Security Update

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Oliver Dowden

Monday 11th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his statement, and for advance sight of it.

Maintaining national security in the face of threats to our values and our democracy is the first duty of any Government, in respect of which Labour stands ready always to work on a cross-party basis to keep our country safe. I pay tribute to all those in our intelligence and security services and police, and those across Government and beyond, who work to protect our national security on the anniversary of the awful attacks of 9/11. As we remember those lost, we are in no doubt about the seriousness of the work that they do.

We recognise, too, the seriousness of the allegations involving espionage on behalf of China at the heart of our democracy. It is essential that the police, the intelligence agencies and the justice system are able to do their jobs, and we must support them as they do so. However, we need to know more about what action the Government are taking against attempts by other states to interfere in our democracy and undermine our security. MI5 issued an interference alert about the Chinese Communist party attempting to influence Parliament 20 months ago. The Security Service and others have also raised wider concerns. The Minister referred to the Prime Minister raising strong concerns with China about unacceptable interference. Did the Prime Minister do so at the time of those arrests, or has he only done so now, since they have been made public?

The Government set up the defending democracy taskforce to look at foreign interference, but what has it actually done? Is the Minister on it? Has it produced a report for the National Security Council as was promised? Has it looked at vetting levels and delays? The Government opposed the Lords amendment to the National Security Bill that was put forward to introduce stronger checks on donations to political parties, to ensure no foreign influence, and they opposed Labour’s proposal to close the loophole on shell companies. Has the taskforce looked at those measures? Why is it not acting in that area?

What is being done about national security prisoners? It beggars belief that Daniel Khalife was charged with national security offences but was able to escape under a van. Can the Minister confirm that even though this individual had already evaded arrest for three weeks when the police first tried to apprehend him, he still ended up in a category B prison? Can he also confirm reports that in 2019 another prisoner was able to escape from Wandsworth prison, also by hiding underneath a van? Has the review been completed of all national security prisoners—those on remand and those convicted —to see what level of prison security is in place? If not, why not?

I want to ask the Minister about the wider issue of the risks to our national security from other states. He has rightly taken action on sensitive surveillance equipment and I am glad that Ministers have accepted Labour’s proposals on procurement. In his statement, he rightly talked of the systemic challenge that China poses, including on human rights, but the statement says nothing about the work of the investment security unit. What is it doing? Nor does the statement say anything about the comprehensive approach we need to the risks to our critical national infrastructure, even though the head of MI5 has given a series of warnings and the Intelligence and Security Committee was extremely critical in its report in July, warning of the lack of a proper strategy on China and of short-termism. We need to engage with China on climate change and global issues, but we also need to be robust about defending our national security. That is why the shadow Foreign Secretary has called for a full audit of China’s relationship and why we have supported the National Security Act 2023 but also raised concerns about Iran pursuing kidnap and murder threats and Russia pursuing cyber-attacks.

We recognise that after 9/11 and the appalling terror attacks on 7/7, the country came together. The then Labour Government worked on a major counter-terror strategy—the Contest strategy—involving everyone across Government, the police, the intelligence agencies, local government and the private sector. The Contest strategy has endured and has strong cross-party support, but the Government have been warned for years about rising state challenges, so where is the Contest strategy for state threats? We will support the Government in producing one, and a Labour Government would work cross-party to produce one, but where is it? We need a Contest strategy on state risks, state challenges and state threats to protect our national security. National security is too important to ignore warnings; we need urgent action to defend our national security.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I thank the shadow Home Secretary for the overall constructive approach with which she has addressed this issue. It is important that we treat issues such as this on a cross-party basis in defence of our democratic institutions, and it is timely that this statement should be made on the anniversary of 9/11. I will endeavour to address the points that she has raised, and I will be happy to write to her on any points that I inadvertently miss out.

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary regularly raise with their Chinese opposite numbers Chinese interference in democratic institutions. This is an ongoing approach that has been going on for some time.

