Before the Minister sits down, I am conscious that, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, mentioned, we will come
on to the whistleblowing aspect, but the Minister was at pains to quote liberally from the Law Commission’s evidence to the Public Bill Committee in the Commons on this. I of course have read the evidence, as others will have done. I was interested when it came to the disclosure of information element, because Professor Penney Lewis told the Public Bill Committee:
“Indeed, we recommended a mechanism for authorised disclosures to an independent statutory commissioner, which would have appropriate investigatory powers to look into, for example, disclosures that might be embarrassing to the Government.”—[Official Report, Commons, National Security Bill Committee, 7/7/22; col. 52.]
Why are we not legislating for that in the Bill? The Minister seemed to have accepted everything that the Law Commission had said, but not this.