National Security Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Steve Baker

2nd reading
Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. and learned Lady makes a really important point. In its consideration of these issues, the Law Commission made proposals on not only strengthening some of the measures in the Official Secrets Act 1989 but how to have proper safeguards to protect whistleblowers and the public interest. I recognise that there are complex issues in respect of how to draw up the legislation and shall make further points about that.

We have just spent the past four days celebrating our Queen’s historic platinum jubilee and celebrating our shared values and traditions, which are what we defend when we defend our national security. At a time when we have seen an illegal invasion of a fellow European democracy by Russia—an act that threatens and that has attacked and undermined the national security of a fellow European nation—there could be no greater reminder to us all of the need to be resilient and vigilant in the face of threats.

The threats to our national security, democratic values and way of life have inevitably evolved over the decades. The ending of the cold war in the 1990s and the major international terror attacks, particularly by Islamist extremists from al-Qaeda and then from ISIS, alongside growing domestic far-right terror threats, have meant that the national security focus—the top priority of our intelligence and security agencies—has for several decades been on terrorist threats to our way of life but, as the Government’s integrated review made clear, the threats from hostile states have not gone away and in recent years we have seen them grow and become more complex.

As the Government concluded in 2018, the attempt on the lives of Sergei Skripal and his daughter was, in the words of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May),

“almost certainly…approved”

both by the GRU and

“at a senior level of the Russian state.”—[Official Report, 5 September 2018; Vol. 646, c. 168.]

We face different threats from other countries, too. MI5 recently warned publicly about the activities of an individual knowingly engaged in political interference activities on behalf of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party. The MI5 director general Ken McCallum has warned that

“the activity MI5 encounters day-by-day predominantly comes, in quite varying ways, from state or state-backed organisations in Russia, China and Iran.”

Alongside persistent hard power methods of attack, the advent of technology has also allowed soft power methods to flourish, with electoral interference, disinformation, propaganda, cyber operations and intellectual property theft used to foster instability and interfere in the strength and resilience of the state. The Home Secretary referred to the SolarWinds attack and the interference with major UK energy companies. As the Law Commission warned in its report, the Official Secrets Acts between 1911 and 1939 were enacted long before the digital age and include references to

“a sketch, plan, model, note”—

the pencil notings that are a far cry from the cyber and online data interventions that modern espionage might involve.

The words of the MI5 director general are perhaps startling, when he said:

“Today, it is not a criminal offence to be an undeclared foreign intelligence agent in the UK. Likewise, it is not currently illegal to be in a key position of influence in the UK and be secretly in the pay of a foreign state. That can’t be right. To tackle modern interference, we need modern powers.”

He is right, and we agree. That is why reforms and legislation are needed to address the new threats from hostile states. That is why many of the measures in the legislation are important, for example making it possible to take action against those who are operating in the pay of a foreign intelligence agency to do Britain harm; to make it possible to defend the trade secrets of British businesses, including taking action against those who may be paid by foreign intelligence agencies or a state to leak intellectual property or trade secrets that are then used to undermine our industry and our economy; to make it possible to have stronger action against incredibly damaging cyber attacks on our critical infrastructure; and to enable early intervention to prevent damaging attacks, not just to prosecute once the damage is done.

We have questions that we want to put, points that we want to probe and amendments that we will draft because we want to work constructively with the Government to get the legislation right. I shall make some of those points now and I look forward to further discussion with the Home Secretary and the security Minister during the passage of the Bill. The first gaping hole that we see is the promised foreign agents registration scheme that the Home Secretary has said she will bring forward. We had understood that this would be the central part and purpose of the Bill, but it is currently missing. I do recognise that drafting in those areas is complex, and we need to learn from what other countries have done, but that also makes it the more important to have proper scrutiny. I urge the Home Secretary to ensure that the scheme is not brought forward at the last minute so that we do not have time to give it proper consideration in Committee or to take evidence on it beforehand.

[Mr Steve Baker]

The right hon. Lady makes an important point about the foreign agents registration scheme. Will she join me in encouraging my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to consider possibly amending the programme motion so that we can have a day in Committee of the whole House to consider it? It will be a large part of the Bill and doing it through amendments in Committee may be inappropriate.

