Baroness Manningham-Buller, the former Dame Eliza and Director-General of the Security Service (MI5), gave the Mile End lecture in the House of Lords a few hours ago.  Her topic was “Reflections on Intelligence” and I understand that the text of this will shortly be available on the Parliamentary web-site.

In the Q&A after the lecture one Jack Bauer enthusiast asked her about torture.  She was unequivocal in her reply:

“Nothing – even saving lives – justifies torture.”

She’d earlier made some comments about US “waterboarding” activities at Guantanamo Bay and she added the caustic comment:

“The sad thing is that Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush watched “24″.”

Liam Fox’s office has been in touch with journalists complaining about Gordon Brown’s visit to British troops.  In an interesting insight into the Tory mindset the troops are described as “political props”.

It is the most cynical of political games to suggest that it is wrong for the Prime Minister to visit now.  Even Liam Fox must know that there will be a General Election in the next few months – for all anyone knows it could be called this month.  Once the Election is announced it will, of course, be difficult for politicians to visit without their motives being misinterpreted.  But what the Tories seem to be arguing is that any visit at any time by the Prime Minister uses the troops as “political props”.

But just imagine the Tories’ complaints if the Prime Minister didn’t visit.

The Prime Minister is right to have gone to Afghanistan to visit British troops – something he has done regularly since he took office.

And it is Liam Fox and Cameron’s Conservatives who are playing politics.

Cynical is hardly an adequate description of their games.

The Guardian this morning produces new evidence of the Conservative Party organisation using surrogates and deniability.  Apparently, a shadowy organisation, called the Young Britons’ Foundation has trained 2,500 Conservative activists including eleven Parliamentary candidates.  The “training” has involved exercises with assault rifles on a shooting range in Virginia and the organisation’s leader has called for the NHS to be scrapped, environmental protestors to be shot and for US-style laws on firearms.  He has also defended waterboarding techniques in interrogation.

Naturally, despite the group’s close links to leading Conservatives, like Daniel Hannan, Eric Pickles, Liam Fox, Michael Gove, Ed Vaizey, David Davis and John Redwood, Conservative Central Office denies that it has official links with the YBF, even though it strongly recommends activists attend Blaney’s courses.

There they go again …..

There is to be a new Joint Committee to consider the National Security Strategy.

The first National Security Strategy was published in March 2008 and looks beyond the traditional areas of foreign, defence and security policies to include transnational crime, pandemics and flooding.

The Strategy was updated in June 2009 with further updates to be produced every year.  It has always been the intention that there would be a Joint Parliamentary Committee with members drawn from both Houses to help monitor the implementation and development of the Strategy.

The Committee is to consist of twelve Commons members, including the Chairmen of the Departmental Select Committees on Foreign Affairs, Defence, Home Affairs, International Development, Business and Enterprise, Energy and Climate Change, and Justice, and also the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and ten Lords members (and I have been asked to be one of these).

I did enjoy the Riddell cartoon in today’s Observer:

Back in the saddle

© Chris Riddell 2010

I had just read the front-page lead, “David Cameron to pledge NHS cash boost for most deprived areas“.  This reports that David Cameron is going to announce tomorrow that in the (unlikely) event that he wins this year’s General Election billions of pounds of NHS resources will be diverted to the most deprived parts of the country- apparently in an attempt to defuse the “class war” attacks on his Party.

Interesting, if true.

So where would this money come from?  Even bigger cuts elsewhere in the public sector?  The King’s Fund has demonstrated that even maintaining current cash spending on the NHS would lead to devastating reductions elsewhere.  So what will suffer?  Defence?  Police??  International Development???

Or is it going to come from elsewhere in the NHS?  So does this mean that middle-class areas will have their NHS resources cut?  Will Tory candidates in those areas come clean with their electorates??  And is the plan that the middle classes are to be forced into private health insurance???

So is this the vision for “Modern Conservatism”?

I think Tom Harris (no relation – he’s Scottish) seems to have got it right.

Two recent articles demonstrate how seriously more and more countries are taking the possibility of war in cyberspace, either by developing their own offensive capability or by strengthening internet security and resilience.  There are even talks about a new international treaty to “demilitarise” cyberspace.

According to Reuters, Major-General Amos Yadlin, Israel’s chief of military intelligence, has placed vulnerability to hacking in the same list of security threats to the State of Israel as the Iranian nuclear project and Syrian and Islamist guerrillas attacking across Israel’s borders.

He also made it clear that Israeli armed forces had the means to provide network security and launch cyber attacks of their own, pointing out that:

“The cyberwarfare field fits well with the state of Israel’s defense doctrine  …. This is an enterprise that is entirely blue and white (ie. Israeli) and does not rely on foreign assistance or technology. It is a field that is very well known to young Israelis, in a country that was recently crowned a ’start-up nation’.”

