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1. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Bob Blackman

   National Security (State Threats) Bill

   I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention. Another issue, which the Committee also referred to, was that certain charities in this country are linked to or directed and funded by Tehran. At least 13 charities are under investigation by the Charity Commission. I have asked continually for action from the Government and the Charity Commission to close down those charities to prevent them from acting against the interests of this country. At the moment, there is a lack of action and co-ordination, and it is not clear to me that this legislation will catch those charities, or whether there is sufficient legislation to do so. I would appreciate the Minister addressing that issue.

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2. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Bob Blackman

   National Security (State Threats) Bill

   It is clear that this is one of a series of actions that need to be taken. If we had had the opportunity to give the Bill pre-legislative scrutiny, suggestions could have been made to increase its scope to deal with these issues once and for all. It is pretty clear to me that action needs to be taken to defend our people and the people who come here fleeing the Iranian republic. Following this legislation, we look forward to the proscription of the IRGC or whatever sanction we are going to take, as well as specific sanctions against the commanders. The assets of the IRGC and its various bodies should be frozen and subject to enhanced security, and we look forward to seeing protections for the Iranian dissidents and opposition figures living in Britain. Let us make sure that we send a clear message. Members of all parties agree that this legislation is necessary, but further legislation is also necessary. This Bill could be improved, provided the Government were willing to listen to the proposals that my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Stamford (Alicia Kearns) has put forward. I hope that we will hear those arguments in Committee and ensure that the Government take note of that. I also hope that, if the Government do not act today, they will agree to act in the future on the sensible proposals that my hon. Friend has made. This is a moral and national security necessity. We know that operatives from Iran, whether it is the IRGC or other state-based organisations, are taking action right now on our university campuses to stir up trouble and antisemitism. They are taking direct action, as has been said, against Jewish businesses, synagogues and, indeed, even now places where Jewish people live. That is absolutely unacceptable, and the people responsible obviously have to be brought to justice, but the organisations that they are part of must also be brought to justice and prevented from operating. All we can do is pass this legislation and hope that the Home Secretary can take the necessary decisions. I draw attention to one final issue: the operation of the communications. The Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting is a propaganda arm of the regime. It is tied directly to the IRGC. It is not clear to me that it will be caught by the provisions of the Bill. It has a hub in Acton in west London, and it actively airs threats against Iranian dissidents and against the Jewish community. That operation should be closed down straightaway, and I hope the Home Secretary will take the necessary action to do so. I look forward to the responses from the Minister. I know she is new in the job, but I also know that she has the best interests of the security of this country at heart, and I wish her well in carrying out those duties.

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3. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Transport: Marston Vale

   I beg to move, That this House has considered transport requirements in the Marston Vale. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I hope this can be a constructive debate. I am not here to bash the Government or to stand in the way of progress; I am here to open a dialogue with the Minister on behalf of the people I serve in Mid Bedfordshire. The Marston Vale in Mid Bedfordshire contains historical villages such as Cranfield, Marston Moretaine, Lidlington, Stewartby and Brogborough, as well as the new town of Wixams. It also sits at the heart of the Government’s growth agenda. The Universal UK resort will be a £50 billion boost to the UK’s economy, bringing millions of visitors every year to Kempston Hardwick. East West Rail, connecting the intellectual powerhouses of Oxford and Cambridge, will run along the Marston Vale line, stopping at Ridgmont, Lidlington and Stewartby. The merger of Cranfield University with King’s College London will bring further world-class research to the Marston Vale. The Marston Valley development will see 5,000 houses delivered across new villages between Marston Moretaine and Brogborough, and the Stewartby brickworks development will see 1,000 houses delivered on a brownfield site in Stewartby. The new town of Wixams will continue to be built out over the coming years, with thousands more houses and a new train station. The Government’s proposed new town at Milton Keynes and potential developments at Keepers Place and the Aspley Guise triangle could see tens of thousands more houses built in and around the Marston Vale. All in, the roughly 7.5 miles between junction 13 of the M1 and the town of Kempston will soon see two nationally significant infrastructure projects, thousands of new homes and one of the UK’s leading universities, all at the centre of the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor. That is on top of existing significant sites including the Millbrook proving ground, the community forest of Marston Vale and the Woburn Forest Center Parcs. As I said, I am not here to stand in the way of the growth that our area is set to contribute to the UK. If it is done right, there are immense opportunities for the Marston Vale, with thousands of new jobs, brilliant new transport links and new communities in our area.

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4. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Transport: Marston Vale

