Security Update: Official Secrets Act Case

Richard Foord Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

Let me assure the hon. Member that I take very seriously the points that he has made. Clearly there will be a legal dimension to all this, but I am happy to go away, look at his point and then come back to him.

[Richard Foord (Honiton and Sidmouth) (LD)]

In 2023 the Intelligence and Security Committee published a report on China in which it wrote that China was a “whole-of-state threat”. In their 2023 public response to the ISC report, the Government wrote that they recognised

“the committee’s concerns about the long-term strategic challenge”.

The ISC had used the word “threat” rather than “challenge”. Does the Minister regret that in 2023 the Government’s response did not use the word “threat”?

[Dan Jarvis]

With respect to the hon. Member, I am not going to become involved in a critique about whether the Government should have responded in a different way, because that is a matter for them. However, he mentioned the important work of the ISC. The Government consider that the ISC has a very important role to play in Parliament. It is obviously independent of Government, and it will clearly be for the Chair, the deputy Chair and the wider Committee to take a view on how they wish to proceed. As for the specific report to which the hon. Member referred, all that material would have been available to be considered by the CPS.