Seamus Logan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  All I can say is—

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 21, in clause 6, page 6, line 3, at end insert— “(2A) Where an obligation to give notification would have arisen under section 2(3), save for the exemptions in subsection (2), the head of the relevant intelligence service must provide a written notification to the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament summarising the acts that may be relevant to an inquiry or investigation.” This amendment aims to provide accountability for intelligence services and their operations in relation to the duty of candour and its exemptions from them.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Amendment 25 has already been covered in our discussions about “may” or “must”, and I am happy to take that discussion into further meetings with the Minister.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Given the proceedings today are a matter of record, I am happy to withdraw amendment 23. Question proposed , That the clause stand part of the Bill.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 24, in clause 9, page 8, line 12, leave out “may” insert “must”. I am aware that we have debated amendment 48, although perhaps not as fully as I would have liked. In the interests of getting our business done within the time available, I decided not to intervene in that debate. However, I believe that the particular change in amendment 24 is necessary. Where amendment 48 spoke to the duty of candour, amendment 24 speaks to the code of ethics. There are legal minds in the room that are much better informed and trained on legal definitions than my own, but amendment 24 addresses the need to replace “may” with “must” in the code of ethics, as opposed to the duty of candour. I believe this is important given my experience in the health service, where there is a responsibility on individuals to report child abuse, or where a colleague might clearly be able to see that a surgeon carrying out procedures is repeatedly doing something injurious or harmful. By replacing the word “may” with “must”, we place a responsibility on anyone to blow the whistle on those particular issues. In my working life I have experience, as might others present, of consultants who suppressed information relating to child abuse. We certainly heard similar evidence about surgeons during our evidence session. Colleagues will be able to think of many such examples, which is why it is important that the amendment replaces “may” with “must”.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister for that response, but I am at a loss to know how the responsibility suggested by the amendment would cut across any existing code of ethical conduct. If the legislation simply stated that the person who works for the authority must take steps if they believe that another person who works for the authority has failed to act in accordance with the code, I fail to see how that would cut across any existing procedures. It would simply make the provision more robust by saying “You must take that step” rather than “You may take that step”. That is what the amendment calls for; perhaps the Minister might like to expand on why she wishes me to withdraw it.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Earlier, I asked the Minister for an example and she pointed to the national health service. I think that was a fair point, but not every issue here relates to a complicated organisation like an NHS trust, where the chief executive has senior clinicians who have clinical responsibilities that perhaps outweigh the managerial responsibilities of the chief executive. The Minister rightly pointed to paragraph 3 of schedule 3, backing up the point that she was making, and I accept that, but the difficulty with that paragraph, and the way the Bill is currently written, is that it puts the responsibility initially on the body. The point that has been made to me by folk like those at the Hillsborough Law Now group is that that will allow someone—a chief executive, chief inspector or whoever—simply to say, “I didn’t have the knowledge because X or Y didn’t tell me about it.” The proposed amendment would very clearly put the command responsibility on the chief executive or the leading officer.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  In light of the Minister’s clarification, I am happy to withdraw amendment 25. However, with regard to amendment 23, I am still unclear as to what exactly the Minister is saying. Is she indicating that beyond the passage of the Bill there will be further clarifications to public bodies as to what training requirements there might be, and that resources will flow from that?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. We have had an excellent debate on command responsibility, and I am heartened to see a very positive outcome from that discussion. Clause 6 is separate and distinct because it applies to the intelligence services. We heard evidence about the provisions in clause 6 in the evidence session, as well as at a useful special meeting that some Committee members attended with two heads and a deputy head of the three intelligence services. As the shadow Minister pointed out, the evidence from that special meeting and the evidence session has highlighted that there are potentially some contradictory views. Nevertheless, my problem with clause 6(2)(a) is that it is basically a get-out clause; it allows the head of an intelligence service to opt out of the overall duty of candour where that would, according to the Bill, contravene the Official Secrets Act 1989. I understand