   I agree entirely with the hon. Gentleman. With the scale of the change that we are discussing, particularly in my constituency and also in his, it is vital that the proposals are done with, not done to, the residents of the Marston Vale and Strangford, in order to retain public support. That means proper planning on transport infrastructure that considers the cumulative impact of these nationally significant projects on the local communities they will sit within. At the moment, I am afraid that is not happening, and public support is slipping away. Transport modelling for the various projects has been siloed and has failed to properly take into account the cumulative impact of proposals. For example, outline planning permission for the 5,000 houses at Marston Valley was granted on the basis of transport modelling that does not consider the impact of Universal UK, and Universal UK’s transport modelling does not consider the impact of the 5,000 houses at Marston Valley. East West Rail’s proposals will increase capacity to serve Universal, but they fail to properly plan for the impact that they will have on the local road infrastructure by severing local communities. For example, to increase the number of trains on the line in response to Universal UK, East West Rail plans to close a number of level crossings in the Marston Vale and leave others with significant downtime throughout the day. That will have an enormous impact on local communities, effectively bisecting the Marston Vale along the rail line. One of the level crossings that East West Rail has proposed to close, at Station Lane in Millbrook, is a key local route for the Marston Valley development. It is also a vital link for the Millbrook proving ground, including for the transport of military vehicles. The alternative route would direct enormous volumes of traffic down country lanes even with today’s level of demand, but we are adding thousands more houses and Europe’s biggest theme park. Roads such as Bury Ware in Lidlington are simply not equipped to cope with the volumes of traffic they are expecting. Previous East West Rail proposals have broad local support, but the new proposals, which fail to plan for the cumulative impact of transport pressures in the Marston Vale, now risk eroding that. I urge the Minister to work with East West Rail to reconsider the impacts of its proposals on level crossings in the Marston Vale, in the light of the cumulative development impacts. We cannot allow it to irreparably damage our communities and turn our country lanes into gridlocked rat runs. Plans to deliver a new multi-storey car park in Lidlington have also caused concern that the village could end up as a park and ride for Universal UK, just one stop up the line on East West Rail. That is not nimbyism; it reflects a real local concern that good intentions alone are not plans. We cannot prevent people from parking in Lidlington and hopping on the train to Universal, but we can alleviate residents’ concerns and reduce the risk of it happening by properly planning for and delivering a park and ride elsewhere. The new Ridgmont station just off the M1 is a prime candidate for such a park and ride, but that station’s delivery has been predicated on house building that does not yet have planning permission and is not yet included in any local plans. Disjointed planning and concerns about delivery timetables at Ridgmont leave residents in Lidlington and elsewhere fearing the worst. Another impact of the changing demand for transport in our area is that East West Rail’s plans for Stewartby station are now out of touch with the needs of local residents. Stewartby station is relatively busy. Despite a limited rail service, the station sees around 90,000 passengers a year, almost all of them local and many of them students at Kimberley college, which is located a short walk from the current station. East West Rail’s plans for the station involve removing it from the village entirely and turning it into a gateway station for Universal UK. To be clear, we absolutely need an East West Rail station to serve Universal UK, but very little work seems to have been done on the implications of the new station location for Stewartby residents and students of Kimberley college. If the plan remains to build a new Universal station and axe the Stewartby station entirely, Ministers need to ensure that East West Rail urgently works to produce a detailed plan for transport links between the station, Stewartby village and Kimberley college. That plan should include details on how residents with mobility challenges will be able to get to the station, and it should set out the safeguards that Ministers will put in place to ensure that hundreds of students at Kimberley college will be kept safe when using an extremely busy station and making a much longer journey, likely on foot, from the station to the college. The alternative that I have been calling for would be to keep the current Stewartby station operational in addition to a new station serving Universal UK, with a limited stopping service operating only at peak morning and evening times. More generally, despite a much-publicised announcement on the Government’s infrastructure investment to enable Universal UK earlier this month, neither the Chancellor nor the Transport Secretary has written to me to outline specifically what that investment will deliver in my constituency. Residents in the Marston Vale want and deserve clarity from the Government on what infrastructure, particularly transport infrastructure, will be delivered to facilitate the arrival of millions of visitors to Europe’s biggest tourist attraction in their backyard. I hope the Minister will be able to offer some further detail in her response. Another good example of transport pressure in our area is junction 13 of the M1, which the Minister knows I am going to mention. The Government have indicated that junction 13 will be upgraded in the early 2030s, for which my constituents are grateful, but the timeframe for upgrades needs to be urgently reviewed. Junction 13 is unsuitable now; it is already acknowledged that it is regularly severely congested. While the Marston Valley development will provide some upgrades to cope with the demand brought by those new houses, it will not consider the volume of additional traffic brought by Universal UK. Junction 13 is a key route for local traffic as well as traffic passing through our community. Given the significant increase in traffic volume, we need that upgrade now. Junction 13 is not the only significant road infrastructure impacted by local development plans. Vehicle traffic will also use the A421 to get to the Universal UK resort from the M1. The Government have acknowledged this with their investment in slip roads from the A421 to Universal UK, but we have recently seen the significant congestion caused, even with the current levels of demand, when the A421 is closed. In September 2024, there was severe flooding on the road, which saw a dip fill with 72 million litres of water after a pumping station was overwhelmed. Work has been done to solve that particular vulnerability, but the traffic chaos that occurred in 2024 demonstrates what happens in the Marston Vale when the A421 is out of commission. That congestion would be many times more significant if the A421 had to be shut for any reason after Universal UK is built. Any respectable transport plan for the Marston Vale must address one key question: what is our contingency plan if the A421 is out of action? We have seen no answer to that question. Junction 13 is not the only project for which timing will be crucial. From the day that the Universal UK resort opens in 2031, millions of visitors will pour through its doors, whether we have built sufficient transport infrastructure or not. But if we have not, they will pour through its doors via gridlocked local roads designed for local traffic, not for the largest theme park in Europe. It is imperative, therefore, that the Marston Vale is home to a national effort to deliver new infrastructure as swiftly as possible. That includes having the new station at Wixams on the midland main line open from day one, it means ensuring that East West Rail between Oxford and Bedford has services running to completed modern stations with step-free access, and it means having a road network, especially junction 13, that can cope with the volume of traffic we are expecting. As I said, I did not come here to play party politics, to bash Ministers or to rail against the march of progress. I came with a specific request. What we see in the Marston Vale is not unique, but it is unusual: several projects of national significance contained within roughly 7.5 miles of Bedfordshire, split across Central Bedfordshire council and Bedford borough council. The myriad challenges are difficult to address because there is no centralised master planning and, as a result, there is no way to mitigate the cumulative impact of the various individual proposals. That is leading to contradictory solutions. Because there is no centralised masterplan and no single body overseeing these projects, it is also much more difficult to leverage funding to ensure that it is spent in the right places. I would like Ministers to commit to working with me, local councillors, local residents and key stakeholders, such as Universal and local developer O&H, to develop a master plan for transport in the Marston Vale. That should set out exactly what communities in the Marston Vale need to manage the various pressures on our area. It should include detail about how to manage transport pressures strategically during construction periods, and it should open a conversation about how we secure the right funding to deliver those projects. The rewards of success are clear: enabling the Marston Vale and its residents to play the fullest part in delivering the Government’s growth agenda, right at the heart of the Oxford-Cambridge growth corridor. But the costs of failure are stark: residents in the Marston Vale waking up in the 2030s to discover that they have suffered all of the downsides of growth in their communities, and that some of the benefits for the country as a whole have been squandered.

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5. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Transport: Marston Vale

   I thank the Minister for briefly outlining what the £1.3 billion of taxpayers’ money will be spent on. My residents will be relieved to hear that Wixams station is expected to open in time for Universal. The Minister also talked about targeted investment in the local road network. When the detail becomes available, will she commit to writing to me with more information about what public money will be spent and where, and what impact the Government expect it to have?

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6. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Blake Stephenson

   Transport: Marston Vale

   The Minister talked about bringing together local councils—Central Bedfordshire council and Bedford borough council—and England’s Economic Heartland. One of my asks was that we also bring together Universal UK, O&H, which is a significant developer of 5,000 houses in the area, and East West Rail, to ensure that local infrastructure is integrated. Would she consider my proposal—if she cannot answer directly now, she can take it away—that those stakeholders also get around the table? They are developers of significant infrastructure in the area and I think they also need to be around the table.

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7. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Andrew Griffith

   Steel Tariffs

   (Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade if he will make a statement on steel tariffs.

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8. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Andrew Griffith

   Steel Tariffs

   I thank the Minister for that statement. Aerospace, the automotive sector, Formula 1, the construction sector, and manufacturing businesses that use steel, which employ 300,000 people, are all being impacted by Labour’s botched tariffs. Many specialist steels—the Minister may have heard this from manufacturing businesses—are not, as it stands, even produced in the UK. That is a real issue when it comes to, for example, categories 14 and 27, which are used in aircraft wings, or in defence applications that we need to make ourselves safe. Where defence companies have cost-plus contracts, the tariff on steel that is not made here will just get added to the bill for the Ministry of Defence. Will the Minister listen to Stephen Morley, president of the Confederation of British Metalforming, who says: “The UK risks accelerating the decline of its manufacturing base rather than preserving it”, or Simon Boyd from REIDsteel, a British steelmaker, when he says that these measures will kill off “downstream customers of steelmakers in the UK”? I am sure that is not the Minister’s intention, but with just two weeks to go, with respect, it is time to stop listening and start acting. Will the Minister answer three questions? First, will he confirm today that the measures will not be applied retroactively throughout the whole life of existing, agreed contracts? Secondly, will he exempt steel—especially in categories 14 and 27—that is simply not made here in the necessary volumes? Thirdly, after listening to industry, will the Government please delay these tariffs for at least six months so that they can get this right?

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9. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

   National Security (State Threats) Bill (Allocation of Time)

   Let me be clear from the outset that the Opposition support the Bill and want it on the statute book, but we cannot support the manner in which the Government are seeking to pass it. This motion, for something that seeks to make a permanent change to the criminal law of our country, was laid only late on Tuesday, and with it the Government are seeking to drive through every single stage in one afternoon. The months of debate that the Bill should have had are gone, and the line-by-line scrutiny and votes on amendments in Committee have all been taken away, so the first test of this law will be in a court room, where it may well collapse. The case for these powers was made well over a year ago. The House does not exist to waive through legislation; it exists to test it and to find weaknesses before our enemies do. A motion that forbids us that duty does not strengthen the Bill but imperils it. Therefore, with regret, we will seek to divide the House.

