Conduct of Undercover Policing and Surveillance Operatives Bill [HL]

Baroness Manningham-Buller Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 17th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for alerting me to this legislation; I have been out of action from the House for nearly six weeks and I had failed to spot it. She knows broadly what I am going to say, which is that I have sympathy with what she is trying to achieve, for the reasons the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, mentioned and qualified by what the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, just said.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, alerted me to the Bill because she said it had an application to the Security Service. There is no reference to the Security Service in the legislation because, I would argue, it is poorly drafted. You cannot suddenly change the terms of reference for this world. RIPA and the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act 2021 make it clear that a covert human intelligence source is a member of the public who provides intelligence in secret to the authorities. The people listed at the beginning of the Bill who are defined as CHISs are actually the authorities who run those CHISs. I am afraid that this is deeply confusing, so if this Private Member’s Bill survives it needs to be redrafted to make that clear.

We are talking about undercover policing. We are, obviously, waiting for the Mitting report. I make no apology for that behaviour; it was disgraceful in every way and it has done considerable damage. If an undercover member of the Security Service had been found to behave like that when I was there then they would have been sacked, and they should be today. Whatever the Government’s reaction to this, the Bill has to be rephrased. You cannot just say that, from now on, an elephant is a giraffe. A CHIS is a member of the public who gives information in secrecy—in some cases at risk of their lives—to the authorities to illuminate a threat. You cannot just suddenly say that the authorities are CHISs. However, I repeat my gratitude to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for alerting me to what she is, correctly, trying to do. Sorry for being pedantic, I just do not think the terminology is right.