I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. Jonathan Hall, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, was absolutely right. Indeed, his evidence echoed the Government’s own statement in pursuance of the action plan. The action plan says that it covers criminal activity that
“poses a risk to the UK’s prosperity, national security and reputation.”
That is the point. The policy direction the Government have adopted in recent legislation—most notably in legislation to protect industry from takeovers from parts of the world that we regard as a potential threat to this country—increasingly includes economic security as part of the wider national security agenda, and that is absolutely right.
This debate is happening in the context of a world where the old order is changing and giving way to forces that we cannot control and that we should rightly be suspicious about. Therefore, although we want a vigorous, lively, free market economy in this country, we need to be ever more vigilant about ensuring that its boundaries are policed effectively. I will say more about the prosecution of these offences, because it is, shall we say, a vexed question, and there are right hon. and hon. Members here who have direct experience from their work of the evidential challenges that prosecutors face day in, day out.
I do not want the Government to adopt new criminal offences only to find that their use becomes sporadic or ineffective. However, the offences I propose help to further drive a culture of compliance and lawfulness where corporates behave responsibly. There are examples of previous legislation that we can point to that have driven that culture forward positively. I think of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, which the Under-Secretary of State has used as an example, and he was absolutely right to do so. As a result of the passage of that legislation, we saw a dramatic drop in the number of industrial accidents. Why? Because employers were enjoined to take the issue damn seriously. If they did not, there would be liability at the end of it.