Boris Johnson goes to war on foreign spies: PM vows to boost powers for Britain’s secret services to tackle hackers and saboteurs in Queen’s Speech as he also weighs up updating the UK’s TREASON laws
- Prime Minister used Queen’s Speech to set out plan to update espionage laws
- The government will look at strengthening powers available to security services
- Will also consider updating Official Secrets Act and the UK’s old treason laws
- Measures are part of PM’s formal response to the 2018 Salisbury spy poisoning
Boris Johnson will try to make British national security bulletproof by bolstering powers for the secret services, updating the Official Secrets Act and making it easier to identify spies.
The Prime Minister will also consider the case for updating the UK’s treason laws and look at introducing a form of foreign agent registration which would force people to disclose if they are representing the interests of a foreign power.
The measures are part of a wider plan to make the UK a ‘harder environment for adversaries to operate in’.
The moves represent Mr Johnson’s attempt to deliver on commitments made following the Salisbury Novichok spy poisoning in March 2018 which the UK blamed on Russia – an accusation denied by the Kremlin.
The government’s new Queen’s Speech commits to providing the security services and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to ‘disrupt Hostile State Activity’.
Boris Johnson, pictured leaving Number 10 today, has pledged in the Queen’s Speech to bolster the powers available to the security services
There are concerns that the UK’s espionage laws are not up to date especially given the recent shift towards cyber warfare.
As a result, Mr Johnson wants to modernise existing offences to ‘deal more effectively with the espionage threat’ and create new offences ‘to criminalise other harmful activity conducted by, and on behalf of states’.
A number of the UK’s allies already have a form of foreign agent registration.
The US version requires anybody living there who is representing the interests of another country in a political or quasi-political capacity to disclose that they are doing so. It also forces them to reveal information about their finances.
Disclosing that information allows the government to keep an extensive record of all the people who are acting for another country.
There have been repeated calls for the government to update the UK’s treason laws. The existing legislation dates all the back to 1351.
MPs on both sides of the chamber have called for the laws to be updated to make them fit for the 21st Century.
People can still be prosecuted for treason and if convicted they face life in prison but the 1351 Treason Act has not been used since the Second World War.
The new espionage measures outlined by the government are in direct response to the 2018 Salisbury spy poisoning
MPs want the ‘unworkable’ current version of the act to be updated to include ‘acts of betrayal’ against the UK.
They argue that would better equip Britain to adequately punish people like British citizens who went to fight for the IS terror group.
The Law Commission has been asked by the government to review the Official Secrets Act to see if it needs to be changed or updated.