[Yvette Cooper]

I would certainly be happy to have further discussions through the usual channels about the way in which the Bill needs to be scrutinised. In the early evidence stage of the scrutiny, particularly for a Bill like this, it is important for the Committee to be able to hear evidence on this issue, in order to make sure that we get it right.

European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Steve Baker

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong: House of Commons & Ping Pong
Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

In the last Parliament, the Home Affairs Committee produced a report calling for a declaratory system and also a physical document. It is possible to have a declaratory system that protects rights, but also to ensure an incentive for people to apply and get the document. If all of us in this House were suddenly told that our rights to get healthcare, rent a house or get a job depended on the workings of a Home Office computer system, we would have no confidence in it. That is why people want to know that there is a permanent document. I urge the Secretary of State to think again, because this will go wrong, and also just to accept the Dubs amendment. Do not put at risk or cast any doubt on this country’s commitment to child refugees.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I think we should be thankful that we have the opportunity to think again on these matters; I rather regret that we have so little time.

On the issue of a declaratory right, I am very open to the spirit of having a declaratory system. It would send a wonderful signal about how open we are and how welcome people are to stay, but the sheer truth of it—I say this as the former Minister responsible for domestic preparedness in the Department—is that it is way too late to be making this decision now. I am afraid the proposal shows rather an ignorance of how government systems work and of the whole business of delivering a system that can work for literally millions of people. If the proposal were accepted, we would have to abandon giving status to millions of people. It needs to be removed from the Bill, so that we can get on and deliver status for people in a system that is working.

On Lords amendment to clause 26, the power is sunsetted to the end of the year. On the amendment from the noble Lord Dubs, this is one of those areas where we should be thankful that we are thinking again, but, bearing in mind that it is not long since we heard a general acceptance in this House of the proposition that we are all here to pursue the common good in good faith, it is deeply regrettable that some Members have sought to suggest that there would be any lack of commitment on our part to family reunion for refugee children. It is quite wrong. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Neil Gray) says that actions speak louder than words. We will earn the respect of the public by delivering.

European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 5) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Steve Baker

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Sadly, this is the consequence of us being nine days away from Brexit day. That is not a situation that any of us wanted to be in—to have the clock run down this far—with no agreement in place. The Prime Minister did not put any withdrawal agreement to Parliament until January, and it has been put back several times since then, so we have not had a clear plan. That is the situation we are in.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

On a point of order, Sir Lindsay. It may help the House. I have just inquired in the Vote Office, and the correct amendment paper, the one that we should be looking at, is the one with 15 printed pages. There has been some confusion, which would explain the point of order from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash).

Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Steve Baker

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. Now that the decision has been taken, the vast majority of right-thinking people in the United Kingdom will expect it to be carried through with a good heart as a matter of choice. Time and again, we see a foot-dragging reluctance from the Labour party, which increasingly seems not to be respecting the choices of its own voters.

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

It is reported that the analysis shows that the north, the midlands and Northern Ireland will be hardest hit in all the scenarios. Will the Minister confirm that that is because all the scenarios assume that Britain is outside the customs union? Will he confirm, too, that the Government appear to have undertaken no analysis of the different customs union options and of the impact on our economy? Given how significant the situation is for northern manufacturing and for Northern Ireland and given that the CBI has said this is irresponsible and is letting down northern manufacturing, will he commit to conducting and publishing analysis before the customs Bill completes its passage through Parliament?

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady because she has given me the opportunity to reassure her that there is economic growth under all the scenarios in the economic assessment. The only question is to what extent and how fast, but there is projected to be economic growth across a 15-year period in all the scenarios.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Steve Baker

Committee: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 12th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I shall return to the clause 7 versus clause 9 argument a little later.

