Baroness Neville-Rolfe:

Moved by Baroness Neville-Rolfe

That the House do agree with the Commons in their Amendment 25.

25: Clause 57, page 39, line 30, at end insert—“(2A) If a supplier is an excluded supplier on the basis of the supplier or an associated person being on the debarment list only by virtue of paragraph 34A of Schedule 6 (threat to national security), the supplier is to be treated as an excluded supplier only in relation to public contracts of a kind described in the relevant entry.

My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will also speak to Amendments 29, 33, 34, 37, 38, 40, 41, 42, 57, 100 and 101 in this group. These amendments significantly strengthen the exclusions and debarment provisions on national security grounds. I hope they will further assure noble Lords that the Government are taking the issue of national security seriously and are ready to take action. I thank particularly the noble Lord, Lord Alton, who I see in his seat and who has worked tirelessly to raise this issue in the House, for our constructive meetings.

The new amendments will enable a Minister of the Crown to take a stronger approach in response to a specific risk profile of a particular supplier and make targeted decisions about whether the debarment should be mandatory for particular types of contracts, depending on the nature of the risk. If the supplier poses an unacceptable risk in relation to selected goods—for example, networked communications equipment—the Minister will be able to enter on the debarment list that the supplier is an excluded supplier for contracts for the supply or support of that type of equipment.

The entry may also, or as an alternative, stipulate that the supplier is excluded from contracts relating to certain locations or sites, or from contracts let by certain contracting authorities. This removes discretion from contracting authorities regarding exclusions where a supplier poses a threat for particular contracts, thereby reducing the risk of a supplier being allowed to participate in those procurements. By allowing this type of targeted and proportionate approach, we can direct that suppliers must be excluded where the risks are unacceptable and allow contracting authorities to make appropriate choices where the risk is manageable—for example, for the provision of pencils or plastic furniture.

Amendment 31 commits a Minister of the Crown to keep suppliers under review for potential investigation for debarment on national security grounds. This amendment commits Ministers to proactively consider new debarment investigations where there is evidence of risk so that the Government can act effectively and on time. We believe this would be highly advantageous in minimising the risk of those who pose a threat to our national security being awarded public contracts.

I am pleased to announce that the Government will create a new specialist unit, with dedicated resources within the Cabinet Office, to take on and manage this new approach. The new national security unit for procurement will regularly monitor government supply chains and review pertinent information to determine which suppliers should be investigated for debarment on national security grounds. It will be able to draw on the full range of expertise within government, access the latest intelligence, including that from Five Eyes partners, and respond swiftly to emerging threats. It will also carry out investigations of suppliers for potential debarment on national security grounds. The new unit will consider the findings and propose recommendations to the Minister for the final decision on whether the supplier should be added to the debarment list.

The unit will also have a role in supporting and upskilling contracting authorities. By directly engaging with them and providing guidance, it will help contracting authorities confidently to implement the national security exclusion and debarment regimes, maximising their effectiveness. The amendments constitute significant steps to strengthen our approach to national security in procurement. They have been welcomed by the other place and I believe this House should also welcome them.

Amendment 47 removes Clause 65, which was agreed to on Report in the Lords. The original amendment required the Government to publish a timetable for the removal from the Government’s procurement supply chain of surveillance equipment or other physical technology where there was evidence that a provider had been involved in modern slavery, genocide or crimes against humanity.

The noble Lord, Lord Alton, has tabled a revised version of the amendment—amendments in lieu, Amendments 47A and 47B—which would require the Government to publish a timeline for the removal of networked physical technology or surveillance equipment from the Government’s procurement supply chain where there was established evidence that a provider had been involved in modern slavery or the crime of genocide, or was subject to the People’s Republic of China’s national intelligence law.

I am sure the noble Lord will want to speak to his amendment in lieu but, before he does, I hope he may allow me to make a few points. First, I agree with the intent behind the amendment, but the Bill’s new debarment regime makes huge progress on excluding suppliers who are unfit to deliver public contracts, including on modern slavery grounds.

Secondly, I take this opportunity to remind the House that last year the Government published a WMS asking departments to consider the removal of visual surveillance equipment from government sensitive sites to ensure that no such equipment is connected to departmental core networks, and to cease any future procurement for such equipment. In the other place we committed that, within six months of Royal Assent for the Bill, the Government would set out the timeline for the removal of surveillance equipment supplied by companies subject to the national intelligence law of China from sensitive sites. I reiterate that promise today.