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10. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    We support the ambitions in the Bill, we want the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to be designated, and we want the Bill on the statute book, so the Government will find no enemies on our Benches today—only an Opposition determined to ensure that this law protects our people and our country. That is not a cause that belongs to those on one side of the House alone. The Government are right to bring forward this legislation, but they must now have the courage to get it right. The head of MI5 warned us that state-based threats have risen by more than a third in a single year, and that since 2022 our security services have disrupted more than 20 Iran-backed plots to kidnap or kill on British soil. That is 20 plots in our country, and against people who came to this country precisely because they believed it lay beyond the reach of the regimes they had fled. There is a national emergency of antisemitism in our country. Jewish families, many of whose parents and grandparents came to these shores fleeing persecution, now find themselves looking over their shoulders once more. They have endured threats, intimidation and violence on a scale that this House swore we would never see again, and Jewish lives have become smaller. The Bill is a step towards ending that, because much of the activity is fomented, funded and directed from beyond our borders. In the face of that national emergency, and attacks on our Jewish communities, a Bill that confronts hostile state activity on British soil is not just welcome but overdue, because a hostile state is not a gang or a terrorist cell. It poses a different challenge, operating through proxies, the hired gun and the useful idiot, recruited to sow chaos on our streets—but all backed by a foreign state with a flag, an embassy, a seat at the United Nations, and resources beyond the reach of most terrorist groups. That is what makes this Bill so difficult, and why it demands such care. If the Bill is found wanting, it will handicap our police and the security services in their work—work that is largely unseen and for which they are too rarely thanked. Those officers deserve a Parliament ready and willing to give them the tools required for the task. That is what the Bill is for and why, in principle, it is right. But—I am sure the whole House heard the “But” coming—the Bill has gaping deficiencies. It was laid in the House at the end of last Tuesday, and the Government want to carry out all its stages in one sitting by the end of today. A law on how we confront the gravest threat, short of outright and declared war, is being published, debated and railroaded through in a matter of days. That is a serious point, not a procedural complaint, because if we get the scrutiny wrong, our country will pay the price. We exist to find the weaknesses before our enemies do, and the Bill is meant to protect more people. More than a year ago, Jonathan Hall KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, set out in detail why this sort of legislation was needed, and the Government accepted all his recommendations. But then we saw nothing for a year. When the House is told there is no time to get this right, let me be clear that there was time—14 months, to be exact. There was not the will to use it, until a single day was chosen for reasons that have nothing to do with the tempo of the threat. I have called for this legislation for years, so no one will accuse us of wishing to delay it, but I say to the Secretary of State with complete candour that the threat did not arrive in a hurry and it will not be beaten by rushing today. There is no prize for being first to the statute book with a law that fails in the first courtroom that tests it. A Bill passed fast but built wrong is not a blow to hostile states; it is a gift to them. That is why we have tabled 13 amendments, not one of them to stall the Bill or to blunt it, but all to better protect us. I will take the House through the amendments in Committee, but let me now name the gravest gaps, so that we go into this first debate with our eyes open. First, extraordinarily, the Bill is gentler on hostile states than the law currently is on terrorists. Under the Bill as drafted, to convict a person who, for example, supports the IRGC, the Crown must clear a hurdle that it does not face when prosecuting someone for support for the very terrorist groups that the IRGC arms and funds. The IRGC, the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, is being handed protection in law that the terror proxy is denied. I can find no version of that argument that survives being said out loud. It should not be harder to prosecute the body that trains, funds and directs the terrorists than to prosecute the terrorist themselves. The provision on “prohibited purpose” sets a higher threshold, which lawyers for hostile actors will delight in. There is no reason beneficial to the UK for anyone to be engaging with the IRGC, so our amendments would simply bring the offence in line with the Terrorism Act 2000, from which it was copied and then weakened by the Government. The Secretary of State has just said that she wants hostile states to be treated the same way as terrorists, but that is not the case in this legislation. Secondly, the Bill risks making Britain a launchpad for hostile acts against our friends—a state terror hub. A cell that conspires here, be it in Manchester or London, while directing its activity at Baghdad, Beirut, Berlin, Brussels or even Hong Kong will slip the net because the harm was meant for another state’s streets and not ours—it is not prejudicial to the safety of the UK. That is not just a hole in our law but an affront to our allies. Britain will not become a safe harbour for plots against our friends due to inaction from our side, and that is why we have tabled an amendment to close that gap. Thirdly, as drafted, the Bill does not give the police the power to stop state-backed threats before they are enacted and therefore to secure a prosecution. Our terrorism law lets us intervene while an attack is still being planned, and that is among the most important powers our counter-terrorism police have. This Bill has no equivalent, so we could be powerless to charge a person who plans to assist the IRGC or another terrorist state organ unless they act. Our security services do not wish to clear up after plots; they wish to stop them and prosecute beforehand. Fourthly, the Bill has not learned the hardest lesson of the last 20 years, which is that the most common danger that our security services have to deal with is no longer the directed plot but the lone individual who absorbs a hostile body’s propaganda and acts on it without specific direction. A hostile state brings sophistication and reach to its propaganda, yet the Bill catches only those commissioned and instructed, rather than those who are inspired by the climate created by the hostile state. It guards us against the plot that is ordered, but leaves us open to one for which no order has been given. I will press the detail of these points in Committee, but I raise them now because they go to the heart of whether the Bill will work. I am afraid that Foreign Office lawyers, Home Office lawyers and Home Office officials have been unable to reassure me on any of these points. In fact, their answer—[Interruption.] If the Home Secretary wishes to intervene and clarify where I am wrong, she is very welcome to, but her own officials have said that it is “likely” the Bill may cope with these issues. I am not interested in “likely”. If someone is a traitor and they betray our country by supporting a hostile state, I want to make sure that they will be able to be prosecuted. Not one Government official has been able to reassure me or say that our concerns are wrong. I am glad that the Home Secretary of State finds that amusing. She is still very welcome to intervene.

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11. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    The reality is that an individual such as that would not be captured, because they would have diplomatic protections under the Vienna conventions. I admit that I have not been able to find an amendment that would correct that. That is why we have scrutiny of the House, because the shadow Front Bench is not the sole arbiter of where the gaps are. We would have been able to do this if we had had more time. However, I will use this as a chance to touch on the fact that there is a protection in the Bill that if a person acts “for or on behalf of, or holds office under, the Crown, or is in Crown employment”, they are protected against any interactions they may have with the IRGC. However, there is a slight concern, because that is followed by: “(whether or not they engage in the conduct in that capacity).” We would all like to say, hand on heart, that no one who works for our country as a civil servant—a Crown servant—would ever betray us, but technically, under this legislation, we could not prosecute anyone who did so, even if they did so outside their official capacity and were therefore genuinely working to abet another organisation. Again, if the Home Secretary would like to clarify how we would prosecute rogue civil servants, I would be happy to take an intervention from her—but there isn’t one. The Government decided that it was wise to attempt to pass such vital legislation in just one day, but we think that scrutiny is important because the Bill needs to work as well as it can. It is littered with omissions. I have already set out some of them. Additionally, Jonathan Hall said that we should give powers to the police to strip passports at the border, but the Government have not included that. It was proposed that there should be serious police protection orders, but they have removed them. We are gifting defences to would-be perpetrators, and the Bill should not be left as it is. These examples are only the gaping holes I could find in the two and a half days and late nights that I was given to find issues and table amendments. There is one more thing that the Government and the House must hold in mind as we fix our gaze on Tehran. This power is rightly organisation agnostic. We must not write a law for the IRGC alone. We are writing a law for every hostile state organ that comes after it, and the next may look nothing like the last. I think of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist party, of whose reach I have spoken often, and I hope the day comes when the Government turn this power on it. I doubt that that will happen, but I set out that ambition. That day will come only if we build this Bill for the second designation, the third and the fourth. As drafted, this legislation has been written with a single, already sanctioned organisation in mind, and that shows. There is no reference to sanctions read-across in the Bill because the IRGC is already sanctioned. The Government said, “We don’t need to do a read-across for sanctions because the IRGC is already sanctioned.” I am not just looking at the IRGC. There are more organisations that will need to be designated in future. The law must fit not just one adversary but all. Otherwise, it is a single-use power dressed up as a meaningful law. We support the principle of this Bill without reservation, and we will support it on Second Reading, but we will support it in the right way, with scrutiny, attention and determination to ensure that a rushed process does not result in us not meeting the scale of the threats we now face. It is vital that the Government engage today in good faith and listen to Members on all sides. Their failure so far to accept any amendments does not give me cause for optimism, but there is still time for them to accept some. The delay of the last 14 months should not be undone by haste today, because a half-built Bill will not redeem that time; it will simply compound the danger.

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12. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    That is precisely the point that I made in my opening speech. The Government are saying that it is not legitimate to engage with these bodies. Of course they want a carve-out to protect Crown servants, but that is explicitly included in the Bill. What they are doing, essentially, is creating a carve-out whereby people could say that it was legitimate for them to engage with the IRGC, and that somehow it would not be inherently dangerous or unbeneficial to engage with it. We are creating a threshold that I do not believe the courts will be able to meet, so we will not get the prosecutions that the Bill is designed to create.

