Amendments laid to strengthen National Security Bill

The government has today put forward its proposed amendments to the National Security Bill ahead of the Lord’s report stage.

This follows extensive engagement with interested parties and stakeholders, to further strengthen the legislation.

The National Security Bill brings together vital new measures to further protect national security and modernise existing laws. It introduces a foreign influence registration scheme (FIRS), to compel those acting for a foreign power to declare any political influencing activity – to strengthen the resilience of the UK political system against covert foreign influence.

For the first time, the bill makes it a criminal offence to be a spy – by modernising existing legislation to capture anyone conducting espionage, whilst protecting legitimate activity, including from journalists.

Amendments have been introduced following consultation with expert opinion from the fields of business, media and law.

The amendments to this bill include:

1. Focusing the foreign influence registration scheme to where threats to undermine the UK political systems are most acute: foreign powers. The revised political tier will now require the registration of ‘political influence activities’ where they are to be carried out within the UK at the direction of any foreign power.

2. Protecting journalistic freedoms by clarifying the scope of offences and requirements in part 1 to be clearer that we will protect all legitimate activity. This includes amending the language in the phrase ‘knows, or ought reasonably to know’ to put beyond doubt that it would need to be proved what an individual knew - and eliminating the possibility an individual acting unwittingly could be captured. This applies in every instance that the phrase appears in the bill, including in the foreign power condition. Further drafting changes have been made, including to clarify the scope of the offence of assisting a foreign intelligence service, and the meaning of ‘foreign power threat activity’.

3. A more targeted approach to amending the Serious Crime Act (SCA) 2007 to provide legal protections to the UK intelligence community and armed forces. Now, a defence has been added to the existing offences in the Serious Crime Act, where an individual can say their actions were necessary for the proper exercise of a function of an intelligence service or the armed forces. This new approach will still ensure an individual who acts outside of their organisation’s proper functions would remain criminally liable for any wrongful acts.

4. The introduction of oversight for part 1 of the bill.

Tom Tugendhat, Security Minister said:

This government will do everything in its power to protect the British people from hostile foreign activity and keep our country safe.

The National Security Bill will play a critical role in this. It will give our intelligence agencies the tools they need to protect us and contains important new measures to fight back against hostile activity from foreign states.

These amendments will focus the bill on the most serious threats we face.

Lord Andrew Sharpe, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State with responsibility for the National Security Bill said:

The National Security Bill is vital to deter actions which often take place in the shadows.

This legislation will help us deter, detect and disrupt those state actors who seek to harm the UK by covertly targeting our national interests, sensitive information, trade secrets and democratic way of life.

Along with the above, the National Security Bill will modernise our laws and introduce ways to tackle new state threats, such as foreign interference which will make it an offence to improperly interfere with the UK’s democracy and civil society through disinformation or an attack on our electoral processes. Attempting to sabotage our critical national infrastructure – either by damaging a government or military building or by directing a ransomware attack – will be a specific offence when conducted for or on behalf of a foreign state.

The bill will also bring additional powers and measures to tackle the threat from terrorism. For instance, the bill allows the courts to freeze or seize damages if there is a real risk that money will be used for the purposes of terrorism.

The bill will reach report stage in the Lord’s on 1 March and 7 March, where it will receive further scrutiny ahead of third reading. The bill will then return to the House of Commons as per the Parliamentary process and become law later in 2023.

Further information can be found in our National Security Bill factsheet.

Other amendments published on 23rd February 2023:

1. Parliamentary privilege: to clarify that the bill does not intend to interfere with Parliamentary privilege, the phrase ‘proceedings of Parliament’ has been removed from FIRS. For the offence of foreign interference, there is now reference to informal meetings of members of either House which makes it clear that privilege is not interfered with while maintaining the operational need to capture situations where groups like APPGs may be targeted by hostile foreign state actors.

2. Assisting a foreign intelligence service: amendments to make the scope of the offence more specific, while adding to and clarifying the defences available.

3. Introducing an exemption to civil legal aid measures for convicted terrorists: so that the measures will not apply where the offender is a victim of domestic abuse applying for legal aid related to certain family and housing matters.

4. Reducing damages for terrorist claims: amendments to clarify the types of national security cases in which the compensation for people involved in terrorism can be reduced.