in west London, and it actively airs threats against Iranian dissidents and against the Jewish community. That operation should be closed down straightaway, and I hope the Home Secretary will take the necessary action to do so.
I look forward to the responses from the Minister. I know she is new in the job, but I also know that she has the best interests of the security of this country at heart, and I wish her well in carrying out those duties.
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.
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.
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.
I call the shadow Minister.
I welcome the Minister to her place for the first time, and I wish her every success in a vital role in our country and in the Government.
Let me end where I began. We support this Bill and will not push its Second Reading to a vote, because its principle is sound. The power is overdue, and the Government are right to seek it, but let the House be in no doubt about what is being asked of us today. We are asked to take a Bill that was laid before Parliament only last week, and progress it through all stages in just one day. It is what the House would normally do over months. However, the threat is permanent. Haste is temporary, but the harm can be enduring. Our enemies will study and exploit that asymmetry, because bad laws made quickly are not easily redeemed, and the effect may be felt for years in courtrooms in cases that collapse, and in the quiet calculations of the very people we are trying to deter.
Let me be clear about what is and what is not in question. I do not doubt the Government’s good faith. I do not doubt for one moment that the Ministers want to make our country safe, but good faith is not a working law, and good intentions do not disrupt plots. A Bill that reaches the statute book but fails in the courtroom is worse than no Bill at all, because it lets us tell ourselves that we have acted, while the threat goes untouched. The people hunted by proxies on our streets, and by hostile states, are owed more than sincerity; they are owed a law that holds in the police station, in the courtroom and at the border on the day it is tested.
I know what the answer will be—that gaps can be dealt with on another day, in some future Bill, but this House has heard that before, and we have learned what “another day” means. I never took my Government’s word when they said that to me, as anyone will know who watched me damned well refuse to take it when I was Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I will not take it today, because “another day” is where good intentions are sent to be forgotten, and the country does not get to tell the assassin at the journalist’s door that the relevant clause is pencilled for the next Session. We have the Bill before us today, and we have amendments before us today; the only thing we are being asked to leave for later is the part that makes this Bill effective.
I want to touch on the speeches made, starting with that by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros Curtis), who rightly spoke about the importance of civil liberties. Our amendments would give clarity on some aspects of that issue, particularly the flying of flags and the wearing of uniforms. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley), was absolutely right to say that there has been insufficient scrutiny thus far. I am surprised that her Committee was offered a briefing only once this Bill had completed its passage through the House. I was offered a briefing only once, three days after the deadline for amendments had passed; however, we were able to rectify that. She is also right to raise questions about future misuse—an issue that I did not have time to go into, so I am grateful to her for touching on that.
The hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), who I am sure will return to the Chamber in due course, touched on the Australian model. Under one of our amendments, assisting a designated body, or accepting money or any sort of benefit from it, would carry a sentence of up to 25 years. We believe that the sentence for supporting such a body, which is 14 years or a fine, should be increased for those actively assisting it, or receiving material benefit from it.
My good friend my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) rightly set out the experience of our Jewish communities. They are terrified and they are suffering, and this Bill will go some way towards helping them. He also rightly touched on the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is difficult to address, because it is not an organisation, although some like to talk about it as if it was. It must be tackled in the same way as an ideology such as Nazism, and we must find a way of dealing with it, because those who subscribe to its ideology are using funds to undermine this country. I also welcome his managing to include a discussion around AI in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) for raising the point about our need to stand by our Jewish communities.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) was absolutely right about concerns around the need for engagement with the IRGC or similar bodies to be for “a prohibited purpose”. There is no good reason for that threshold at this point. He pointed out that there is a very clear distinction in the legislation between supporting on the one hand, and assisting or receiving material benefit on the other. The Government must explain why they are treating those separately.
It was a pleasure to listen to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has been clear eyed for a long time about the threat from the IRGC and the Iranians. He is particularly right to raise concerns about charities and the way in which they are exploited. The openness of our society is a strength, but of course it also provides more points of entry for those seeking to harm us. He also rightly touched on the impact on our Jewish communities, as so many on both sides of the House did. It is because of that impact that our amendment requiring prosecution of those who fly flags or wear uniforms in support of these organisations must be considered. Even last weekend, we saw people marching through Jewish communities, flying the flags of proscribed organisations to intimidate and scare.
I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) for once again sharing the work he did with Jo Cox—I know that they were very good friends. I think we all remember where we were when we heard of her brutal murder, and this House has less heart as a result of her loss. My right hon. and gallant Friend was absolutely right to mention the Islamic Centre of England—we must give the Charity Commission the power to shut down such organisations. He was also right to touch on TikTok; few have as much expertise as he does in this area. It is a weaponised platform. China does not allow its own children to have access to it, and countries such as India have taken action to say that they will not have it in their country. We must protect our country.
I now turn to the difficulty that the Government can no longer escape. The gaps in this Bill have been named; we will discuss them in more detail shortly in Committee, but they are on the amendment paper. If they are waved away tonight, not in ignorance but in full knowledge, no one will be able to call this haste any longer; it will have become a decision. It will be a decision to put in place weaker powers against hostile states than those we already hold against the terrorists those states fund, to leave a plot that is merely planned beyond the reach of the law, and to let inspired attackers fall through a gap that our terrorism law rightly closed two decades ago. It will, I fear, be a decision made to suit a timetable that has everything to do with internal party politics, rather than the threat. It will not be the Prime Minister’s decision alone—it will belong to every Member who walks through the Lobby to oppose the amendments tonight.
I say directly to Government Members, to all those who have spoken so powerfully—I thank every Member for being so clear eyed about the threats that the IRGC, the Chinese, the Russians and the North Koreans pose to our country—that they did not campaign for so long for a Bill containing these powers just for them to fall at the first legal hurdle. They did not demand action against hostile states just to hand them a gentler regime than we use for terrorists. The amendments before them are not Opposition traps; they are the protections we need, and I think many Government Members feel in their gut that they are needed. I came to this place because national security had been my career—tackling terrorist groups such as Daesh and tackling the Russian Government. I stand by the offer I made to the Government, in the spirit I always make it. I am not here to frustrate this Bill; I am here to complete it. Take the amendments and lay them as Government amendments, or lay them in the Lords. We do not want to make this party political; we just want to close the holes in the Bill. Accepting an amendment that ends the absurdity of having a higher bar for the sponsor than for the terrorist is the right thing to do.
In Committee, I will take the House through all 13 amendments we have tabled, clause by clause, to highlight what stands between the Bill in its current state and what it should be. It is not ideology, not a desire to delay, and not politics; it is time that was not given. Strip away the procedure: two years from now, there will be a prosecution, and we need to ensure that we do not allow a defendant to be freed by words written in haste. In the end, this is not about us, the timetable, or whose name sits at the top of the amendment paper—it is about protecting our people and giving our police what they need. I support the Bill, which is why I have spent hours and hours over the past week trying to get it right. I urge the Government to work cross party, accept our amendments—be it here or in the other place—and ensure we give our police and prosecutors the power that we all know they will not fully have without those amendments.
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken in today’s Second Reading debate. We have had a very powerful and relevant debate, with a great deal of expertise in the Chamber from both sides of the House.
State threats are overt or covert actions by foreign Governments that fall below the level of armed conflict, but go beyond legitimate diplomacy to harm UK interests. They present a persistent and evolving risk to the UK and our allies, and that evolution and the hybrid nature of the threats we face today has come across in all the many excellent contributions we have heard from Members on both sides of the House. There is cross party recognition that the threats we are dealing with are increasingly complex, and rapidly changing and evolving. They manifest across a wide spectrum of activity, including interference in democratic processes, acquisition of sensitive information, threats to public safety and disruption of economic security. We all know—it has been mentioned by many hon. and right hon. Members—that certain states have the intent and capability to conduct such activity to advance their objectives. We have talked about Iran, Russia and China. Such activity is often opportunistic. It is adaptive, and it is increasingly integrated across multiple domains, combining physical, cyber, economic and international tools. Increasingly, as has been pointed out, it involves new and emerging tools such as AI, as well as TikTok, cyber, AI and a range of other things.
In December 2024, the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract, Castleford and Knottingley (Yvette Cooper), commissioned the independent reviewer of state threats legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, to conduct a review into the tools available in terrorism legislation to see how they might be applied to the problem of state threats. He proposed that there should be legislation to create a state threats power equivalent to that of proscription under the Terrorism Act 2000, and although the Bill does not deliver the recommendations of the entire Jonathan Hall report, it does deliver that proposal. To that extent, it is a narrow, not a comprehensive Bill. It is important that Members from all parts of the House understand that that is what the Bill does.
Rather than trying to shoehorn everything else into this Bill, it is important that we understand the nature of the Bill and what it actually does. It strengthens the Government’s ability to disrupt hostile intelligence services and their proxies by adapting counter terrorism tools to tackle state based security threats to the UK. It seeks to close that loophole. It creates a new power for the Secretary of State to designate organisations involved in foreign power threat activity, modelled on the Terrorism Act 2000. It introduces three new criminal offences of supporting, assisting or obtaining benefits from designated bodies. The Bill will enable proxy organisations to be treated in practice like foreign intelligence services, making it easier to prosecute those acting on their behalf. It strengthens the overall national security framework so that the UK becomes a more difficult operating environment for foreign intelligence services and their state linked proxies.
Individuals acting for a designated body will feel the full force of our national security legislation and the potential accompanying prison sentences of up to 14 years. Designation will send a clear public signal to bodies and those prepared to assist them that their malign behaviour will not be tolerated in the UK. Our manifesto committed to adapt the approach used for dealing with terrorism to state based security threats, and that is precisely what the Bill does.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) is a passionate responder at the Dispatch Box, and her interest in this area and her commitment to getting it right are clear. The Government have been working on this legislation since Jonathan Hall made his recommendation. The Prime Minister, in the light of the arson incidents that we saw in north London earlier this year, gave a firm commitment to legislate in a matter of weeks, and we are doing just that to close this loophole on state or proxy based threats.
To be clear, this legislation is no less robust than the Terrorism Act 2000. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, Jonathan Hall said that using terror legislation is “shopping in the wrong department”.
This Bill will ensure that we are shopping in the right department.
I accept what Jonathan Hall said, but what he did not say was that a higher statutory bar was needed to achieve a prosecution. What worries some of us, including my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) and me, is that the addition of that will make it quite hard to achieve a prosecution under the proposed law, not least because the Bill suggests that there must be a criminal purpose—an illicit purpose—involved in the association with a designated body. Will the Minister address that specific point?
I think that there are some necessary differences between a terrorist organisation and a state influenced or state proxy organisation, which the differences between the Bill and the National Security Act—which deals with terrorism—seek to bring out. Jonathan Hall said that the Bill “does the job” in closing that loophole. He also told the House that he thought it would be harder to achieve the prosecutions for designated organisations than those for terrorist organisations. The Bill builds on a tried and tested series of measures in the National Security Act, and we have developed it closely with operational partners. It does the job. We do not believe that it is tougher to get appropriate prosecutions up and running in this context.
No one, I think, respects Jonathan Hall more than we do. He has done an exceptional job for this country in many different ways. He is a man of the highest integrity and the greatest intellect, and we are very lucky to have him.
Given that it seems unlikely that the Home Secretary or the Minister will accept amendments today—I am sorry about that, but I heard their views—will the Minister engage in a conversation between now and the Bill’s passage through the House of Lords? There is a moment when we could introduce amendments that we feel would be of assistance to the Government and, in fact, would make us all stronger.
I am more than happy to create a circumstance in which we can do that. I think there have been some misunderstandings about what protections are offered in the Bill, and some of the amendments seek to address gaps that are not actually there. However, I am more than happy to deal with that, and I will be in touch with the right hon. Gentleman to organise it before the Bill goes to the House of Lords.
The hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) said that the Bill did not take into account activity outside the UK. She was wrong to say that that was not covered. The offences capture activity outside the UK where it is contrary to the safety or interests of the UK, and case law has made it clear that the definition of “safety and interests of the UK” is wide. As I have said, we have worked closely with operational partners to shape the Bill, and we are confident that it will provide the powers that are needed. There have been successful prosecutions under the National Security Act, which demonstrates that powers of this kind work.
Yes, the law specifically covers UK citizens who then travel abroad to commit a crime in support of these proscribed groups. However, it explicitly states that that does not apply if they are planning the crimes here in the UK and they happen abroad, unless it is prejudicial to the safety of the UK. It would be very straightforward for a lawyer to argue that something that takes place in Iraq is not prejudicial to the safety of the UK.