that there are special circumstances regarding the intelligence services, as was ably described to us by Sir Ken McCallum, when he said, “I don’t know who all my agents are, and I am not sure that I know all of their activities.” That is fair enough; one can readily understand why that might be the case. Nevertheless, there should be no overall escape clause for the intelligence services. Having said that, I understand that there will be circumstances in which it is necessary to maintain secrecy about certain aspects of what the intelligence services do. My amendment would give a role to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is a Committee of the House, by requiring the head of an intelligence service, in these specific circumstances, to make a report to the ISC on what the exception is. In even more exceptional circumstances, I understand that the ISC can also communicate with the Prime Minister alone—it has no obligation to do anything else. I believe that that sensible mechanism would give us confidence, in drafting the Bill, that there is no get-out clause. Critically, it would also restore trust even within our intelligence community on how it operates. We do not need to go back over all the evidence that we heard from an employee of the BBC, for example. I hope the Minister can take on board the thrust of what I am saying in the amendment, and perhaps she can even see fit to endorse it.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak to amendment 23. The Minister will be aware that if the Bill is enacted, as we are all confident that it will be in due course, a large number of public authorities will face significant new training requirements. When we met with the intelligence services chair, Sir Ken McCallum, he readily acknowledged that there will be significant training implications for his organisation, and MI5 is quite small in the broader context, particularly if one thinks of the national health service, the civil service, the police, and so on. The Minister has told me that the money resolution has already been passed, and there are no new additional resources attached to this Bill, other than in relation to legal aid—I think that is in the schedules. Amendment 23 seeks to ask the Minister to reconsider that in the light of what I have said about training needs. One only has to think of things such sexual harassment, equality training, and so on, and the massive training requirement that fell upon the public bodies many years ago. I was one of those who underwent that training. It was a significant training requirement, and I expect that the duty of candour and the code of ethics, and so on, will also have a major training requirement. With amendment 23, I am asking the Government to reconsider whether adequate funding is available to organisations to undertake the training that will follow from passing this Bill.

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Dowd. Pursuant to the issues already outlined by the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills, amendment 22 is about affording enhanced protections. The main point I make to the Minister is this. If the existing protections actually worked, then why—as we heard in the evidence sessions—are so many people falling foul of whistleblowing provisions? Their careers can be blighted, and in some cases they lose their jobs. If the existing protections are sufficient, why is it necessary to consider making these amendments?

• 2 Dec 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Fourth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which is helpful. Perhaps when the Minister and I, and others, meet to discuss other matters, we might explore this in more detail. If the Minister is willing to accept that, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  I will confine my remarks to the north-east of Scotland. Whether it is farmers, oil and gas workers, the fishing industry, local pubs and hotels, businesses, or families who are just about managing this festive season, no one—not one person—has approached me to say what a great Budget this was. People are angry and worried, and they are right to be. We are still in a cost of living crisis, and there was no change to the energy profits levy in the Budget, nor to the family farm tax. There was more punishment for Scotch whisky and no mention of the WASPI women. There was no review of the coastal growth fund to boost the local fishing industry and, worst of all, there was sleight of hand on the cost of living for so many families. When I recently led an Adjournment debate in this place on the Nolan principles, I voiced my fears that people are losing faith in politics. It now seems that that is not only because of Johnson or Truss, although they did not help; it is largely due to this Government. Households in the north-east are facing harsher and colder winters than other parts of the country, and will continue to struggle as energy costs rise. That is even more unfair given the north-east’s contribution to energy production as the UK’s renewables powerhouse and, crucially, via our oil and gas sector, which is being hammered like a tent peg by this Labour Government. They are apparently hellbent on taxing our energy sector out of existence. Keeping the EPL in place until 2030 will mean haemorrhaging job losses in the tens of thousands. It will risk our energy security, incur eye-wateringly expensive carbon-heavy imports, scupper supply chain growth, and severely hamper our future renewables potential. Just today, there have been a further 100 job losses at Harbour Energy in Aberdeen. People I know in my constituency are going abroad to get contracts