May I say what a pleasure it is to see that we are taking this seriously? The words of the Home Secretary filled me with renewed optimism, because we need both optimism and action. Does he agree that we can never underrate the Russians and Vladimir Putin? The fact is that they are very clever; they are using both financial strategies and dupes in Europe and other places to channel their influence. We must be wary at every level.

Does the Home Secretary think our intelligence services are equipped to cope with the real challenge that we now face from Russia, and indeed from China? Has he been picking up what I am picking up from a lot of my old friends in Washington? Not only are they very disturbed about Russian influence on American elections, but I have heard very strong information that they believe that some of the influence is coming from Russia via London and from the United Kingdom. That is a real problem.

The Home Secretary knows I have a bee in my bonnet about this, but there are people in this Parliament who have been named as very close to Russia. We had a member of the House of Lords featured in a main article in The Times only two weeks ago. Surely we must make our House and our Parliament as clean and above board as possible, and if there are such groups or individuals in this place, we should know about it.