When I met Foreign Office and Home Office lawyers last night, they said it was “likely” that that would be captured. I said, “I recognise that ‘likely’ is hopeful, but it is not absolute.” [Interruption.] The Minister will be able to answer in a moment. I am formally repeating the conversation that I had, a conversation that was requested, in which I was told that this was “likely”. That is very different from saying, “We will be able to prosecute, and we must be able to do so.” We should be wanting to pass clarifying amendments to put additional protections into law so that it is watertight, to ensure that the actions of anyone in Manchester planning something abroad will definitely be captured.
I suspect that lawyers often use words like “likely”, because they are very rarely ready to commit to “absolutely”. Perhaps we need to deal with some of this in more detail in Committee, but we are assured that overseas activity will be covered in the interactions of this Bill, and case law makes that more likely.
I am loath to go through in detail the Committee style points that were made during the debate. What I will say is that designation is the closest we can get to state inspired and connected proxies or organisations, so that we can prevent them from behaving in the way that they are behaving on our streets day in, day out. A designation will allow us to ensure that we capture and prosecute the malign activity in which hybrid and state actors involve themselves, so this Bill closes the gap that Jonathan Hall discovered in the National Security Act.
We wish to get the Bill on the statute book so that we can deal with the rising threats on our streets, which many Members on both sides of the House mentioned in their Second Reading speeches. I am extremely grateful that all Front Benchers support the Bill and will not vote against it, and I look forward to dealing with some of the amendments in much greater detail in Committee. I urge the House to give this Bill a Second Reading.
Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read a Second time; to stand committed to a Committee of the whole House (Order, this day).
Considered in Committee (Order, this day)
[Judith Cummins in the Chair]
Clause 1
Designation of bodies involved in foreign power threat activity
I beg to move amendment 16, page 2, line 12, at end insert— “33AA Conduct relevant to designation (1) For the purposes of section 33A, a body is to be regarded as involved in foreign power threat activity if the Secretary of State reasonably believes that the body is, or has been, involved in— (a) transnational repression; (b) abusive lawfare; (c) sanctions evasion connected to a foreign power, a designated body or foreign power threat activity; (d) the concealment, movement or control of assets for or on behalf of a foreign power or a body acting for or on behalf of a foreign power; or (e) conduct which enables, facilitates, assists or conceals any activity falling within paragraphs (a) to (d).
(2) For the purposes of this section, “transnational repression” means conduct carried out by, for, or on behalf of, or with the intention of benefiting, a foreign power, where the conduct has the purpose, or effect, of intimidating, coercing, punishing, silencing, controlling or retaliating against— (a) a person in the United Kingdom; (b) a United Kingdom national; (c) a person resident in the United Kingdom; (d) a person with a substantial connection to the United Kingdom; or (e) a family member, associate or representative of a person falling within paragraphs (a) to (d).
(3) Conduct falling within subsection (2) includes, but is not limited to— (a) surveillance, harassment, intimidation, threats or coercion; (b) threats or reprisals against family members or associates overseas; (c) forced return, attempted forced return, abduction or attempted abduction; (d) misuse of criminal, civil, immigration, extradition or administrative processes; (e) misuse of Interpol notices or other international police cooperation mechanisms; (f) targeting of journalists, activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, political opponents, dissidents, whistleblowers or members of diaspora communities; and (g) conduct intended to conceal, enable or facilitate any activity falling within paragraphs (a) to (f).
(4) For the purposes of this section, “abusive lawfare” means the use, or threatened use, of legal, regulatory, administrative, criminal, civil, immigration, extradition or other proceedings where the predominant purpose, or one of the predominant purposes, is to— (a) intimidate, silence, punish or deter a person from engaging in public interest speech, journalism, advocacy, democratic participation or human rights work; (b) deter investigation or scrutiny of corruption, human rights abuses, sanctions evasion, hostile state activity or foreign power threat activity; (c) impose disproportionate cost, delay, pressure or reputational harm on the target; or (d) protect, conceal or advance the interests of a foreign power or a body acting for or on behalf of a foreign power.
(5) Proceedings, or threatened proceedings, are not abusive merely because they are brought by, or on behalf of, a foreign power, or a person connected to a foreign power.
(6) For the purposes of this section, “sanctions evasion” means conduct which has the purpose, or effect, of enabling or facilitating the evasion, circumvention or frustration of— (a) sanctions imposed under the Sanctions and Anti Money Laundering Act 2018; (b) asset freezing measures; (c) trade sanctions; (d) export controls; (e) immigration restrictions; (f) public procurement restrictions; or (g) any other restrictive measure imposed by or under an enactment for the purpose of protecting the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.
(7) Nothing in this section is to be read as preventing legal advice, representation or advocacy, provided that such activity is not undertaken for the purpose of facilitating foreign power threat activity, transnational repression, sanctions evasion, abusive lawfare or the concealment of assets connected to a designated body.”
This amendment would specify categories of conduct that may be regarded as involvement in foreign power threat activity for the purposes of designation.
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following: Amendment 15, page 2, line 42, at end insert— “33C Mandatory review following designation (1) Where regulations are made under section 33A designating a body, the Secretary of State must, within 30 days of the regulations being made, conduct a review of whether further action should be taken in relation to— (a) the designated body; (b) any person who owns or controls the designated body; (c) any person owned or controlled by the designated body; (d) any officer, employee, agent, member or representative of the designated body; (e) any person acting for or on behalf of the designated body; (f) any person who materially assists the designated body; and (g) any person who provides funds, economic resources, professional services, goods, technology or other material support to the designated body.
(2) The review under subsection (1) must consider whether it is appropriate to take, recommend or request action including— (a) designation under the Sanctions and Anti Money Laundering Act 2018; (b) asset freezing measures; (c) travel bans or other immigration restrictions; (d) director disqualification; (e) public procurement exclusion; (f) civil recovery, restraint, freezing or forfeiture action; (g) referral to Companies House, the National Crime Agency, the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, the Financial Conduct Authority, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the Bar Standards Board, HM Revenue and Customs, the Charity Commission, the Electoral Commission or any other relevant authority; (h) enhanced beneficial ownership checks; (i) enhanced reporting requirements; and (j) any other action necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.
(3) In conducting a review under subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult— (a) the Treasury; (b) the Secretary of State responsible for foreign, Commonwealth and development affairs; (c) the National Crime Agency; and (d) any other Minister of the Crown or public authority as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.
(4) Within 30 days of a body being designated under section 33A, the Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a statement confirming— (a) that the review required by this section has been conducted; (b) what categories of action listed in subsection (2) have been considered; (c) whether any such action has been taken, recommended or requested; and (d) where no such action has been taken, recommended or requested, the reasons for that decision.
(5) A statement under subsection (4) may omit information where the Secretary of State considers that publication of that information would be contrary to the interests of national security, international relations, the prevention or detection of serious crime, or the protection of ongoing legal proceedings.
(6) The Secretary of State must keep under review whether further action under subsection (2) is required in relation to a designated body and persons connected to it.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State, within 30 days of designating a body, to review whether further action should be taken against the body and persons connected to it, and to lay a statement of the outcome before Parliament. Clause stand part.
Amendment 3, in clause 2, page 3, line 8, leave out from “body” until end of line 9.
This amendment and Amendments 4 to 6 would remove the additional defence of supporting a designated body for a non prohibited purpose. Amendment 4, page 3, line 16, leave out from “body” until end of line 17.
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 3. Amendment 5, page 3, line 21, leave out from “body” until end of line 22.
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 3. Amendment 6, page 3, leave out lines 23 to 25.
See the explanatory statement for Amendment 3. Amendment 1, page 4, line 23, at end insert— “(3A) The conduct specified in subsection (3) includes establishing, administering or maintaining a company, trust, partnership or similar arrangement which conceals, or is intended to conceal, the beneficial ownership of assets connected with a designated body.”
Amendment 8, page 4, line 27, after “United Kingdom” insert “or are conducted outside, but were planned from within, the United Kingdom”.
Amendment 7, page 5, line 15, leave out “14” and insert “25”.
This amendment would increase the maximum sentence for assisting a designated body from 14 years to 25 years imprisonment. Amendment 11, page 6, leave out lines 21 to 23.
This amendment would remove the defence of reasonable excuse for retaining a material benefit provided by or on behalf of a designated body. Amendment 12, page 6, line 38, leave out “(7) or”.
This amendment is consequential on Amendment 11. Amendment 9, page 7, line 8, at end insert— “17D Uniform and publication of images in relation to a designated body (1) A person in a public place commits an offence if he— (a) wears an item of clothing, or (b) wears, carries or displays an article in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that the person is a supporter of a designated body.
(2) A person commits an offence if the person publishes an image of— (a) an item of clothing, or (b) any other article, in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that the person is a supporter of a designated body.
(3) In subsection (2) the reference to an image is a reference to a still or moving image (produced by any means).
(4) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale (or both).
(5) A constable may seize an item of clothing or any other article if the constable— (a) reasonably suspects that it is evidence in relation to an offence under subsection (1), and (b) is satisfied that it is necessary to seize it in order to prevent the evidence being concealed, lost, altered or destroyed.
(6) In connection with exercising the power in subsection (5), a constable may require a person to remove the item of clothing or other article if the person is wearing it.
(7) But the powers conferred by subsections (5) and (6) may not be exercised so as to seize, or require a person to remove, an item of clothing being worn next to the skin or immediately over a garment being worn as underwear.”
This amendment would create an offence of wearing or displaying in public, or publishing an image of, an article in a way that arouses reasonable suspicion that a person is a supporter of a designated body. Amendment 10, page 7, line 8, at end insert— “17D Preparation of acts relating to a designated body (1) A person commits an offence if, with the intention of— (a) committing an offence under section 17A, 17B or 17C, or (b) assisting another to commit such an offence, the person engages in any conduct in preparation for giving effect to the intention.
(2) It is irrelevant for the purposes of subsection (1) whether the intention and preparations relate to one or more particular offences, offences of a particular description, or such offences generally.
(3) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable, on conviction on indictment, to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years or a fine (or both).”
This amendment would create an offence of engaging in conduct in preparation for committing, or assisting another to commit, an offence relating to a designated body. Amendment 13, page 7, line 8, at end insert— “17D Self directing acts in support of a designated body (1) A person commits an offence if the person engages in conduct of any kind which is— (a) inspired by the ideology, actions, and self promotion of a designated body, and (b) prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.
(2) A person commits an offence if the person— (a) engages in UK related activities that are likely to assist the stated, or assumed, aims of a designated body, and (b) knows, or having regard to other matters known to them ought to reasonably to know, that their activities are likely to assist the stated, or assumed, aims of a designated body.
(3) UK related activities” means— (a) activities taking place in the United Kingdom; (b) activities taking place outside the United Kingdom which are prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.
(4) Subsections (1) and (2) apply to conduct outside the United Kingdom, but apply to conduct taking place wholly outside the United Kingdom only if the person engaging in the conduct— (ab) is a UK person, or (b) acts for or on behalf of, or holds office under, the Crown, or is in Crown employment (whether or not they engage in the conduct in that capacity).
(5) In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence to show that the person engaged in the conduct in question— (a) in compliance with a legal obligation under the law of the United Kingdom which is not a legal obligation under private law, (b) in the case of a person having functions of a public nature under the law of the United Kingdom, for the purposes of those functions, (c) as a lawyer carrying on a legal activity, or (d) in accordance with, or in relation to Uk related activities carried out in accordance with, an agreement or arrangement to which— (i) the United Kingdom was a party, or (ii) any person acting for, or on behalf of, or holding office under, the Crown was (in that capacity) a party.
(6) A person is taken to have shown a matter mentioned in subsection (5) if— (a) sufficient evidence is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and (b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.
(7) A person who commits an office under this section is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years or a fine (or both).
(8) The following terms have the same meaning as in section 3— “Crown employment” ; “financial benefit” ; The “law of the United Kingdom”; “lawyer” ; “legal activity” ; “UK person” .”
This amendment creates a new offence of undertaking conduct harmful or prejudicial to UK interests that is inspired by a designated body, rather than actively commissioned on behalf of a designated body. Amendment 14, page 7, line 8, at end insert— “17D Dissemination of publications relating to a designated body (1) A person commits an offence if the person engages in conduct falling within subsection (2) and, at the time of doing so— (a) intends an effect of the conduct to be a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to support, or to provide assistance to, a designated body, or (b) is reckless as to whether the conduct has that effect.