The right hon. Lady asked about the defending democracy taskforce, which is led by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Security. It reports into the National Security Council, on which I sit, and we receive regular updates on the work that he is doing, working with Departments across Government, not least the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, which is responsible for large elements of electoral integrity, the devolved Administrations, local authorities and other matters. The purpose of the taskforce is to bring together all those different elements to pursue a whole-of-Government and whole-of-society approach when addressing those threats.

The principal purpose of the investment security unit is to provide advice to me, as the quasi-judicial decision maker, in respect of acquisitions that may invoke national security questions. I take advice from the unit on whether the Government should intervene, and we have issued 15 directions in respect of acquisitions in the past year. That is to say we are asking companies to take action, the hardest being to block the acquisition, but it could be some other remedial action. More than half of those directions are in respect of Chinese companies.

The right hon. Lady is entirely right to raise the question of critical national infrastructure, on which I have worked very closely with the head of MI5 and others. Countries around the world are looking again at their critical national infrastructure, particularly in relation to the threat of cyber-crime, which often has a blurred link with hostile states. I take cyber-crime very seriously, and I chair regular meetings on it. We are constantly upping the work we do, against a background in which the external threat continues to rise.

The Government will very shortly respond to the ISC’s report. The draft is with Ministers, and it is about to be signed off. I hope it will be with the House this week.

The right hon. Lady rightly raises points about Iran and Russia, particularly in relation to cyber but also across a whole range of issues. As part of our overall approach, we have done two things. First, we have tried to give the agencies a public face with which to interface with businesses and private citizens in a whole-of-society approach. For example, GCHQ now works through the National Cyber Security Centre to advise businesses and individuals on cyber-risks. Equally, we have just created the National Protective Security Authority, which essentially enables MI5 to interface with businesses and individuals on protective security. Those agencies, working through the Cabinet Office and particularly with the Home Office and the Foreign Office, work across the range of issues that particularly arise in relation to Iran and Russia.

Although we take this investigation very seriously, and it clearly should be conducted independently, I reassure the right hon. Lady and the House that the Government are taking a whole-of-society approach across all these issues to strengthen our defences against rising threats.

Online Harms Consultation

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Oliver Dowden

Tuesday 15th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Oliver Dowden]

Yes, I do, and I thank my hon. Friend for her question. These kinds of financial penalties we are proposing will cause all senior executives to sit up and think. The last thing one would want to do in a senior management position in such a company is to expose it to such a high level of fine, but we will still, ultimately, reserve the criminal sanction as well, in the way I have set out.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

The Select Committee on Home Affairs has spent many years being deeply frustrated by the weak responses of social media companies to our urging them to take action against hateful extremism and online child abuse, so I welcome the measures the Secretary of State has announced. The Government response states that

“the regulator will have the power to require companies to use automated technology…to identify illegal child sexual exploitation and abuse content or activity on their services, including, where proportionate, on private channels.”

Will he confirm that that means major platforms will need to use this automated technology on the end-to-end encrypted private channels? What proportionality test is he applying here, given that child sexual abuse is clearly so abhorrent and wrong in all circumstances? When will it ever be disproportionate to pursue this?

[Oliver Dowden]

The right hon. Lady raises important points. On private channels, companies will be expected to use emergent technology to check for this sort of thing happening. The point about proportionality is that clearly we cannot expect them to individually, through human activity, spot this kind of thing; they will have to rely on artificial intelligence and so on. So as the regulator becomes confident that those technologies work, it will expect the firms in question to use it. There is a slightly separate issue about end-to-end encryption, and she will be familiar with the sort of conversations the Home Secretary and I are having with Facebook, for example, on that. Encryption cannot be used as an excuse to get out of being subject to this legislation, and we would expect firms that use end-to-end encryption still to take measures to protect against child abuse and exploitation, for precisely the reasons the right hon. Lady sets out.