Article for ConservativeHome by former MP and
journalist
The Government is preparing to overhaul Britain’s security laws,
utilising work done on them by Sajid
Javid when he was Home Secretary, who in turn will then have
seen research by Policy Exchange.
We wait to see what the legislation contains, but the plans seem
to fall into three parts. First, an overhaul of the Official
Secrets Act. Second, an updating of the espionage laws, which
will be carried out largely with state actors, such as China and
Russia, in mind. Third, a new treason offence.
Its origins lie in the return to Britain of Islamist terrorists
who fought abroad with ISIS. Ministers believe that the present
legal framework isn’t fit for purpose if prosecutions are to be
successful. The recent Court of Appeal judgement on Shamima
Begum’s case doubtless explains why we are reading about revised
laws now.
At any rate, the original Policy Exchange proposal was supported
by a former Home Secretary, ; a former head of
MI5, Lord Evans; a former Lord Chief Justice of England and
Wales, , and former head
of counter-terrorism at Scotland Yard, Richard Walton.
, one of the authors of that report, Aiding the
Enemy, was out and about in the Sunday Times
yesterday, concentrating largely on espionage – and writing as he
did so “pinstriped fixers, lawyers and silver-tongued svengalis
are pocketing money” are doing the bidding of hostile foreign
governments.
Meanwhile, Javid was busy in the Mail on
Sunday, covering the same themes, and arguing that we
need to repurpose “our ancient treason laws to cover Britons who
operate on behalf of a hostile nation or go abroad to fight
alongside terrorist groups”.
That would cover Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as ISIS and Al
Qaeda. It will doubtless be argued that Britain shouldn’t be in
the business of legislating for loyalty oaths, or giving terror
groups the same status as foreign governments.
But if you think about it, the loyalty oath claim is a red
herring, since what would be required is not a pledge of
allegiance to Britain, but the shunning of terror aimed at our
troops or civilians. (The form of words that Javid used would
appear to cover fighting alongside terror groups, period –
whether against British citizens or not.)
We expect that it will also be claimed that a new treason offence
will be “bad for community relations” – i.e: that British Muslims
will be opposed to it, though it will certainly go down well
among others in Blue Wall seats, as we must now call them, and
elsewhere.
A modernised treason offence would certainly be to the point.
Islamist extremism has no room within it for attachment to nation
states – what matters is the worldwide community of Muslims, led
from its present ignorance, as the extremists see it, to the
politicised and ideological version of Islam which they
themselves propagate.
(This use of religion rather than nationality as a catch-all
definer explains why they identify Jews with Israel, by the way –
despite the fact that not all Jews live there and many aren’t
Zionists at all. Hence the Hypercacher kosher
supermarket siege in Paris in 2015, and the 2008 massacre at a
Jewish outreach centre in Mumbai.)
We anticipate, too, that forcing lobbyists who work for foreign
governments to register; toughening up rules on registering
interests in the Lords or work undertaken by former Ministers,
and slowing, say, the flow of Chinese money into our universities
and civil society will also be resisted. A sign of how much new
measures are needed.