Reuters says that:

“Cyberwarfare teams nestle deep within Israel’s spy agencies, which have extensive experience in traditional sabotage techniques and are cloaked in official secrecy and censorship.

They can draw on the know-how of Israeli commercial firms that are among the world’s hi-tech leaders and whose staff are often veterans of elite computer units in the conscript army.”

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the United States has begun talks with Russia and a United Nations arms control committee about strengthening Internet security and limiting military use of cyberspace.  According to the New York Times:

“Many countries, including the United States, are developing weapons for use on computer networks that are ever more integral to the operations of everything from banks to electrical power systems to government offices. They include “logic bombs” that can be hidden in computers to halt them at crucial times or damage circuitry; “botnets” that can disable or spy on Web sites and networks; or microwave radiation devices that can burn out computer circuits miles away.”

The Russians are apparently arguing that the increasing challenges posed by military activities to civilian computer networks can be best dealt with by an international treaty, similar to treaties that have limited the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.

So where is the UK on all of this?

Well according to Major-General Yadlin, Britain is setting up a cyberwarfare command, and this demonstrates why Israel needs to have its own “soldiers and officers” dedicated to this field.

I have to admit that the existence of a UK cyberwarfare command is new to me – not that I (or many other people either – apart presumably from Major-General Yadlin) would necessarily know if it did exist.

My concern has usually been the opposite and that until recently at least the UK has seemed naively complacent about the scale of the cyber-threats faced.

The publication of a national cyber security strategy has been a welcome first step in the right direction (as I have commented before) and there are also signs of increasing Parliamentary interest in the matter (although when I sat in on the last part of the latest House of Lords hearing on internet security in Europe the main preoccupation seemed to be that Heraklion – where the relevant EU agency is based – is awfully difficult to get to from London).

Nevertheless, these two articles do show that the rest of the world recognises the problem, so the UK probably ought to be doing more as well (unless we really do have a cutting edge cyberwarfare command based in a bunker underneath Cheltenham).

The Parliamentary Information Technology Committee (PITCOM), of which I am the Honorary Treasurer, has produced a useful briefing summarising the key issues about the increasing reliance of the critical national infrastructure (CNI) on technology and the crucial importance of ensuring that that technology is resilient and adequately protected.

The potential vulnerability of the CNI to a variety of threats and the need to raise the level of protection and readiness of the UK to respond to attacks are highlighted.  The briefing also emphasises the importance of partnership between the Government and the private sector to mitigate risks, particularly given the extent to which major parts of the CNI are under private ownership and may not automatically prioritise the national interest above short-term commercial interests.

The briefing should be essential reading for all Parliamentary candidates and anyone else interested in national security.

Those who doubt the clarity of purpose of the mission in Afghanistan should listen to the interview on Radio 4’s “Today” programme this morning with Captain Andrew Tiernan of the Grenadier Guards.  He is on leave and about to return to Afghanistan.   This is his thrid tour of duty and he is clear about the progress that has been made and the importance of the role that British troops are fulfilling.

At the beginning of the interview it was made clear that his appearance on the programme was not at the behest of the Ministery of Defence, but was a consequence of his expressing his frustration to his mother about the way in which the work that he and his colleagues are doing in Afghanistan is being portrayed in the news media.

He emphasised that talk about a pull-out is undermining the work that they are doing and demonstrates a failure to support the troops out there.

I hope his message is taken to heart by those in the Conservative and Liberal Democrat Parties who are sniping at the clarity of the mission or are toying with calling for our troops to be pulled out as some sort of  pre-election stunt.

I have tabled three questions for written answer about how much the Ministry of Defence has spent in contesting the war pensions claimed by former military personnel (strictly speaking the third is not about this, but is a comparison with the costs of the new MoD headquarters.

The questions are as follows:

Lord Harris of Haringey to ask Her Majesty’s Government what were the total administrative and legal costs incurred by the Ministry of Defence in contesting war pension claims in each of the last five years. HL5842

Lord Harris of Haringey to ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Baroness Taylor of Bolton on 14 December 2008 (HL Deb, col 222), what were the total costs incurred by the Ministry of Defence in contesting the case of the late Terry Walker before his war pension was cut from 100 per cent to 40 per cent shortly before he died; and whether they will be represented when the inquest on his death is resumed. HL5843

Lord Harris of Haringey to ask Her Majesty’s Government what was their original estimate of the cost of reconstructing the headquarters of the Ministry of Defence; how much has so far been spent on the project; and what they now estimate will be the ultimate cost. HL5844