---

National Security Strategy

My Lords, my right honourable friend the Minister of State for Crime, Policing and Terrorism answered an Urgent Question earlier in the other place. With the agreement of the usual channels, it is being repeated in this place as a Statement, as is the practice. The Statement is as follows: "Mr Speaker, at 10 o’ clock this morning my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made a Written Ministerial Statement, laying before the House this year’s update to the national security strategy. Accompanying the strategy update is the first national cybersecurity strategy for the United Kingdom. Last week, the Government presented to the House the Digital Britain strategy. This country is well placed to take advantage of the opportunities of the digital age. However, we can seize these opportunities only if people are confident that they can operate safely in cyberspace. Every day, millions of people across the UK rely on the services and information that make up cyberspace. The internet is accessible in 65 per cent of United Kingdom households, a figure that is growing by about 8 per cent per year. Plastic transactions, which depend on wired or wireless communication, make up 90 per cent of our high street purchases. The national security strategy, published for the first time by this Government last March and updated this year, sets out an honest and transparent appraisal of the risks that we face, including the threat that organised crime poses to our country. Organised crime costs this country £20 billion per year. We have a duty to the British public, and to British industry, to take all measures to reduce dramatically this cost. The Government also need to assess the threat from terrorist organisations and other states and prepare our response to that. The public would expect no less. All these threats can arise in cyberspace. As the director-general of the Security Service has said, "‘a number of countries continue to devote considerable time and energy trying to steal our sensitive technology on civilian and military projects, and trying to obtain political and economic intelligence at our expense. They do not only use traditional methods to collect intelligence but increasingly deploy sophisticated technical attacks, using the internet to penetrate computer networks’." We know the importance that terrorist groups—notably al-Qaeda and its affiliates—place on the internet and cyberspace. This is particularly important at the moment for propaganda. We know that terrorists would like to be able to operate more effectively in cyberspace. This Government are not in the business of scaremongering. We do not assess at present that terrorists have the capability to mount such an attack imminently but we must prepare as terrorists become more sophisticated. These threats from states or terrorists could affect critical national systems. There is a real threat to millions of ordinary citizens, their transactions and the businesses that they work for. Online fraud generated £52 billion worldwide in 2007. The average cost of an information security incident for a small company is in the range of £10,000 to £20,000. For a large company, it can be more like £1 million to £2 million. As the UK’s dependence on cyberspace grows, so the security of cyberspace becomes ever more critical to the health of the nation. So, today, the Government are publishing the first cybersecurity strategy. As a result, we will establish the office of cybersecurity in the Cabinet Office, to lead on cybersecurity issues, and a cybersecurity operations centre, a multi-agency body based alongside GCHQ in Cheltenham. This organisation will also examine the operations and technical capabilities needed. As a result of the new strategy, we will develop a cyberindustrial strategy for critical UK cybersecurity needs, in the same way as we have a defence industrial strategy. We will develop a cybersecurity skills strategy for the UK, plugging existing gaps and creating more high-tech employment opportunities. We will make critical systems in the public and private sector more resilient and enhance our ability to detect attack. We will develop the international law and doctrines of national defence in cyberspace, working with other countries. We will better advise business and citizens about the cybersecurity risk picture and the steps that they need to take to address it. We will develop new strategies for tackling terrorists’ and criminals’ use of cyberspace with our colleagues, in line with the ACPO strategy for law enforcement on cybercrime due out shortly. We will also plan emergency response. The new centre will test the UK’s ability to respond to a major attack, as we do for terrorism, in setting up a strengthened analysis function for cyberthreats. As with all our national security activity, it is important that government powers are used proportionately and in a way consistent with individual liberty. So we will set up an ethics advisory group to advise on this. I will update the House on its membership when it is formed. The centres will be operational in September and new funding will be announced before then, building on the existing resources allocated largely to intelligence agencies. I will report back to the House. On the wider national security update, the Government have taken forward the good start made last year. We look across the broad range of national security threats. We have set out an updated analysis of the threats that we face and made new commitments on tackling what drives insecurity in the world. These are conflict, energy shortages, poverty and, looking to the long term, the impact of climate change. Keeping Britain safe depends on the dedicated and professional work of the Armed Forces, the intelligence services, the police and other services. I pay tribute to them all". That concludes the Statement.