National Security (State Threats) Bill

Gordon McKee Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 17th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

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.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

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?

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

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.

Abuse of Customer-facing Workers

Gordon McKee Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Chris Evans]

I will develop that argument further, but there is nothing more depressing than seeing a sign saying, “Abuse of staff will not be tolerated,” and we seem to see them everywhere now. That was not a sign we saw before. I think things have changed since lockdown. People seem angrier and more aggressive, but by shouting at people in these types of roles, particularly at GP surgeries, they are just stopping vital medical care getting to people who are ill and may need to be transferred to hospital. It has to stop.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is being extremely generous with his time, and he is making an important speech. At a supermarket in Muirend in my constituency, there is a strong connection between other criminal actions—particularly shoplifting—and abuse of staff and sometimes physical violence towards staff. Do you agree that the UK Government must work with the Scottish Government and the police to ensure that we take a co-ordinated approach to resolving all retail-related crime, because that often leads to abuse of shop workers?

[Chris Evans]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; we need a co-ordinated response, including across Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. At the end of the day, this abuse does not stop at the border. It does not happen because someone is Scottish or English; it happens everywhere, and we should have a co-ordinated response from the four Governments of the United Kingdom to address it. He is absolutely right to bring that up.

The “Service with Respect” campaign’s proposals would encompass 60% of the UK workforce, or around 18 million people. Of those, 42% say they experienced abuse from customers in 2025, up from 36% the previous year. Although these figures are alarming, they do not come as a shock to me. My first job was in a bookmaker’s. As a result, my first experience in a customer-facing role was marred by violence and constant abuse. I distinctly remember the undercurrent of aggression that ran through every shop that I worked in. That only intensified when I worked alone, and low-level verbal and physical harassment soon became the norm.

That is not isolated to betting shops in south Wales. Across the UK, 90% of staff have witnessed violence or threats of violence by at least one customer, and 75% have been told that they or their colleagues will be assaulted after leaving work—abuse is not confined to the workplace.

Before becoming an MP, I worked in a bank—for my sins—and banking is another sector in which employees routinely face abuse. They work directly with customers’ finances, often assisting them in times of stress and vulnerability. That can heighten tensions, increasing the likelihood that meetings will escalate into harassment, intimidation and threats of violence. Indeed, data collected from UK Finance members suggested that 10,503 incidents of abuse were directed at bank and building society staff in 2024. That is nearly double the figure in the previous year.

Risks encountered by customer-facing banking staff are often overlooked in debates such as this. Given the sector’s important role at the heart of our communities, I would welcome an explanation from the Minister as to why the amendment sought by UK Finance to the Crime and Policing Bill was not taken forward by the Government. That amendment would have extended the offence of assaulting a retail worker to the banking sector—a timely development amid the growing number of protests organised against banking staff.

Finally, I cannot ignore the scourge of harassment faced by public transport workers. In a survey of more than 600 RMT members, nearly two thirds had experienced customer violence in the past year. Of those, 70% agreed that abuse on public transport had increased on the year prior. For me, this is personal: both my mother and my stepfather worked on the valleys line and, sadly, abuse was part of their daily lives. In the light of the Crime and Policing Act, the RMT is campaigning with renewed vigour for the introduction of stronger legal protections for its members. At a station, a transport worker and a retail worker can be working in close proximity; nevertheless, if both are assaulted, they will be eligible for different levels of legal protection. That disparity is unacceptable.

In addition, the Scottish Government have pledged to create a stand-alone offence of assaulting a public transport worker. When that comes into force, those working on a service in Scotland will be afforded significantly stronger protections than those assaulted south of the border—even on the same train service. I hope the Minister will meet representatives of the RMT to discuss how that problem can be alleviated. If the Department requires more evidence before doing so, I urge it to create a cross-industry working group composed of transport professionals, the unions and officials from the civil service.

So far, I have highlighted the abuse faced by employees in just three sectors, but I could go on—to the call centre staff, the hospitality workers, the utility engineers or simply the caseworkers in our constituency offices—and we have yet to touch on the impacts of such abuse. The Institute of Customer Service reports that workplace abuse causes one third of employees to consider leaving their jobs and one quarter to take sick leave. When workers begin to disengage in that way, the services they provide suffer, the businesses they work for suffer and, ultimately, the communities they serve suffer. Incidents of abuse can have a debilitating effect on a workplace long after the perpetrators have fled and the immediate dangers have passed. In the most severe cases, staff are left with physical injuries, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety or depression.

Neither the human nor the economic costs can be fully explained, let alone calculated. Although sick leave has been priced at £1 billion a year, the costs of replacing those who leave their roles, training new staff and undertaking legal proceedings push that figure far higher.

Counter Terrorism Policing: Arrests

Gordon McKee Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question and for the work he did as Prime Minister? He knows better than most the extraordinary capabilities that the men and women who serve in our intelligence and police forces have and the commitment that they make to our country.

He made important points. He is completely right about the number of state-sponsored plots. That is totally unacceptable, and this Government, as was the case with the previous Government, are absolutely clear that we will do everything that we can to stand against them. He made an important point about working closely with our colleagues and partners in Europe and internationally. He is right; that is the approach that we will adopt and colleagues in the Foreign Office are thinking carefully about what more we can do in that area.

[Gordon McKee (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

May I thank the Minister for his statement and join him in paying tribute to the security services that keep us all safe? As he knows, the UK is under constant cyber-attack from states, including Iran. Will he update the House on what work the Home Office is doing to protect the UK from ransomware attacks?

[Dan Jarvis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend because he raises an important point about cyber-attacks, which we face, along with countries around the world. I hope he knows that the Home Office has recently concluded a consultation on new, world-leading measures against ransomware, which we believe will make a material difference to the nature of the threat we face. Essentially, we want to smash the business models of those cyber-criminals, many of whom operate out of Russia, targeting UK businesses. The measures would be good for both our national security and our economic prosperity. I assure my hon. Friend that we are progressing them at pace.