(2) A person engages in conduct falling within this subsection if the person— (a) distributes or circulates a publication relating to a designated body; (b) gives, sells or lends such a publication; (c) offers such a publication for sale or loan; (d) provides a service to others that enables them to obtain, read, listen to or look at such a publication, or to acquire it by means of a gift, sale or loan; (e) transmits the contents of such a publication electronically; or (f) has such a publication in the person's possession with a view to its becoming the subject of conduct falling within any of paragraphs (a) to (e).
(3) For the purposes of this section a publication relates to a designated body if matter contained in it is likely to be understood by a reasonable person as a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to support, or to provide assistance to, a designated body.
(4) It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to show that— (a) the matter by reference to which the publication was treated as relating to a designated body neither expressed the person's views nor had the person's endorsement, and (b) it was clear, in all the circumstances of the conduct, that the matter did not express the person's views and did not have the person's endorsement.
(5) A person guilty of an offence under this section is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years or a fine (or both).”
This amendment would create an offence of disseminating, or possessing with a view to disseminating, a publication that encourages support for or assistance to a designated body. Clause 2 stand part.
Amendment 2, in clause 3, page 7, line 27, at end insert— “(5) Regulations under subsection (3) may not be made unless a draft of the statutory instrument containing them has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”
This amendment ensures that any regulation under section 33C made by the Secretary of State to remove a designation is subject to the draft affirmative procedure. Clauses 3 to 8 stand part.
New clause 3—Designation of the IRGC— “(1) The Secretary of State must take reasonable steps to lay before Parliament regulations under the provisions of this Act to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a body involved in foreign power threat activity.
(2) Before laying such regulations, the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the IRGC fulfils the conditions set out in Section 1 of this Act.
(3) The regulations specified in subsection (1) should be laid before Parliament within a month of this Act coming into force.”
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take reasonable steps to bring forward regulations designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) within a month of this Act coming into force. New clause 4—Assessment of the adequacy of the powers contained in the Act— “(1) Within twelve months of passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must commission the Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation or another such person performing a similar function to produce a report on the adequacy of the powers contained in this Act.
(2) The report specified in subsection (1) must consider the effectiveness of the Act’s powers in tackling the threat posed by state backed and state linked actors to the security of the United Kingdom.
(3) The report specified in subsection (1) must include any proposals for legislative changes to the provisions of the Act as are considered necessary by the Independent Reviewer.
(4) As soon as receiving the report, and no later than three months after receiving it, the Secretary of State must lay the report before both Houses of Parliament.
(5) Within three months of laying the report before Parliament, the Secretary of State must publish a response to the report and to any recommendations made by the Independent Reviewer.”
This new clause would require the Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation to assess the adequacy of the powers introduced by this Act twelve months after its passing. New clause 5—Seizure of Passports etc from Person Suspected of Assisting a Designated Body— “(1) This section applies in the case of a person at a port in Great Britain, Northern Ireland, or in the border area, if a constable has reasonable grounds to suspect that the person— (a) is there with the intention of leaving Great Britain or Northern Ireland for the purpose of assisting a designated body outside the United Kingdom; or (b) has arrived in Great Britain or Northern Ireland with the intention of leaving it soon for that purpose.
(2) The constable may— (a) exercise any of the powers in sub paragraph (4) in the case of the person, or (b) direct a qualified officer to do so.
(3) A qualified officer must (if able to do so) comply with any direction given by a constable under sub paragraph (2)(b).
(4) The powers are— (a) to require the person to hand over all travel documents in the person’s possession to the constable or (as the case may be) the qualified officer; (b) to search for travel documents relating to the person and to take possession of any that the constable or officer finds; (c) to inspect any travel document relating to the person; and (d) to retain any travel document relating to the person that is lawfully in the possession of the constable or officer.
(5) The power in sub paragraph (4)(b) is a power to search— (a) the person; (b) anything that the person has with him or her; and (c) any vehicle in which the officer believes the person to have been travelling or to be about to travel.
(6) A constable or qualified officer— (a) may stop a person or vehicle for the purpose of exercising a power in sub paragraph (4)(a) or (b); (b) may if necessary use reasonable force for the purpose of exercising a power in sub paragraph (4)(a) or (b); and (c) may authorise a person to carry out on the constable's or officer's behalf a search under sub paragraph (4)(b).
(7) A constable or qualified officer exercising a power in sub paragraph (4)(a) or (b) must tell the person that— (a) the person is suspected of intending to leave Great Britain or (as the case may be) the United Kingdom for the purpose of assisting a designated body, and (b) the constable or officer is therefore entitled under this Schedule to exercise the power.
(8) Where a travel document relating to the person is in the possession of an immigration officer or customs official (whether a qualified officer or not), the constable may direct the officer or official— (a) to pass the document to a constable as soon as practicable, and (b) in the meantime to retain it, the officer or official must comply with any such direction.”
This new clause would replicate existing powers to seize travel documents from individuals suspected of terrorism, applying those powers in relation to individuals suspected of assisting a designated body New clause 6—Police powers to apply for serious crime prevention orders in designation cases— “(1) The Serious Crime Act 2007 is amended as follows.
(2) In Section 8, after subsection (2)(a) insert— “(ab) it is an application for an order under section 1 that is related to an offence committed under section 2 of the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026.””
This new clause allows police to apply for serious crime prevention orders in relation to offences committed under this Act. New clause 7—Sanctions— “(1) The Secretary of State may make regulations under the provisions of Section 1 of the Sanctions and Anti Money Laundering Act 2018 to subject any— (a) body designated under the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026, or (b) a person who commits an offence under section (2) of that Act to any available sanction within that Act.”
This new clause would ensure that any body designated under this Act, or any person who commits an offence under this Act, may be subject to the sanctions regime set out in the Sanctions and Anti Money Laundering Act 2018. The schedule.
We have tabled 13 amendments, not to frustrate the Bill but to give it the necessary teeth. This Bill is soft where it should be hard, silent where it should speak, and blind where it should see. It is soft because, as drafted, it sets a higher bar to prosecute a person who supports the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps than a person who supports the terrorists whom the IRGC funds and commands; it is silent because whole categories of hostile conduct that our terrorism laws have criminalised for 20 years are simply missing; and it is blind because it has been written for one organisation on one timetable, with almost no provision for future designations. Good will is not enough, and we must close the holes that our enemies will exploit.
The Government have lifted much of this legislation from section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, yet they have added something that does not appear in the terrorism offence: a requirement that support was given for a prohibited purpose that was prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United Kingdom. Let me ask the Minister the simple question that this Bill invites: what level of support for the IRGC do the Government consider beneficial to the United Kingdom? The IRGC is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, and if she agrees that there is no level of support for it that is beneficial to the UK, we can simply remove the prohibited purpose. She has just said from the Dispatch Box that she agrees that there is absolutely none, so let us act and amend the Bill.
Under the Bill as drafted, to convict someone who supports the IRGC the prosecution must prove that their support was prejudicial to the safety or interest of the UK—an additional threshold—but that requirement does not exist in terrorism law. To convict someone who supports Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis—the proxies that the IRGC arms and funds—there is no such hurdle, so the body that inspires, organises arms and funds the terrorists is handed a protection in law that the terrorist himself is denied. That is the difference between a prosecution that succeeds and one that never gets off the ground, and I know something about prosecutions that fail at the last moment. Our amendment 3 simply removes the extra defence and brings this offence into line with the terrorism law from which it is drawn.
I recognise that the Government may seek to argue that state entities enjoy protections in international law that terrorists do not, that we must set a higher bar than in equivalent terrorism legislation and that acting prejudicially to the UK’s interests is a reasonable test. However, state immunity protects the Iranian state from being sued or prosecuted in our courts, and it has nothing to do with the British resident who chooses to fund or promote the IRGC. We are not prosecuting Tehran; we are prosecuting the person here who does its work. The proposition that the Minister is left defending is that supporting the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism should be harder to prosecute than supporting the groups it sponsors. That is not a higher bar; it is international lawyers tying the hands of Ministers who are meant to be keeping us safe.
On amendments 11 and 12, the same instinct to protect where we should prosecute runs through subsection (7) of proposed new section 17C, which makes a reasonable excuse a defence for accepting and keeping a material benefit from a designated body. That is not necessary, because there are already protections in the Bill for, for example, a lawyer or somebody who has no ability to know that funds were being taken. I recognise that such a provision is in the National Security Act 2023, but that is not a reason to repeat a weakness, and we have an opportunity to fix it. There is no excuse for keeping a hostile state’s money—not in this Bill and not in the Act it leans on.
The sentencing gets the gravity backwards. As drafted, supporting a designated body and actively assisting one carries the same maximum sentence of 14 years or a fine.
Before my hon. Friend moves on to fines, the issue she has raised, and which I raised earlier, seems to be crucial. It is true that Jonathan Hall, as the Minister said on Second Reading, recognised that the approach to a terrorist organisation was different from the approach to a state. Nevertheless, creating this higher bar whereby to secure a successful prosecution it must be established that the individual concerned was acting on behalf of the designated body for a prohibited purpose—connection with the body alone is not sufficient—seems to me to make prosecution less likely rather than more likely. If international law is at the heart of that—the fear of appeals, and so on and so forth—we need to hear that from the Minister, and the case needs to be a highly persuasive, because it seems to me that the Government are making their lives more difficult, rather than easier.
That is exactly the crux of the point I made in my speech on Second Reading. We should not set a higher threshold, because we will see prosecutions collapse for exactly that reason. We need to be arming prosecutors to go and get the justice that our country needs to better protect us.
Turning to the maximum sentence of 14 years, actively doing a hostile state organ’s work—moving its money, carrying its information, committing violence on its behalf—is graver than just supporting it. It is a kind of treason, and I suspect most British people would call it that. We urge the Government to consider having a higher potential sentence for actively working with or receiving material benefit from a designated body. Amendment 7 would therefore raise that maximum sentence from 14 years to 25 years. That figure is not plucked from the air; it matches the Australian regime under which the IRGC was listed last November. As I have said, the Government may argue that the 14 year maximum sentence is taken from the NSA 2023, but let us raise the maximum sentence in both. After all, we are talking about treason.
On amendment 10, I turn from where the Bill is too soft to where it says nothing at all. This is one of the gaps about which the Government have offered no answer, and I have looked hard for one. Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006 makes preparing an act of terrorism an offence, but this Bill contains no equivalent. As the Bill is drafted, a person can plan to assist a designated organ—to be straightforward, let us talk about the IRGC—and unless and until they commit the act, they have committed no offence at all under this Bill. However, the entire purpose of national security work is to prevent and disrupt before harm is done, not to see the plot and clear it up afterwards. We would not tolerate that vulnerability in terrorism law and we should not invent it here. Amendment 10 closes that gap, and lets police and prosecutors act while a plot is still on the drawing board. If the Minister believes preparation is already caught elsewhere, I would welcome her showing me where, but I have yet to be shown that in the briefings I have had.
Amendment 13 recognises that the gap left by preparation is widened by a second omission: self directed and inspired actors. The Bill misses entirely the person who is never directly commissioned or directed, but who absorbs a hostile state’s propaganda and acts on it alone. Twenty years of counter terrorism has taught us this lesson at a terrible cost. The gravest or most likely threat is no longer the directed plot, but the individual radicalised online who acts on their own. Hostile states bring the resources, reach and sophistication of states to that propaganda, arguably with a greater inspiring power than any terrorist group can muster. We saw that with the bots that screamed for independence in Scotland and fell silent the moment Tehran’s internet went down, something my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) raised in his speech earlier. That is just a small insight into the ways they are invested in turning us against each other. A Bill that catches only the commissioned and directed is fighting the last war and leaving us dangerously exposed to the next. Amendment 13 captures those inspired to act by a designated body, but not directed by them.
I turn now to the most dangerous omission of all, which we touched on in the wind ups on Second Reading, and the omission that would worry our allies and partners, which amendment 8 seeks to address. As drafted, the Bill captures activity in the UK and activity abroad that is “prejudicial” to the UK. It does not catch activity planned here on British soil to be perpetrated abroad where there is no ability to prove that it is prejudicial to the interests of the UK where there is no harm to the UK. Activity by the IRGC in France, Iran or Bosnia, or by the Chinese in Hong Kong, may not be directly prejudicial to the interests of the UK, so again we are adding an unnecessary threshold. But if it is perpetrated here, be it in Manchester, London or anywhere else, we must be able to prosecute those responsible.
