Sir Julian Lewis
MP for New Forest East · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I will share with the House one particular case that is representative of many. My constituent, Mrs Gillian Pothecary, lost her husband almost a year ago. She wrote to me in July about her valiant but so far unavailing quest to obtain a civil service widow’s pension.”
“She said: “Mrs Pothecary’s…case falls under the commitment to be fully resolved by early September at the absolute latest. Capita has assured me that her case is on their escalation log and has been flagged for priority handling.” I rang up Gill just before coming into this debate and—you’ve guessed it, Dame Siobhain—she has not yet recei…”
“As the Minister seems to have run out of supportive Back Benchers, I shall endeavour to ask him a helpful and easy question. Accepting that it will be some years, to put it mildly, before we can eliminate our dependency on oil and gas, does he accept in principle that we are more secure if we exploit our own domestic oil and gas resources…”
“I warmly endorse almost everything the Secretary of State has said today, and I genuinely congratulate him on his appointment. In my first speech in this House almost 30 years ago, I promised to support Labour Governments as long as they supported the nuclear deterrent, the conventional armed forces and NATO.”
“On Monday, just as campaigners from the New Forest and Waterside were handing into Downing Street a 32,000-signature petition against the appalling and unfair outcome of local government reorganisation affecting our area, the welcome announcement was made by the Government that the local government reform proposals for Hampshire and three…”
“We are now in a situation that is worse than that at the height of the cold war, so the comparison we have to make is between what we are spending now and what we spent during the cold war, which was, in modern calculating methods, between 4.5% and 5.1% on defence. So let us not talk about increases to 2.7%.”
The complete record
Every one of 3,750 lines we hold for Sir Julian Lewis, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 35 of 75.
“The Intelligence and Security Committee has been briefed by MI5 on specific instances of this, and we accept that, without the use of covert human intelligence sources, many of the attacks foiled in recent years would have succeeded in their horrific aims. That is what justifies the authorisation of specified criminal acts, on occasion, in order to maintain an agent’s cover and in proportion to the potential harm that he or she is working to prevent. As pointed out on Second Reading on 5 October, the report on Northern Ireland-related terrorism compiled by our predecessor Committee and presented to Parliament that same day firmly concluded at paragraph 39: “While there are, rightly, concerns that criminal activity may somehow be being legitimised, the need for such authorisations is clear.”
“On behalf of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I entirely endorse the tributes and good wishes paid by the Solicitor General and the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) to my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). His professionalism, calmness and dedication as Security Minister and in other roles are a model for us all. We admire him greatly and wish him the best of health. Despite extraordinary technical advances in surveillance and espionage methods, human sources in intelligence operations remain indispensable, especially in the counter-terrorist work of our Security Service. Going undercover to join terrorist groups or remaining in a terrorist group, having become disillusioned with its objectives, in order to frustrate them, calls for courage of the highest order.”
“The outcome would inevitably be an increase in murders and other serious offences on their lordships’ list, which would not have happened but for the incorporation in statute of such a collection of prohibited crimes. As I said earlier, the ISC has had a comprehensive briefing from MI5, explaining how those authorisations are used in practice. We are convinced that the Security Service uses them appropriately and proportionately. We are also reassured that the measures in the Bill legalise only what is specified in each criminal conduct authorisation. That means that any other criminal behaviour not covered by the terms of a CCA may be subject to prosecution—a safeguard that will hopefully encourage the House to reject Lords amendment 2. This is one of those occasions when it is necessary—really necessary—to keep our enemies guessing.”
“As the years go by, and as experience shows, I fully expect that there will have to be amendments to the Human Rights Act. I believe that although terrorists could indeed read it, they would take rather more seriously a categoric list of forbidden offences in the Bill than they would the rather generalised content of the Human Rights Act. I do not expect my right hon. Friend to be wholly satisfied with that, but it is my honest opinion. Consequently, terrorist groups whose operations might have been compromised by technical means, rather than by human infiltration, would be likely to ask their genuine members to commit more and more forbidden offences, simply to prove their loyalty.”
