PRITI’S NEW SPY LAWS TO TARGET HOSTILE STATES
PRITI Patel has vowed to face down Britain’s enemies with tough new spy laws.
The Home Secretary warned Russia and China powers are being drawn up
to curb their increasingly hostile activities. And hardline sanctions will be imposed on spies and their governments.
The new laws will also stop hostile countries interfering with British businesses, as well as buying them up.
Ms Patel told the Daily Express: “Security is what we are about – protecting our people, our country, our state.” She spoke days after a report by parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) warned that Britain had “underestimated” the threat posed by Moscow for too long.
The Home Secretary said the report, based on evidence given two years ago, was out of date and the position now was a “world away” from the one it set out. She said: “We’ve moved on.
“When it comes to our adversaries we are much stronger than we were. I think it is really important for your readers to know that.”
She explained that the way the intelligence and security agencies work with each other is “fundamentally different” now.
“It’s much more integrated. Our agencies are interoperable in terms of skills, intelligence – not just in the UK but internationally as well where we work with our partners.”
The ISC report into Russian meddling said the UK Government was “playing catch-up” and needed to take “immediate action” to deal with the threat from Moscow.
Fuelling
It said London had been turned into a “laundromat” to clean up dirty money, fuelling a boom in lawyers and estate agents who were “enablers”, some knowingly. Moscow has also targeted the UK with disinformation campaigns and cyber attacks, MPs said. The ISC, former spy chiefs and Scotland Yard’s chief Dame Cressida Dick have all called for laws to be overhauled.
Ms Patel said she is drawing up a Bill to impose tougher sanctions on spies and the states they work for.
She said: “You can’t erode at a marginal level. You have got to have a plethora of effective sanctions and tools that are deployed.”
The laws will tackle hostile activities against British companies, too, including a crackdown on intellectual property theft.
China has infuriated the West by allowing its firms to copy product designs and new technology.
Ms Patel said: “We are doing much more on national security, foreign agent registration, much more on companies as well, protecting our intellectual property, protecting businesses from some of the pernicious behaviour that could come in from third-party countries – buying up our companies as well. We are completely geared up for them.
“We have seen China responsible for all sorts of actions even through Covid.”
She praised the UK’s intelligence and security agencies, saying: “I will speak very proudly about the work that our security and intelligence agencies and services do because I see it, I feel it, I experience it every single day.”
Meanwhile, the UK accused Russia of launching a “projectile with the characteristics of a weapon” during a satellite test yesterday. It is the first time the Ministry of Defence has publicly condemned Russian activity of this sort. The US also slammed the action, describing it as a test of an anti-satellite weapon. The US space command said Russia “injected a new object into orbit” from the satellite Cosmos 2543. General Jay Raymond, US
Space Force chief of space operations, said: “The Russian satellite system used to conduct this on-orbit weapons test is the same satellite system that we raised concerns about earlier this year.” He said it put US and allied space assets “at risk”.
Head of the UK’s space directorate, Air Vice-Marshal Harvey Smyth, said of the launch: “Actions of this kind threaten the peaceful use of space and risk causing debris that could pose a threat to satellites and the space systems on which the world depends.”