Thirdly, the key issue here is where those cameras are located. The level of risk in recycling centres, leisure centres, schools or hospitals does not match the level of threat that we potentially face on sensitive sites. These are not the sites that would typically be of interest to a hostile state, and they do not contain the type of material that would be particularly useful to them.

Lastly, replacing devices is not the only method for mitigating risk. We should look to strengthen protective measures to ensure that devices are less vulnerable to attack. The Government are working with the National Cyber Security Centre and the newly-formed National Protective Security Authority to provide organisations with a library of advice and guidance, enhancing the protection of these devices and reducing the likelihood of compromise.

I thank the noble Lord for his constructive engagement since tabling his amendments. While regrettably I cannot support his amendment, I am happy to offer a clear definition of the sites that our commitments regarding physical surveillance will apply to. Our commitment will apply to government departments and cover their sensitive sites, which are: any building or complex that routinely holds secret material or above; any location that hosts a significant proportion of officials holding developed vetting clearance; any location which is routinely used by Ministers; and any government location covered under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005. While our commitment does not extend to the wider public sector, public sector organisations may choose to mirror our action—indeed, I believe that some of them have chosen to do so.

I am also happy to commit—and this is important—to an annual written report to Parliament detailing progress on our commitment to remove from government departments’ sensitive sites physical surveillance equipment subject to the national intelligence law of China. I hope that these commitments satisfy the noble Lord and that he will not be pressing his amendments. I thank him again for his contribution on this important matter.

Amendment 102 removed an amendment which was added to Schedule 7 on Report in this House creating a discretionary exclusion ground for suppliers engaged in forced organ harvesting. Forced organ harvesting is an abhorrent practice and we are in full agreement that complicity in the abuses associated with the overseas organ trade must not be tolerated. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has subsequently tabled two amendments in lieu, Amendment 102B in Motion 102A. I take this opportunity to reiterate the Government’s stance on this important issue. The UK has been explicit that the overseas organ trade, or complicity in it, will not be tolerated. For example, it is an offence to travel outside of the UK to purchase an organ, by virtue of the Health and Care Act 2022. The Government continue to monitor and review evidence relating to reports of forced organ harvesting in China and maintain a dialogue with leading non-governmental organisations, and with international partners, which is equally important, on this very important issue.

I do not believe that these amendments are necessary as the issue is already dealt with under the existing exclusion grounds. Under the Procurement Bill, any suppliers failing to adhere to existing ethical or professional standards that apply in its industry, including relating to the removal, storage and use of human tissue, could be excluded under the grounds of professional misconduct.

To further reassure noble Lords, as far as I am aware no supplier to the UK public sector has been involved in forced organ harvesting—though if they were, the exclusion grounds would apply. Although I sympathise with the noble Lord’s concern—he has been very eloquent in this area in successive debates on the Bill—I am not convinced of the case for this amendment. I hope that, in the light of what has been said, he may decide not to press this amendment today, bearing in mind all that I have said about our approach to this abhorrent practice. I beg to move.

My Lords, I begin by thanking the Minister. I will come back to that in a few moments, because she has been extraordinarily helpful, and I know we have made significant progress from when the first Amendment was moved on this issue.

In parenthesis, before I begin—and because I will not weary the House with a second speech later, even if the opportunity is there—I would like to say how much I support what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of King’s Heath, is trying to achieve with Motion 102A and Amendment 102B. Again, I have spoken on those previously, along with the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Brinton, the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro, from the Conservative Benches, my noble friend Lady Finlay—who is unable to be with us this evening—and many others who want to support what the noble Lord is trying to achieve.

I turn to Clause 65 and Amendment 47B in Motion 47A in my name. As the Minister said, it would require a timeline for the removal of surveillance equipment that is connected to the internet and subject to the People’s Republic of China’s national intelligence law. I did say that I would like to start my remarks, and I do, by paying tribute to the Minister’s own efforts and those of her officials, who have met with me now on several occasions—most recently on Thursday last—to discuss the concerns of Members of both Houses when it comes to the presence of Chinese-made surveillance cameras in our public procurement chain.

