National Security
Bill
“Measures will be introduced to support the security services and
help them protect the United Kingdom.”
The purpose of the Bill is to:
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● Further protect our national security, the safety of
the British public and our vital interests from those who
seek to do the UK harm, in line with the manifesto commitment
to ensure the security services have the powers they need.
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● Undertake the biggest overhaul of state threats
legislation for a generation to provide our world class law
enforcement and intelligence agencies with an enhanced suite
of tools, powers and protections to tackle the full range of
evolving state threats.
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● Prevent the exploitation of our civil legal aid and
civil damage payments by convicted terrorists.
The main benefits of the Bill would be:
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● Enhancing our ability to deter, detect and disrupt
state actors who target the UK, preventing spies from harming
our strategic interests and preserving the integrity of our
society.
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● Restricting the ability of convicted terrorists to
receive civil legal aid and ensuring that terrorists cannot
gain civil damages which might fund terrorism.
The main elements of the Bill are:
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● Reforming existing espionage laws (Official Secrets
Acts 1911, 1920 and 1939) to provide effective legislation to
tackle modern threats.
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● Bringing in new offences to tackle state-backed
sabotage, foreign interference, the theft of trade secrets
and assisting a foreign intelligence service.
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● We will introduce a Foreign Influence Registration
Scheme requiring individuals to register certain arrangements
with foreign governments to deter and disrupt state threats
activity in the UK, bringing the UK into line with similar
schemes in the United States of America and Australia.
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● Providing powers to allow state threats to be tackled
at an earlier stage, by expanding the ability to prosecute
people for preparing activities, and for other offences that
are committed by those acting for a foreign state to be
labelled as state threats and sentenced accordingly.
● Introducing new civil measures to use as a tool of last resort
where prosecution of a hostile actor is not possible. This
includes the ability to restrict a state threat actor from access
to certain places, or where they can work and study, preventing
any harm from being done where there is no other option to
prosecute or disrupt the activity.
Territorial extent and application
● The Bill will extend and apply across the UK.
Key facts
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● Our espionage laws date back to 1911 and do not
account for how threats to our national security have evolved
and diversified over time. Russia’s action in Salisbury,
China’s attempts to interfere in our democracy and persistent
effort by foreign actors to steal intellectual property
generated in the UK demonstrate why we need new laws to help
the intelligence agencies and police detect, deter, disrupt
and prosecute state threat actors seeking to harm the UK.
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● This legislation will further support the extensive
previous and ongoing cross- government efforts to counter
state threats, including the recent Economic Crime
(Transparency and Enforcement) Act 2022, in light of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Economic Crime and
Corporate Transparency Bill also being introduced in this
session.
