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Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I shall not follow the right reverend Prelate, my West Country neighbour, very far down the track that he has made central to his speech, except to say that he mentioned the Roman Catholic Church, and my daughter, who works for a Roman Catholic charity, CAFOD, would think it remiss of me if I did not say "Hear, hear" on behalf of Roman Catholic charities to much of what he said about the needs of the charitable sector. I congratulate him on his excellent speech. That said, to matters secular. In declaring all my business interests, I shall say also that my speech will be one of two halves. The first half, on the Bribery Bill, will be a bit bipartisan and cosy, but, for fear that my noble friends on the Front Bench will think that their Back-Bench supporters are getting a bit soft, the second half, concentrating on the tragically missed opportunity to deal with the nation’s cybersecurity problems, will be much less obliging to Her Majesty’s Government, with their clear-cut policy of simple strategic dithering over cybersecurity and the serious threats that we face from it. I turn first to the Bribery Bill. I welcome the fact that at last, after nearly 13 years, Her Majesty’s Government are suggesting that we should meet our obligations internationally to, for example, the OECD in respect of introducing a specific offence of bribing a foreign public official. Happily, according to public opinion surveys conducted by organisations such as Transparency International, the UK is perceived generally to be one of the least corrupt countries on the globe. That is good because bribery at home or abroad undermines the rule of law, attacks the principles of fair competition and is a morally and economically destructive crime that often has devastating effects on the poor and on human rights. Changing the law by itself, however, will not be enough, important though the impact on British boardrooms will be, for they will become increasingly aware of the new corporate offence of failing to prevent bribery, the kind of sin of omission that I recall the Jesuits trying to beat an understanding of into me in earlier years. Doubtless my learned friends all around the Chamber will have great fun in Committee with the concept that companies will have to demonstrate that they have adequate procedures in place in order to seek mitigation and avoid corporate liability. These new boardroom procedures must not be allowed to be box-ticking formalities. Instead, they should rest on the ability of UK companies to show a demonstrable continuum of good corporate behaviour and culture that goes back for years. In other words, corporate adherence to the law must be paralleled by necessary changes in corporate culture, the true nature of which is demonstrated, it was once explained to me, by what people get up to when they think no one is watching. In my experience of observing other companies, the use of bribes is usually the worst visible manifestation of a simply bad corporate culture, too often identified with what could be termed a "we must win at all costs" mentality, which is characteristic of the sort of company whose reaction to, let us say, proprietary information from a competitor falling into their hands is not to send it straight back unread, as they should do, but actually to use it to try to win that desirable contract to supply a product, a service or some consultancy; the sort of company that spins alleged good news in an extreme way that would make even this Government blush; the sort of company that either covertly or in its public statements tries to damage a competitor with wrongful and hurtful assertions about quality or, worst of all, about safety. In this country, alas, there have been one or two recent examples of this sort of behaviour, which seems endemic in a few companies where it has grown up over decades. Here, directors, particularly non-executive directors, have a particular responsibility to stop such behaviour and bring about rapid cultural change. I turn to my second point. I am disappointed at the lack of a coherent approach to the cybersecurity of the United Kingdom. The Government have shown precious little sense of urgency and absolutely no coherence in their approach to protecting everything from the national grid to the financial structures of this country. No one is in charge. Instead, we have a positive barrel-load of chattering acronyms. Just listen to the little list that I have assembled, and I have probably missed a few. There is the CESG, part of GHCQ, providing information assurance. There is GovCertUK, whose job is to try to prevent IT attacks on the public sector. There is CPNI, allegedly leading efforts to prevent attacks on the internet world of cybersecurity around their networks. Then, reflecting the interests of the noble Baroness, Lady Harris of Richmond, there is SOCA, working with ACPO on e-crime. To these has recently been added, for those of your Lordships who might just have missed these important announcements, the OCS, the Office of Cyber Security, last June. Also that month the Government gave us the CSOC, or Cyber Security Operations Centre. This last entity is apparently to be charged, in the profoundly unlovely language of the Cabinet Office, with the role, ""to actively monitor the health of cyber space"." The Government have published a self-styled Cyber Security Strategy for the UK. On pages 23 and 24 of Annex A to this document, which I read with some care, there is a list of frequently asked questions of such triviality that I wonder who actually did ask them—or are they simply what philosophers would term "a figment"? One FAQ is certainly missing, and that is the question that my noble friends have frequently asked and I repeat now: who is in charge of this area of policy? To add to the telling question asked back in June by my noble friend Lady Neville-Jones when she queried exactly how the new bodies such as the OCS, the CSOC and all the other acronyms fit into our existing national security structure, precisely what is the chain of command? Who is in charge, for example, of the cyber threat to the 2012 Olympics? I declare myself a member, unlikely though it may seem to your Lordships, of the advisory board of the British Olympic Association. In this context, it is interesting to learn from a little-known speech made by the noble and gallant Lord, Lord West of Spithead, which was reported by the Press Association, so it must be true—