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13. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    I have been very clear that we must stand by our Jewish communities. Yesterday, I sat down with the Jewish Leadership Council, the Community Security Trust and representatives of other organisations. They do not recognise the need to rush this Bill through the House, and they want us to scrutinise it in order to close the gaps that we discussed in that meeting. Although I wish we could have acted sooner, and I fully support the Bill and want to get it done, they want to get it done right, so that we do not have the gaps that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) has just set out.

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14. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    One of the powers that the Government could look to take—outside this Bill, because it is not within its scope—would be to give the Charity Commission the power to wind up a charity. It currently does not have that power, but we can be absolutely certain that states are creating brand new charities across our country specifically to infiltrate them. That might be my hon. Friend’s best course of action to get that done, and I am sure he would have the full support of most of the House for it.

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15. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    I welcome the Minister to her place for the first time, and I wish her every success in a vital role in our country and in the Government. Let me end where I began. We support this Bill and will not push its Second Reading to a vote, because its principle is sound. The power is overdue, and the Government are right to seek it, but let the House be in no doubt about what is being asked of us today. We are asked to take a Bill that was laid before Parliament only last week, and progress it through all stages in just one day. It is what the House would normally do over months. However, the threat is permanent. Haste is temporary, but the harm can be enduring. Our enemies will study and exploit that asymmetry, because bad laws made quickly are not easily redeemed, and the effect may be felt for years in courtrooms in cases that collapse, and in the quiet calculations of the very people we are trying to deter. Let me be clear about what is and what is not in question. I do not doubt the Government’s good faith. I do not doubt for one moment that the Ministers want to make our country safe, but good faith is not a working law, and good intentions do not disrupt plots. A Bill that reaches the statute book but fails in the courtroom is worse than no Bill at all, because it lets us tell ourselves that we have acted, while the threat goes untouched. The people hunted by proxies on our streets, and by hostile states, are owed more than sincerity; they are owed a law that holds in the police station, in the courtroom and at the border on the day it is tested. I know what the answer will be—that gaps can be dealt with on another day, in some future Bill, but this House has heard that before, and we have learned what “another day” means. I never took my Government’s word when they said that to me, as anyone will know who watched me damned well refuse to take it when I was Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I will not take it today, because “another day” is where good intentions are sent to be forgotten, and the country does not get to tell the assassin at the journalist’s door that the relevant clause is pencilled for the next Session. We have the Bill before us today, and we have amendments before us today; the only thing we are being asked to leave for later is the part that makes this Bill effective. I want to touch on the speeches made, starting with that by the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Mr Barros-Curtis), who rightly spoke about the importance of civil liberties. Our amendments would give clarity on some aspects of that issue, particularly the flying of flags and the wearing of uniforms. The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Dame Karen Bradley), was absolutely right to say that there has been insufficient scrutiny thus far. I am surprised that her Committee was offered a briefing only once this Bill had completed its passage through the House. I was offered a briefing only once, three days after the deadline for amendments had passed; however, we were able to rectify that. She is also right to raise questions about future misuse—an issue that I did not have time to go into, so I am grateful to her for touching on that. The hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), who I am sure will return to the Chamber in due course, touched on the Australian model. Under one of our amendments, assisting a designated body, or accepting money or any sort of benefit from it, would carry a sentence of up to 25 years. We believe that the sentence for supporting such a body, which is 14 years or a fine, should be increased for those actively assisting it, or receiving material benefit from it. My good friend my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) rightly set out the experience of our Jewish communities. They are terrified and they are suffering, and this Bill will go some way towards helping them. He also rightly touched on the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood is difficult to address, because it is not an organisation, although some like to talk about it as if it was. It must be tackled in the same way as an ideology such as Nazism, and we must find a way of dealing with it, because those who subscribe to its ideology are using funds to undermine this country. I also welcome his managing to include a discussion around AI in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mark Sewards) for raising the point about our need to stand by our Jewish communities. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright) was absolutely right about concerns around the need for engagement with the IRGC or similar bodies to be for “a prohibited purpose”. There is no good reason for that threshold at this point. He pointed out that there is a very clear distinction in the legislation between supporting on the one hand, and assisting or receiving material benefit on the other. The Government must explain why they are treating those separately. It was a pleasure to listen to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who has been clear-eyed for a long time about the threat from the IRGC and the Iranians. He is particularly right to raise concerns about charities and the way in which they are exploited. The openness of our society is a strength, but of course it also provides more points of entry for those seeking to harm us. He also rightly touched on the impact on our Jewish communities, as so many on both sides of the House did. It is because of that impact that our amendment requiring prosecution of those who fly flags or wear uniforms in support of these organisations must be considered. Even last weekend, we saw people marching through Jewish communities, flying the flags of proscribed organisations to intimidate and scare. I thank my right hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) for once again sharing the work he did with Jo Cox—I know that they were very good friends. I think we all remember where we were when we heard of her brutal murder, and this House has less heart as a result of her loss. My right hon. and gallant Friend was absolutely right to mention the Islamic Centre of England—we must give the Charity Commission the power to shut down such organisations. He was also right to touch on TikTok; few have as much expertise as he does in this area. It is a weaponised platform. China does not allow its own children to have access to it, and countries such as India have taken action to say that they will not have it in their country. We must protect our country. I now turn to the difficulty that the Government can no longer escape. The gaps in this Bill have been named; we will discuss them in more detail shortly in Committee, but they are on the amendment paper. If they are waved away tonight, not in ignorance but in full knowledge, no one will be able to call this haste any longer; it will have become a decision. It will be a decision to put in place weaker powers against hostile states than those we already hold against the terrorists those states fund, to leave a plot that is merely planned beyond the reach of the law, and to let inspired attackers fall through a gap that our terrorism law rightly closed two decades ago. It will, I fear, be a decision made to suit a timetable that has everything to do with internal party politics, rather than the threat. It will not be the Prime Minister’s decision alone—it will belong to every Member who walks through the Lobby to oppose the amendments tonight. I say directly to Government Members, to all those who have spoken so powerfully—I thank every Member for being so clear-eyed about the threats that the IRGC, the Chinese, the Russians and the North Koreans pose to our country—that they did not campaign for so long for a Bill containing these powers just for them to fall at the first legal hurdle. They did not demand action against hostile states just to hand them a gentler regime than we use for terrorists. The amendments before them are not Opposition traps; they are the protections we need, and I think many Government Members feel in their gut that they are needed. I came to this place because national security had been my career—tackling terrorist groups such as Daesh and tackling the Russian Government. I stand by the offer I made to the Government, in the spirit I always make it. I am not here to frustrate this Bill; I am here to complete it. Take the amendments and lay them as Government amendments, or lay them in the Lords. We do not want to make this party political; we just want to close the holes in the Bill. Accepting an amendment that ends the absurdity of having a higher bar for the sponsor than for the terrorist is the right thing to do. In Committee, I will take the House through all 13 amendments we have tabled, clause by clause, to highlight what stands between the Bill in its current state and what it should be. It is not ideology, not a desire to delay, and not politics; it is time that was not given. Strip away the procedure: two years from now, there will be a prosecution, and we need to ensure that we do not allow a defendant to be freed by words written in haste. In the end, this is not about us, the timetable, or whose name sits at the top of the amendment paper—it is about protecting our people and giving our police what they need. I support the Bill, which is why I have spent hours and hours over the past week trying to get it right. I urge the Government to work cross-party, accept our amendments—be it here or in the other place—and ensure we give our police and prosecutors the power that we all know they will not fully have without those amendments.