Amendments 3 and 4 were also tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend. The Government agree with his goal of ensuring that instruments under the Bill are accompanied by all the information that the House, the public and, indeed, the sifting committee need in order to understand what they can do and why. We also agree that more can be done to ensure that the House has the proper opportunities to scrutinise the instruments. As I have said, the Government have therefore accepted the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne, and we will also table amendments to address long-standing concerns about information. The Government believe that the proposed committee represents an option that balances our concerns about the ability to plan and the limited time available before exit day with some Members’ well-stated and long-standing concerns about the efficacy of the scrutiny of negative SIs in this House. Those amendments will address the unique challenge posed by the secondary legislation under this Bill, ensuring that the Government’s reasoning on procedure is transparent to the House and that the House can recommend that any negative instrument should instead be an affirmative one.

Beyond all that, the Government have tabled amendment 391 which will require that explanatory memorandums are alongside each SI and include a number of specific statements aimed at ensuring the transparency of SIs that are to come, and act as an aid to this House, providing more effective scrutiny. These statements will explain, for instruments made under the main powers in this Bill, what any relevant EU law did before exit day, what is being changed, and why the Minister considers that this is no more than is appropriate. They will also contain information regarding the impact of the instrument on equalities legislation. The wording of our amendment and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne differs from that proposed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield, but, as he has said, he has put his name to it and I am pleased that we are therefore able to move forward.

I turn now to the issue of what is necessary and amendments 49, 65, 205 to 208, 216 and new clause 24. Amendments 49 and 65 bring us to the important debate about whether the power in clause 7 should allow necessary corrections or appropriate corrections. “Necessary” is a very strict test, which we would expect to be interpreted by a court as logically essential. Where two or more choices as to how to correct EU law are available to Ministers, arguably neither would be logically essential because there would be an alternative. Ministers therefore need to choose the most appropriate course. If two UK agencies, such as the Bank of England or the Financial Conduct Authority, could arguably carry out a particular function, the Government must propose which would be the more appropriate choice. Also, if the UK and the EU do not agree to retain an existing reciprocal arrangement and the EU therefore ceases to fulfil its side of the obligations, the UK could decide it is not appropriate for the UK to provide one-sided entitlements to the EU27; it might not be legally necessary for the UK to stop upholding one side of the obligation, but it might not be appropriate for us to continue if the EU is not doing so.

[Yvette Cooper]

It is my understanding that the Minister is saying that courts that were told that Ministers had two options, both of which might be necessary solutions to a particular problem, would therefore say that neither passed the necessity test because Ministers had chosen between the two of them. That sounds utterly ludicrous as a way in which the courts would make a decision. Will the Minister elaborate by providing a case law example of a situation where the courts have been given such a necessity test and have decided to rip up all necessary options on the basis that there were too many necessary choices?

[Mr Baker]

I will see whether, before I sit down, my memory can be jogged on an example of case law, but I am only a humble aerospace and software engineer and I do not mind saying to the right hon. Lady that I have sometimes observed that we dance on the head of a pin over particular words. In order to protect the law and the public purse, I think the Law Officers would require me to take appropriate advice from lawyers on the nature of these words and to abide by it as we proceed through the legislation.

Criminal Law

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Steve Baker

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

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

Today we have had a completely shambolic debate. The Home Secretary has given an excellent account of why we should support policies that are not on the Order Paper. She has given an excellent defence of the European arrest warrant, which is not on the Order Paper. I agree with her that the European arrest warrant is immensely important. It helps us to fight crime. It helps the police, in Britain and across Europe, to stop murderers, traffickers and sex offenders. It helps us to deport more than 1,000 suspected foreign criminals primarily to their own countries to face justice. Given that there is a majority in this House in favour of the European arrest warrant, why on earth are we not voting for it? Why the sophistry? Why the games? Why the dancing around? It is just baffling that the Home Secretary is playing games with something so important to criminal justice and to the fight against international crime and terrorism.

The draft regulations cover a series of measures—the 11 measures that are on the Order Paper—and we support them. The confiscation orders, freezing orders on criminal records, the European supervision order, the joint investigation teams—we support them all. We support the measures on confiscation and freezing orders because no country in the EU should become a safe haven for criminal assets. We should be able to confiscate them wherever they are held. We support the two measures on criminal records and conviction. Exchanged data on the conviction of EU nationals should be harnessed for us to identify, locate and stop EU criminals entering our country and committing crimes. We support the European supervision order as a vital reform to interact with the arrest warrant, because suspects awaiting trial should, if appropriate, be in their home state. We support the joint investigation teams because we saw with Operation Golf that co-operation in complex investigations means we can arrest 126 traffickers from across Europe and safeguard vulnerable children not just in Britain but across the continent too. We support the prisoner transfer framework, because it makes it harder for other member states to refuse to take back their nationals from our prisons. We should have that co-operation in place.

