National Security Bill (First sitting)

Maria Eagle Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 7th July 2022 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

Just before we get the answer, I will just flag up that this may be outside of the scope of this Bill, but we will allow the discussion to proceed, because we have not made a precise ruling on it as the co-Chairs of this Committee. So please proceed, but there the potential for it not to be within the scope.

Sir Alex Younger: My answer is a less eloquent version of that, which is that I have talked about the Government about this. Essentially, they say that they think it is too complicated to work this issue through in the timescale that this Bill is operating in. I am not a lawyer; I apologise. I do not have a detailed answer to your question.

Professor Sir David Omand: I believe that the powers in the Bill are not only necessary, but urgent. In addition to everything that Alex was saying, we are living through a digital revolution. The digital harms are there. I would hate to see the powers in this Bill held up, and possibly even miss their legislative slot, while quite difficult work is done on the 1989 Act.

[Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)]

Q I have never heard anybody apologise for not being a lawyer before.

Sir Alex Younger: It is sincere.

[Maria Eagle]

It is novel for me—I speak as a lawyer.

I would like to come back to clause 23 and the changes proposed to the Serious Crime Act 2007. I could tell you are very strongly in favour of the changes, but I wonder whether this kind of complete carve-out from liability for the agencies is something you have come across before anywhere else. Is this totally novel, or have you seen it operate somewhere else, and you think it would work well in these instances? There are already defences in that legislation to protect the people you were expressing concern about. What is so wrong with the defences that are already there?

Sir Alex Younger: There are other examples. Australia is the clearest, but it goes much broader than this, actually. In our case, you are right, and it is really important to recognise that a large part of what is already there works. The SCA is, by the way, an Act that I absolutely support—I hate to see fat cats here helping people launder money overseas; it is really irritating. We need this stuff, but I am fairly sure that this aspect, the potential criminalisation of intelligence exchange, was unintentional. The reality is that the way the SCA is drawn, with its extraterritorial nature and its very broad conditions, captures things that would not be adequately addressed through the safeguards that were in place before.

Of course, as you allude to, there are defences in place, but to go back to the conversation we have just had, I do not think I as a counter-terrorist operator, which I was, would be particularly happy—even though I have faith in the justice system and the wisdom of juries—to know that what I did could be tested in a court of law with all the uncertainty that entails, when I am obeying a lawfully authorised instruction with all of the oversight that exists. I want to be really clear: when a UK intelligence community individual acts not in good faith or outside those instructions, they should absolutely be subject to all the considerations, including of secondary liability, that exist, but I think any ambiguity in the circumstances I just described is wrong and will have a chilling effect on our intelligence exchange.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Does not the ability to obtain a ministerial authorisation under the Intelligence Services Act 1994 deal with those concerns?

Sir Alex Younger: Again, I am not a lawyer, but I do not believe that it does, no, not entirely. In fact, that is the predicate for what I am saying.

[Maria Eagle]

Q Do you agree, Sir David?

Professor Sir David Omand: Yes, I would agree with that.

[Damian Hinds]

Q Sir David, you have a long sweep of history to look back at, with GCHQ and your role as the first security and intelligence co-ordinator, and now in academia. Sir Alex was speaking earlier about some of the long-term trends and the blurring of boundaries. I think you used the phrase “the digital revolution”. I wondered if you might say a word about what you think are the biggest growing or evolving threats right now.

Professor Sir David Omand: From my experience, I would point to the consequences of the digitisation of every conceivable kind of information. That is proceeding apace. We have digital cities. Our infrastructure is now wholly dependent on IT.

In my recent book, I coined an acronym, CESSPIT—crime, espionage, sabotage and subversion perverting internet technology—and that perversion is going on as we speak. I will add one thought: I put “crime” in my acronym deliberately. If you take the activities of something like the North Korean Lazarus group, which was responsible for the WannaCry ransomware attack on our national health service, it is operating in order to obtain foreign exchange to pay for the North Korean nuclear programme and North Korean intelligence activity. In March, the group took more than $0.5 billion-worth of Ethereum currency from an exchange. This is large-scale larceny on behalf of a state.

My hope is that the powers in the Bill will help the police and agencies to deal with state-based criminal activity. I know that there are aggravated offences powers as well, which will help the police.