As recently as yesterday, the Sunday Telegraph reported that the Co-op has decided to ban Chinese CCTV for “ethical and security reasons”. Given the Minister’s professional background in a previous life, she will know that, in doing this, it is following the example of Tesco. It would indeed be odd if supermarkets were ahead of public bodies in recognising the dangers posed by the CCP’s surveillance state. I was also very struck that the Deputy prime minister, the Right Honourable Oliver Dowden, speaking in Another place this afternoon about allegations concerning espionage on the estate of your Lordships’ House and that of another place, made a point of saying that one of his first actions in Whitehall had been to have surveillance cameras linked to Hikvision removed from his department. This is something that Sajid Javid also said when he became Secretary of State for Health. I simply say that, if supermarkets and departments of state are not suitable places for these cameras, where is? It would indeed be odd if we did not think about the 60% of public bodies that are estimated to have Hikvision cameras in use.

This is not a new question that I am putting to your Lordships’ House; this is something I have raised on over 40 occasions in the House or in Grand Committee since 2020. Both the Minister and the Leader of the House, the noble Lord, Lord True, have taken this issue seriously. When the noble Lord was in charge of this Bill, in its earliest stages, we had a meeting to discuss Hikvision. Because I want to get on with seeing a resolution of this issue, I am able to welcome the clear commitment from the Minister, given at the Dispatch Box, for a timetable for the removal of this surveillance equipment and these cameras from sensitive sites. However, it is worth noting, as I have said, how we got here.

As the Government have recognised, there are at least a million Hikvision and Dahua cameras in the UK, installed across our high streets, job centres, schools, police forces, hospitals, universities, local government buildings and even government departments. I gently say to the Minister that, although she is right that military barracks or GCHQ are clearly far more sensitive sites than, say, hospitals or schools, some of this is about data collection. That involves every single citizen of this country, so it poses dangers for them too. I commend to her the recent Channel 4 documentary on Hikvision and the fantastic work of IPVM, Big Brother Watch, Hong Kong Watch—of which I am a patron—and other organisations that have outlined the security risk that these cameras pose, particularly in those sensitive public sector sites, but not exclusively so.

It is quite something to consider that, as a country, we have willingly handed over the Majority of our surveillance infrastructure, which watches the often public and sometimes intimately private moments of our lives, not just to the police or local authorities but to an authoritarian Government that the House of Commons has found, on a resolution of the House, credibly accused of genocide. I declare a non-financial interest as vice chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Uyghurs.

How ironic it is that we are debating this on the day we have learned that an alleged CCP spy has been operating across Parliament, based in the office of a Member of another place. We urgently need a bicameral group of senior parliamentarians to investigate this shocking lapse. The Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament has warned against the infiltration of our universities and other institutions. Only last week, the University of Cambridge ended a partnership with a subsidiary company developing Chinese weapons and military hardware. The line between crass naivety and outright collaboration is a fine one. We recall the Cambridge spies and the Soviet Union, and some of the disastrous consequences. It should send a shiver down the spine of every freedom-loving person to see swathes of the public surveillance procurement supply chain handed over to Chinese companies that are blacklisted for complicity in gross human rights violations by the United States and which are legally compelled under the PRC national intelligence law to pass on data to the Chinese Communist Party state.

As we debate the timeline for their removal from our public procurement supply chain, the definition of what we should consider “sensitive sites” and the oversight that Members of this House and another place will have should be high on our agenda. Surely, for too long government policy towards China has favoured investment and trade at the expense of our national security, our values and human rights. We have underestimated the PRC, ignored the voices of those Uighurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans and others who have been persecuted by the CCP and know it best, and failed to produce a coherent strategy to deal with the threat that the PRC poses. I am always struck by the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Patten of Barnes, who knows a thing or two about China. He describes it as cakeism—wanting to have your cake and eat it—to want trade deals on the one hand, but recognise the country as a threat to your national interest on the other.

Despite the ongoing human rights crackdown in Hong Kong, China’s flagrant breaches of the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the recent targeting of Hong Kong activists living in the UK, the Government have failed to hold any Hong Kong or Chinese official to account with targeted sanctions. I suppose at this juncture I should say that I have a sort of interest, in being one of two Members of your Lordships’ House who have been sanctioned by the CCP. Most Ministers would privately concede, if pushed, that they share the view of this House that the treatment of Uighur Muslims is credibly genocide, yet they dare not publicly state it or take the kind of actions that the US is taking to ensure that the goods that we import from China are not made by Uighur forced labour. That is why I raised that very issue, linking it not just to slave labour but to genocide, in moving my original amendment.

