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National Security Strategy

My Lords, I join the rest of the House in extending my grateful thanks to the noble Lord, Lord King, for initiating this timely debate. This is something that I would like to have even more discussion about. One can tell from some of the overruns that noble Lords have a lot to say about it. It is an extremely important subject for a nation. I am not surprised that the noble Lord raised this, given that he is an ex-TA officer. I worked for him as his head of naval intelligence when he was Secretary of State and, when he was chairing the ISC, I was chief of defence intelligence, so I have worked with him and have known him for a long time. I know his depth of knowledge. I thought that his tour d’horizon of the threats that we face was very pertinent, as other noble Lords said. I also thank all the other noble Lords who spoke. There is a great deal of knowledge here and there were a lot of interesting facts. I am not sure that I will be able to touch on every single comment that was made, but it is important that those comments are laid down in Hansard. There is no doubt that this debate emphasises how in this House we realise the importance of our national security. I can assure noble Lords that that is also close to my heart and has been ever since I marched up the hill at Dartmouth 45 years ago. It is great that there is a cross-party flavour. At times, there will inevitably be some political aspects—that is the nature of life—but, wherever possible, matters to do with security and defence should ideally be on a cross-party basis. I am pleased that overall our national security strategy seems to have been welcomed, as it is a timely thing. Before I say something about our national security strategy, I must thank the noble Baroness, Lady Park, who has a great depth of knowledge in this area. She was a FANY in the Second World War. She stressed on a couple of occasions that we are a maritime nation. You can imagine how that warms the cockles of a sailor’s heart. It has been a good week. The Prime Minister said in PMQs yesterday: ""We are committed to the aircraft carriers. The future policy of the Navy is being organised around them, and I hope all parties will support the aircraft carriers".—[Official Report, Commons, 3/2/10; col. 298.]" The first English admiral was created 700 years ago today, so you can see that it has been quite a good week for me. The national security strategy talks about security for the next generation. It is the updated version of the strategy produced in 2008. We had never had a national security strategy before in this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, said that she had something to do with it and I am pleased about that. I tried to push this in 1993, when I wrote my paper on the need for a grand strategy for the United Kingdom, but sadly we were unable to achieve it until 2008. It is right that we have one now and everyone here believes that that is correct. We are really only talking about tweaks and things. The update strengthened our national security framework. It updated our assessment of threats and reported progress over the past year in which it has been in place. It set out how we will tackle some of the wide-ranging and evolving challenges to our national security. It has not just been sitting there as a document; it says how we will go about these things. The noble Lord, Lord Bew, said that he felt that the second document was better; I think that it is. It is a living document, but we need to do more. It must be done again and again. We will refine it and it will get better; that is what we must try to do. It provides a comprehensive basis for planning and delivering the first and most important function of government, which we would all agree is protecting our people and way of life. Many things have sprung from it and I will touch on some of them. We laid out our principles and core values. A number of speakers talked about that, including the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. It is important that I go through those. They were behind our thinking when we prepared the security strategy, ensuring that our work was grounded in the core values of fair play, human rights, openness, accountable government and the rule of law. My noble friend Lord Soley particularly stressed that issue. It is also important that, in countering terrorism and other security threats, we are proportionate in our response and focus on striking the right balance between security, liberty and human rights. Again, a number of speakers touched on that important issue. Wherever possible, we will tackle security challenges very early. Looking back more than five years, I think that there is no doubt that we were not quick enough to pick up on extremism being fostered in certain areas. We have to tackle such things early. At home we need partnerships at all levels to prevent extremism and to respond to domestic emergencies. A number of speakers have talked about that. Overseas, we must work through multilateral institutions and partnerships. In government we have developed a more integrated approach and will retain strong, balanced and flexible capabilities to address the threats that we have identified. The noble Lord, Lord King, touched on the need for that. Security for the Next Generation created a national security framework that sets out why threats occur, who or what threatens us and how and where security threats occur. The new aspects of security considered in the framework include the Government’s first cybersecurity strategy, which I will come back to later, since it is very important and deals with a real threat; a wider assessment of the changing security picture, including our analysis of the security implications of the global economic downturn; and assessment of some of the key characteristics of the UK, such as what is special about it, what makes us different and the implications that these have for our national security priorities. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, touched on whether we address those things; I think that we have. The framework also considered a stronger effort on serious organised crime, because that is crucial and very damaging. It is something that has developed to a very worrying extent. Its roots develop and cross into terrorism and other things. There was a commitment to look at the national security implications of our increasing dependence on space and a commitment to working in partnership with industry to look at maritime security challenges. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, referred to Chinese goods on a Korean ship. I would put it differently: shipping is still focused on London. It earns us £18 billion a year. We are still very reliant on trade. We are the biggest investor in many parts of the world; we are certainly the biggest EU investor. That all makes money for this country. We have a global requirement for a capability to look after that. The paper stated that international terrorism was the most significant and immediate threat to us. We have seen further attempts to attack the western world, such as Abdulmutallab’s failed bombing over Detroit. We reflect on that. In a sense the strategy falls out of that, although they were back to front initially. CONTEST 2 is recognised as the best counterterrorist strategy in the world. The noble Lord, Lord Lyell, said that it is based on pursue, prevent, protect and prepare, as it was originally. These things merge; they are not distinct stove-pipes. There are cross-cutting measures in there and it is co-ordinated by the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office. I am happy to send the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, a copy of our Olympic and Paralympic security plan so that he can see what is happening. Ideology was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Bew, and the noble Lord, Lord Cope, in the context of Northern Ireland. More widely, it is part of our "prevent" agenda. We had, I fear, paid lip service to that until about two and half years ago. We have now definitely done a lot more. We have put a huge effort into it. Have some bits of it been absolutely right? No, but this has been going on for two and a half years and is something that we have really focused on. Again, this is something that can improve and that we must grasp. If you look back 10 or 15 years, we did not realise what a threat this was. We did not come to terms with it quickly enough. We recognise that there was not a lot on Northern Ireland in the paper but, let us face it, I could have produced an immense document just on Northern Ireland. It was quite hard to compress it. However, I assure noble Lords that, in terms of allocation of resources, security forces, personnel and a determination to meet the challenge, we are absolutely there. It is important to adjust to changing circumstances. Therefore, since the failed Detroit attack, we have announced how we will strengthen our protection against would-be terrorists. We intend to extend the Home Office watch list, using it as a basis for two new lists: a no-fly list and a larger list of those who should be subject to special measures. We are working in partnership with security agencies abroad to improve the sharing of information on individuals of concern. However, we have not stepped from a blank sheet into this; we are tweaking and improving. I am afraid that all the time these terrorists are trying to find ways round and into us to cause damage. They will keep thinking of new things. We are thinking of new things. We look at red teaming in this. How would you try to do that? We always have to try to stop it, but whenever an incident occurs there is always something that you can learn. We must not be, and are not, complacent about it. It is because we recognise the global nature of the threat that our response must be truly global as regards plots against the UK—our interests originate in various parts of the world. We and our allies are clear that the terrorist threat from al-Qaeda in the Afghan-Pakistan border region, the FATA, remains the most significant security threat to the United Kingdom. The UK military and civilian effort in Afghanistan supports the Afghan people in rebuilding their country, ensuring that it cannot be retaken by the Taliban and cannot again become a base for al-Qaeda, because, at the top-hamper, al-Qaeda and the Taliban are joined at the hip. Further down, at worker-bee level, that is not necessarily the case, but at the top it is. I was commander-in-chief when we invaded Pakistan. On the initial invasion, we were horrified at the extent of the training camps and the laboratories doing all sorts of nasty work. We must never let that happen again. The noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, mentioned Pakistan. We are working very closely with Pakistan. It is key to that region. I have great concerns about Pakistan. We are working in close partnership with its Government to try to develop the capability to bring terrorists to justice. There was talk of the FCO’s money. About a quarter of the FCO’s counterterrorism funding goes to initiatives in Pakistan—£8.3 million was spent in 2009-10 and a projected £9.5 million will be spent in 2010-11. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Sheikh, mentioned equipment. I was slightly surprised at that. I assume that he was referring to equipment for the British Army in Afghanistan. The British Army there has never been so well personally equipped. One has to be careful. When you go into a new domain, inevitably your equipment will not be right for it. It takes time to catch up. When I was sunk in the Falklands, my ship was not very capable of defending itself against massed air attacks close to land. That is just a fact of life. If you are in the military, you get on with it—you bloody well do the job—but, sadly, it means that things are suboptimal initially. But that is what has to happen. Now, out in Afghanistan, they have very good personal equipment. Looking outside the FATA, we also have to recognise that AQ has affiliates, allies, people who are inspired by it, who seek to exploit other areas of weak governance such as the Yemen, Somalia and the Sahel. My noble friend Lord Soley referred to the fragility of some of these states and how we have to keep an eye on them and look after them. These things were identified in our strategy. We identified Yemen in this way. This was not a new shock to us. The Yemen has been at the forefront of an international effort against terrorism. As I say, we have for some time assisted the Government of Yemen. By next year our commitment to Yemen will total some £100 million. We are also increasing our capacity building in Somalia. This is a really difficult place in which to operate. We contributed considerable money to the African Union mission there, but it is a problem. This leads into the aspect of piracy and the ability to tackle it. We will continue working to tackle the terrorist threat globally through multinational institutions. We do a lot of work through the G20 on the economic downturn. This was emphasised in the defence Green Paper, Adaptability and Partnership, published yesterday. It was presented in this House by the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor. I was very sad to miss that debate, in which excellent questions were raised. I read it in Hansard and I would have liked to be present. The Green Paper makes it very clear that our alliances and partnerships will become increasingly important and that NATO remains the cornerstone of our security. We are tackling the security challenges of the modern age, such as the growth of cyberspace and the changing threats posed by serious organised crime, which were touched on by my noble friend Lord Soley. That is why we published the UK’s first cybersecurity strategy. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, is absolutely right. Lots of good work had gone on before. A lot of work was done by CESG in Cheltenham—I am sorry about the initials—and the Security Service. There has been a lot of good work within companies such as BT, with which we have been in dialogue. However, it was not co-ordinated and focused. The answer to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, on whether the number of attacks is increasing is yes. Is public awareness of it low? Yes. I said to the committee that he referred to that this was absolutely the case. We need to be really concerned about this, as we are. We produced the cybersecurity strategy and we set up the Office of Cyber Security. I have been all over it like a rash since that happened last summer, putting huge pressure on it. It was unable to ease up for Christmas because we have to do a lot of things. There are whole areas of legality. Can you go back down on to something? How do you get attribution? If someone takes out a power station, which could be done—although we have protected our own—is that an act of war? If you bombed it, it would be, but is it an act of war if it takes place in cyberspace? What will we do in terms of cyber warfare? We have state actors, serious crime actors, criminals who clone and take details of individual bank accounts and hackers, who might think that they are funny but actually can do serious damage that costs industry huge amounts of money. Of course, we also have the terrorists, who are very cute. At the moment they use the internet for radicalisation, but they will learn how to do other things. There is a lot that we must achieve. We are in discussions on an international agreement, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Soley, but it is the sort of agreement that is extremely difficult to reach. In the document, we also recognise the threat from hazards such as natural disasters and accidents. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, touched on the breadth of this and I think that what we have done is appropriate. Yes, we have to work with the public. We produced CONTEST at an unclassified level so that our public could read it. That was jolly difficult; I cannot tell you of the battle that we had in trying to achieve that, but it was a huge success. Out of our national security strategy we have produced the first ever national risk register, which is unclassified. Local resilience forums around our country are able to look at it, find what all the threats are and work out priorities and preparedness in terms of terrorism, natural hazards or industrial accidents. We have provided the forums with a template where such incidents are likely to happen. That is a huge step forward. This all-hazards approach is a flexible and sound basis for dealing with changing requirements. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Cabinet Office works with the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office. There has been talk about how we can hone this. I think that it works quite well. Perhaps we can refine it a little, but it works well, people talk and there is a lot of debate across government. I turn to how this Government manage these issues. There is all this talk of a national security committee, but we effectively have that already. The Prime Minister, who I have to say is very involved in this, chairs the Ministerial Committee on National Security, International Relations and Development—it is a horrible title and perhaps we should start calling it the NSC. He does listen. Noble Lords suggested that he did not, but I cannot think of any occasion when he has not listened to what I have told him. He takes this seriously. On that committee are the Secretaries of State of all the key departments. I sit on that committee and all the other sub-committees. The Chief of Defence Staff is normally there, as are the heads of the security agencies and the top security people in the police, if appropriate. We all sit there and these matters are discussed. Then, a series of sub-committees looks at specifics. For example, one sub-committee looks at protective security. It met on Tuesday. I took to it an issue on maritime security and another issue—I am sorry, but I have just remembered that I cannot mention it. Anyway, the committees are looking at these things all the time. I almost fell into that one. I repeat that these things are looked at. Could this be streamlined or made better? I think that probably it could—perhaps we should look at that. However, it works jolly well and that is important. The committee also asked the National Security Forum to discuss specific issues. This was set up by the Prime Minister. I chair it. It has a group of experts, who are Nobel prize winners and people from the fields of diplomacy, counterterrorism and so on. They all sit down and are terribly difficult to run as a committee because they all have amazing ideas of their own. They are all well connected and we are able, under my chairmanship, to advise the Government. The sort of things that we have given advice on are risks to energy supply, nuclear issues, maritime security, space security, the Green Paper and so on. I have almost said enough. In conclusion, the importance of the security of our people and country is uppermost in the Government’s mind. I know that it is important to all of us in this Chamber. I believe that this has been demonstrated by the speed with which we have responded to changing threats, demonstrated by the Detroit bombing and other incidents—I found the Home Affairs Select Committee report very surprising and actually wrong in some areas. It has been demonstrated by the huge efforts that our Armed Forces are putting into Afghanistan. It has been demonstrated by the lead that we have shown in bringing the international community together this week to discuss Afghanistan and Yemen. I did not expect much from the Yemen thing, but more came out than we could have hoped for. In the past two and a half years, we have produced the first United Kingdom national security strategy, with everything that has followed from that. It is something that we can refine. We have produced the first national risk register, informing the public and local resilience forums. We have produced the first cybersecurity strategy—again, a huge amount of work is being done on that. We have produced the first science and technology strategy concerning counterterrorism. We have also produced CONTEST 2, which is recognised as the best counterterrorist strategy in the world. We should be proud of that. I am sure that the Chamber is pleased by that, but we can do more to refine it. These are important issues that we need to discuss more, because it is important to our nation that we discuss them. We will continue to work with all our partners, because this is about partnership, whether it is at home or abroad, to protect our great nation and its interests, which will enable our wonderful people to go about their daily lives freely, with confidence and, I hope, in a more secure, stable, just and prosperous world. We must now go away to achieve that.