My Lords, in supporting the noble and learned Lord’s argument that the definition should not be too narrow, perhaps I may take him back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Pannick. He sought to establish that national security was a narrow definition by invoking the categories in new Section 59A(5), as inserted by Clause 5, which are,
“national security … the prevention or detection of serious crime”,
and,
“the economic well-being of the United Kingdom”.
It must be the case that national security would include some of those other categories. The most obvious one is,
“the prevention or detection of serious crime”,
which might be terrorist crime.