Foreign Influence Registration Scheme

Statement

The following Statement was made in the House of Commons on Tuesday 1 April.

“With permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, I will make a Statement on the foreign influence registration scheme. FIRS is a fundamental component of the National Security Act 2023, which was a response to the evolving threat of hostile activity from states targeting the UK. Parts 1 to 3 of the Act came into force in December 2023 and have been transformative for our operational partners, with six charges already brought against those conducting activity for or on behalf of foreign states acting in the UK. A further five individuals involved in those cases have been charged with other offences.

FIRS provides crucial additional powers to protect our democracy, economy and society. It does three things: provides transparency on foreign state influence in the UK; gives the police and MI5 a critical new disruptive tool, with criminal offences for those who fail to comply; and deters those who seek to harm the UK. They will face a choice to either tell the Government about their actions or face arrest and imprisonment.

Given the benefits of the scheme, I can tell the House that FIRS will go live on 1 July. The political influence tier of the scheme, which applies to all states, will allow the UK to be better informed about the nature, scale and extent of foreign influence in the UK’s political system. It will strengthen our resilience against covert foreign influence. The political tier requires the registration of arrangements to carry out political influence activities in the UK at the direction of any foreign power. In most cases, registrations under this tier will be made available on a public register. For the first time, Members of this House will now be able to check whether anyone who seeks to influence them is doing so at the direction of a foreign power, a move that I am sure will be welcomed right across this House.

The enhanced tier of the scheme has been specifically designed to shed light on activities directed by foreign powers or entities whose activities pose a threat to the safety and interests of the UK. It enables the Government to specify those foreign powers that pose the greatest threat to our society, to ensure transparency over a much broader range of activities than just the political tier. It will provide an important tool for the detection and disruption of harmful activity against our country. Last month, I set out our intention to specify Iran under this tier of the scheme. I can announce today that we will also specify Russia under the scheme.

Russia presents an acute threat to UK national security. In recent years, its hostile acts have ranged from the use of a deadly nerve agent in Salisbury to espionage, arson and cyberattacks, including the targeting of UK parliamentarians through “spear phishing” campaigns. Clearly, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has also highlighted its intent to undermine European and global security. To ensure that we are responding to the whole-of-state threat that Russia poses, the Government intend to specify the Head of State of Russia and its Government, agencies and authorities, which will include its armed forces, intelligence services and police force as well as its parliaments and judiciaries. We also intend to specify several political parties that are controlled by Russia, including the United Russia party. This means that any person—either an individual or an entity, such as a company—that carries out activity as part of any arrangement with those Russian entities will have to register with FIRS. Should any of these foreign power-controlled entities, such as political parties, carry out activity in the UK directly, they would also have to register with FIRS. I hope it will be clear what a powerful tool this is.

It is clear that FIRS has the potential to provide greater protection for our security, our democracy and our economy, but we must get the implementation right. In support of the scheme, the Government have today laid before Parliament draft regulations specifying Russia and Iran, introducing new exemptions from the scheme and making provision for the publication of information. Both this House and the other place will have the opportunity to consider and debate these regulations under the affirmative procedure. The Government have also laid a further set of regulations relating to the collection and disclosure of information under the scheme. To support the consideration of the regulations, and to assist potential registrants and others to better understand their responsibilities under the scheme, the Government have published comprehensive guidance online.

By bringing the scheme into force on 1 July, the Government will be giving sectors three months’ notice to help them to prepare for it. During that time, the Government will work closely with the relevant sectors, including academia and business, to ensure that they understand their obligations. Taken together, this package will ensure strong compliance with the scheme from day one. There will also be a three-month grace period to register existing arrangements. I know that right honourable and honourable Members on both sides of the Chamber recognise the challenges posed to the UK by foreign interference, and I hope that all Members can support these further steps to keep our country safe. Of course, as with all national security issues, we must stay agile, and, as I have said, FIRS will be kept under review. Any new announcements will be made to the House in the usual way.

It is our duty to defend the safety and interests of the UK. That is why we are commencing FIRS; it is why we are introducing greater protections for our democracy; and it is why we are clamping down on the threat from states that conduct hostile activities in, and against, the UK. I commend this Statement to the House”.