In plain terms, the gap was turning the UK into a base for state terrorism: a cell here in Britain planning a campaign of intimidation against a journalist in Dublin on behalf of the IRGC, or a network running sabotage operations in Germany. Arrested and charged, their defence writes itself. If the act was not to take place here in the UK, you cannot argue that it was prejudicial to UK safety. The law does not like ambiguity. We should not leave prosecutors having to argue that an attack on Dublin or Berlin was also somehow an attack on London. Amendment 8 closes that gap directly, so that planning hostile activity from British soil is caught wherever that activity is aimed. If the Government are confident that that scope is already reached, they lose nothing by putting it beyond doubt. Far better to write the law clearly today than to watch a case fall apart on that very point.
The next omission is propaganda itself. Since 2006, it has been an offence to disseminate publications that promote terrorism. The Bill extends no equivalent protection against the propaganda of designated states. We have heard colleagues today talk about publications such as Press TV which, shamefully, former Members of this House appear on and are paid to have shows on. Two of the principal weapons of hostile states are the propaganda that recruits and the disinformation that divides. The Chinese Communist party pushes propaganda and disinformation through the United Front Work Department. I hope these powers will reach it one day, but amendment 14 brings designated bodies within the same standard applied to terrorist publications for 20 years, because I do not in any way think that the Government think that IRGC propaganda should have more latitude than that of a proscribed terrorist group.
Next is an omission that many living in our country, especially our Jewish community, will find the most difficult. Under section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, it is an offence to display in public the insignia of a proscribed organisation. It is the power that we rely on to take Hamas flags, Hezbollah banners and the symbols of Hizb ut Tahrir off our streets. The Bill as drafted contains no equivalent provision whatever, so if the amendment is not accepted by the Government, either now or in the other place, the flag of the IRGC may fly lawfully on a British street, glorifying every stabbing, every attack on our Jewish communities, every kidnap plot and every assassination attempt that the regime has directed here. How do we look the people who are being hunted in the eye and tell them that the banner of their hunter is welcome on our streets?
The Government may say that criminalising the display of state symbols brings lawful state activity under UK criminal law, contrary to diplomatic convention, and that by reciprocity, hostile states could criminalise the Union Jack and UK uniforms abroad, exposing our personnel and dual nationals. I have taken the time to consider that. Yes, state immunity protects foreign states in our courts, but it should not and does not dictate what a resident of this country may do on British pavements.
The amendment does not touch the Iranian state, or its embassy or any accredited diplomat protected by the Vienna convention. It touches the person waving the flag or wearing the uniform. The reciprocity argument does not survive five seconds of contact with reality, because Iran already jails its own citizens for waving the Union Jack. We do not keep our flag safe in Tehran by keeping their flag flying in London.
I move from the offences that the Bill omits to the powers it withholds from our police and the officers standing at the border. New clause 5 closes one of the starkest gaps between the Bill and the terrorism law that the Secretary of State clearly said she seeks to mirror: “the same as” was the language she used. If an officer has reasonable grounds to suspect at the border that someone is leaving the United Kingdom to assist a designated terrorist group—which, under the Bill, would be a designated hostile state body—they should be able to seize the passport of the person seeking to travel and stop them.
We grant that exact power in terrorism cases. Parliament created the provision in 2015 so that an officer at the border does not have to watch a suspect board a plane and vanish. On 29 March 2024, two men stabbed Pouria Zeraat, a journalist with Iran International—an incredibly brave man who continues to do everything he can to shine a light on what is taking place in Iran—outside his home in Wimbledon. The Crown told the court that the men had acted as proxies for the Iranian state, and within hours they were at Heathrow and gone. We can close that loophole by accepting new clause 5.
Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of whom we have spoken much, recommended the power last year. He said that it was an immediate recommendation, and the Government rightly accepted it. I welcomed them doing so, but now the Government have left it out of the Bill. The equivalent power against terrorism has worked for 10 years and been used 75 times. If the threat is visible at the border, we must not tie the hands of the officer standing in front of it.
The second power that the Bill withholds is the serious crime prevention order. Again, terrorism law already allows it, but this Bill does not, which is why I tabled new clause 6. A serious crime prevention order lets a court manage risk beyond the conviction, limiting travel, restricting internet access, controlling communications, and compelling disclosure that aids an investigation. Each one of those tools would help us tackle hostile state networks. We grant them against organised crimes and terrorists, but the Bill grants them against neither the IRGC nor any future designated body.
The Minister must explain why a SCPO is right for county lines gangs and terror cells, but not a hostile state. I suspect that the real answer is that it may have been an omission, or that there may be plans for a future Bill, but we have this Bill in front of us now, so let us give the police the necessary powers.
There is a blind spot at the centre of the Bill—a consequence of writing it for one organisation and forgetting that there will be more state bodies that behave as terrorists. The Bill does not mention sanctions once. For legislation the entire purpose of which is to act against hostile state bodies, there is a remarkable and revealing silence that tells us who the Bill was drafted for. The IRGC is already sanctioned, so the Government did not trouble to build a bridge to the sanctions regime, but the next body we might designate may not be sanctioned at all, and I assure the House that there will be a need for future designations. I have touched on one: the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party.
New clause 7 enshrines designation as grounds for sanction. It does not impose anything automatic, and neither does it ask for a running commentary on sanctions—Government lawyers can rest easy—but it gives the Bill a bridge to a second or third designation, not just the first. Amendment 15 builds directly on that bridge. Where new clause 7 makes the link possible, amendment 15 makes the Government turn their minds to it. It requires the Secretary of State, within six months of designating any body, to consider whether that body should also be sanctioned, and to lay the reasons for that decision before this House.
Amendment 15 is not a demand that the Government sanction anyone. The amendment deliberately ensures that designations and sanctions do not drift apart due to inattention. If the Government are serious that the power should be used agnostically against bodies not yet sanctioned, they would welcome a discipline that forces them to look every time.
Finally, I come to the threat that the Bill cannot even bring itself to name. Hostile states, and the bodies that serve them, will use any tool they can to silence dissent, subvert democracy, and advance their interests, particularly in those who sought safety in our country—Tibetans, Hongkongers, Ukrainians and British nationals who dared to stand up to autocrats and terrorist technocrats, and who are now under attack on our soil.
Amendment 16 names three of the most common and most sinister forms of attack by hostile states: transnational repression, abusive lawfare and sanctions evasion. It would be the first time that transnational repression was put into British law. That may seem like an amazing, glaring omission to many Members of this House; I myself was not aware of it until I gave the Bill Office my amendment and asked them to provide me with the legal definition of transnational repression, only to be told that there is no such definition because it is not in law. We can correct that through this Bill. Doing so would send a single, unambiguous warning that a foreign power that reaches on to our streets to do these things will be designated for it.
We have heard about the threats from Iran to our country. We know how the Chinese Communist party has put bounties on the heads of pro democracy Hongkongers—cash for the abduction of people as young as 19, kidnap notes put through the doors of neighbours saying, “Bring this person to the Chinese embassy so that we can deal with them.” We have talked about Russia murdering people on our soil, and behind all the names we know—Litvinenko, Berezovsky and all the others—there are hundreds and thousands we do not know who are still being attacked.
Section 33 of the NSA already names some hostile acts, including sabotage, the theft of trade secrets and entering a prohibited premises. If the Act can name those examples, it can find the room to name transnational repression. This is the chance to improve the National Security Act, protect the vulnerable and put autocracies on notice.
To conclude, I will draw these threads together. Every one of these 13 amendments is drawn not from theory, but from the body of counter terrorism law that this country has built, tested and relied upon for two decades. Apart from the transnational repression suggestion, every measure is taken from terrorism legislation to ensure that we do not have omissions or gaps in the Bill. They also come from my experience working directly to counter hostile states and terrorist groups before I came to this place. Even the basics—a propaganda offence, the flags and uniforms, the power to seize a passport at the border; orders we already have—are the bare minimum the Government should be looking to accept. If these amendments are not agreed to, it ceases to become an issue of haste and becomes one of choice—a choice to give the IRGC a gentler regime than the terrorist groups it funds.
We support the Bill. We are not trying to stop it. I hope that I have made the case clearly that we just want to plug the gaps. I do not think it is fair for the Government to suggest that we are trying to use this Bill like a Christmas tree and hang lots of additional items on it. I seek simply to close existing gaps. The only new measure would be the one concerning transnational repression. I commend these amendments to the Committee, and I hope they will be considered.
I have to commend the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) for doing her homework. I wish to explain why we do not think these amendments are needed at the moment.
There are a couple of themes that run through my response to the hon. Lady’s amendments. The first is that it is not possible to treat a state body the same as a terrorist organisation, because one cannot abolish a state body. One has to think about the differences between the two, which is why we have called the measure closing the loophole in this Bill designation, rather than proscription. It is also the case that we clearly have other international obligations, both under international law, for the sovereignty of individual states, and under diplomatic law, with the Vienna convention, so that we can enable diplomatic relations or other arrangements with states that we might not approve of particularly. Within that difference lie some of the different approaches in the Bill and in the hon. Lady’s amendments.
The other common theme, which perhaps divides us in our approach to the Bill, as well as explaining the differences and why we will not be accepting the hon. Lady’s amendments, is that we are not trying to put all of Jonathan Hall’s recommendations on to the statute book in this Bill. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in her opening remarks, we have accepted all the recommendations in Jonathan Hall’s report and will be legislating for them subsequently. What we wish to do with this quite narrow Bill is close that loophole with state sponsored or proxy organisations as quickly as possible so that we can deal with the rising threats present on our streets as we speak. It may help to bear those two things in mind as I lay out the Government’s position regarding the amendments that the hon. Lady has just spoken to.
Through amendments 3 to 6, the hon. Lady seeks to remove the prohibited purpose test. The test is there precisely to cover the difference in treatment between terrorist organisations and states, which we cannot proscribe and with which we may have to have some kind of arrangements. While the Bill is modelled on the provisions in the Terrorism Act 2000, it has to reflect the realities of dealing with state entities. That is what the prohibited purpose test is about. There may be some cases where UK persons need to have legitimate dealings with a state entity; it might be a British diplomat or a non governmental organisation delivering humanitarian aid. The prohibited purpose test is necessary to protect legitimate conduct without creating loopholes that can be exploited by hostile actors.
I am glad that the Minister has addressed that point, because it was raised by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) and I on Second Reading. Surely the counter argument is that it will be a sure defence when prosecutions are brought; it will be much harder to secure a conviction, because the necessity to prove a purpose will be tested beyond measure. The association with a state sponsored organisation such as, for example, the IRGC is ipso facto proof, surely, of guilt.
Action that is prejudicial to the safety and interests of the UK is the test that we are talking about. If one were delivering humanitarian aid and had to deal with part of a state that we did not particularly approve of, that would not be prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK. It would be in line with what the UK wished to do, but if it were prejudicial, because it was hostile activity, the test would be passed.
The Minister gives the example of a diplomat, and she is right that our diplomats in Tehran will need to engage with the IRGC—it is nonsense to suggest that they would not be able to do so—but that is why there is a specific exception for that in the Bill. Proposed new section 17A(5) refers to a person who “acts for or on behalf of, or holds office under, the Crown, or is in Crown employment (whether or not they engage in the conduct in that capacity).”
As I have mentioned, I am concerned that that means that anyone who is a traitor and works for the civil service would have protections under any circumstances, but it means that we do not need that additional threshold, because diplomats are already specifically protected in the Bill at another point.
It is not only diplomats. It may well be NGOs delivering humanitarian aid and people who have to come across states or their designated proxies in particular cases.
We need to be clear about which provisions relate to which offences. The offence that I think the Minister has heard concern expressed about, and to which amendment 3 relates, is the offence under proposed new section 17A of the National Security Act 2023—in other words, the offence of supporting a designated organisation. The provisions that relate to protections for those who are acting on behalf of the UK state apply to the other two offences, not to the 17A offence, do they not?
The Minister is of course right that there is a difference between the way in which the UK state needs to interact with another state entity and the way in which it needs to interact with a terrorist entity, but these offences relate to individuals not to states or, indeed, the designated body. We are talking about offences that might be charged against individuals who are themselves accused of supporting that designated body.
Is not the point here—the point has been made several times—that we are setting up an additional hurdle in order to prosecute successfully for an offence of supporting a designated body? As the Minister heard me say on Second Reading, what I am concerned to understand is why that is not duplication, in effect, of the designation process itself, which distinguishes an innocent, perfectly rational state body from one that is up to no good for all the ways described in the designation process. Why do we need the prohibited purposes test in addition to the designation process?
