My Lords, Amendment 37A on treason and aiding a foreign power is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, who is extremely frustrated that he cannot be here today.
This is an excellent Bill. It is clear from the proceedings in this Chamber that it is welcomed, and I very much echo those sentiments. However, I have moved this amendment because I believe that there is a significant gap in the legislation. An important signal to the British public is needed in an era of hybrid warfare and mass migration. These points were very well made in the Policy Exchange publication Aiding the Enemy,
authored by Professor Richard Ekins and current Home Office Minister Tom Tugendhat, with a foreword by my friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge.
We are living in an age of rising great power competition. As noted in the proceedings on this Bill, hostile states such as China and Russia are actively looking to suborn our nationals into actions that undermine our national security. As it stands, the law of treason applies only to international armed conflicts. That is where the gap is. The law of treason should pick out and condemn people who betray the UK where preparations for international armed conflict are being made or where attacks on the UK, such as cyberattacks, may fall short of the threshold required for international armed conflict. This would recognise accurately the wrong being done, which is typically worse than merely mishandling official information, and punish it accordingly. For example, in the Cold War there were British nationals who betrayed our country by passing secrets to the Soviets; they certainly deserved to be punished as traitors but were not because the law of treason was in a poor state. It remains in a poor state now, as a new cold war could be beginning, so it is time that we fixed it.
We need to speak to the hearts and minds of our citizens, to bind the British people and make it clear to those who seek to assist foreign powers to do us harm that they will be designated by law as traitors to their country. This is not about requiring patriotism; it is about the law clearly setting out that to assist a group or country to attack the country in which you are a citizen is a crime. It is for these reasons—that appeal to the heart—that similar arrangements have been recently introduced by other common-law jurisdictions such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.
I was very struck by the story of Kimberley Miners, who travelled to Syria and returned. She said of her experience living with ISIS:
“People have no idea, but ISIS is actively searching Facebook for vulnerable people. People just like me. These people befriended me, I felt accepted.”
I feel enormous compassion for her but also enormous anger that she was so stupid as to make this decision. If our nationals had a clearer sense of where the boundaries lay, naive people would not make such mistakes.
Treason reform was dropped from the final text of the National Security Bill when it was placed before Parliament, which is a great shame. The consultation on legislation to counter state threats, with which many noble Lords will be familiar, claimed that significant historical analysis would need to be done to enable reform of treason but that that would significantly delay the Bill. I never like the idea that we should avoid good legislation because it is too time-consuming to draft; given the support for this straightforward, clearly drafted measure in many corners of the Committee, I do not think it need delay the Bill or overstress the resources of the MoJ.
One objection to a refresh of the treason laws was made by the excellent Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Jonathan Hall KC, who suggested that
“in order to prosecute an individual for aiding a hostile state or organisation, you have to label that state or organisation as such. Doing so could legitimise their cause and give them ‘special status and cachet’.”
I take a different view. Treason is not about labelling your enemies or legitimising their status; they put all their efforts into doing that themselves, without our help or otherwise. Jonathan Hall also suggested that juries would be worried about convicting on such a contentious crime with a controversial history. That is an important point to address, because it is exactly this squeamishness about considering treason a crime that means that we need to bring it back from the legal freezer and make it a commonly understood and demystified concept.
The incidence of treason is not going down—it is quite possibly becoming more frequent. We cannot live in a country in which a sense of social awkwardness prevents prosecution of a heinous crime. Therefore, it would be wise to leave it to the prosecuting authorities to decide which crimes can be most effectively prosecuted, as they are both qualified and rightly responsible to make these decisions. As a parliamentarian, I do not think that good law-making is best achieved by second-guessing juries. There are a number of horrible crimes for which, as noble Lords know, it is sometimes difficult to gain convictions, but we do it because they are important.
I am also conscious of the misuse of treason accusations by autocracies such as Russia. Accusations of treason can be abused and used to silence dissenters, but it is not logical that the misuse of a law by a tin-pot regime elsewhere means that we should not have it in this country, which values the rule of law. The best protection is good, workable legislation. That is why I ask the Minister to reconsider the decision to drop treason provisions from the Bill and to consider supporting this constructive amendment. I beg to move.