21:47:00

My Lords, maintaining our national security is one of the first duties of government. When we were in office, we took robust steps to strengthen our national security in the face of an increasingly unstable world. That international trend has continued since this Government took office, and it is essential that the Government build on our work to protect our country from foreign threats. I was very pleased to hear the honourable Member for Barnsley North in the other place praise our Conservative record in passing the National Security Act 2023, a landmark piece of legislation, which, to quote the Security Minister, has been “transformative”. I welcome that constructive tone from Ministers on this policy area, and I can only hope that the Government will take the same approach in other policy areas. In the Statement, Ministers had plenty to say about Iran and Russia. In the same constructive tone that they have taken, we welcome these steps. Both Iran and Russia pose a threat to our national security, and we must be robust in response to those threats. But Ministers are silent on China. Can the Minister please take this opportunity to explain why the Government have not added China to the enhanced tier of FIRS? We have already set out the shocking evidence of Chinese engagement in foreign espionage in the UK, and this House recently voted to prevent Great British Energy’s supply chain including products linked with oppressive practices. We did this with China’s oppression of the Uyghur people in mind, and I pay particular tribute to the tireless campaigning of the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on that issue. China engages in industrial-scale espionage, stealing technology from Governments, universities and industry. I have already spoken about the repression of the Uyghur people, but it also seeks to repress Chinese citizens here in Britain, and the Chinese state’s approach to Hong Kong and the Hong Kongese is deeply concerning. China has set up undeclared and illegal police stations in the UK and, last year, placed a bounty on the heads of three Hong Kong dissidents living in the UK. Why has the Chinese ambassador not been summoned to explain that? We on these Benches believe that China should be in the enhanced tier of FIRS. The Government refuse to comment on this but, regardless of whether the Minister is willing to comment, I hope that he will listen. Ministers have said: “We will co-operate where we can; compete where we need to; and challenge where we must, including on issues of national security”. This approach is not strong enough, and we will and must continue to press the Government to place China on the enhanced tier of FIRS.

My Lords, I associate myself and these Benches with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Davies, said, especially the last part. I will add to that small list of questions to the Minister with regard to China in a moment, but I also recognise the high level of consensus that there is; that the UK requires a FIRS; and that the legislation is sound. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Davies, will recall that this House was instrumental in bringing about the scheme that we now have, rather than what had been initially proposed and passed in the House of Commons. That demonstrates the value of all political parties working together for proper scrutiny. The intention was to have a robust and deliverable scheme that would be targeted, proportionate and effective. I am therefore grateful that there is now a clear date of operation and that it will go live on 1 July. I commend all the work of the officials who are bringing this together. It will be a year since the general election and 18 months after the passage of the legislation, but the key thing is to have it operable, effective and able to be communicated. I would be grateful if the Minister could say a bit more than was in the Statement about how the new scheme will be communicated. It is imperative that it registers those who we require it to register and does not include those who we do not require to be registered, which would clog up the much-valued time of officials. We welcome the regulations that the Government have indicated have been laid and we will carry out proper scrutiny of them. I am grateful for the announcement about Russia. I will repeat something that I asked for when we considered the national security legislation. These Benches asked the previous Government to proactively update Parliament on a regular basis about not just the level of activities of those seeking to interfere inappropriately in our political and economic systems but the type of activities, which often change, with different methods and ways of seeking to interfere. I hope that the Government might consider this to be beneficial. It has been useful when we have had periodic updates from the head of MI5 about the level of potential interference, but that is after the event. Given that this interference is intended to be towards people such us in Parliament, then as much as we can be informed on a proactive basis, the better. I repeat the request that my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire asked the Leader of the House previously. The Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report is still redacted. Given that the Government have decided to put Russia in the enhanced tier, there is no justification for the unredacted report not to be released so that we can be fully aware. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, who had been a significant member of that committee and now chairs it, will have his own views on this. We need to be informed about what the current potential kinds of activities are with regard to Russia. The Leader replied to my noble friend that it was an interesting question to be considered. I hope that the Government have considered it and that the Minister will be able to give a considered answer. If he cannot today, I hope that he will be able to write to me. Secondly, how will this scheme operate not only within Russian state entities but also their proxies? The legislation is worded in a fine way in order to capture those that will be acting on behalf of Russia, but I hope the Minister will be able to stress that we will be able to capture all those who are acting on behalf of Russia. Moving on, as the noble Lord, Lord Davies, did, to China, these Benches believe that it should be on the enhanced tier. We also believe that the China audit that the Government have carried out should be published in full, not just as a narrative summary. We believe that there should be a human rights and democracy report that is linked with national security legislation, especially as we know that the Chinese state has been acting in an extraterritorial repressive way with regard to residents in this country—especially those from Hong Kong. There are some extremely brave people from Hong Kong whose family members at home are under threat because of unacceptable activities that are carried out here in the UK. We of course know that the proposed embassy will have an enormous hub for intelligence gathering and I therefore hope that the Government will not make a decision on planning before they publish their full China audit and a human rights and democracy report. As to why it is beneficial, I will again quote the work of the noble Lord, Lord Beamish—maybe he will agree with me on this point. The excellent ISC report on China from July 2023 still gives us very clear signals as to why we should have China recognised within our interference legislation. Paragraph K in the summary of conclusions states: “In terms of interference, China oversteps the boundary and crosses the line from exerting influence—a legitimate course of action—into interference, in the pursuit of its interests and values at the expense of those of the UK”. Furthermore, paragraph H states: “To compound the problem, it is not just the Chinese Intelligence Services: the Chinese Communist Party co-opts every state institution, company and citizen. This ‘whole-of-state’ approach means China can aggressively target the UK, yet the scale of the activity makes it more difficult to detect”. Both those recommendations are perfectly clear evidence of the justification for China to be put on the enhanced tier. If the Government make the decision not to do so, they have to very clearly state why the committee was wrong and that the levels of interference are not being carried out, because there is no evidence that that level of interference, which was found to be unacceptable, has changed—in fact, it has got worse.