I think it is to cover all potential actions that individuals may undertake that are okay; they can assure themselves that an activity is okay, even if it involves a designated state, if it is not prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK. Many humanitarian organisations are worried about being inadvertently caught in the designation process, and the prohibited purpose test is there to give assurance in those contexts.
Earlier today, I and other members of the Foreign Affairs Committee met the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross’s regional delegation to the UK. The ICRC makes the point that while it is not a non governmental organisation, it needs access to state actors on both sides of a conflict. I am curious about whether the prohibited purpose test is specifically looking to protect NGOs and organisations such as the ICRC, or whether it is also to do with compliance with international law, such as the European convention on human rights.
The Bill does accord with the European convention on human rights, international law and all our obligations. The prohibited purpose test is there precisely to give assurance to bodies like the one that the hon. Member mentioned, so that there will not be any dubiety about whether they can engage with the organisations that they must work with as part of their core job.
May I put on record my thanks to the Home Secretary and the team for the speed with which they have addressed the major issues in the Bill? I also thank the Home Secretary for making it clear on Second Reading that the Bill’s provisions will not apply to humanitarian organisations.
Yes. This is the test that delivers that assurance.
I am extremely grateful to the Minister for giving way again. I hope she accepts that I am genuinely trying to ensure that I have understood correctly how the test is supposed to work. I would be grateful if she also addressed the other point that I raised. I understand her argument that the intention is to ensure that, for example, those at NGO level who might engage with a designated body are not held criminally accountable for doing so. However, she will recognise that the Bill deals differently with the offences of assisting or obtaining a material benefit from a designated body. In those cases, there is provision for the defence that she has outlined, but that approach is not taken in relation to supporting a designated body. Can she explain why we have that difference?
I think it is about consistency. The Bill was drafted to try to mirror—albeit in a slightly different context—the Terrorism Act provisions, while fitting into the National Security Act’s provisions, so that we do not have a complicated range of tests.
Amendment 7 relates to defences and sentencing. Essentially, the hon. Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) wishes to increase the prison sentence for actively assisting to 25 years from the current 14 years. The idea is that 14 years would very much fit in with the sentences under the National Security Act, and we would not end up with a complex range of sentences for quite similar offences. One could increase both, if we were minded to do so, but the point about the introduction of designation in the Bill is that it is trying to fit into the National Security Act, which has been working quite well, rather than our having a whole range of different sentences for very similar offences.
I fully recognise the Minister’s point that she is trying to align the provisions with those in the National Security Act, but as per my argument earlier, let us improve the National Security Act while we are at it. The Minister says that the question is whether she is minded to make the change; I say she should be minded to. If someone actively assists or materially benefits from a hostile state while committing treason, it is absolutely right that they should get a tougher sentence than that for just flying a flag or supporting a hostile state. Those acts are still heinous, but a far worse crime has been committed. I ask the Minister to consider making the change when the Bill is in the Lords.
I note the hon. Lady’s point.
Amendment 10 would “create an offence of engaging in conduct in preparation for committing, or assisting another to commit, an offence relating to a designated body.”
It is not necessary, because a person who engages in conduct of any kind, including preparatory conduct, that is intended to assist a designated body in carrying out UK related activities would be caught by the Bill’s provisions.
The hon. Lady talked about what she called a loophole; she said that the Bill does not cover attacks inspired by a designated body. Her amendment 13 would create a new offence for self directed acts inspired by a designated body, but we do not believe it is necessary. The test for the assisting offence in proposed new section 17B of the National Security Act is whether conduct is intended to assist a designated organisation, or whether the person ought to have known that their conduct was likely to assist the organisation. The person does not need to be tasked or directed by the organisation to commit the offence, so those who are inspired to do things, rather than being asked or told to do things by the designated body, are caught.
With amendment 8, the hon. Lady seeks to capture conduct that occurs outside the UK but is planned within the UK. Again, we believe it is unnecessary. If planning takes place in the UK, it is already caught in the Bill, under the offence in proposed new section 17B of assisting a designated body. That offence refers to conduct of any kind, and it will be an offence to plan something in the UK that takes place outside the UK if it materially assists a designated body in carrying out activities that are prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK—the prohibited purpose test. That could cover someone in the UK who assists a designated body in its work, done overseas, to target an ally of the UK, so the amendment is unnecessary.
Amendment 14 would create an offence relating to the dissemination of publications that encourage support for a designated body. The conduct that the amendment seeks to address is already covered by the new offence of supporting a designated body.
I think the hon. Lady wanted people to be criminalised for wearing clothing or displaying flags or similar symbols linked to a designated body. The Bill does not ban the wearing or carrying of an image, because we cannot ban what might be worn by a foreign diplomat, but if somebody is supporting or promoting the hostile activities of a proscribed body in any way, they will be caught by the new support offence. I hope that assures the hon. Lady that that issue is covered.
New clauses 5 and 6 would give effect to other recommendations made by Jonathan Hall by creating new powers to seize travel documents, and to allow police to apply for serious crime prevention orders in relation to offences committed under this legislation. We are committed to legislating on those recommendations and, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced on Second Reading, we will do so as soon as parliamentary time allows.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
I want to begin by restating that Liberal Democrats support this Bill. We have long called for action to tackle the threat posed by the IRGC, and we have repeatedly been disappointed by slow progress. The Bill represents a positive step, and a rare moment of agreement on a principle across this House. When it comes to important matters of national security, this is a desirable outcome.
The UK is increasingly targeted by hostile state backed groups, and the IRGC has been involved in such activity, as we know. Attacks on Britain’s Jewish community in recent months have laid bare the clear and ongoing threat to that community, and also to UK national security. The uptick in antisemitism and the threats against our national security continue, regardless of the politics in this House, and we must bear that in mind when we act urgently to protect Jewish communities. That is why I urge Members across the House to support new clause 3 on the designation of the IRGC. This will provide, after long delays, much needed certainty for the Jewish community and others that the Government will act at pace by bringing forward regulations within a month of this legislation passing.
The hon. Gentleman will know that I have called for the proscription of the IRGC numerous times in this House, and that it is something I absolutely want, but does he not accept that we have to pass this legislation, set the framework up and allow the Home Secretary to make an evidence based decision before proscription is brought into effect? Should he not withdraw this new clause, and allow due process to take its course?
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention. The new clause will not be withdrawn. The sentiment is shared between us, and I think we should appreciate that.
New clause 3 reflects the Government’s stated intention to move by the summer recess, and it ensures that this commitment will be honoured in practice; that would give much reassurance to those watching from outside the House. Importantly, the new clause does not force the Home Secretary to designate the IRGC prematurely; it would have to do so only in line with the coming into force of the rest of the Bill. It does not override due process; nor does it lower the evidential threshold required under the legislation. It ensures that the intelligence gathering and preparatory work necessary for designation are treated as an urgent priority, rather than something that can be continually delayed. This urgency is long overdue.
Liberal Democrats will also support new clause 4, which provides for an independent post legislative review within 12 months of this legislation passing. This is a crucial safeguard. The Bill introduces significant new powers, and it is essential that their effectiveness and proportionality are independently assessed.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to want this. However, there is already a requirement under law for Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, to review all terrorism legislation and related legislation, including the National Security Act 2023—which this would fall under—every single year, and to report back to Parliament. Hopefully the hon. Gentleman will be reassured that this is already covered in law, and that there is a specific requirement.
The hon. Lady knows much more about this than I do, and I bow to her greater knowledge.
The Home Secretary gave a reassurance on Second Reading that humanitarian organisations would not find their work being criminalised, and the Security Minister has just touched on that point as well. We welcome that further reassurance on the official record, but I have no doubt that the point will be further explored elsewhere when the Bill moves on. I am sure that Members from across the House will agree that the accelerated passage of the Bill through Parliament, which will limit the amount of scrutiny it receives, heightens the imperative for independent post legislative scrutiny, which may be useful to the Government.
Similarly, we will support amendment 2, which ensures that any decision to remove a designation is subject to the draft affirmative procedure. Again, speed is a factor in this Bill’s passage, as the official Opposition have mentioned a number of times today, and it is likely that this will not be needed in the short to medium term. However, parliamentary oversight should apply not just at the point of designation, but at the point of removal. It is vital that there should be adequate parliamentary scrutiny if a future Home Secretary should seek to remove a designation, and this amendment will enshrine that mechanism.
We also support amendment 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone). This amendment closes a critical loophole by making it an offence to use corporate structures to conceal assets belonging to designated individuals or organisations. It would strengthen enforcement against the murky structures which many Members of this House have long opposed. I urge Ministers to consider the merits of the amendment, even if it does not reach a Division today.
The Liberal Democrats will support amendment 8. The Bill refers to “UK related activities”, but fails to account for activities that are conducted overseas but planned from within the UK. It cannot be right that groups planning attacks on our allies and neighbours are sheltered from the law by this oversight. These actors do not respect traditional borders and so our laws must adequately adapt to meet the challenge. The amendment would close that loophole and, in doing so, strengthen the Bill.
The Bill can be further strengthened to bring the activity of copycat and lone wolf actors into scope, as set out in amendment 13. Experts are warning that access to violent content online is a contributing factor to violent acts being carried out by those who feel they are acting on behalf of a group, even if they hold no direct link or contact. The laissez faire attitude of social media platforms to content moderation means that attacks of that kind are more likely. Amendment 13 would bring lone wolf and copycat actors into scope by creating a new offence of undertaking conduct that is harmful or prejudicial to UK interests that is inspired by a designated body, rather than actively commissioned on behalf of a designated body.
Finally, while there is merit in many of the amendments thoughtfully and helpfully proposed by the official Opposition, we will not support amendment 3. The amendment would remove the additional defence of supporting a designated body for a non prohibited purpose. That is an important protection in the Bill to ensure the performance of the functions of the diplomatic mission in accordance with the Vienna convention on diplomatic relations, or to allow humanitarian assistance or other activities that support basic human needs. It would also ensure that the engagement of the UK Government with the designated body would not be for a prohibited purpose.
We support the Bill, which is long overdue. We hope that it will pass today and make quick progress in the other place.
I declare an interest that I chair, and have done for about five years, a group called Solidarity with the Iranian Workers’ Movement Committee. We formed officially about five years ago and have been working for about 10 or 15 years. It is a group of Iranian refugees and trade unionists in this country, and we have tried to provide solidarity and campaign on human rights issues, focused on trade unionists in Iran. We started informally around the Tehran bus workers’ dispute, if people can remember that taking place, because a lot of the trade unionists we worked with were subsequently arrested and detained, and some were executed. That brought us together in solidarity.
On new clause 3, we have been raising time and again the proscription of the IRGC and have expressed our disappointment at the lack of action by the Government. I understand why the legislation is brought forward, and I hope that it will be brought through effectively and with the impact that we want, particularly on that organisation. Members will remember that we worked with the National Union of Journalists. In this country, the IRGC targeted journalists in particular, and a broadcasting station in Chiswick had to depart and operate from New York for a period.
Although I support the intentions of the legislation, may I also express my reservations about it? I have been in this place long enough to have experience of legislation that has come through not with undue haste, but with haste, and it is in that legislation that we usually make mistakes because we have not taken into account others’ views about the impacts. What worried me was that the explanatory notes—the Secretary of State asked us to look at them in some detail—made clear: “Given the pace at which this legislation was developed, outside groups have not been engaged on the specifics in the Bill.”
A range of organisations are now expressing concern, such as the Red Cross, and that worries me. That is why rushing a Bill through in one day is precipitous. I am worried that as a result of that, we will legislate poorly. When I say “poorly”, I am referring to incursions on people’s rights; I do not mean the right to in any way defend the organisations or states that many hon. Members referred to on Second Reading, but people’s right to express solidarity with some organisations or even countries in struggle, which we have had in the past.
To cite an example, I am a member of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Trump is now targeting Cuba and has designated it as a terrorist state. Under the Government’s proposals, for an organisation to be designated there are two factors, which were set out on Second Reading. First, a body has to have been “involved in foreign power threat activity”, as set out in proposed new section 33A of the National Security Act 2023 and in the Bill’s explanatory notes. One of those activities is foreign interference in elections. Secondly, the Secretary of State may designate a body if they believe that “is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.”
In the coming months, even until the next general election if necessary, I will be working in solidarity, through the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, with the current Cuban Government. I will be working to influence that election to ensure that a Government are elected that prevent the hostile attack by the US on Cuba, so that will be seen as foreign interference in an election.
