Contribution
My Lords, I start by saying how grateful I am to noble Lord, Lord Hanson of Flint, for the way in which he has engaged with the JCHR on this issue, and indeed to his colleague, Dan Jarvis, Member of Parliament, another Minister in the Government, who gave evidence to the committee. It has been constructive and we have made progress.
The noble Lord has felt some of the frustration around some of the issues, such as FIRS and sanctions—things on which he cannot give running commentaries, including the proscription of the IRGC. However, that begs the question I raised earlier on about how we as a Parliament deal with such difficult, sensitive and often controversial questions. They cannot be dealt with on the Floor of the House, but they can be in places such as the Intelligence and Security Committee. I hope that he will talk to his colleagues about how some dedicated moment in the course of the year might be set aside to look at those things, because he knows as well as I do that if the avalanche of issues that come before a committee rumbles on, you never get round to doing some of the other things you might like to do. Perhaps he can take that away specifically so that some of these questions could be looked at in more detail in more confidential surroundings, in camera and safeguarding national interests. That is something constructive that could come out of this.
The Minister said that this is a safe, open and democratic society. There is unanimity across your Lordships’ House that we want to keep it that way. I do not agree with him about the numbers. In fact, he said we need to look again at the data. We have underestimated the scale of transnational repression. If anything, this report and the debate have helped us to see the scale.
This is an excellent report. I congratulate everyone involved in its compilation. I only regret that my friend, the noble Lord, Lord Dholakia, who is such a hard-working member of the committee, has now rotated off it. We were grateful to him for the contribution that he made to the report’s compilation.
The noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, said that few people know what transnational repression is. She is quite correct. I hope that the report and today’s debate will help to put that right. A number of noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, complimented the witnesses who came before the committee, and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, emphasised the courage that many have shown, specifically those who wanted to waive their anonymity so that people would know what has happened to them.
Maiden speeches always give special definition to debates, and the noble Lord, Lord Isaac, certainly raised our debate. The noble Lord, Lord Cryer, said that we would all have to look to our laurels as a result of the noble Lord’s maiden speech; I agree. The noble Lord, Lord Isaac, brought together two things: his commitment to education and to human rights. Curiously, those two have conflated as we have heard about the threats to our universities. We heard that from the noble Lords, Lord Moore and Lord Young of Acton, and other noble Lords who contributed. This is something we have to return to. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Malvern, the Universities Minister, is looking at this. She could do no worse than go back to the report compiled several years ago by the then Universities Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Johnson of Marylebone. When I drew that report personally to the attention of his brother, who at the time was the Prime Minister, he said he was not even aware of it. Things have moved on and we need to be much more aware of the systemic subversion of our universities, which has been referred to today.
The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, who is a long-standing friend, always emphasises the importance, as he did in his intervention a few moments ago, of resilience and getting rid of the dependency we have—billions of pounds of national debt every year. But it goes beyond the funding to the very heart and nature of our society. We have heard about FIRS, SLAPPs, red notices, Magnitsky sanctions, common definitions, the collection of data, how to reset diplomatic engagement, proscription of the IRGC and the rest. These are all important themes and I am glad that our committee was able to bring some of them out. I am grateful to all noble Lords who developed the arguments and delved deeper as we have proceeded.
I shall end on a personal reflection, which is that I always enjoy listening to the noble Lord, Lord Rooker. We have talked today about maiden speeches. He may not remember but in 1979, a brash new young MP who had just been elected in a by-election and became the shortest-ever lived MP, for two and a half days flat, had to make his maiden speech within two hours of arriving because the House was being suspended so that people could go back and fight a general election. It fell to the noble Lord, then Jeff Rooker, to respond to the new youngest Member of the House of Commons and say nice things about him. He has always given me encouragement as the years have proceeded, and it is always a pleasure to hear him speak in debates such as our own today. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Isaac, will also feel encouraged by all the commendations that have been made to him from around your Lordships’ House. With those words, I conclude my remarks.