Last week, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, and Sir Iain Duncan Smith MP, who has championed this cause in the Commons, I met US Customs and Border Protection officials to discuss customs enforcement preventing goods coming to the US from China’s Uighur region where forced labour is present. It is striking how much the US is doing to tackle the issue of modern slavery, in comparison to our own rather lacklustre approach.

These views are not mine alone but shared by the Foreign Affairs Committee in its recent report on the Indo-Pacific and the integrated review, and the joint Intelligence and Security Committee’s report on China, which both bemoan the woeful lack of a China strategy and seriousness from the Government over the security threats posed by the PRC. I commend to the Minister last week’s op-ed by Juliet Samuel, which made a forensic examination of what she described as the “King Kowtow” approach to trade with China—where, incidentally, instead of resilience we have a huge dependency and a trade deficit of over £40 billion.

Procurement and a renewal of our own industrial capacity would make a dent in that. We need a national resilience strategy, not dependency. Surely that is one of the lessons that we should have learned from Ukraine. Sadly, the Foreign Secretary’s recent visit to Beijing reflects the wrong approach. He has embarked on a fixed pathway of engagement with the PRC at all costs, failing to protect our national security at home while being unwilling to learn the lessons from our key allies, who have far more developed strategies for dealing with the PRC.

The commitment by the Government this evening will not change consecutive Governments’ woeful lack of a China policy overnight, but it does offer a glimmer of hope for the publication of a timeline for the removal of what the former Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner has described as “digital asbestos” from our public procurement supply chain. The Government should reflect on the worrying reasons for the resignation of the commissioner, Professor Fraser Sampson.

When it comes to the Government’s commitment to prioritise the removal of this equipment from “sensitive sites”, which I welcome, I favour the clearest definition to cover our police forces, NHS trusts, schools, universities, government departments, military sites, transport networks and local government buildings. This clear definition will make it easier for the Government to readily identify the extent of the problem, and put in place a practical timetable for the removal of surveillance equipment that falls under the jurisdiction of the PRC’s national intelligence law after six months from the Bill receiving Royal Assent.

I welcome the commitment from the Government—the most important thing of all in the concessions that the Government have offered—to a role for Members of this House and the other place in scrutinising annually the progress the Government have made in the removal of these cameras and this equipment, and hope that the responsibility for this will be given to the Joint Intelligence and Security Committee. Finally, it is my sincere desire that we can avoid such a public procurement supply chain fiasco in the future. I hope that civil servants and Ministers will learn the lessons from allowing Hikvision and Dahua cameras to spread across the public sector and avoid such a costly mistake for the taxpayer again.

I started my speech by paying tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, and the departmental officials who have worked on the Bill. I should like to end it in that spirit as well. I greatly appreciate the concerted engagement from the Minister, the quiet diligence of officials and the Government’s openness to moving on this important issue. In conjunction with that, I also thank Sam Goodman of Hong Kong Watch, of which I am a patron, as I have said, for some helpful background work. Given the commitment today by the Minister at the Dispatch Box to the publication of a timeline, a definition of sensitive sites and the allowance of some parliamentary oversight, I will not be moving this amendment to a Division. However, the House can be sure that I will watch this with an eagle eye and return to it, should the need arise in the future.

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendments 102A and 102B. It is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton. I very much agree with the thrust of what he said and look forward to the results of his eagle eye, which I am sure will come to your Lordships’ House over the next months and years. Like him, I also thank the Minister for her stewardship of the Bill. It has taken so long that I recollect that on our first day in Committee, the noble Baroness herself had laid many amendments which she seemed to have to refute later on in proceedings on the Bill. At least she knows how it feels to have a government Minister reject so many well-argued points.

I thank the Minister also for what she said about the Government’s view of the appalling atrocities being committed in China, with the removal of organs from a living prisoner of conscience for the purpose of transplantation, killing the victim in the process. It is state sanctioned and widespread throughout China. The victims at the moment are known to be primarily Falun Gong practitioners, but most recent evidence suggests that Uighur Muslims are also being targeted on a massive scale, particularly in Xinjiang.

