My Lords, I absolutely support the remarks that have been made by numerous noble Lords on the primary intention of this part of the Bill, which surely is to deal with those covert and hostile activities which may be committed by, or on the behalf of, foreign Governments—or foreign entities connected closely to foreign Governments—which might damage the national security of this country.
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This is the National Security Bill and, plainly, those aspects have a place in the National Security Bill. I am totally unconvinced that the rest of these FIRS applications have any place in this Bill and I will come back to that in a moment. I agree with the noble Viscount who has just spoken that there is significant overreach in this Bill, as outlined by Amendment 88, but I suggest it goes much further than the list in Amendment 88. It reaches out into legitimate commercial and charitable activity which is carried on every day with absolutely no risk whatever to national security. If occasionally such a piece of activity trespasses into national security, I do not believe we need these provisions to deal with it; there are other ways of ascertaining and coping with that kind of incident.
I am particularly concerned—and I do not want to sound pompous about this, but I will say what I am thinking anyway—with the attitude of the Government to the role of this House in bringing clarity to legislation. We are here, if we are here for anything, to ensure that legislation that emerges from this Parliament has been properly considered and its drafting fine-tuned. It is perhaps the core business of this House that we do best. My noble friend Lord Anderson was kind enough to refer to a comment I made at Second Reading about this part of the Bill being a concept drawing which an architect might issue before ever drawing a plan. If I may build on that, I have thought about what has happened to that concept drawing. The best I can do at the moment is that the concept drawing was left on the table at which we eat at my house and my seven year-old grandson got at it with his box of crayons. It has some colour, but the colour is chaotic and disorganised and might even include—and I say this with deference to the ingenuity of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire—a drawing of a Dutch motor caravan user in a resort in north Wales who is trying to get a tyre repaired. This is not organised legislation, as it stands; it is the draft law of undrafted, unintended consequences.
Of course, we are all grateful to the Minister—who I know listens with great attention to what we say—for the indication that the Government are still thinking about this and that there may be further consideration. But I am concerned by his noble friend’s frequent use of the phrase “Further information will follow”. I think we are getting slightly bored by the use of that phrase by the noble Lord, Lord Murray. “Further information will follow” usually means “We have heard what you said, but we have not listened to it and we are not going to do anything about it.” I say to the Government that I do not understand for one moment why a set of proposals introduced by Government Back-Benchers in another place which has not been through the ordinary legislative process and which, as far as I can tell, has not had the close attention of expert parliamentary draftsmen is not being at least paused. In reality, it should be stopped and a new Bill be introduced with a proper, FIR scheme in it which we would all, I believe, contribute to in a constructive way. It would probably have quite a quick passage through the House, as long as it was not guilty of the sort of overreach we have here.
I want to give a real example. I have a friend, whom I met through a charity, who is a businessman. He runs a business that deals in something quite mundane, if complicated, which is large-scale plant hire. He has access to a large number of wagons. He came up with the idea of taking equipment that would be useful to people who have been displaced from their homes or who have difficulties as a result of Russian bombing in Ukraine. First, what he did was to collect a very large number of beds and mattresses, stick them in lorries, get his friends to help and carry thousands of beds to Ukraine where they were needed. One of his current enterprises—and I am happy to give details to any noble Lord who would like to contribute to what he is doing, as we have—is taking very large numbers of electricity power generation equipment which can be
used in a house or a block of flats in Ukraine. He is doing it through and with the co-operation of a Ukrainian charitable body with a connection to the Government of Ukraine.
Under the Bill as it currently exists, I believe and he believes, he would have to register that arrangement. What is going to happen to examples like that? They will stop doing it because they do not want to get involved in an unnecessary bureaucratic nightmare. Or, if they do it, who is going to read the register with scrutiny? I predict with confidence that it will be Russian military commanders who will want to know exactly which kinds of lorry to bomb as they make their way across Ukraine and how to look for the generators that are going to save lives in public buildings, hospitals and homes in Ukraine. It is nonsense for this legislation to have that kind of overreach—I use the word again.
So I say to the Minister: why here, why now and why the hurry? This can be dealt with with the complete co-operation of your Lordships’ House, but not in the way it is being done. I urge the Government not to wait for Report but to take some executive decisions right now and say that what we should do is concentrate on what really matters, the true national security part of the Bill. Let us get that enacted with minimal amendment and with the co-operation of the whole of your Lordships’ House, wherever we come from politically or not, as the case may be. Let us go back to the drawing board and produce real architectural planning for a FIR scheme if it is to reach wider.