We support the rest of the 35 measures that are not on the Order Paper—the measures we do not have a chance to demonstrate our support for and to vote for tonight. We saw, with the problem of foreign criminals entering in the UK, that the Schengen information system is also vital and necessary. We need Europol to support and co-ordinate cross-border investigations. We support closer co-operation on combating child abuse imagery, because with this crime there are no borders and the police need to work with police across Europe and across the world too. We support action to tackle football hooliganism across borders, and as we have made clear many times in the House, we particularly support the EAW. The Association of Chief Police Officers has described it as an essential weapon, and distinguished legal figures, including the former President of the Supreme Court, have argued that

“Britain also risks becoming a safe haven for fugitives from justice, a handful of them British citizens, but the vast majority foreign nationals wanted for crimes elsewhere in Europe.”

And they are right.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Lady believe that our country was a safe haven for foreign criminals before the EAW, and does she believe it is a safe haven now for foreign criminals from countries outside the EU?

[Yvette Cooper]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there were cases before the introduction of the EAW when it took years to extradite suspects—for example, suspected terrorists back to France. We should not be in that situation. If we have people in our country wanted in France for serious crimes, particularly terrorists allegations, we should be able to deport them to face justice.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Yvette Cooper and Steve Baker

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right, and I would certainly expect the Select Committees to play an important role in that process. There needs to be a debate about the way in which the board should work. It has considerable potential. Wider, more substantial reforms of the existing framework are needed, including, for example, to the structure relating to the commissioners, who in theory have oversight of different parts of legislation, and to the role of the counter-terrorism reviewer, which is more effective than the work of some of the commissioners. We need to look at the whole framework in determining how the privacy and civil liberties board will fit in with the wider reforms that we need. That might need to be a two-stage process: the introduction of the board and reforms made to the commissioners’ structure in the light of the wider review that we are calling for. We have tabled amendments to secure such a review.

The review of the legislation is particularly important. For some time, we have been calling for an independent expert review of the legal and operational framework and in particular of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. As a result of the communications data revolution, the law and our oversight framework are now out of date. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has said, new technology is blurring the distinction between communications and content, and between domestic and international communications, as well as raising new questions about data storage. We therefore need to reconsider what safeguards are necessary in an internet age to ensure that people’s privacy is protected.

We need stronger oversight, too. We need to know how far the new technology is outstripping the legal framework, and what powers and safeguards are needed for the future. We need to determine how warrants should operate, who should have access to data, and whether the police and intelligence agencies have the lawful capabilities that they need. The police need to be able to keep up with new technology, but the safeguards need to keep up, too. All those elements should be included in the scope of the first stage of the independent review by the counter-terrorism reviewer, David Anderson.

[Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Lady on the long list of considerations that she wishes her party to look at, but has she considered the easy availability of strong cryptography? What is her party’s position on that?

[Yvette Cooper]

I will not pretend to be an expert on individual technologies or on the legal framework that is needed to safeguard them. That is exactly why we need an expert review. The honest truth is that most of us here in Parliament are considerably less expert on these technologies than our children, and we therefore need technological expertise as well as legal expertise as part of the review. That is the kind of review that David Anderson needs to lead.

We have tabled an amendment to put the review on a statutory footing and to outline some of the issues that it must cover, so that the House can be reassured that a sufficiently wide-ranging review will take place. It will need to look at the practice as well as at the legislation. We will also need to have a serious public debate about David Anderson’s conclusions, through the Joint Committee of both Houses and through taking public evidence. A public consultation must form part of that process. This is about getting the balance right, but it is also about ensuring that we have public consent. We cannot have any more sticking-plaster legislation; we need a serious and sustainable framework that will command consent for years to come.