“I have the advantage of having been present when my right hon. Friend made that very point on Second Reading, and therefore I was entirely prepared for that intervention. I will give a response that is perhaps slightly unorthodox, despite the emphasis put on the Human Rights Act by my right hon. and learned Friend the Solicitor General. In my previous role as Chair of the Defence Committee, it became more and more obvious that the Human Rights Act, and the European convention on human rights, had had serious, and perhaps largely unanticipated, adverse consequences for the operations of our military. I suspect that if applied too literally, they would have equally adverse effects on the operations of our security and intelligence services.”
“In support of my right hon. Friend, it will come as no surprise that I would simply say that, whether one trusts this expert or that expert, or this or that Committee Chairman, that is what is known in philosophical terms as the appeal to authority. I am happy to rely on the argument that I put forward, which is that, if we create a list of things that agents cannot do, we invite terrorists to use it as a checklist to test their own membership for spies and infiltrators.”
“Like me, the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), was elected in 2010 on a manifesto pledge to settle this matter. It needs to be settled, and that has not yet happened.”
“On interrogating my own website, I find that the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury in June 2010 was Mr David Gauke, and he said then: “The coalition Government have pledged to make fair and transparent payment to Equitable Life policyholders, through an independently designed payment scheme, for their relative loss as a result of regulatory failure.” —[ Official Report , 8 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 167.] I said to him at the time how glad I was that that was going to happen. A little later, however, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Mark Hoban, had to defend the fact that it appeared that only a fraction of the losses were to be paid. I know that the ombudsman said that it would not be a matter of the entire sum being paid, but who can honestly believe that paying just 22% of a loss is a fair outcome? Both parties are to blame.”
“When mistakes are being made on this scale and of this magnitude, it stands to reason that the Treasury should not be sheltering behind any sort of argument or excuse as to how these sums are calculated. The methodology should be out there, and it should be capable of objective independent verification; it should not be necessary for appeals of this sort to go forward. [ Interruption. ] My hon. Friend the Minister, chuntering from a sedentary position, anticipates that I was about to come to him next, and despite his obvious dissatisfaction with the point I have just made, I would like to say that he is a very sincere and fair-minded fellow, but he is the latest in a long line of Ministers who have had to defend the indefensible.”
“My life is very different to that we planned when we put our savings with EL: no holidays, no treats.” This is the sort of issue that gets politics and politicians a bad name, although 280 Members of this House have been trying through the good auspices of the all-party group on Equitable Life policyholders to put matters right. In his able introduction to the motion, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) referred to the miscalculation for one pensioner who, it was said, was due £17 when the actual figure was over £8,500. He could also have referred to another mis-calculation discovered by the Equitable Members Action Group: £58 was awarded, instead of over £7,000.”
“An 84-year-old widow in my constituency writes as follows: “In the year 2000 our pension was £11,120, it is now £3,187. When my husband died in 2015 it was reduced by one third, so this accounts for some of the loss. It continues to go down annually. With inflation, of course, my loss is even greater than this. The state pension increases because of inflation, yet the Government give no consideration to EL annuitants who invested savings to ensure a decent standard of living in retirement. When we heard that EL were having problems we were not that worried as we assumed the Government would step in. Why was not the same concern given to EL victims as to those now suffering financially because of the covid pandemic? The effect on us is just as great, and probably more long term. It is twenty years since this debacle began.”
“How does the Minister respond to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) that an innocent person finding themselves on trial in the United States—our closest ally, as we all agree—would nevertheless be put under intolerable pressure to plead guilty, because if he gambles on proving his innocence and fails, he faces an enormous sentence, whereas if he confesses to a crime that he did not commit, he can get off with a few months in jail?”
“Given that the Minister has previously expressed sympathy for the idea of raising the mandatory retirement age for magistrates in particular, may I appeal to him to ensure that when he does so, there is provision to reinstate those magistrates who have retired in the meantime, so that the valuable services of people like my constituent Peter Power JP are not lost to the bench?”
“21.] Whether we go down that route of a classified unpublished annexe to send to our Committee or follow the model used in the ISC’s own reports, which are prepared in full with subsequent redactions made and marked in the main body of the text, such an approach would be the least burdensome for the Department to prepare and for the ISC to scrutinise. Either method would effectively close the scrutiny gap and get this valuable and necessary legislation off to the best possible start.”