My Amendment was supported by noble Lords all around the House on Report. Essentially, it gave a discretionary power to exclude suppliers from being awarded a public contract if they have participated in forced organ harvesting or unethical activities relating to human tissue, including where they are involved in providing a service or goods relating to such activities. The effect of the amendment would have been to prevent any service or goods that may have been involved in, or developed off the back of, the forced harvesting trade entering the UK. When it went back to the Commons, the Government took the provision out in Committee. This was challenged on Commons Report, led by my Honourable Friend Marie Rimmer. Despite support from MPs of all parties, that was not successful, so I am asking noble Lords to send it back to the Commons for further consideration.

My reasons, briefly, are threefold. First, the scale of the atrocities being carried out in China, specifically in Xinjiang, are becoming ever clearer and more horrific. Secondly, I believe that Ministers were wrong in dismissing the need for the amendment, both in the response they gave in the Commons to my colleagues and in the comments that the Minister has given tonight. Thirdly, I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, that the context in which this is being debated is, frankly, that government policy towards China is completely inadequate to the threats that country poses to the interests of the United Kingdom.

On the scale of the atrocities, I can do no better than to quote what Sir Iain Duncan Smith said on Report in the Commons. He referred to the 2022 UN report, which found serious human rights violations in Xinjiang. He said:

“They seem to be about the most significant human rights abuses currently happening in the world,”—[Official Report, Commons, 13/6/23; col. 205.]

whether we use the term “genocide” or not.

What the Minister has essentially said is first that we do not need to do this because there is a discretionary power in the Bill already, and secondly that there is no evidence, as far as the Government are aware, that a supplier to the UK public sector has been involved in forced organ harvesting. On the first point, I believe that there is considerable merit in making explicit reference in the Bill to this matter, so that public authorities are in no doubt whatever that they can use a discretionary power to deal with companies that may be dealing, maybe inadvertently, in this abhorrent trade. Secondly, I think there is evidence of taxpayers’ money being spent on companies involved in forced organ harvesting. For example, pharmaceutical companies may be supplying immunosuppressant drugs to hospitals that have been reported to remove organs from prisoners of conscience.

As I have said, we cannot consider these matters without seeing them in the context of UK policy towards China. I am not going to repeat what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, said, nor to requote. We have now had our Lordships’ Select Committee, then chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, in its report only last month on the Indo-Pacific tilt policy. They all draw attention to the Government’s woefully inadequate response to the threat that China presents and to the very ambiguity there is in policy. We can see the obvious tension between our security, on one hand, and the willingness and wish of the Government to trade with China and to encourage Chinese investment, but I am afraid that, in trying to get a balance, we have ended up with a Government with a wholly inadequate and incoherent policy.

My amendment is very modest. All it does is give the decision-maker discretionary powers to exclude a supplier from a procurement contract if it

“or a connected person has been, or is, involved in … forced organ harvesting, or … dealing in any device or equipment or services relating to forced organ harvesting”.

It would be the first piece of UK legislation to include and define forced organ harvesting. It would be a huge step in preventing UK complicity in forced organ harvesting, and I urge the House to support it.

My Lords, I was a signatory to earlier amendments and we have just heard the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, make a very cogent case for the Commons to think again about his amendments. I will be very brief, given the hour. The noble Lord built on what the noble Lord, Lord Alton, outlined just now, and his case is backed by international investigation and evidence. Thus, for example, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, not an institution that would say this lightly, concludes in relation to Xinjiang:

“Allegations of … torture … including forced medical treatment … are credible”.

The Minister in the Commons and now the Minister in the Lords have argued that current legislation covers the problem identified in this Amendment, but noble Lords will have heard the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, make a very persuasive case that this is not so. My noble friend Lord Fox will comment further shortly but, if the noble Lord decides to put this to a vote, from these Benches we will support him.

Very shortly, it seems.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Alton and Lord Hunt, for bringing forward these two amendments. I shall address them sequentially. I do not share the surprise of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about supermarkets being able to lead. I am sure the Minister will probably agree that supermarkets are in contact with their customers. They sense the morality and the feelings of their customers, so they do not just lead—they follow. Perhaps we are a bit slow in picking up the moral revulsion that people have out there, and also the fear of scrutiny from a totalitarian regime. I think both those issues play with the public, the public play those back to the supermarkets and the supermarkets have very good antennae for picking them up. We should share their sensitivity to these issues.

The noble Lord made an excellent speech for which he is to be congratulated because, working from here back to the Commons, we have seen significant progress. We have seen a great deal of progress, and I support him in not having to move his Motion this time. He mentioned en passant the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and I endorse what he said. The Cabinet Office is now responsible for the National Security and Investment Act—there is a team there working on that—and it now has a team working on this. It behoves those teams, if they are not the same people, certainly to be close to one another, close to the ISC and able to feed off the intelligence that the ISC can give them, which no other committees can. I hope the Minister is able to reinforce that.