I am grateful to noble Lords for their initial comments and contributions, and for the broad welcome that they have given to the Government’s decision to include Russia in FIRS and yesterday’s announcement by my honourable friend the Member of Parliament for Barnsley North, Dan Jarvis. A number of points have been mentioned and I will try to raise them in my response. It is important to say that those who have been put under the scheme—both Iran and Russia—should recognise that there is cross-party support in this House, and that national security and the Government’s response to those challenges have the support of the main political parties in this House. As the Security Minister set out yesterday, the FIRS announcement does three things. It helps with transparency, so it will give those two nations currently on the list transparency of foreign state influence in the United Kingdom. Secondly, it provides disruption by giving the police and MI5 a critical new disruptive tool. Thirdly, it gives deterrence for those two nations as a whole. It is worth putting before the House why Russia has been added to the list. It is not only because of the Salisbury nerve agent attack, espionage, arson, cyberattacks, the spear-phishing of parliamentarians and attacks on emails; the illegal war in Ukraine means that Russia remains a serious state threat and we need to have the provisions of the Act, which had cross-party support, and FIRS put in place today. It is also important that I take on board again what the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, said about the fact that this is coming in now. We came into government on 4 July last year. We wanted to give a three-month notice period for the implementation of a FIRS notice. We have worked with officials—to whom I pay tribute for their hard, consistent work to bring the scheme to fruition—and, from 1 July, both Iran and Russia will fall under the purview of the scheme. That is a good development, and it reflects the Government driving forward that point of view. The three-month grace period is important. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, mentioned guidance and support. We will shortly publish guidance to explain clearly the requirements of each tier and how to comply with them. We will produce sector guidance for academia, media, business, defence and civil society sectors. The implementation programme is extremely important and is now, I believe, on track. Two main issues have been raised in addition to that of support, and I will try to address both. First, I will deal with the questions that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, raised about the Russia report and whether the ISC will publish an unredacted version. I find myself in the strange position of being a Minister talking about a report that I authored as a member of the ISC between 2016 and 2019. Although I have seen the unredacted version because I participated in its production, I have to say, as a Minister of the Crown who has looked at the unredacted version, that it provides highly classified material that would damage the operational capabilities of the intelligence agencies, if published, by revealing targets, methods, sources and operational capabilities. So the Government have no plans to produce an unredacted version. However, that does not take away from the fact that the broad themes of the Russia report, which were highlighted by the committee I sat on over five years ago, are the reasons why the Government took the actions on the FIRS set out yesterday in the House of Commons by my honourable friend Dan Jarvis, the Minister responsible. That may not satisfy the noble Lord, Lord Purvis of Tweed, but I hope that it clarifies where the Government stand today. China was mentioned by both the noble Lords, Lord Davies of Gower and Lord Purvis of Tweed; they raised legitimate questions about the Government’s view of the country. As I have set out in a previous response on China, and as my honourable friend said yesterday, we will always keep the FIRS under review. However, this Government have been clear that we are taking a long-term, consistent approach to managing UK relations with China. As has been said, we will co-operate when we can on issues of international co-operation and trade; we will compete when we need to on a whole range of issues; and we will challenge where we must, including on issues of national security. There have been times when, because of concerns, we have challenged on issues of national security. However, currently, the Government’s decision, although it is always kept under review, is that Iran and Russia are the two countries to fall under the initial FIRS, which will be operational from 1 July. A range of issues about human rights and security are raised consistently in Parliamentary Questions and in comments and statements by Members of this House and the other place, including concerns about China. We will continue to keep that under review, but, as of today, Russia and Iran are the two nations that are under the FIRS—I hope that noble Lords can accept that explanation. We will continue to examine, at all times, any threats from any countries. I hope that the decision a few weeks ago to put Iran under the FIRS and the decision this week to put Russia under it are welcome, because those decisions will help protect our country from strategic threats from state actors. Finally, I remind the House that depending on which tier individuals or nations have been put under, there is a minimum two-year prison sentence for non-registration and there is a maximum five-year prison sentence for those things. That is a severe sentence for individuals who do not comply with the legislation that had cross-party support to pass.