“In his appearance before the Public Bill Committee, former chief of MI6 Sir Richard Dearlove had the following exchange with the Minister, who referred to the annual report to be prepared for Parliament as a requirement of this legislation. The Minister asked: “What is your view on balancing transparency and ensuring Government can take national security decisions sensitively? Where does that balance lie in terms of our ability to be as transparent as we can without harming sensitivities around these decisions?” Sir Richard replied: “My view would be that the annual report has as much transparency as possible, but you are probably going to require a secret annexe from time to time.” –– [ Official Report, National Security and Investment Public Bill Committee, 24 November 2020; c.”
“Of the 14 amendments tabled for today, there is one—new clause 7—that recognises the scrutiny gap in this legislation and proposes that a special report containing the relevant classified national security material should be prepared for, and provided to, the Intelligence and Security Committee. This Opposition amendment has much to commend it, and, as ISC Chairman, I would be minded to support it if it were the only available option. However, an undertaking by the Minister today that the Government will bring forward their own amendment in the upper House to close the scrutiny gap satisfactorily in a more streamlined way would be even better.”
“It was, of course, to deal with exactly the sort of situation facing us today, where the intelligence and security battle in what is increasingly known as the grey zone of conflict mutates and moves into areas of responsibility far beyond traditional boundaries, as Deborah Haynes’ admirable new podcast illustrates so convincingly. That is why Business Ministers, rather than Defence or security Ministers, are having to grapple with today’s legislation. Following a constructive discussion with my hon. Friend the Minister yesterday, I was cautiously optimistic that the Government would recognise that the 2013 arrangements provide the correct basis for scrutiny on which to proceed.”
“The ISC will aim to avoid any unnecessary duplication with the work of those Committees.” Indeed, having chaired the Commons Defence Committee in the previous two Parliaments, I can confirm there was never the slightest friction, overlap or intrusion from the then ISC into the work of the Defence Committee. The ISC looked at defence intelligence and offensive cyber, as set out in its MOU, and the Defence Committee continued to scrutinise everything else. It really should not be necessary, every time a new unit is set up inside a Department not normally associated with national security or intelligence issues, to spell out in black and white, as I have done today, how and why the framers of the 2013 Act deliberately created the flexible memorandum of understanding arrangement that incorporated its role on the face of that legislation.”
“To put the matter beyond all doubt, consider finally this extract from paragraph 8 of the MOU about our remit: “The ISC is the only committee of Parliament that has regular access to protectively marked information that is sensitive for national security reasons: this means that only the ISC is in a position to scrutinise effectively the work of the Agencies and of those parts of departments whose work is directly concerned with intelligence and security matters.” Inserted at the end of this sentence is a notation for the following footnote which explains: “This will not affect the wider scrutiny of departments such as the Home Office, FCO and MOD by other parliamentary committees.”
“All that is required, therefore, for a Government activity in relation to intelligence or security matters to be added to the existing list in the memorandum of understanding is a simple exchange of letters between the ISC and the Prime Minister agreeing to do so. In other words, the 2013 Act and associated memorandum were designed exactly for circumstances such as these, where evolving intelligence and security arrangements create sensitive new functions and/or new units which need Parliamentary scrutiny to be within the same circle of secrecy as the long-established agencies.”
“The long title of the JSA makes it quite clear that it provides not only for scrutiny of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, but for “oversight of…other activities relating to intelligence or security matters…and for connected purposes.” Section 2(1) of the Act refers to those three intelligence agencies specifically, but section 2(2) spells out our Committee’s wider remit: “The ISC may examine or otherwise oversee such other activities of Her Majesty’s Government in relation to intelligence or security matters as are set out in a memorandum of understanding.” Section 2(5) explains that that MOU can be altered by agreement between the ISC and the Prime Minister.”
“In 1994, the ISC was established specifically for circumstances such as these—namely, to examine matters that Parliament could not because they were too sensitive for public disclosure and debate. It has been suggested that the ISC cannot undertake this role this time because the organisation concerned, the new investment and security unit, is based in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, rather than Departments like the Home Office or the Cabinet Office, which traditionally handle national security matters. Yet this is fundamentally to misunderstand the legal basis under which the ISC functions. There are two interlinked documents: the Justice and Security Act 2013 and the memorandum of understanding between the Prime Minister and the ISC for which that Act provides.”