I think the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is right in not pressing the Motion, but he is wrong to describe his eye as evil.

Noble Lords:

Eagle!

Eagle—thank goodness. I thought it was an evil eye. I was going to describe it as beady. I thought his “evil eye” was going to be upon the Minister and I was a little concerned for her safety. It is getting late.

Moving on, as my noble friend set out, we will support the Amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. There can be no place in the UK supply chain for businesses that engage in this behaviour, and we have to be absolutely sure that there is no place, which is why the noble Lord is right to want to explicitly write this in. I regret that the fact that my noble friend Lady Brinton’s amendment was not accepted means that if the noble Lord is successful, his amendment will not apply to the National Health Service, which seems rather unfortunate as it would probably be the prime customer. None the less, getting it in writing and putting it in there is very important and will be enthusiastically supported.

My Lords, I will be very brief. I thank both noble Lords for such excellent speeches on really important issues and important amendments that have been brought back for further discussion. The noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, again and again draws our attention to where we need to act on wrongs in this world. Clearly, we must do all we can to tackle modern slavery, genocide and crimes against humanity. He is right to draw our attention to the serious examples he gave us in his speech of where this is happening. We believe that procurement policy can and should contribute to that end where it can. I say to the Minister that the Government have listened to much of what the noble Lord has said; we have moved forward to some extent on this.

My noble friend Lord Hunt’s Amendment clearly spells out why we need to be doing something about this. Reading his amendment, what struck me was the definition. I will read it, because I think it is at the crux of this:

“‘Forced organ harvesting’ means killing a person without their consent so that their organs may be removed and transplanted into another person”.

I cannot think of many things more appalling than that, so we fully support my noble friend. He deserves the thanks of the House for bringing this forward. He has our full support, but I wish the Government would consider amending the Bill in this way.

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness on the excellence of the two speeches we have had during this important debate. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Alton, again for his contribution. I am delighted that we have been able to agree on this matter so that the changes we have agreed can be moved forward. I thought his speech, ranging from what the Co-op and Tesco are doing, through the Cambridge spies, the absolute horror of what is being imposed on the Uighurs, and all the other things he said that I will not repeat, bears reading and reflecting on.

On the use of surveillance equipment—to respond to one point the noble Lord made—in the wider public sector, I should add that if the Government consider the risk to be intolerable, they are able to take action. That does not have to be enshrined in primary legislation. On the point about parliamentary scrutiny, the Government carefully consider and respond to all Select Committee recommendations. The annual written report on surveillance cameras, once laid in Parliament, will be available to all committees. I am sure it will receive appropriate scrutiny and a great deal of interest.

Turning to the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Northover and Lady Hayman, we all agree that organ harvesting is a horrific practice. However, given that we already have provisions in this Bill relating to professional misconduct—which will cover organ harvesting—it would seem inappropriate and odd to single out this particular, albeit horrific, practice in this Bill, and not others, especially given that the risk of this practice occurring in public contracts is low. While the issue is of key importance, the Amendment itself largely duplicates the Government’s existing efforts. I cannot agree with the criticism of this given all we have done to try to improve this Bill and make the arrangements better. As I have said, there is a reference to organ harvesting in the NHS legislation. To pick up on the various security areas we have now in the Cabinet Office, they will work closely together. That is how you defeat the enemy on these things.

The Deputy prime minister has spoken in the other place on these issues today, and the Leader of the House will be repeating the Statement shortly when we finish this business. Obviously, that is some context. This Government have already taken steps to act on the risk from foreign influence and demonstrated that they are willing to act when the risk is intolerable. Our action on the risk of using certain surveillance equipment on government-sensitive sites was necessary and proportionate. This Bill will help us further, as the national security debarment provisions will enable us to act in public procurements where we see malign influence. This is a major change that has been made to this Bill. It is very encouraging that this House has influenced it and then welcomed it on its return from the other place. This is how good legislation is made, I hope.

It is crucial that we bring this most important Bill to Royal Assent as quickly as possible. I hope noble Lords will back us today, and I hope that in view of what I have said, the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment. In any event, we need to move forward and get this Bill on the statute book.

Commons Amendment 25 agreed.