because they lost their jobs in Scotland. Ninety thousand oil and gas workers in the north-east are bitterly disappointed. Why? This Budget was a chance to secure their jobs and to secure £50 billion of potential investment supported by the renewables sector, which needs the skills base of our workers. The hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) talked about banking. The four big banks made a £44 billion profit last year, and there is not a word about a windfall tax on them. This is the politics of madness. Forget investment in a just transition; this is industrial damage on a grand scale. Talking of industrial damage, why have the Government got it in for Scotland’s world-class Scotch whisky sector? Once more it has been treated as a Treasury cash cow, with duty rising again in line with inflation, although I—as well as many others, including numerous industry sources—warned the Treasury that an increase in duty would reduce the income to the Treasury. Who does not understand the maths? Furthermore, with the family farm tax still in place, generational family farms across my constituency face ruin by Treasury spreadsheet, with the Chancellor balancing the books on the back of our domestic food security. Finally, where are the WASPIs in this Budget? There is no mention of the Government’s plan to review their decision on compensating those 1950s-born women. The truth is that Scotland cannot afford to be dragged back into Labour’s black hole, or whatever fiscal fiction they care to conjure up to justify their economic choices. We are expected to believe that the same people who told us that removing the two-child cap was deeply unwise now say that it is the centrepiece of the Government’s achievements. This begs the question, “What does Labour stand for?” It certainly does not stand for working people, families or businesses. We have, instead, a chaotic “cost of Labour” Budget, caught in a perpetual doom loop, while the north-east of Scotland pays a high price for the Government’s economic mismanagement. Brexit Britain is broken, trust is broken, and the north-east is bearing the brunt. Scotland wants out.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  If the hon. Member feels so strongly about the two-child cap, why did he vote to keep it last year?

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Lord Evans, in the fullness of time, the Committee will consider amendments, so the final Bill might be slightly different in its shape. One can readily understand the very persuasive points that you have made, in particular with regard to MI6 and the need for good relationships with other countries on the sharing of information. However, we might consider command responsibility in a different way in the final Bill—the provision of safe mechanisms, for example closed sessions of inquiries or investigations, or possibly reporting mechanisms to the Intelligence and Security Committee of the UK Parliament. Were such arrangements in place, would that enable the head of a particular intelligence service to provide information to a safe place and, in turn, to the chair of an investigation or inquiry? Lord Evans of Weardale: I would want to see the exact mechanism, but I do not think it is inconceivable that there could be a way of doing something of that sort, which in broad terms is similar to what is done with closed material proceedings in the civil courts. In order for a court to make a just decision, it needs to have access to the relevant information, even if that is sometimes highly sensitive. The closed material procedures ensure that such information can be brought forward and considered by the judge without its being visible to terrorist sympathisers, for instance, or Russian intelligence officers. Closed proceedings can work. In some ways, they are sub-optimal because you have to work quite hard to give people confidence that they are really getting at the truth for the public. The ultimate safeguard for that is the fact that the judge is in control of their own court; if they do not believe that justice is being done, they can make that very clear. Over the years, those closed material procedures have been refined and slimmed down in such a way that they are quite widely accepted to be part of a proper justice system while protecting the sensitive information at hand.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q We have not met before, but may I call you Cindy? Cindy Butts: Yes, please do.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  So you are aware of the proposals regarding command responsibility? Daniel De Simone: Yes.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Would you accept that there might be circumstances in which the head of a particular intelligence organisation might need a safe place to be able to reveal sensitive information? Daniel De Simone: Absolutely, and that is why we have closed material procedures within the courts. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee frequently sits in secret—that is not in public. There absolutely needs to be places where intelligence and sensitive matters can be discussed. Clearly, no one wants harm to national security or for there to be genuine damage to anyone. I think there are ways of dealing with it. When he gave evidence earlier, Lord Evans said that himself, and he is the former head of MI5.