22:05:00

My Lords, I welcome this Statement. As the Minister has already outlined, the FIRS was one of the key recommendations of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s 2020 report on Russia, which both he and I were involved in. I concur with his statement on why the full, unredacted report cannot be published. I assure the House that this is a long process. We try to put as much as possible into the public domain, but there are certain elements in this work that would help our adversaries if it was produced in public. I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, is a keen reader of our reports, and I recommend the Iran report, which will be coming out in the next few weeks. I ask my noble friend the Minister about Russia’s proxies and satellites—Belarus, Chechnya and others. Are the Government thinking of including them in the FIRS as well?

The FIRS we announced yesterday includes the leadership of Russia, political parties that support the leadership of Russia and a number of other state apparatuses, including the security services in Russia. We have and we will, in due course, present to this House and the House of Commons a statutory instrument that sets out in detail the applicability of the FIRS. I hope that my noble friend can wait for that to see the detail of the specific organisations and individuals named under it. In informing him of that, I also pay tribute to him and his work with the Intelligence and Security Committee. It is done behind the scenes and appears only when reports such as the Russia report are published. I know, from spending four and a half years on that committee, that there is a tremendous amount of work going on under the surface all the time to both challenge the security services, Government Ministers and agencies on their performance on security and to make the sorts of recommendations that appeared in the Russia report to date. I am pleased that my noble friend supports the Government’s position not to seek the publication of the unredacted report. For the reasons he has mentioned, this is about national security, and it is also about themes: The themes of the Russia report were that the Russian state was seeking to undermine UK democracy and be a malevolent actor and, as we have seen in Salisbury and in Ukraine since the Russia report, it is not a player on the international stage that abides by the rules. In producing that report, we have to withhold some aspects. It is welcome that my noble friend supports the Government’s approach to that issue.

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for the Statement. I broadly welcome it, and I think there is a broad, cross-party consensus on the national security requirements. When I hear my noble friend talk about threats from Iran and Russia, as a member of the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy I can tell him that we looked in great detail at the nature of some of these threats—for example, in regard to ransomware—and produced a report on it. The question I wanted to ask my noble friend relates to the political tier. I quote from the Statement: “For the first time, Members of this House will now be able to check whether anyone who seeks to influence them is doing so at the direction of a foreign power”. I wanted to raise the issue of all-party parliamentary groups, because one of the concerns that has been expressed over the years is that they could be a vehicle for unwanted influences—certainly financially—buying their way in and influencing the way all-party groups operate. I am the president of the Parliamentary and Scientific Committee, which is the Parliament’s oldest all-parliamentary party group. I hope the Minister can reassure the House that this scheme will enable it to be absolutely clear that no all-party parliamentary group that operates in this House—or in Parliament generally—is in any way open to the type of foreign influence that this Statement is designed to prevent and that as a result Parliament can have confidence that all-party parliamentary groups will be protected under this scheme to some extent by the work being undertaken, and that when FIRS goes live, we will have this confidence open to view.

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Stansgate for his work in this field and for his question. Where the scheme will be of best benefit is that it will allow greater transparency around individuals who may be influenced, in this case by Russia or, as in the previous announcement, by Iran. That gives confidence to parliamentarians particularly. Any individual who is engaged with or supporting an all-party group, in whatever shape and form they do that, will have had to make a declaration about foreign influence before they participate in any activity as a whole. After 1 July, that will be a public matter of record. If they do not declare it and are subsequently found to have such influence, they will be subject to severe penalty, tested by the police, the CPS and the court, and ultimately subject to penalties of potential long terms of imprisonment of up to five years. I hope that will bring a transparency and confidence to all-party groups in the event of individuals believing that such groups are somehow influenced or fronted by organisations which are seeking to do malevolent damage to the UK. It gives transparency and flushes that out. If anybody tries to do that in a secretive way and is found to be doing so, they will face a severe penalty.