    Hansard source
16. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    Yes, the law specifically covers UK citizens who then travel abroad to commit a crime in support of these proscribed groups. However, it explicitly states that that does not apply if they are planning the crimes here in the UK and they happen abroad, unless it is prejudicial to the safety of the UK. It would be very straightforward for a lawyer to argue that something that takes place in Iraq is not prejudicial to the safety of the UK. When I met Foreign Office and Home Office lawyers last night, they said it was “likely” that that would be captured. I said, “I recognise that ‘likely’ is hopeful, but it is not absolute.” [Interruption.] The Minister will be able to answer in a moment. I am formally repeating the conversation that I had, a conversation that was requested, in which I was told that this was “likely”. That is very different from saying, “We will be able to prosecute, and we must be able to do so.” We should be wanting to pass clarifying amendments to put additional protections into law so that it is watertight, to ensure that the actions of anyone in Manchester planning something abroad will definitely be captured.

    Hansard source
17. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    I beg to move amendment 16, page 2, line 12, at end insert— “33AA Conduct relevant to designation (1) For the purposes of section 33A, a body is to be regarded as involved in foreign power threat activity if the Secretary of State reasonably believes that the body is, or has been, involved in— (a) transnational repression; (b) abusive lawfare; (c) sanctions evasion connected to a foreign power, a designated body or foreign power threat activity; (d) the concealment, movement or control of assets for or on behalf of a foreign power or a body acting for or on behalf of a foreign power; or (e) conduct which enables, facilitates, assists or conceals any activity falling within paragraphs (a) to (d). (2) For the purposes of this section, “transnational repression” means conduct carried out by, for, or on behalf of, or with the intention of benefiting, a foreign power, where the conduct has the purpose, or effect, of intimidating, coercing, punishing, silencing, controlling or retaliating against— (a) a person in the United Kingdom; (b) a United Kingdom national; (c) a person resident in the United Kingdom; (d) a person with a substantial connection to the United Kingdom; or (e) a family member, associate or representative of a person falling within paragraphs (a) to (d). (3) Conduct falling within subsection (2) includes, but is not limited to— (a) surveillance, harassment, intimidation, threats or coercion; (b) threats or reprisals against family members or associates overseas; (c) forced return, attempted forced return, abduction or attempted abduction; (d) misuse of criminal, civil, immigration, extradition or administrative processes; (e) misuse of Interpol notices or other international police cooperation mechanisms; (f) targeting of journalists, activists, human rights defenders, lawyers, political opponents, dissidents, whistleblowers or members of diaspora communities; and (g) conduct intended to conceal, enable or facilitate any activity falling within paragraphs (a) to (f). (4) For the purposes of this section, “abusive lawfare” means the use, or threatened use, of legal, regulatory, administrative, criminal, civil, immigration, extradition or other proceedings where the predominant purpose, or one of the predominant purposes, is to— (a) intimidate, silence, punish or deter a person from engaging in public interest speech, journalism, advocacy, democratic participation or human rights work; (b) deter investigation or scrutiny of corruption, human rights abuses, sanctions evasion, hostile state activity or foreign power threat activity; (c) impose disproportionate cost, delay, pressure or reputational harm on the target; or (d) protect, conceal or advance the interests of a foreign power or a body acting for or on behalf of a foreign power. (5) Proceedings, or threatened proceedings, are not abusive merely because they are brought by, or on behalf of, a foreign power, or a person connected to a foreign power. (6) For the purposes of this section, “sanctions evasion” means conduct which has the purpose, or effect, of enabling or facilitating the evasion, circumvention or frustration of— (a) sanctions imposed under the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018; (b) asset-freezing measures; (c) trade sanctions; (d) export controls; (e) immigration restrictions; (f) public procurement restrictions; or (g) any other restrictive measure imposed by or under an enactment for the purpose of protecting the safety or interests of the United Kingdom. (7) Nothing in this section is to be read as preventing legal advice, representation or advocacy, provided that such activity is not undertaken for the purpose of facilitating foreign power threat activity, transnational repression, sanctions evasion, abusive lawfare or the concealment of assets connected to a designated body.” This amendment would specify categories of conduct that may be regarded as involvement in foreign power threat activity for the purposes of designation.

    Hansard source
18. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    We have tabled 13 amendments, not to frustrate the Bill but to give it the necessary teeth. This Bill is soft where it should be hard, silent where it should speak, and blind where it should see. It is soft because, as drafted, it sets a higher bar to prosecute a person who supports the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps than a person who supports the terrorists whom the IRGC funds and commands; it is silent because whole categories of hostile conduct that our terrorism laws have criminalised for 20 years are simply missing; and it is blind because it has been written for one organisation on one timetable, with almost no provision for future designations. Good will is not enough, and we must close the holes that our enemies will exploit. The Government have lifted much of this legislation from section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000, yet they have added something that does not appear in the terrorism offence: a requirement that support was given for a prohibited purpose that was prejudicial to the safety or interest of the United Kingdom. Let me ask the Minister the simple question that this Bill invites: what level of support for the IRGC do the Government consider beneficial to the United Kingdom? The IRGC is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism, and if she agrees that there is no level of support for it that is beneficial to the UK, we can simply remove the prohibited purpose. She has just said from the Dispatch Box that she agrees that there is absolutely none, so let us act and amend the Bill. Under the Bill as drafted, to convict someone who supports the IRGC the prosecution must prove that their support was prejudicial to the safety or interest of the UK—an additional threshold—but that requirement does not exist in terrorism law. To convict someone who supports Hamas, Hezbollah or the Houthis—the proxies that the IRGC arms and funds—there is no such hurdle, so the body that inspires, organises arms and funds the terrorists is handed a protection in law that the terrorist himself is denied. That is the difference between a prosecution that succeeds and one that never gets off the ground, and I know something about prosecutions that fail at the last moment. Our amendment 3 simply removes the extra defence and brings this offence into line with the terrorism law from which it is drawn. I recognise that the Government may seek to argue that state entities enjoy protections in international law that terrorists do not, that we must set a higher bar than in equivalent terrorism legislation and that acting prejudicially to the UK’s interests is a reasonable test. However, state immunity protects the Iranian state from being sued or prosecuted in our courts, and it has nothing to do with the British resident who chooses to fund or promote the IRGC. We are not prosecuting Tehran; we are prosecuting the person here who does its work. The proposition that the Minister is left defending is that supporting the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism should be harder to prosecute than supporting the groups it sponsors. That is not a higher bar; it is international lawyers tying the hands of Ministers who are meant to be keeping us safe. On amendments 11 and 12, the same instinct to protect where we should prosecute runs through subsection (7) of proposed new section 17C, which makes a reasonable excuse a defence for accepting and keeping a material benefit from a designated body. That is not necessary, because there are already protections in the Bill for, for example, a lawyer or somebody who has no ability to know that funds were being taken. I recognise that such a provision is in the National Security Act 2023, but that is not a reason to repeat a weakness, and we have an opportunity to fix it. There is no excuse for keeping a hostile state’s money—not in this Bill and not in the Act it leans on. The sentencing gets the gravity backwards. As drafted, supporting a designated body and actively assisting one carries the same maximum sentence of 14 years or a fine.