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q How would we do that? Dr Chopra: Going back to what I was saying about our role as a regulator, I have focused on where we have taken enforcement powers where we have seen things that have not worked, but I think we could also do the opposite. As a regulator, we could be talking about those areas that we see as outstanding, and platforming what they have done with their policies, processes and procedures that have made them outstanding. Being a regulator that champions innovation and outstanding organisations is something that the CQC could contribute. That might be one way. I have worked in other jurisdictions. When I think about how duty of candour works in Scotland, one of the differences is that every organisation in Scotland has to do an annual duty of candour statement. Each organisation is required to set out at the end of the year how many instances of duty of candour have been picked up, the very top headlines of what the issues were, and what they are doing about it. I thought that was a good provision that I saw operating up north. It is not perfect, but it shows how the duty is working in practice. I was working in an assurance body up there, and it allowed me to look across the country to see what was happening and whether there were areas where under-reporting may be taking place. It allowed better monitoring at national level. Helen Vernon: In addition to what we do in relation to compensation, we have a role in the effective management of concerns about practitioner performance. Recognising some of the things that you mentioned, we did some work on some guidance called “Being fair”, which was about setting out some principles on a just and learning culture and what that looks like. Translating that into practice has meant creating templates and some simple principles that can be shared across different organisations to make it easy for people to speak up safely. That was co-produced with the input of regulators and clinicians who have been through some difficult processes, but it is one of the ways in which we can bring practical guidance to sometimes difficult concepts.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Ron, it says in our brief that in 2006, you predicted the impending sub-prime/collateralised debt obligation crisis. Should I sell everything? I am only kidding. Ron Warmington: I do think that everything is hyped, but luckily, I was in Burbank looking at a business that did that, and it was the worst business—at that point— that I had ever looked at, so it was easy to predict what would happen.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Not at all—I thought it was a good answer. Flora Page: It is about incentives, isn’t it? The incentives have to be aligned for folk to do the right thing. Ron Warmington: Yes, we have to get people to make the right decision. They will not do it just because it is the right thing to do. Some people will—even though it is costly to themselves, their careers or their companies, they will do the right thing; I have been brought up with people like that. Other people need to be persuaded to do the right thing by threats or by incentives, or ideally both. I do not think we can just hope for the best that the ethics of corporate Great Britain and civil service Great Britain are going to change. I mean, I have seen Ministers talk utter nonsense because their civil servants parroted nonsense that was parroted to them by people in the organisations that ought to have been subject to review. I feel sorry for MPs and Ministers in those cases. Jacqui Hames: It is important to point out that the media companies responsible for the industrial-scale phone hacking saga are corporations. They make a profit or loss, and they hide behind the free speech mantra, but ultimately they are creating a culture where this behaviour is acceptable—where criminality is acceptable. There is no doubt that a whistleblower coming from their side of the fence would be treated extremely badly. As a victim of phone hacking, as an ex-police officer who had their personal items sold to a news corporation, I know that you have nowhere to go in those circumstances if those corporations are just going to hide behind a freedom of speech defence. It is not freedom of speech to spread misinformation and disinformation that affect the wellbeing of hundreds of people who have already gone through intolerable experiences.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Do you agree with them? Daniel De Simone: I am not really here to speak on behalf of the BBC about command response or anything else but, as you heard from what I said about MI5, where responsibility can be taken by individuals, that is better than it falling on organisations, because organisations are more slippery and it is harder to hold them to account. Where an individual has to take responsibility, that is better.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Well, you have got the duty of candour, the code of ethics, the code of conduct and the new offences. Do you feel that that represents a challenge for large public organisations? Cindy Butts: I think it will present a challenge for them, because it is very different from what we have now and indeed from what has ever existed. That is a testament to those who have worked on the Bill and to what it is trying to achieve. It will be an enormous change for them, but it is a change that is long overdue and desperately needed. Yes, it is challenging, but I would like to think that they see the importance and value of the changes that are coming into being, and that they will rise to that challenge, because the status quo is no longer acceptable.

• 27 Nov 2025 · Public Office (Accountability) Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q With all that said, do you think the reach of the Official Secrets Act might go a little too far in some circumstances? Daniel De Simone: In what way?