My Lords, exactly as the Statement says, it is our duty to defend the safety and interests of the UK. However, it also says that businesses will have to ensure they understand their obligations and that there must be strong compliance with the scheme. What consultations have taken place with businesses, both large and small to medium-sized, to ensure the process is entirely rigorous but, equally importantly, easy to undertake?

That is a very important point. We do not want to damage business, trade or engagement with any nation currently under the FIR scheme or potentially under FIR schemes. Currently, there is a significant difficulty with trade with Russia, because of the issue with Ukraine, and rightly so. Ultimately, we have had widespread consultation on this matter. We want to make sure that we do not damage business, but it is important that national security is at the forefront of our thinking. The prime move today is to make sure that malevolent actors do not operate in a non-transparent way, and that if they do, and are found, they will face the full force of United Kingdom law under the cross-party Act that we supported collectively in both Houses.

My Lords, this Statement is about the foreign influence registration scheme, which, as the Minister said, is trying to ensure transparency and control of the lobbying influence of certain states in the UK. But this is part of a much larger issue. The lobbying Act 2014, passed under the coalition Government, is now a decade old. By coincidence, I started today—some time ago—at a round table which was considering a forthcoming report from the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, titled No Rules Britannia? The UK’s Lobbying Laws Exposed on the Global Stage. That report is still under embargo but I do not think institute will mind me sharing a phrase from the foreword, which says that “the UK’s lobbying laws leave us languishing at the lower end of global governance rankings making it harder to promote our democratic values on the world stage”. Is the Minister prepared to look at the report when it is released, if I share it with him and his team? He may want to respond later in writing, but are the Government prepared to look seriously at the lobbying Act of 10 years ago to see what needs to be done to bring us up to somewhere near global standards?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness. Of course I will look at any report that is produced and share it internally within government. We want to see transparency in lobbying. That is why we are taking measures to ensure that Members of both Houses are transparent in how they operate and about their outside earnings and their declarations. That is part of the Government’s role on transparency. I will take away what the noble Baroness said about the specific Act and review and respond in due course. The issue that we are dealing with today shines a light on transparency regarding the influence of Russia and Iran, which have been notified under the current FIRS arrangement. That transparency will give confidence for parliamentarians in this House and in the House of Commons about the level of influence on us as Members from any outside body and who is behind any influence. That is a good thing when we are dealing with malevolent state actors, which both those nations are designated as. I hope that the noble Baroness will welcome that.

I know that it is not the done thing for the Front Bench to come back, but I want to come back on a question. The Minister is characteristically very good at answering questions from the Dispatch Box, so I do not mean this as a criticism. In July 2023, the Intelligence and Security Committee found that China was not only seeking to influence but interfering in our internal affairs. Am I to take from the decision not to have China as part of the go-live scheme that the Government have determined that the committee was wrong and that China is not interfering in our political system?

I apologise if I slightly overlooked part of the noble Lord’s question. The Government have not made a judgment on any ISC comment or recommendations. However, we are continually keeping under review every nation in relation to a potential FIRS. We have announced Iran. Yesterday, we announced Russia. All other potential designations are kept under constant review. On China, as I have said in the House before, we co-operate where we can, we challenge where we need to and we ensure that we maintain our national security interests. We will keep that under review, but I cannot give the noble Lord a running commentary on potential FIRS designations. They are not a matter for today, which is about Russia and recommitting to the FIRS declaration on Iran.

My Lords, if the House will forgive me for a quick follow-up question, the Minister referred to sector guidance. Will he issue sector guidance relating to Parliament itself?

My noble friend raises an interesting point. The sector guidance is to ensure that, as the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, mentioned, we give guidance to academia, business or other sectors. As I envisage guidance for Parliament, there is transparency in that, from 1 July, any individual who seeks to influence Parliament will have to declare any influence that they have from Iran or Russia. If they do not declare it and subsequently are found to have it, they will face the full force of the law and potentially a five-year jail term. I think that the guidance to Parliament is simply that Parliament can have trust and confidence that all-party groups do not have influence from those nations, unless those individuals declare that influence. If they hide it and it then comes to light, they will be prosecuted. That gives Parliament the confidence that it needs. The sector guidance is meant to be for academia, students, business and other issues. I hope that this reassures my noble friend that this is the general intention of this legislation.

House adjourned at 10.19 pm.