    Hansard source
19. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    That is exactly the crux of the point I made in my speech on Second Reading. We should not set a higher threshold, because we will see prosecutions collapse for exactly that reason. We need to be arming prosecutors to go and get the justice that our country needs to better protect us. Turning to the maximum sentence of 14 years, actively doing a hostile state organ’s work—moving its money, carrying its information, committing violence on its behalf—is graver than just supporting it. It is a kind of treason, and I suspect most British people would call it that. We urge the Government to consider having a higher potential sentence for actively working with or receiving material benefit from a designated body. Amendment 7 would therefore raise that maximum sentence from 14 years to 25 years. That figure is not plucked from the air; it matches the Australian regime under which the IRGC was listed last November. As I have said, the Government may argue that the 14 year maximum sentence is taken from the NSA 2023, but let us raise the maximum sentence in both. After all, we are talking about treason. On amendment 10, I turn from where the Bill is too soft to where it says nothing at all. This is one of the gaps about which the Government have offered no answer, and I have looked hard for one. Section 5 of the Terrorism Act 2006 makes preparing an act of terrorism an offence, but this Bill contains no equivalent. As the Bill is drafted, a person can plan to assist a designated organ—to be straightforward, let us talk about the IRGC—and unless and until they commit the act, they have committed no offence at all under this Bill. However, the entire purpose of national security work is to prevent and disrupt before harm is done, not to see the plot and clear it up afterwards. We would not tolerate that vulnerability in terrorism law and we should not invent it here. Amendment 10 closes that gap, and lets police and prosecutors act while a plot is still on the drawing board. If the Minister believes preparation is already caught elsewhere, I would welcome her showing me where, but I have yet to be shown that in the briefings I have had. Amendment 13 recognises that the gap left by preparation is widened by a second omission: self-directed and inspired actors. The Bill misses entirely the person who is never directly commissioned or directed, but who absorbs a hostile state’s propaganda and acts on it alone. Twenty years of counter-terrorism has taught us this lesson at a terrible cost. The gravest or most likely threat is no longer the directed plot, but the individual radicalised online who acts on their own. Hostile states bring the resources, reach and sophistication of states to that propaganda, arguably with a greater inspiring power than any terrorist group can muster. We saw that with the bots that screamed for independence in Scotland and fell silent the moment Tehran’s internet went down, something my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge (Tom Tugendhat) raised in his speech earlier. That is just a small insight into the ways they are invested in turning us against each other. A Bill that catches only the commissioned and directed is fighting the last war and leaving us dangerously exposed to the next. Amendment 13 captures those inspired to act by a designated body, but not directed by them. I turn now to the most dangerous omission of all, which we touched on in the wind-ups on Second Reading, and the omission that would worry our allies and partners, which amendment 8 seeks to address. As drafted, the Bill captures activity in the UK and activity abroad that is “prejudicial” to the UK. It does not catch activity planned here on British soil to be perpetrated abroad where there is no ability to prove that it is prejudicial to the interests of the UK where there is no harm to the UK. Activity by the IRGC in France, Iran or Bosnia, or by the Chinese in Hong Kong, may not be directly prejudicial to the interests of the UK, so again we are adding an unnecessary threshold. But if it is perpetrated here, be it in Manchester, London or anywhere else, we must be able to prosecute those responsible. In plain terms, the gap was turning the UK into a base for state terrorism: a cell here in Britain planning a campaign of intimidation against a journalist in Dublin on behalf of the IRGC, or a network running sabotage operations in Germany. Arrested and charged, their defence writes itself. If the act was not to take place here in the UK, you cannot argue that it was prejudicial to UK safety. The law does not like ambiguity. We should not leave prosecutors having to argue that an attack on Dublin or Berlin was also somehow an attack on London. Amendment 8 closes that gap directly, so that planning hostile activity from British soil is caught wherever that activity is aimed. If the Government are confident that that scope is already reached, they lose nothing by putting it beyond doubt. Far better to write the law clearly today than to watch a case fall apart on that very point. The next omission is propaganda itself. Since 2006, it has been an offence to disseminate publications that promote terrorism. The Bill extends no equivalent protection against the propaganda of designated states. We have heard colleagues today talk about publications such as Press TV which, shamefully, former Members of this House appear on and are paid to have shows on. Two of the principal weapons of hostile states are the propaganda that recruits and the disinformation that divides. The Chinese Communist party pushes propaganda and disinformation through the United Front Work Department. I hope these powers will reach it one day, but amendment 14 brings designated bodies within the same standard applied to terrorist publications for 20 years, because I do not in any way think that the Government think that IRGC propaganda should have more latitude than that of a proscribed terrorist group. Next is an omission that many living in our country, especially our Jewish community, will find the most difficult. Under section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, it is an offence to display in public the insignia of a proscribed organisation. It is the power that we rely on to take Hamas flags, Hezbollah banners and the symbols of Hizb ut-Tahrir off our streets. The Bill as drafted contains no equivalent provision whatever, so if the amendment is not accepted by the Government, either now or in the other place, the flag of the IRGC may fly lawfully on a British street, glorifying every stabbing, every attack on our Jewish communities, every kidnap plot and every assassination attempt that the regime has directed here. How do we look the people who are being hunted in the eye and tell them that the banner of their hunter is welcome on our streets? The Government may say that criminalising the display of state symbols brings lawful state activity under UK criminal law, contrary to diplomatic convention, and that by reciprocity, hostile states could criminalise the Union Jack and UK uniforms abroad, exposing our personnel and dual nationals. I have taken the time to consider that. Yes, state immunity protects foreign states in our courts, but it should not and does not dictate what a resident of this country may do on British pavements.

    Hansard source
20. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    The Minister gives the example of a diplomat, and she is right that our diplomats in Tehran will need to engage with the IRGC—it is nonsense to suggest that they would not be able to do so—but that is why there is a specific exception for that in the Bill. Proposed new section 17A(5) refers to a person who “acts for or on behalf of, or holds office under, the Crown, or is in Crown employment (whether or not they engage in the conduct in that capacity).” As I have mentioned, I am concerned that that means that anyone who is a traitor and works for the civil service would have protections under any circumstances, but it means that we do not need that additional threshold, because diplomats are already specifically protected in the Bill at another point.

    Hansard source
21. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    I fully recognise the Minister’s point that she is trying to align the provisions with those in the National Security Act, but as per my argument earlier, let us improve the National Security Act while we are at it. The Minister says that the question is whether she is minded to make the change; I say she should be minded to. If someone actively assists or materially benefits from a hostile state while committing treason, it is absolutely right that they should get a tougher sentence than that for just flying a flag or supporting a hostile state. Those acts are still heinous, but a far worse crime has been committed. I ask the Minister to consider making the change when the Bill is in the Lords.

    Hansard source
22. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to want this. However, there is already a requirement under law for Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, to review all terrorism legislation and related legislation, including the National Security Act 2023—which this would fall under—every single year, and to report back to Parliament. Hopefully the hon. Gentleman will be reassured that this is already covered in law, and that there is a specific requirement.

    Hansard source
23. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill. Clause 2 Offences relating to designated bodies Amendment proposed: 3, page 3, line 8, leave out from “body” until end of line 9.—(Alicia Kearns.) This amendment and Amendments 4 to 6 would remove the additional defence of supporting a designated body for a non-prohibited purpose. Question put, That the amendment be made.

    Hansard source
24. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    The Bill asks how our country confronts the greatest threat it faces: states that behave like terrorists. We support the Bill, and have today set out its weaknesses—the places where, as drafted, it is found wanting. We tabled 13 amendments and new clauses, with not one designed to delay the Bill, not one designed to wreck it and, tonight, not one accepted—not a clause, not a line, not one additional defence for our country. There are two ways for a Government to show their contempt for the House: they may deny it time or deny it influence. They may rush this House or overrule it. This Government have chosen both.

    Hansard source
25. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alicia Kearns