“214.] It is hard to disagree with that, although I hasten to add that the Committee has not the slightest wish gratuitously to add to its workload, overburdened as we are due to our delayed reconstitution and the fact that we cannot operate virtually, where sensitive material is concerned, during periods of lockdown. Nevertheless, Parliament should be enabled to scrutinise the implementation of the powers given to Government by this legislation, which explicitly puts national security material at the heart of future decision making. It is obvious that there will be potential conflicts between encouraging business on the one hand and safeguarding national security on the other.”
“That scrutiny gap was addressed, also on Second Reading, by the shadow Business Secretary, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who said: “Given the sensitive nature of the issues involved in this Bill, I do think there needs to be a way…for this House to monitor how this is working in practice. I do not speak for it, but we have a special Committee of the House—the Intelligence and Security Committee—that can look at these issues. I would like to raise the question with the Secretary of State whether it could play a role in scrutinising the working of the regime and some of the decisions being made, because there are real restrictions on the kind of transparency there can be on these issues…The ISC is in a sense purpose-built for some of these issues.” —[ Official Report , 17 November 2020; Vol. 684, c.”
“Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), made crystal clear how central secret material would be to the practical application of the provisions of this legislation. He stated that “the whole point of the Bill is for it to be narrow on national security grounds”. He also said: “These powers are narrowly defined and will be exclusively used on national security grounds. The Government will not be able to use these powers to intervene in business transactions for broader economic or public interest reasons”. —[ Official Report , 1 November 2020; Vol. 684, c. 206-210.] It follows that the very areas in which the BEIS Committee would be perfectly qualified to scrutinise policy are specifically excluded from the application of the powers conferred by the National Security and Investment Bill.”
“As the future arrangements laid down by the Bill will depend on the input of the new investment security unit, and as that unit will be housed in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, one would normally expect that general scrutiny could be conducted by Parliament as a whole and specialised scrutiny by the Select Committee on Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Unfortunately, that does not work in this case: much of the work of the investment security unit will depend on input from intelligence and security agencies and similar sensitive sources that cannot and must not be made public. Furthermore, on Second Reading, the then Business Secretary, my right hon.”
“Not only did he keep his promise to write to us about the points made by Committee members on Second Reading, during my period of self-isolation, but he dealt with ISC concerns at the Committee stage and reached out before today’s debates as well. That is precisely the type of constructive engagement that we should like to have with the Government. If I do not secure the concessions that I want after all of that, I shall be very disappointed! The issue on which I shall focus is parliamentary oversight. Normally, that would be straightforward.”
“On Second Reading both of this Bill and of the Telecommunications (Security) Bill, it was mentioned that in 2013, the Intelligence and Security Committee first recommended measures to prevent high-risk vendors such as Huawei from penetrating our critical national infrastructure in future. It is always the way: you wait seven years for a Bill to protect against infiltration and takeover, then two come along together. Given that background, the ISC naturally welcomed the introduction of this legislation, and we greatly appreciated the contact that we have had with the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi).”
“For the sake of clarity, the annual report that will be supplied to Parliament will not have any security-sensitive information in it. The Minister says that we could request further information. The only information we want to request is the information of a security-sensitive nature that will routinely have played a part in leading to these decisions. I do not want to tell any tales out of school. All I can say is that the Minister seemed very receptive when I put forward the idea of an annexe to the report, which would come to the Committee, or alternatively there could be an unredacted or redacted version of the report. Is he saying that the Cabinet Office is declining to do that? If so, it would appear that the malign influence of one Mr Cummings is not entirely eliminated from that Department.”
“Is this what the Minister wants? Every year, the Committee will request to have a comprehensive explanation of the security-sensitive information that has underlain the different decisions that the unit has taken. All he is saying is that we can request this ad hoc every year and we will get it—I will believe that when I see it. If that were to be the case, there could be no possible objection to incorporating this in the legislation now so that it is not at the whim of a future Minister to either give us what we need or deny us what we need.”
