Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)

My Lords, I associate myself and these Benches with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, especially the last part. I will add to that small list of questions to the Minister with regard to China in a moment, but I also recognise the high level of consensus that there is; that the UK requires a FIRS; and that the legislation is sound. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Davies, will recall that this House was instrumental in bringing about the scheme that we now have, rather than what had been initially proposed and passed in the House of Commons. That demonstrates the value of all political parties working together for proper scrutiny. The intention was to have a robust and deliverable scheme that would be targeted, proportionate and effective. I am therefore grateful that there is now a clear date of operation and that it will go live on 1 July. I commend all the work of the officials who are bringing this together. It will be a year since the general election and 18 months after the passage of the legislation, but the key thing is to have it operable, effective and able to be communicated. I would be grateful if the Minister could say a bit more than was in the Statement about how the new scheme will be communicated. It is imperative that it registers those who we require it to register and does not include those who we do not require to be registered, which would clog up the much-valued time of officials. We welcome the regulations that the Government have indicated have been laid and we will carry out proper scrutiny of them. I am grateful for the announcement about Russia. I will repeat something that I asked for when we considered the national security legislation. These Benches asked the previous Government to proactively update Parliament on a regular basis about not just the level of activities of those seeking to interfere inappropriately in our political and economic systems but the type of activities, which often change, with different methods and ways of seeking to interfere. I hope that the Government might consider this to be beneficial. It has been useful when we have had periodic updates from the head of MI5 about the level of potential interference, but that is after the event. Given that this interference is intended to be towards people such us in Parliament, then as much as we can be informed on a proactive basis, the better. I repeat the request that my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire asked the Leader of the House previously. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report is still redacted. Given that the Government have decided to put Russia in the enhanced tier, there is no justification for the unredacted report not to be released so that we can be fully aware. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, who had been a significant member of that committee and now chairs it, will have his own views on this. We need to be informed about what the current potential kinds of activities are with regard to Russia. The Leader replied to my noble friend that it was an interesting question to be considered. I hope that the Government have considered it and that the Minister will be able to give a considered answer. If he cannot today, I hope that he will be able to write to me. Secondly, how will this scheme operate not only within Russian state entities but also their proxies? The legislation is worded in a fine way in order to capture those that will be acting on behalf of Russia, but I hope the Minister will be able to stress that we will be able to capture all those who are acting on behalf of Russia. Moving on, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, did, to China, these Benches believe that it should be on the enhanced tier. We also believe that the China audit that the Government have carried out should be published in full, not just as a narrative summary. We believe that there should be a human rights and democracy report that is linked with national security legislation, especially as we know that the Chinese state has been acting in an extraterritorial repressive way with regard to residents in this country—especially those from Hong Kong. There are some extremely brave people from Hong Kong whose family members at home are under threat because of unacceptable activities that are carried out here in the UK. We of course know that the proposed embassy will have an enormous hub for intelligence gathering and I therefore hope that the Government will not make a decision on planning before they publish their full China audit and a human rights and democracy report. As to why it is beneficial, I will again quote the work of the noble Lord, Lord Beamish—maybe he will agree with me on this point. The excellent ISC report on China from July 2023 still gives us very clear signals as to why we should have China recognised within our interference legislation. Paragraph K in the summary of conclusions states: “In terms of interference, China oversteps the boundary and crosses the line from exerting influence—a legitimate course of action—into interference, in the pursuit of its interests and values at the expense of those of the UK”. Furthermore, paragraph H states: “To compound the problem, it is not just the Chinese Intelligence Services: the Chinese Communist Party co-opts every state institution, company and citizen. This ‘whole-of-state’ approach means China can aggressively target the UK, yet the scale of the activity makes it more difficult to detect”. Both those recommendations are perfectly clear evidence of the justification for China to be put on the enhanced tier. If the Government make the decision not to do so, they have to very clearly state why the committee was wrong and that the levels of interference are not being carried out, because there is no evidence that that level of interference, which was found to be unacceptable, has changed—in fact, it has got worse.