    National Security (State Threats) Bill

    I am not sure that anyone has disputed that Jonathan Hall backs the Bill. I had a lengthy call with him to discuss the gaps in the Bill, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman has not had. I will not share a private conversation, but I encourage the hon. Gentleman to have a similar call with Jonathan Hall to discuss those gaps. We are here in this place to find the gaps while they can still be mended. That is the whole of our purpose, but we were not permitted to fulfil it today because scrutiny was declined. I have to admit that it feels like our suggestions were not even given due consideration. So I must tell the House what in the Bill now leaves this Chamber unaltered. The sponsor remains more gently treated in law than the proxies that it arms. The world’s largest sponsor of terrorism keeps a protection denied to its terrorist proxies. The self-directed actor—the lone individual that our terrorism law learned to tackle, at great and terrible cost, two decades ago—will fall through a gap that we were forbidden to close. Britain may be used as a base from which to plot against our friends in Dublin, Berlin or Brussels, or even those in Hong Kong and Tehran. The flag of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps may still be flown, lawfully, on a British street, glorifying every threat against our Jewish communities that the regime has directed here. [Interruption.] The Minister may say, “Not necessarily,” but she specifically ruled out our amendment on the basis that we should not prevent members of the Iranian diplomatic corps from wearing uniforms here. The Bill does not apply to members of the diplomatic corps; it applies specifically to UK persons. That is therefore still the case and there is no protection against seeing those flags walked past Jewish people’s homes. In Committee, I asked the Government how we look the people the regime has hunted in the eye and tell them that the banner of the hunter is still welcome on our streets. Tonight, I have no answer to offer them. A law passed in good faith but built wrongly fails as surely as one that is passed in bad faith. When a prosecution comes, it will turn not on the speeches given today, the Government’s good intentions or our warnings, but on what a defendant did. When that day comes and there is a gap that was identified in this House today that could have been closed in an afternoon, let the record show that it could have been mended. The Bill now passes to the other place, and I have every confidence that their lordships will give it the scrutiny it deserves. We will not oppose the Bill tonight. We will support it, not because it delivers the full protections it should, but because a flawed shield is still a shield of some form and the men and women that the Bill is designed to protect cannot be left with nothing. We support it, having placed on the record of this House what was refused and whose hand refused it. The threat we face is patient, it is ruthless and it will not be deterred by a law that we were too rushed to finish and that the Government were too proud to mend. I have supported this Bill at every stage, and it is because of that that I lament what the Bill could have been and that the House was given a single afternoon to try to get it right. I hope this Bill is as watertight as the Government assert, but if they wish to be absolute and to remove risk or ambiguities, we ask those in the other place to shut down any risk that the shield this aims to be might let even one traitor succeed in harming our nation. I hope they will do that on the basis of the way we have put forward our amendments: in the national interest.

    Hansard source
26. 17 Jun 2026·Parliament·Alberto Costa

    Steel Tariffs

    We have talked about large and small businesses being affected, but my constituent Joe, who is a sales director in an SME likely to be affected, is deeply concerned about his livelihood. I have a very simple question for the Minister: if he is taking on board industry feedback, will he publish detailed information on safeguard quota allocations and anticipated utilisation rates before those measures come into place on 1 July?

    Hansard source
27. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Victoria Atkins

    Thames Water

    First, I echo the Secretary of State’s comments in remembrance of her dear colleague Jo Cox. Her loss was felt across the House and across party political lines, and I send all of our very best wishes to her loved ones and friends. I thank you, Mr Speaker, and I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement and for a briefing call on this announcement. As you know, I have been trying for months to coax the Secretary of State to the Dispatch Box to explain major events within her portfolio, from the Government’s EU handover negotiations to their lack of support for farmers. Finally, she emerges into the light. We all assumed that it would be to announce progress towards resolving the many issues facing Thames Water and its customers; instead, it is to make a statement about a letter to the regulator. There is nothing new in this statement—no change in the situation of Thames Water, and still no certainty for billpayers. Thames Water has repeatedly failed its customers and the environment with a record of pollution, leakage and chronic under-investment. The latest figures lay this bare. The company is responsible for around a third of the nation’s worst pollution incidents, even as billpayers face steep increases in their bills. These are not abstract failures; untreated sewage has been poured into the rivers and chalk streams that local communities cherish, while customers are asked to pay more for less. The priority now must be a financial arrangement that keeps the company afloat and protects billpayers and taxpayers. While the Secretary of State’s Government are in chaos, paralysed by the Prime Minister’s weakness and the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s leadership ambitions, Thames Water continues to fail. If no deal is reached, Thames Water could collapse—again, at enormous cost to taxpayers. The Secretary of State has said that she does not want a scenario where customers “pick up the bill for the company’s failures”, but when the Conservatives tried to amend the Water (Special Measures) Act to prevent consumers from being on the hook in the event of a company going into special administration and tried to impose a lending ratio limit on water companies to prevent this situation from happening again, Labour voted it down. Why? I also remember that under the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), an investor pulled out of a previous rescue deal, partly due to political risk—in other words, the former Secretary of State had talked himself out of a deal. How is the current Secretary of State avoiding the failures of the now Secretary of State for Housing? There are those who are urging nationalisation, a word that is thrown around carelessly by Labour Back Benchers and by Reform—in fact, I think I heard it just now. None of them ever explains that nationalisation would be extremely expensive, potentially costing the taxpayer up to £20 billion. For those who are wondering what that means, it is roughly equivalent to the defence funding shortfall we have heard so much about in recent days. However, there are reasonable concerns about how Thames Water’s failures will be managed during the Government’s restructuring of the sector and the abolition of Ofwat, so can the Secretary of State please confirm that the existing penalty regime will not be downgraded or diluted, which has been briefed to the newspapers? What safeguards will be put in place to ensure Thames Water remains fully responsible for its environmental and operational failures? How will the Government ensure that billpayers are not left bearing the cost of past mismanagement, and have they offered or begun any process to recommend an alternative deal? Ministers have still not explained how investment in the sector will actually be paid for. Indeed, the Secretary of State’s predecessor had to admit that so-called private water industry investment is in reality paid for by higher bills, and the Secretary of State has repeated that today. Families already struggling with the cost of living should not become the safety net for a company that rewarded its executives while letting its infrastructure crumble. This is an important moment for the Government to show that they can balance financial stability with strong regulatory oversight and put accountability and the interests of billpayers and the environment at the heart of water reform. The Government must now deliver on the big promises they made during the election for the water sector. Public trust in the water industry is already at rock bottom.

    Hansard source
28. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Julian Lewis

    Thames Water

    It is tempting to say that there is a particularly bad smell about this company, but that would be a statement of the obvious. Although I am not normally a friend of nationalisation, I have a feeling that this company is on a one-way journey to bankruptcy. Am I right in presuming that if that point ever arose, there would be no question of compensating shareholders for a bankrupt company that eventually had to be taken over by the state?

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29. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Wright

    Community Hospitals

    Order. I thank the hon. Lady for opening the debate, and remind all Back-Bench colleagues who wish to speak that they should continue to bob—not right now, but as the debate continues—so that I know they want to speak. I am hoping we can avoid any time limits this morning. We have five Back Benchers wishing to contribute, and if they limit themselves to about seven or eight minutes each, we should be fine.

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30. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Wright

    Community Hospitals

    I am grateful to all Back-Bench contributors to the debate. We now move to the Front-Bench speeches, beginning with the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

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31. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Jeremy Hunt

    Social Media Disinformation

    In 2017 there was appalling ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, and Facebook was used to recruit civilian death squads. Atrocities continue to this day. The UK holds the pen on Myanmar at the UN. At the General Assembly this year, will the Foreign Secretary hold a high-level meeting to look at this issue and shine a spotlight on the human rights abuses that continue to this day in Myanmar?

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32. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Iain Duncan Smith

    Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

    The hon. Lady was very prescient then, and it has got worse since. There was lots of talk under the previous Administration about Downing Street cars being searched for IOTs. We know about the huge imports from bad actors, such as China and other countries—that is really what we should be worried about. Many of them contain kill switches, which would devastate some of our industry, such as energy. That would be a disaster. She is right to have raised the issue and to continue to raise it.