“The Cabinet Office seems to have a strange sort of fear of the Intelligence and Security Committee, because every time we try to do our job, it seems to want to push back. The message I wish to give to them is this: “Friends, colleagues—comrades, even—of the Cabinet Office, the ISC is not your enemy. We are your constructively critical friends. You know what? Sometimes we get it right: we got it right over Huawei. It would have been good if successive Governments had listened a bit earlier over Huawei, but they got there in the end. If you lock us out, you are simply shutting off a safety valve and a mechanism for correcting mistakes that you need not make. Don’t make that mistake again. Apart from that, congratulations on a very good Bill indeed.””
“We cannot possibly do our job of inspecting and scrutinising those parts of security issue information that have to be classified if we are not allowed to go into those Departments only in so far as that type of information has spread with a new threat into a different Department. If the Government are saying—and I see some nodding heads on the Front Bench—that it is now accepted that the ISC can ask the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for this sort of information, that is a huge step forward, and we thank the Government for it. We still believe that it would be better for it to be formalised in the way that Sir Richard Dearlove suggested in Committee. I will conclude with a message that I would like the Ministers to take to their colleagues in the Cabinet Office.”
“That is a great step forward, and I thank him for it genuinely, because previously there were remarks to the effect that the ISC’s writ did not run anywhere near the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. That appears to have been dropped, and that is a big step forward. The reason why it is necessary to recognise this is not that we want to make extra work for ourselves. It is because we entirely agree with the Government that the security threats constantly change, morph and spread themselves out into different areas of activity and, inevitably therefore, into different areas for which different Departments have responsibility.”
“It is never good form to repeat from the lengthier preliminary stages what one has said in any detail in the final Third Reading debate, so I will just quote one small extract from the memorandum of understanding between the Prime Minister and the ISC, which the Secretary of State may not have heard me read earlier. Paragraph 8 of the memorandum of understanding says: “only the ISC is in a position to scrutinise effectively the work of the Agencies and of those parts of Departments”— meaning other Departments such as his— “whose work is directly concerned with intelligence and security matters.” On Report, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), said that it will be open to the ISC to request the secret information that cannot be published.”
“Mr Deputy Speaker, may I begin this short contribution by warmly endorsing what you had to say by way of congratulations to the new Secretary of State? He is genuinely one of the most popular Members in any part of the House, and I am sure that his delayed but nevertheless entirely merited accession to the Cabinet was greeted with wide acclamation. The best must never be allowed to be the enemy of the good. This is a good Bill, but there are, as the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) said, opportunities for it to be improved further in another place, which I hope will happen.”
“May I welcome the Leader of the House’s robust answer to the previous question? Mine is on a different subject. Monday’s non-partisan debate in Westminster Hall referred to the need for a dedicated Minister with status in both main Departments that deal with the hospitality sector—the third largest in our economy. In his well-received response, the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), was naturally rather reticent about restructuring the Government to reflect such an enhanced role for himself. May we therefore have a statement from the Cabinet Office Minister on the need for a dedicated and upgraded Minister for the hospitality sector and the promotion of its survival and recovery?”
“Although our service personnel are already making a fine contribution, has my right hon. Friend examined which aspects of Israel’s efficient and highly successful vaccination programme involving her armed forces might be applicable to our own use of military medical resources?”
“If it is found to work well during that phase, making it permanent might well be the logical next step.”
“Robin Hutson, who was mentioned earlier and who is my constituent, said, “It is our belief that we do not have a respected, truly invested senior Minister with deep sector knowledge, but who also has the power and the ear of the PM to effectively defend our corner.” It took more than four months for the Treasury to respond to one letter that I sent from a concerned constituent. Having a separate dedicated Minister would prevent that sort of delay. It would matter less that responsibilities are spread over more than one Department if only it were the same Minister who held the post in each Department. It is not uncommon to have a specialist Minister with a focused role in more than one Department. Initially, that could be on a temporary, emergency basis, as a hospitality industry recovery Minister.”