The right hon. Gentleman references Cuba in the context of this legislation. The United States has elections—whether they elect the right president or not, is a matter for the Americans—but the Cuban people do not have that luxury. On direct or indirect threats to the United Kingdom’s interests—this is indirect threat—he will know that many Cuban nationals have been sent to Ukraine to fight in Russia’s illegal war. They are killing Ukrainian soldiers and aiding and abetting the bombing of civilians. Putin is losing, but if he did win, Cuba would have been aiding a regime that is not in our national security interest.
Well, QED. There we have it. Under the Bill, as members of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, I and many other hon. Members will be committing an offence—
I have a great deal of respect for my right hon. Friend, as he knows, but in order for that to be the case, this Government would have to decide to designate the Cuba Solidarity Campaign. Obviously I cannot talk about what may or may not be designated should the Bill get on the statute book, but I think he is winding himself up into a bit of a tight knot.
I am grateful for the Minister’s consideration of my mental health, et cetera. The designation covers “foreign interference in elections” and we will be campaigning to maintain solidarity with Cuba itself. On the second designation— “is necessary to protect the safety or interests of the United Kingdom”— in our current trade negotiations with the United States, we are taking decisions about the “interests” of the UK as interpreted by the US. So I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that when we introduce such legislation, we must discern what could be the worst that could happen and how could it go wrong? We are opening up an opportunity for things to go wrong. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary would not designate the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, but in a certain situation, certain Administrations would. By not including sufficient protections in the legislation we are, unwittingly, opening the door to its being used to designate organisations, and therefore individuals, as breaking the law, with significant penalties imposed. That is why the rush to legislation is my concern. If we are not engaging with outside bodies that could be in the specifics of the legislation, as the explanatory notes say, that is where we will make mistakes.
What consultations or discussions have been had with some of the organisations campaigning on the international implications of what is happening, particularly regarding the role of the US. What discussions have taken place? There could be ramifications well beyond what we all agree on today with regard to the designation of the IRGC and others that, at this moment, could be specifically designated as advancers of terrorism.
I note the definition on activities being “prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom”, but does my right hon. Friend agree that we are getting into some tortuous territory? It could be properly argued that it is in the interests of the United Kingdom to seek to uphold basic human rights and have international humanitarian law observed consistently. That is in our collective and global interests, but we could find ourselves in situations where actors who we currently class as our allies, such as in the example he has given, use organisations to undermine that very principle. Is that not an example of how we need to think this legislation through?
There is a consideration that needs to be properly debated and given the time to be debated. My specific point is that if the US moves against Cuba and imposes and demands a wider trade ban, for example, the argument could be made that we are undermining our own interests if we do not co operate with the US. That argument has been used in the trade negotiations so far. Under this legislation, we could have an organisation designated specifically around trying to break that blockade. That is my worry.
That leads me on to a minor point about designation. At the moment, designation is made through the affirmative procedure, which brings a statutory instrument before the House that we can vote for or against; we cannot amend it. What we saw under the proscription process, particularly with Palestine Action, was that the statutory instrument came before us with a bloc of 20 organisations. We had to vote for it or against it; we could not distinguish in voting between any of those organisations.
I ask the Government to consider that when we deal with this matter, it should be dealt with through the super affirmative procedure, rather than the affirmative procedure. In the super affirmative procedure, there is a process of consultation in which individual organisations can be dealt with, rather than dealing with organisations en bloc. In that way, we could take a more considered decision about the individual roles and aspects of organisations that the Government are designating.
I hope the Government will consider that process better, because it would reassure us more that this legislation will be effective and will not have the sweeping consequences that bloc proscription has brought so far. We have seen maybe 3,000 people going through our courts simply for holding up a poster with regard to Palestine Action.
I will speak to my amendment 1, which I am very pleased has the most supporters of any amendment before us today.
Amendment 1 would make an offence of the concealment of beneficial ownership relating to a designated organisation and the establishment and maintenance of that concealment of finance and assets. In simpler terms, it would crack down on the professional enablers working to hide the ownership of assets for a designated group by clarifying that that is the same as providing them with a material benefit. These groups rely on hiding their money, and opaque financial systems only help them to do that. By extending liability to those who make that opacity possible, we limit the ability of designated groups to continue to benefit from their assets and finances.
Amendment 1 makes it clear that financial transparency is a national security issue. The opaque systems, all too often in overseas territories and Crown dependencies, and those who enable their use, are assisting nations and organisations that want to do our country harm. Designating these state backed groups is vital. We have seen the issues they cause across the country: targeting our institutions, targeting those who speak out against regimes, and directing acts designed to target and strike fear into our Jewish communities.
I did not table this amendment for theoretical cases or as a stimulant for debate, however; I tabled it because groups such as the IRGC are benefiting from these structures right now. It is alleged by The Times, Bloomberg and Transparency International that Iranian Cypriot banker Ali Ansari has purchased a huge London property empire for the benefit of the new Ayatollah. His purchases are linked to a company called Birch Ventures Ltd, which is registered on the Isle of Man with Ansari listed as the beneficial owner. Last year, this Government sanctioned Mr Ansari because they believe he is funding the IRGC. The Government believe that Mr Ansari is such a risk of supporting a group which may be designated a state threat that they have frozen his assets, but I fear this Bill does not actually ensure that his role in supporting these groups is properly captured. The usefulness of Mr Ansari to the Iranian regime is his ability to obscure their wealth, hide their assets and ensure that their financial flows carry on unabated by acting as the beneficial owner when it appears this is not actually the case.
It is not only the Iranian regime who can fund their state threats through obscuring ownership. Just this week the Government have sanctioned individuals and companies that existed as fronts to purchase technology that could be used in Ukraine at the behest of the GRU—another candidate to become a designated group under this Bill. Those responsible for disguising the benefits to the GRU of the ownership of these companies or the assets they hold could also become liable for prosecution under my amendment.
Another Russian intelligence arm, the FSB, directs cyber attacks against our country and the businesses in it. Indeed, the Government identify that FSB Centre 18, known as Star Blizzard, has targeted Members of this House. Sanctioned oligarchs Dmitry Patrushev and Denis Bortnikov were identified as part of the Navalny 35 as acting as wallets for their powerful fathers who have held senior positions in the FSB. Again, these are powerful people who are enabling the continued existence of the wealth of senior figures in dangerous groups, and those roles should not go unpunished.
The malign state actors—the people my amendment is targeting—have a simple role: they are the enablers, the fixers, the money men. They may not write the hacking code or carry out sabotage or violent acts personally, but by enabling and obscuring the finances which make such activity possible, they are culpable and responsible. We cannot allow a loophole in this vital legislation that leaves these individuals who play such a key role without punishment. Making it clear that this role is illegal will remove their usefulness to these groups. It will cut out sources of funding and make it harder for them to continue their activities.
To make sure that this new law has a real effect, the Government urgently need to take two key steps. First, they need to work with overseas territories and Crown dependencies to ensure they are operating to the highest global standards to prevent the financing of designated groups—just as they would be expected to stop the financing of terror groups. There can be no hiding places for those who do us harm, and now that we are finally giving these groups a proper legal classification, we must root out their financing in the same way we have done with terrorism for decades. I would appreciate the Minister telling us what plans she has to do this, and if she has had these conversations already, and if not, when she will.
Secondly—this is incredibly important if, as I suspect, the Government do not accept this amendment today—we need to get better at enforcing the current laws around beneficial ownership. We must ensure that those who are not correctly reporting beneficial ownership, for whatever reason, are not able to get away with it.
I support this Bill and want it to pass, but I am concerned that some who play a crucial role in propping up designated groups, shielding their finances and contributing to their malign activity could get away unscathed. I urge the Government to support this amendment today.
I call the Minister.
New clause 3, tabled by the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), would require the Secretary of State to bring forward regulations designating the IRGC within a month of this Act coming into force, but the exercise of these powers under this Bill will have significant implications for national security and foreign policy, and it is right that they should be exercised independently by the Secretary of State on the basis of expert advice, including from the security and intelligence agencies. That is what this Bill allows, and putting these designations on the face of the Bill would be a very difficult way to effect the change, so the way to do this is the way that the Bill sets out.
The hon. Member for Cheltenham’s new clause 4, which would “require the Independent Reviewer of State Threats Legislation to assess the adequacy of the powers introduced by this Act twelve months after its passing”, is already essentially covered by the Bill’s provisions, because they would be subject to part 3 of the National Security Act. The independent reviewer of state threats legislation has to carry out an annual review into the operation of its provisions, and is also empowered by part 1 of that Act to review any other such things he or she sees fit. Amendment 2 would require the draft affirmative procedure to be used for regulations removing a designation. He is right that such regulations should receive the proper parliamentary scrutiny, and the Bill already provides that such regulations are subject to the draft affirmative procedure. The use of the negative procedure is limited to very minor technical changes, such as the addition of aliases.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) asked whether it would be possible to proscribe a particular group, and gave a particular example. The test is whether the body is engaged in “foreign power threat activity”; it is a high bar, and it targets organisations that pose a real threat to the UK. I cannot imagine for one minute that my right hon. Friend would be involved in any of those.
Amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone), would provide further examples of conduct that would be considered a material benefit, and he spoke about what those might be. Obtaining material benefits from a foreign intelligence service is an existing offence under section 17 of the National Security Act, so I do not think the further examples of conduct in amendment 1 are needed, as that conduct is already caught by the provisions in the Bill.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 2 Offences relating to designated bodies Amendment proposed: 3, page 3, line 8, leave out from “body” until end of line 9.—(Alicia Kearns.) This amendment and Amendments 4 to 6 would remove the additional defence of supporting a designated body for a non prohibited purpose. Question put, That the amendment be made.
29|18:07|85|317|divided:|Question accordingly negatived.||0|0
Clause 2
Offences relating to designated bodies
Amendment proposed: 8, page 4, line 27, after “United Kingdom” insert
“or are conducted outside, but were planned from within, the United Kingdom”.—(Alicia Kearns.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
30|18:21|143|249|divided:|Question accordingly negatived.||0|0
Amendment proposed: 13, page 7, line 8, at end insert—
“17D Self directing acts in support of a designated body
(1) A person commits an offence if the person engages in conduct of any kind which is—
(a) inspired by the ideology, actions, and self promotion of a designated body, and
(b) prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.
(2) A person commits an offence if the person—
(a) engages in UK related activities that are likely to assist the stated, or assumed, aims of a designated body, and
(b) knows, or having regard to other matters known to them ought to reasonably to know, that their activities are likely to assist the stated, or assumed, aims of a designated body.
(3) “UK related activities” means—
(a) activities taking place in the United Kingdom;
(b) activities taking place outside the United Kingdom which are prejudicial to the safety or interests of the United Kingdom.
(4) Subsections (1) and (2) apply to conduct outside the United Kingdom, but apply to conduct taking place wholly outside the United Kingdom only if the person engaging in the conduct—
(ab) is a UK person, or
(b) acts for or on behalf of, or holds office under, the Crown, or is in Crown employment (whether or not they engage in the conduct in that capacity).
(5) In proceedings for an offence under this section it is a defence to show that the person engaged in the conduct in question—
(a) in compliance with a legal obligation under the law of the United Kingdom which is not a legal obligation under private law,
(b) in the case of a person having functions of a public nature under the law of the United Kingdom, for the purposes of those functions,
(c) as a lawyer carrying on a legal activity, or
(d) in accordance with, or in relation to Uk related activities carried out in accordance with, an agreement or arrangement to which—
(i) the United Kingdom was a party, or
(ii) any person acting for, or on behalf of, or holding office under, the Crown was (in that capacity) a party.
(6) A person is taken to have shown a matter mentioned in subsection (5) if—
(a) sufficient evidence is adduced to raise an issue with respect to it, and
(b) the contrary is not proved beyond reasonable doubt.
(7) A person who commits an office under this section is liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 14 years or a fine (or both).
(8) The following terms have the same meaning as in section 3—
“Crown employment” ;
“financial benefit” ;
The “law of the United Kingdom”;
“lawyer” ;
“legal activity” ;
“UK person” .”—(Alicia Kearns.)
This amendment creates a new offence of undertaking conduct harmful or prejudicial to UK interests that is inspired by a designated body, rather than actively commissioned on behalf of a designated body.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
31|18:32|135|258|The Committee divided:|Question accordingly negatived.||0|0
Clauses 2 to 8 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
New Clause 3
Designation of the IRGC
“(1) The Secretary of State must take reasonable steps to lay before Parliament regulations under the provisions of this Act to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a body involved in foreign power threat activity.
