Part of the debate – in the House of Commons am 1:05 pm ar 8 Mai 2024.
I thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of his statement. Like him, I pay tribute to those in law enforcement who work so diligently to counter these types of threats, which are extremely well known, and understood right across Europe. Disinformation and other types of hybrid threat are now a feature of democratic life in this country and elsewhere. We need a comprehensive sea change in how we approach that threat—a new whole-of-society approach to dealing with hybrid threats. I am fine to support the Government’s increase in defence spending, but what we really need is new thinking, new doctrines and new institutions in order to compete against threats that are ever evolving, becoming more sophisticated, more aggressive, and extremely well funded.
I will focus in particular on the threat of disinformation, especially because we are in an election year. The Government used to provide Parliament—I cannot quite recall when this stopped—with a six-monthly update on the threat posed by Daesh. Can we have a similar type of statement on hostile disinformation—a written statement to Parliament on a regular basis, informing Members of where the threat is and what is being done to meet it? I echo the comments about pressing the Government to ensure that sanctioned money is converted into Ukrainian hryvnia to allow that country to rebuild. I will not press the Home Secretary on that any further—he knows our views—but while I welcome the seizure of the assets that he mentioned and the expulsion of the defence attaché, I can tell him that there are tons of assets in Scotland, including land, estates and much else, that could also be seized. If he chooses to look into that any further, he will certainly have our support.