“The hospitality industry is the UK’s largest employer of under 25-year-olds and, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) said in her able introduction, the importance, post Brexit, of our having an appealing environment for people to come and invest in cannot be overstated. As the vaccine programme is implemented, one might reasonably expect the reintroduction of tiered restrictions on a gradually reducing basis. That is where the significance of adequate ministerial representation for the hospitality industry comes into play. For a sector of this size—the third largest in the UK—ranging from pubs through to restaurants and hotels, tourism and travel, not having a separate specialist and dedicated voice at the core of Government has led to a justified sense of disregard and discrimination.”
“The hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) complained that it is rather cold in Westminster Hall today. I can recommend the House of Commons Library to him. It is an absolute furnace there, where I prepared the great oration that I was going to make, 90% of which is now going to be chucked because of the time limit. However, that is a measure of the importance of the debate, because so many people want to contribute to it. That is why our time is so limited. When I last looked, more than 206,000 people had signed the petition, and the group with the highest number was people from the New Forest. In New Forest East alone almost 300 businesses are in the food and accommodation sectors, employing 4,000 people and constituting 10.8% of the working population.”
“This feels slightly like my own first day back at school, though I am rather near the bottom of this particular class. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the importance of his mass testing programme for schools derives from the danger that infected children may be spreaders without symptoms?”
“One level playing field on which we might all agree is the similar treatment of similar businesses in terms of Government support during the covid emergency, so may we have a statement in the new year, if not sooner, about the plight of food and drink wholesalers who do not get business rates relief, whereas supermarkets do? That seems to me and many others to be inequitable.”
“I alert the Government to a not unrelated problem, which is not about fire safety but about the plans to allow extra storeys to be built on top of high-rise blocks. Before the Government announced their plan, it happened to the block in which I live. We had a floor built above us. The builders then declared themselves bankrupt, and all sorts of charges are being levied on the innocent leaseholders who are having to fork out for faults that were not of their own making.”
“Although I did not make a speech in this debate, I enjoyed the others greatly and I did make a short intervention. Will my hon. Friend take back to the Government the dangers of allowing free rein to graft extra top floors on to high-rise blocks with limited planning requirements? I have personal experience, as I said, and it is a disaster in the making. We should not be encouraging it.”
“I am encouraged by the Secretary of State’s replies so far. Given that there is no security for Europe without the United States, what specific reassurance can he give that we shall not be sucked, via Permanent Structured Cooperation, into the European Union’s persistent attempts to create an alternative NATO without the United States, which would be a particularly dangerous military version of Hamlet without the Prince?”
“Finally, I have a question that I was pleased, I think, to hear the Secretary of State answer 15 minutes into his opening speech, but it would be nice to have the Minister reiterate that answer: do the Government now fully accept—as they did not in 2013—that national security must always be their overriding consideration where critical national infrastructure is concerned?”
“Secondly, if the answer is the National Cyber Security Centre and our wider intelligence community, will there be procedures to guarantee that they will be consulted with adequate notice, and who will ensure that their advice is given sufficient weight? Thirdly, in view of the revolving door via which too many businessmen and ex-civil servants effortlessly glide between their former roles and the Huawei boardroom, what assurance can we have that the Government will be immune from lobbying campaigns by those on the payroll of high-risk vendors?”
“Proposals such as those in this Bill, which the Committee first recommended in 2013, are therefore to be welcomed, but the public rely on the ISC to assure them that we have asked those questions in private that cannot be discussed more openly. As that has not yet happened, our support for the Bill in principle cannot be as unqualified at this stage, as we should like it to be, though I welcome the Minister’s offer to speak to the Committee later this week. Here are a few of the questions that can be asked on the Floor of the House. First, as the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport has not traditionally specialised in national security, on whom will the Secretary of State rely for advice when deciding whether to issue restrictions against high-risk vendors, or directions to telecoms providers?”
“Hopefully, our US partners—currently promoting an international clean network initiative—will agree and Five Eyes harmony on those vital matters can now be reinstated. Having waited so long for two such necessary Bills, the ISC must sadly record our concern that, in both cases, their Second Reading debates were held within just four working days of their introduction on First Reading. Normally, adequate notice of about two weeks would enable our hard-working staff to obtain relevant confidential material and advance sight of such legislation to allow proper prior consideration. The tiny window of opportunity afforded by the parliamentary timetabling has prevented this from happening, and our staff had to fall back purely on publicly available sources.”