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33. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Iain Duncan Smith

    Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

    It is always a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), who talks common sense most of the time she gets up, which may be one of the reasons why she is still on the Back Benches. If we listened more to those who know something about things, rather than talking as though we know things, and saying things that are invariably wrong, we in Parliament would obviously be better off. The greatest threat we face is that bad actors out there are using this level of technology to get across to countries such as the UK. This is not a party political point, because both Governments have failed to face up to it to the degree that they should have—that is why this Bill is welcome, but it is not everything, as the hon. Lady says—but we think that we can treat the bad actors as though they were normal actors in a commercial sense. However, China is using slave labour to undercut markets and regularly puts IOTs into cars. It gets away with it because we think that we need China more than it needs us. That is the big problem. The hon. Lady is right to raise it, and I congratulate her for again making an excellent speech. I will in due course beg to move my amendment on anti-refoulement, because although this is a good Bill, some bits are missing and others have been skated over. This is one area about which we will come, again and again, to regret that we had not done more. The issue is British citizens abroad ending up under the rule of Governments that do not believe in the concept of freedom before the law, in a fair trial as part of that process, or in habeas corpus, which is an English common law right that has gone around the world. The amendment seeks to prohibit data sharing with jurisdictions that cannot guarantee a fair trial. It maintains the current legal approach, which generally restricts the sharing of sensitive information outside the EU. Currently, information sharing of a type enabled by proposed new regulation 6, which is in clause 18, is prohibited outside the EU. The proposed new regulation is therefore weaker than what is going on in the European Union. Sadly, it paves the way for such sharing, rather than restricting it. The amendment therefore seeks to prohibit information sharing with places where the Secretary of State believes that a fair trial simply cannot be obtained. It would require the Secretary of State to consult civil society and human rights experts to identify jurisdictions—this would apply universally and not just to China, although China is a big player in this—where the right to a fair trial cannot be guaranteed, with all decisions subject to mandatory annual reports to Parliament. That is important: Parliament should be part of this and make decisions about whether it agrees with the Government. Beijing is a good example. It has frequently used seemingly legitimate criminal complaints to target dissidents. Proposed new regulation 6, if unamended, therefore raises transnational repression risks rather than solving them. The amendment is necessary to close that loophole in the Bill, which currently fails to anticipate politically motivated requests from such totalitarian states. I often say that we should stop speaking about countries such as China, Russia, Iran and North Korea as authoritarian states. They are not authoritarian states; they are totalitarian states. Why do I say that? Because everything in those countries is owned and run by the state. Authoritarian states are often dictatorships, but they are not the same thing as totalitarian states. They are brutal and nasty, but totalitarianism is a complete system. This is about totalitarian states. Proposed new regulation 6 is predicated upon helping other Governments obtain justice. The argument of my amendment 3 is that—quite apart from the transnational repression risks—justice as we understand it cannot be served in a country where essentially there is no rule of law, no right to a fair trial, and a judicial system that serves the party. As I often say, it is a matter of pride that perhaps the greatest gift this country has given to the world is the concept of freedom in the face of the law. That is the point I made earlier: habeas corpus came from English common law and dominates so much of the free world’s thinking. It was not until the 1970s that some countries in Europe actually practised habeas corpus, so it was not just the case that it was produced by Britain; it was also owned by many other countries. That is what is at risk here, and we should be the greatest defenders of that right to a fair trial anywhere in the world. Let us take a few of these countries as examples for why amendment 3 is needed. Let us look at China. Requests were made by authoritarian states—totalitarian states in this case—regarding Interpol notices, as has been the recent pattern, and this happens a lot. The People’s Republic of China and other countries have a troubling recent history of very significant transnational repression, hounding dissidents in the UK and cloaking their political persecution in superficially legitimate criminal charges. The PRC is not alone in requesting information on political opponents in the UK, and it does it a lot. We can confidently speculate that China will make requests of the UK almost immediately should the Bill be passed. Let me look at the single biggest case that confronts us in China at the moment: that of Jimmy Lai. He is a British citizen. I cannot tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, how endlessly in debates, even under the previous Administration, we had to fight to get the Government to state that he is a British citizen, not a dual nationality citizen. He is a British citizen, is proud to be British, has been British all his life and has only ever owned a British passport—he has never been a Chinese citizen with a Chinese passport. The special rapporteur on torture, Alice Jill Edwards, in her 2024 and 2025 reports, specifically flagged concerns that evidence obtained through torture is still widely admitted in Chinese courts. She also expressed concerns in late 2024 regarding the case of Jimmy Lai in Hong Kong, noting that evidence allegedly secured through torture in mainland China was and is being used in the trial. On 15 November 2024, the United Nations working group on arbitrary detention published its opinion that Jimmy Lai is “unlawfully and arbitrarily detained” and called for his immediate release. The proposed new regulation will not go far enough and therefore does not deal with this, and that is what my amendment 3 is all about. On the risk of extradition to China from safe third countries, currently the UK does not have a bilateral extradition treaty with the People’s Republic of China, and it has suspended its bilateral extradition treaty with Hong Kong—something that many of us were calling out for at the time in 2020. In 2025, proposed changes to the Extradition Act 2003 would allow co-operation between UK and Hong Kong authorities on a “case-by-case ad hoc basis”. The trouble with that is that it begins to open the door. The risk of sharing NIS data is not confined to the physical removal of individuals; it also poses a profound threat to national security and the safety of the diaspora within the UK—how often have we heard about that? These totalitarian states not only seek to extradite dissidents, they seek to silence them through transnational repression and to compromise the UK’s own digital resilience. Sharing NIS data with an adversarial jurisdiction is akin to providing a road map for a state-sponsored cyber-attack. For dissidents and human rights defenders living in the UK, NIS data can be used to demonise and de-anonymise their activity. This information is frequently used to identify and harass family members remaining in their home country, to conduct targeted phishing and surveillance against the individual’s private devices, and to coerce the individual into becoming an informant under the threat of criminal charges based on the shared technical data. Let me deal with another case: that of Ryan Cornelius in the United Arab Emirates. Ryan Cornelius is a British citizen who has been arbitrarily detained in Dubai for 18 years, despite well-documented evidence of an unfair trial and inhuman treatment. Ryan’s detention has been found to be arbitrary by the UN working group on arbitrary detention. His case arose from a high-profile financial dispute involving loans connected to a major Dubai development project. Although he and his associates had reportedly complied with restructuring agreements with Dubai Islamic Bank, he was arrested without warning, transferred by plain-clothed officers to a police facility, where he was held incommunicado, denied access to a lawyer and subjected to aggressive interrogation. During this time, he was coerced into signing documents in Arabic—a language he does not understand—under the false premise that this would give him his release.

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34. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Iain Duncan Smith

    Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill

    I am not quite certain that I understand the Minister’s reasons for why he cannot accept my amendment, tweak it or work with it in the other place. The reality is that with this Bill, we are opening the door in a way that we would not have otherwise done to the use of information that may predicate a failure for some British citizen sitting in a country where the rule of law does not protect them in the courts. The Government are taking a risk of making it worse, not better. While the Minister agrees to some degree with the principle of what I am saying, surely this is the time to put it right in the Bill.

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35. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Desmond Swayne

    Lifelong Learning: “University of the Air” White Paper

    Patrick Hurley, you have two minutes to wind up.

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36. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Desmond Swayne

    West Midlands Police: Government Support

    Order. The sitting is suspended for 45 minutes.

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37. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Desmond Swayne

    Access to Dental Services: West Sussex

    Order. I haven’t any proposals.

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38. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Sir Andrew Mitchell

    Ebola Outbreaks

    Thank you, Mr Speaker, for your wonderful words about Jo Cox and for the brilliant debate we had last Thursday as the main business of the House. Following acknowledgment by the Development Minister, the noble Baroness Chapman, that Labour’s horrific development and aid cuts undermine the response to the Ebola crisis, and that funding is only 5% of the help provided for the last Ebola emergency a decade ago, will the Government make it clear that these pandemics cross borders and are a serious danger to all of us unless they are contained? Is that not the essence of the case for international development?

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39. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Simon Hoare

    West Bank: Settler Activity

    I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s use of the term “settler terrorism”. She is absolutely right; the phrase “settler violence” does not do justice to what is happening. She will be aware that settler terrorism is often enabled and encouraged, or at best a blind eye is turned, by both the Israeli police and the IDF. She will know the damage perpetrated by that terrorist activity. If Israel wishes to remain the villa in the jungle it has always wished to be, can she at least remind her Israeli Government counterparts of the importance of the rule of law and the separation of the duties of the IDF and the police when it comes to protecting the citizens of both Israel and Palestine?

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40. 16 Jun 2026·Parliament·Priti Patel

    UK-US Relationship

    I echo your sombre words about Jo Cox, Mr Speaker. Her memory and her family are in our thoughts today. The United Kingdom’s long-standing strategic, security, defence and intelligence relationship with the United States is crucial for us and for our allies. Can the Foreign Secretary tell us what role Britain has played in the negotiations between the United States and the middle east in relation to Iran, given our historic links to partners in the region? Have the Government seen the US-Iran agreement, and what is Britain’s role in shaping future foreign policy and the security architecture in the middle east?

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