(2) Before laying such regulations, the Secretary of State must be satisfied that the IRGC fulfils the conditions set out in Section 1 of this Act.
(3) The regulations specified in subsection (1) should be laid before Parliament within a month of this Act coming into force.” —(Max Wilkinson.)
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to take reasonable steps to bring forward regulations designating the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) within a month of this Act coming into force.
Brought up, and read the First time.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
32|18:44|144|244|The House divided:|Question accordingly negatived.||0|0
Schedule agreed to.
The Deputy Speaker resumed the Chair.
Bill reported, without amendment.
Third Reading.
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
This Bill will create crucial new powers to allow the Government to keep pace with the evolving threat picture that Members from all parties referred to in the previous debates. The Bill will now move on to the other place, where I am sure colleagues will give it rigorous scrutiny while ensuring that its passage continues as smoothly as possible.
The Bill asks how our country confronts the greatest threat it faces: states that behave like terrorists. We support the Bill, and have today set out its weaknesses—the places where, as drafted, it is found wanting. We tabled 13 amendments and new clauses, with not one designed to delay the Bill, not one designed to wreck it and, tonight, not one accepted—not a clause, not a line, not one additional defence for our country. There are two ways for a Government to show their contempt for the House: they may deny it time or deny it influence. They may rush this House or overrule it. This Government have chosen both.
Does the hon. Lady not accept that Jonathan Hall, whom Members on all sides of the House respect, backs the Bill as a narrow and focused measure to designate state threats?
I am not sure that anyone has disputed that Jonathan Hall backs the Bill. I had a lengthy call with him to discuss the gaps in the Bill, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman has not had. I will not share a private conversation, but I encourage the hon. Gentleman to have a similar call with Jonathan Hall to discuss those gaps.
We are here in this place to find the gaps while they can still be mended. That is the whole of our purpose, but we were not permitted to fulfil it today because scrutiny was declined. I have to admit that it feels like our suggestions were not even given due consideration. So I must tell the House what in the Bill now leaves this Chamber unaltered. The sponsor remains more gently treated in law than the proxies that it arms. The world’s largest sponsor of terrorism keeps a protection denied to its terrorist proxies.
The self directed actor—the lone individual that our terrorism law learned to tackle, at great and terrible cost, two decades ago—will fall through a gap that we were forbidden to close. Britain may be used as a base from which to plot against our friends in Dublin, Berlin or Brussels, or even those in Hong Kong and Tehran.
The flag of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps may still be flown, lawfully, on a British street, glorifying every threat against our Jewish communities that the regime has directed here. [Interruption.] The Minister may say, “Not necessarily,” but she specifically ruled out our amendment on the basis that we should not prevent members of the Iranian diplomatic corps from wearing uniforms here. The Bill does not apply to members of the diplomatic corps; it applies specifically to UK persons. That is therefore still the case and there is no protection against seeing those flags walked past Jewish people’s homes. In Committee, I asked the Government how we look the people the regime has hunted in the eye and tell them that the banner of the hunter is still welcome on our streets. Tonight, I have no answer to offer them.
A law passed in good faith but built wrongly fails as surely as one that is passed in bad faith. When a prosecution comes, it will turn not on the speeches given today, the Government’s good intentions or our warnings, but on what a defendant did. When that day comes and there is a gap that was identified in this House today that could have been closed in an afternoon, let the record show that it could have been mended.
The Bill now passes to the other place, and I have every confidence that their lordships will give it the scrutiny it deserves. We will not oppose the Bill tonight. We will support it, not because it delivers the full protections it should, but because a flawed shield is still a shield of some form and the men and women that the Bill is designed to protect cannot be left with nothing. We support it, having placed on the record of this House what was refused and whose hand refused it. The threat we face is patient, it is ruthless and it will not be deterred by a law that we were too rushed to finish and that the Government were too proud to mend.
I have supported this Bill at every stage, and it is because of that that I lament what the Bill could have been and that the House was given a single afternoon to try to get it right. I hope this Bill is as watertight as the Government assert, but if they wish to be absolute and to remove risk or ambiguities, we ask those in the other place to shut down any risk that the shield this aims to be might let even one traitor succeed in harming our nation. I hope they will do that on the basis of the way we have put forward our amendments: in the national interest.
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
This has been an exercise in efficient democracy today, and I have enjoyed all six or so hours of it. Now, the Bill has passed this House and it proceeds to the other place. When it has completed its journey, I hope that the Government will move forward and designate the IRGC as soon as possible, according to the timetable they have stated they aspire to. That is something that those on all sides of the House have aspired to for some time, and it will make our country a safer place, particularly for our Jewish communities.
Question put and agreed to. Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Delegated Legislation
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Nuclear Safeguards
That the draft Nuclear Safeguards (EU Exit and Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 23 April, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.—(Claire Hughes.)
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Environmental Protection
That the draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 23 April, in the last Session of Parliament, be approved.—(Claire Hughes.)
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Immigration
That the draft Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) (Amendment) Order 2026, which was laid before this House on 14 May, be approved.—(Claire Hughes.)
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Claire Hughes.)
I am grateful for the opportunity to debate Government support for private investment in Lancashire this evening. Lancashire is my home. It is also the home of some of the most powerful innovators that we have in this country. Often, they fly under the radar of both Government and private investors. In many ways, that is because they do not need us. They already have exceptional trade links and supply chains within their own sectors—decades old business models in multi generational companies that just work—so they crack on, quietly making money for this country and prosperity for themselves. In some ways, they do not need our help when they have figured it out for themselves for so long, but we need them. We need companies that have drive and that, with Government support and further investment in enabling infrastructure, could do 10 times what they are currently doing for our economy.
As a Labour Government, we are great at helping people who are struggling and who do not have the opportunities they deserve. I am grateful for the millions this Government are investing into Lancashire through Pride in Place projects, which will absolutely improve health and wellbeing—something we have particular need for in our county, where poor health accounts for a significant portion of the productivity gap. But, as a Labour Government, I think we could be more honest with ourselves that while overcoming deprivation is a top priority, growth is a top priority too. We could also be better at recognising where those growth opportunities are.
I think it is fair to say that this Government are pretty convinced by agglomeration economics and by the idea that if we invest in city regions, the wealth will trickle out. But what happens somewhere like Lancashire, where there is already wealth but it has been supported consistently for decades by EU funding and then by the crisis and resilience fund and the shared prosperity fund, all of which have now been removed? It feels shortsighted to pull the rug from under Lancashire’s thriving economy in the hope that some wealth might trickle out from surrounding city regions in 20 years or so.
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, particularly around growth in cities and towns, which I am particularly interested in. Over the last 10 years, we have seen growth of around 10% in our cities whereas growth has been around 5% in our towns. Does she agree that if we do not invest in our towns, particularly where they are outside of city regions, we will miss a crucial opportunity to uplift everyone?
I absolutely agree. As I will come on to, it is about ensuring that we make the most of all areas of our country. Some of those areas already have growth, and we need to ensure that we are expanding the growth that is already there.
Without a proper holistic look at how the Government can support businesses in Lancashire, not only will businesses struggle, but our UK economy will struggle more when we miss out on the huge potential for growth.
I could stand here all night waxing lyrical about how wonderful Lancashire is—our hills, our grand town halls, our coastline, our grit—but I know none of those things speak the language of the Treasury, Government and growth, so I will focus on the numbers and the examples of how the Government have a growth opportunity in Lancashire that they need to not miss.
Lancashire is a £40 billion GVA powerhouse. That makes us the 5th largest economy in the north. As the Minister knows, the current growth narrative for the north is often dominated by our major metropolitan neighbours. While we celebrate their success, any true growth narrative for the north must take non metropolitan areas into account. At this point, let me be clear: “non metropolitan” does not mean rural. There is a serious risk of people in Westminster making that mistake.
My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate for the Ribble Valley in Lancashire. Does she agree that Lancashire has missed out on millions of pounds of investment because the likes of Manchester and Liverpool have been prioritised and because we have not had a fully functioning combined authority?
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. As I will come on to, the people and places in counties such as Lancashire deserve that kind of funding. Even if the politicians who have been making the decisions have maybe delayed those opportunities to get devolution, we should not penalise the people there for that.
Lancashire is a prime example of a polycentric economy. We have coastal and rural environments, but also urban environments from city centres to market towns, with many of the same issues and opportunities as our metropolitan neighbours. We are a county of 1.57 million people and over 55,000 businesses, contributing a massive portion of the north’s economic output. We face the same challenges—some of the highest levels of deprivation and worklessness in our urban pockets—yet we also have areas that rank in the top five of northern local authorities for productivity. We are not just waiting for growth; we have an economic base that matches any of our neighbours, where strengths in defence, energy and advanced engineering add unique productive potential to the north as a whole.
The private sector in Lancashire is ready to lead. We have a dynamic project pipeline with the potential to attract over £20 billion in additional investment over the next decade. However, we are currently fighting with one hand tied behind our back. The macroeconomic data tells a sobering story: since 1998, Lancashire has experienced the lowest growth in investment spending of any UK region. Despite our high value production base, we rank in the bottom quarter for average Innovate UK grant size, for example. These grants are increasingly concentrated in areas with strong knowledge intensive business services, rather than production oriented economies such as Lancashire’s.
We must be honest about what Lancashire is missing out on because we lack mayoral arrangements, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster) highlighted. Currently, we are excluded from 30-year investment funds estimated to be worth £30 million per year for our county. We are also missing out on the collective £200 million per year available to new mayoral areas and the city region sustainable transport settlements that our neighbours in Greater Manchester and Liverpool enjoy.
On transport and infrastructure, we are all aware in Lancashire that if we could have investment in a second bridge across the River Ribble linking the M55 and opening up Blackpool airport, and linking it with the M6 and the M65, we could have huge opportunity, but the Government, the Green Book and the Treasury do not seem to want to recognise or support that. Does my hon. Friend agree?
I completely agree. As many of my constituents regularly tell me, the congestion we get when the M6 fails or has a closure is a nightmare when it falls on to the A roads around the constituency, so a second bridge around Preston to create a ring road is critical.
Staying with the subject of transport, my hon. Friends the Members for West Lancashire (Ashley Dalton) and for Pendle and Clitheroe (Jonathan Hinder) are having to fight relentlessly for better connectivity in their constituencies, which is where devolution could really help us. The Government may say that Lancashire did not come to the table when the offer was first there for devolution, but that is not the fault of Lancashire’s places and people, so it does not seem fair that they should suffer. Lancashire leaders are at the table now, so let us crack on.
The disparities are reflected in our venture capital and equity investment volumes, which trail significantly behind Greater Manchester. In the first quarter of 2024, Greater Manchester reached approximately £104 million in investment, while Lancashire secured just £7 million. That innovation gap is not due to a lack of ingenuity; it is a lack of investment that acts as a direct drag on our wider commercial performance.
When I speak to private investors—both those investing in small companies and those investing in big infrastructure —they often sheepishly tell me they know they should probably be doing more in Lancashire, but that they are creatures of habit. I am making it one of my missions to coax more of them up to Lancashire to see what is on offer, but I ask the Minister not to let this Government fall into the same bad habit of sticking to what we know, even though there is clearly such growth potential in Lancashire.
My hon. Friend is giving a passionate articulation of the frustration felt by many of us outside non metropolitan areas. We feel that frustration greatly in Redditch, where we are south of the West Midlands combined authority border. I find that difficult to explain to my students who want extra funding in education or to those who want transport links that do not get funding because we miss out on every partnership and every strategic housing fund. If we are really going to get the economy moving and growing, that has to happen in our towns—towns like Redditch—that led the industrial revolution many years before we had even heard of metro mayors.
I completely agree with my hon. Friend. As much as the debate is about Lancashire, one thing that will underpin change for both our counties is a commitment to devolution and to towns, so that the focus is not just on our cities.
We know what works. Our enterprise zones at Samlesbury and Warton have already helped to deliver a cumulative £1.2 billion in private investment. In the wider north west, private capital already supports 873 businesses. We have world class assets, from BAE Systems, which supports 20,000 jobs in the north west and partners with 1,400 UK suppliers, to our nuclear renaissance, anchored by Springfields, Westinghouse and Heysham.
