The Government's plans to overhaul espionage laws risk interfering with people's human rights, a group of MPs and peers has said. The Joint Committee on Human Rights (JCHR) called for the National Security Bill, which it said “goes too far” and puts freedom of speech at risk, to be changed.
The group called on ministers to amend the proposals to make sure there can be “adequate checks” carried out on how it is used. Described as the biggest overhaul of security legislation for a generation, the Bill is expected to provide the security services with greater powers to tackle threats from spies and state-backed sabotage.
It is intended to reform existing espionage laws like the Official Secrets Act to better tackle threats faced by hostile states like Russia and China. It will for the first time make it an offence to be an undeclared foreign spy in the UK and introduce a new foreign interference offence to disrupt illegitimate influence activity done for, or on behalf of, a foreign state.
Committee chairwoman Joanna Cherry said: “It is right that legislation governing espionage offence be updated to better reflect the reality of the world in the 21st century. However, in its current guise the National Security Bill goes too far, with offences whose breadth puts at risk freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, an unnecessary extension of criminal immunity and measures that undermine the key principle of equal access to justice.
“We call on the Government to revisit the Bill and bring forward amendments to ensure that it protects national security without needlessly criminalising actions that pose no risk to it. It must also remove necessary impediments to the access of legal aid and damages to ensure that fundamental principles of justice and human rights are protected.”
The new powers could help crack down on cases like that of the suspected Chinese spy Christine Lee accused of targeting politicians, according to Whitehall officials. Earlier this year MI5 issued a rare security alert, telling MPs that Ms Lee, a prominent London-based solicitor, had engaged in “political interference activities” on behalf of China’s ruling communist regime.