The data is firmly on our side. Lancashire offers a cost effectiveness ratio of 1:80 for tech talent. That means that a tech professional’s take home pay goes significantly further in Preston or Blackburn than in London or even Manchester. We are a magnet for the next generation of start ups, already producing 16 academic spin outs from our universities that have raised £36 million in equity this year.
I will take a moment to highlight a couple of specific initiatives that exemplify our county’s proactive approach to investment. Fhunded is a project close to my heart, as I had the privilege of working directly on its development during my time at Lancashire county council, prior to my election to this place. I want to give a huge thanks to my former colleagues at LCC, especially Dan Knowles and Rory Southworth, who have nurtured this initiative into the vital economic engine it is today. Fhunded has become a cornerstone of our early stage finance community, acting as a curated bridge that brings our brightest founders and most ambitious funders together. Its impact is undeniable. The vast majority of equity raised in Lancashire throughout 2024 was generated through connections made via the Fhunded initiative. It serves as a perfect case study for this debate: a local government funded catalyst that is successfully mobilising private capital and ensuring our high potential start ups can thrive right there in Lancashire.
Another brilliant publicly funded initiative is the RedCAT Catapult run by East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce. It has exceeded targets set by the previous Government on return on investment, supporting businesses in the low carbon technology and advanced manufacturing sectors. My hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) is meeting the Minister soon to discuss the initiative, and we would welcome some initial thoughts today on potential support for future funding.
Beyond the big names, we must support our foundational economy. In Lancashire, family owned, mid tier businesses are the key to the supply chains that drive our most vital sectors. They have the potential to scale, to bring new innovation and to distribute growth across our entire economic base. KeTech, in my constituency, is an established software and data SME that powers 80% of the UK’s train data, but has struggled with winning UK contracts over foreign competitors. Our ability to work with such small and medium sized enterprises is currently heavily constrained by the loss of local economic development funds, but the Lancashire county combined authority has the potential to drive key pilot activity based on our leadership in the mid tier business council.
When it comes to growth, we know from our city region neighbours that it was the investment in culture and night time economy that attracted the young talent needed for innovation to really thrive. The Guild Hall in Preston was a key entertainment venue for the whole of Lancashire but closed in 2019 due to reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and will take over £60 million to rebuild. I hope that the Ministers in the Departments for Business and Trade and for Culture, Media and Sport speak regularly about the impact cultural investment like that can have on attracting talent and growth, and I hope that they will support Blog Preston’s campaign to reopen the venue.
The county has quick wins and immediate opportunities in defence, energy and advanced manufacturing that simply do not exist elsewhere in the north. There are pipeline investments from Government that, if pushed through quickly, could provide a win win win by stimulating local economic growth, supporting the UK to retain key sovereign capabilities and driving national growth—the most important mission for our Labour Government.
While my primary aim today is to put Lancashire back at the heart of Government thinking in general, I also have, as Members would imagine, some specific asks of the Government. First, will the Government confirm funding for the permanent home of the National Cyber Force at Samlesbury in my constituency via the defence investment plan? This £5 billion commitment by the previous Government needs continued engagement from Ministers.
Secondly, will the Government continue their investment in the National Cyber Force ecosystem, including investment in the Blackburn cyber and skills campus, to ensure that my constituents get the skills to work at the National Cyber Force and that we do not just bring people in from elsewhere in the country?
Thirdly, will the Government confirm funds to Westinghouse for next generation nuclear fuel capabilities? Westinghouse at Springfields is the supplier of choice to fuel the UK’s independent nuclear deterrent platform.
Fourthly, will the Government progress the office relocation requirements of His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs as an anchor tenant to bring forward a new office quarter around Preston station?
Fifthly, will the Government fast track our move toward a mayoral combined authority with a commitment in the spring spending review for an interim settlement, similar to other areas, that allows Lancashire to pull its weight—as it clearly can—alongside its northern neighbours?
I am nearly finished. Sixthly, echoing the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr Foster), will the Government scope the return on investment of a second bridge across the River Ribble, west of Preston, to create a ring road around Preston and unlock the increasing gridlock in our rapidly growing county?
Finally, will the Government commit to regular engagement with Lancashire MPs through the all party parliamentary group on Lancashire, which I chair, to ensure that Ministers fully understand the opportunities for Lancashire to make a significant contribution to the UK economy?
I am a red rose through and through in both party and county. I came back to Lancashire, and I will likely be there forever, because I see not only the potential, but a way of doing growth better—of businesses grounded in community, with care for the environment in which we are lucky to work and live and with a quiet relentlessness to thrive. Our businesses lead with humility; they understand risk and reward, and that is what makes them stronger. Those are Labour values, and it should be this Labour Government who help those values and those businesses to thrive. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
I am incredibly grateful for the opportunity to close this debate on behalf of the Government. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Maya Ellis) for securing this debate on investment in Lancashire’s economy; there can be no doubt about her commitment to and passion for Lancashire. I also thank my hon. Friends the Members for South Ribble (Mr Foster), for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) and for Redditch (Chris Bloore), who contributed so well to the debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley said in her concluding remarks, she is a red rose, and I think that applies to all those who call the red rose county home.
I want to address as many of the specific issues raised as possible, but I will talk about some of the positive investments in Lancashire that the Government are supporting and that have been enabled by Government policy. I am sure that by this stage, everyone in the House will know that I grew up in the north east of England, on the other side of the Pennines—I hope that will not be held against me in this debate. We share something very much in common with Lancashire: our recent history, at a time of deindustrialisation in both our regions, which undermined the culture of the proud people of the north.
I saw the effects of successive Governments who stepped back and allowed the slow and supposedly inexorable outsourcing of our industrial base to cheaper overseas markets. My hon. Friend talked about sectors such as advanced manufacturing and defence, and I know she will agree that that decline destroyed the landmarks, identity and culture of many industrial heartlands. What we have seen is that, as important as thriving services are, they work best when they are on top of a powerful industrial base of good, local jobs in manufacturing, engineering and key industries spread across the country.
Leyland Trucks is now the only heavy goods vehicle manufacturer in the United Kingdom, and it is based in my constituency. Is it Government policy that we should be buying British? Does the Minister agree that the Government should support any orders for trucks through Leyland DAF?
I thank my hon. Friend for raising Leyland Trucks. He will be aware of some of the procurement advice changes this Government have made, because we are keen to support British industry particularly in areas relating to national security. Thanks to Government support, Leyland Trucks has invested in its assembly lines and is now capable of producing 30 electric trucks per shift for sale both here in the UK and on international markets. It is also building a fully integrated zero emission battery electric road sweeper. That is funded in part by our DRIVE35 programme, which represents the biggest investment in our car industry since the second world war. Leyland Trucks is vital to our automative sector and the Government’s industrial strategy.
I could highlight some other great investments in Lancashire, including in aerospace, which we heard about from my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley in opening the debate. There are 6,000 jobs being supported at BAE Warton and Samlesbury, thanks to the Typhoon deal that the Government secured with Turkey last year and our wider Typhoon programme. Production and final assembly of each Turkish Typhoon fighter jet will take place at either Warton or Samlesbury as part of that deal. My hon. Friend the Minister for Trade is in Turkey as we speak, securing more trade opportunities for British industry.
In energy, Lancashire is also playing a critical role in making the UK a clean energy superpower, thanks in no small part to the strength of the nuclear sector in the county. Lancashire is already home to world leading expertise located at the Springfields and Heysham power stations and we are building on these strengths. This Government are investing in nuclear power, working with the private sector with partners such as LS Electric, to progress an energy storage project at Widow hill. This is helping to balance the grid and keep energy supply stable as more renewable power comes online. I know that there is appetite to do even more in Lancashire, especially with the RedCAT low carbon technology commercialisation accelerator. It has been raised with me by Members previously and I know it is doing good work in bringing cutting edge low carbon products to market. I am meeting members of the East Lancashire chamber of commerce and my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) soon to discuss this initiative further.
Defence has of course been mentioned strongly, and we are all eagerly anticipating the publication of the defence investment plan, but in addition to the BAE sites I have mentioned, my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley will be aware that Lancashire is part of the north west cyber cluster. She mentioned that specifically in her requests for further information and I undertake to write back to her in relation to the six or seven points she raised in detail at the start of the debate.
The Ministry of Defence has made Blackpool and the Fylde College one of just five new defence technical colleges to bring employers across the defence sector together with young people from the area to ensure they can secure roles in engineering, in nuclear and in cyber security. I know my hon. Friend shares my enthusiasm for creating opportunities for young people in defence, in energy and of course in advanced manufacturing.
In addition to this support, the Department is working with the Office for Investment and local partners to deliver the “Lancashire Growth Plan”, which I would certainly recommend Members from the area become familiar with and carry around Parliament and push under the noses of Ministers, because, as we have heard, growth does not just happen in cities, and not all the places that are classed as not urban are also not rural. That is a strong feature not only of Lancashire but many places in the north east, including the place that I call home.
These are industrial areas centred around towns and it is good to see a strong pipeline of private sector investment coming forward across Lancashire. We have GVS Filter Technology’s recent £14 million low carbon manufacturing headquarters in Lancaster; a £100-million Eden Project in Morecambe, where Vinci has been appointed as the main contractor; and the Department for Business and Trade has thrown its support behind the recent investment announced by Budweiser, the official sponsor of the FIFA world cup 2026. I do not know whether I am allowed to point that out, but there we are. I believe my hon. Friend joined my ministerial colleague, the Under Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden), who is responsible for employment rights and consumer protection, in celebrating Budweiser’s £7.8 million investment.
There is another investment that I must mention. Mr Speaker is not here and is of course not able to speak on behalf of his own constituency, but Chorley is also benefiting from TVS Supply Chain Solutions, part of India’s TVS Group and a major UK employer. The group is planning to invest hundreds of millions of pounds in the UK, creating thousands more jobs, including in Chorley. I am aware that senior leaders met my right hon. and learned Friend the Prime Minister during his recent India visit, which will help us secure nearly 7,000 new jobs from Indian investment in the UK.
It was interesting to hear the Minister name a number of towns in relation to manufacturing roles. In our towns, we have on average 9% employment in manufacturing, whereas in cities, that figure is 4%. Does the Minister agree that in towns, if we really push our manufacturing sector, we can massively increase the number of good, unionised jobs available to people in those areas?
I do agree with my hon. Friend. More than that, in the towns I have described and, in fact, in the places across the country where there is manufacturing, it is usually the most productive employment—the most productive economic activity. Of course that is good for the economy, but it is also good for jobs, because the most productive employers offer the higher wages, certainly higher than would be available if those factories were not there. My hon. Friend is quite right; aspects of industrial policy that can centre more manufacturing in towns will provide better employment and improve the standard of living of people who live in those areas.
Boosting economies in those areas also needs to be linked to investment in infrastructure, which is why the northern growth strategy is important—it will ensure that the right transport and infrastructure is in place to attract that business investment. We are making upgrades to the west coast main line, equipping Lancashire combined county authority with £215 million of investment via the local transport grant to help councils deliver transport improvements, including bus lanes, cycleways and congestion reducing measures for motorists. The Pride in Place programme, which has been mentioned, is providing £5.8 billion over 10 years to rejuvenate many places around the country, including six in Lancashire. We are targeting that investment in the places where it is most needed, breathing new life into high streets, parks and the public realm. Pride in Place funding is also supporting youth clubs, libraries, community grocers, cultural venues, health and wellbeing services, and other local initiatives that make a big difference to local areas, making them both better places to live and more attractive for private investment and the creation of jobs.
Significant work is under way to attract greater private sector investment in Lancashire. After years of Governments under investing in and, frankly, overlooking industrial communities such as those in the north west, we have acted decisively to drive growth and regeneration across the county. The reforms we have set out in our industrial strategy are making it easier for Lancashire’s key industries to invest, grow, and succeed in what is a fiercely competitive global market. Our Office for Investment is working hard to bring in more private domestic and international investors to support our high export, high productivity firms and back the places where people live.
We are ensuring that Lancashire is placed at the forefront of the Government’s growth mission, while ensuring that growth is seen and felt by local people in local communities. We are an active, interventionist Government, working to drive growth and investment in Lancashire, in the north west and throughout the country. I am grateful for my hon Friend’s support in that effort, and I am committed to working with her and other Lancashire MPs to ensure we build on that momentum in the weeks and months to come. She said that she could wax lyrical about how wonderful Lancashire is, and indeed it is wonderful. She also said that she wanted to coax more people to Lancashire, and I am sure that with this debate, she has done just that.
Question put and agreed to.
House adjourned.