Over the last few months, I have been doing some work on the danger of nuclear materials falling into the hands of terrorists and had the opportunity to raise the issue during Lords Question Time this afternoon.

Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer had tabled the following question:

“To ask Her Majesty’s Government what contribution they will make to the work required to achieve progress on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons following the resolution passed at the review conference in May.”

Lord Howell of Guildford, the Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, answered as follows:

“My Lords, as we promised on taking office, we pushed hard for agreement of a final document at the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference. We will give the highest priority to reversing the spread of nuclear weapons, keeping them out of the hands of terrorists and cutting their numbers worldwide, and we will work with partners to translate those commitments into action.”

I came in with the following supplementary:

“My Lords, the IAEA’s illicit trafficking database has recorded 336 incidents involving unauthorised possession of nuclear materials and associated criminal acts in the past 15 years. There have also been incidents of terror teams carrying out reconnaissance of nuclear weapon trains in Russia. Can the noble Lord tell us, first, whether Her Majesty’s Government are satisfied with the security arrangements around the nuclear facilities in this country and what steps they are taking to protect them? Secondly, what steps are they taking to ensure that security arrangements around both civil and military nuclear facilities elsewhere are being properly maintained?”

And this elicited the following response:

“I thank the noble Lord for his question. We are satisfied, but we are always on guard and always watchful for any need for improvement. The international security of nuclear materials was discussed, analysed and strengthened at the Washington conference in April that preceded the nuclear NPT review conference. A whole series of measures was put forward there and agreed. In so far as one can, one can say that these measures are a step forward in what is undoubtedly, as the noble Lord fully realises, a very dangerous situation.”

I will be returning to the issue later in the Session.

It is early days yet but I am beginning to hear that the various civil liberties lobbying organisations and activists are questioning whether the Coalition’s commitment to their agenda is quite as strong as they were led to believe before the General Election.

Even though the Coalition Government in its document “Our Programme for Government” trumpets that:

“We will be strong in defence of freedom. The Government believes that the British state has become too authoritarian, and that over the past decade it has abused and eroded fundamental human freedoms and historic civil liberties. We need to restore the rights of individuals in the face of encroaching state power, in keeping with Britain’s tradition of freedom and fairness.”

and Nick Clegg has made bizarre statements about the greatest reforms since 1832, those who are picking over the details are clearly not impressed.

For example, Ross Anderson at Cambridge University is already talking of “A very rapid betrayal“, saying:

“The coalition Government plans to keep the Summary Care Record, despite pre-election pledges by both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to rip up the system – which is not compliant with the I v Finland judgement of the European Court of Human Rights.”

And Hawktalk says:

“Ah! The reality of power! For all the Opposition talk about strengthening the protection of privacy, in the first weeks of Government, the pro-privacy proposition has become more difficult to implement. The inevitable result is that gears are being put into neutral or reverse (as quietly as possible, mind you!).

So it is with the repeal of the ID Card Act and the abolition of the National Identity Register by the “Identity Documents Bill 2010-11” whose Second Reading is today. We all know that from their respective manifestos, both Lib-Con coalition partners wanted to scrap ID Cards and strengthen the penalties in the Data Protection Act. We know that the previous Government had draft legislation on the stocks which provided for custodial penalties for misuse of personal data under the Data Protection Act.

With apparent political unity about the weak data protection offences associated with the deliberate misuse of personal data, one would have thought that an stronger penalty could have been introduced quite quickly. Alas, this is not the case. The Identity Documents Bill has used a contorted definition of “personal information” in order to avoid strengthening the offences in the Data Protection Act.”

And then there is the huge anger already generated by the plans to repatriate asylum-seekers to Iraq and the deportation of children to Afghanistan.

I always thought that the Tories were cynical and opportunist in their attacks on the last Government’s record on civil liberties and human rights, but I suspect the LibDems believed their own rhetoric.  I suspect that faultline is going to get increasingly strained as the Coalition comes to grips with the realities of being in Government.

I have always taken a fairly robust view on the question of whether Gary McKinnon should be extradited to the United States, tending to take the position that the crimes of which he is accused are potentially extremely serious and that the US Courts should be given an opportunity to consider his case.

I have, of course, listened to the views expressed stridently by those who argue that Gary McKinnon’s Aspergers condition means that it would be better if he were tried in this country. 

Most people have taken a consistent position on the issue – one way or the other.

Not, however, the Deputy Prime Minister and Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg – as can be seen from a piece in the New Statesman:

“On 15 December 2009, a photograph was taken of Janis Sharp, the mother of Gary McKinnon, and the Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, outside the Home Office in Westminster. They were there to protest against the extradition of McKinnon, aged 44, to the US on charges of computer fraud. Eight years earlier McKinnon, an Asperger’s syndrome sufferer, had hacked repeatedly into Pentagon and Nasa networks.

“They could try him here if they wanted to, so it’s up to the government here to do the right thing,” Clegg said in an interview that day. “If Gordon Brown really had a moral compass, he would do the right thing and try Gary McKinnon here instead.”

Little more than five months later, on 25 May, Clegg, the new Deputy Prime Minister, said of the McKinnon case in a radio interview that “what I haven’t got the power to do – neither has the Home Secretary, neither has even the Prime Minister – is to completely reverse and undo certain legal aspects of this. But that, of course, you wouldn’t want politicians to do. It’s legally very complex.”

Opposition made adopting principled positions simpler. Clegg also stated that his personal view on the case remained unchanged – McKinnon should ideally be tried in a British court. But his equivocation on the law had upset Sharp and, when I visited her recently at her home in Hertfordshire, she wept as she spoke about her son.

“I think we all thought that we had waited until this, the new government; and then we’d done it. They’ve all made promises,” she said, referring to the support offered to the McKinnon campaign not only by Clegg but other senior Lib Dem MPs, as well as David Cameron.”

It seems that promises made in Opposition don’t count for much once you are in the Coalition Government.

In House of Lords Question Time this afternoon, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, a Coalition Minister of the LibDem variety, managed to insult 221 million Arabic speakers world-wide by saying their language was “unusual”.

He did so while answering a series of questions on university funding.  The relevant exchange is as follows:

“Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve: My Lords, what steps will the Government take to ensure that the pattern of cuts imposed by different institutions in response to falling resources does not endanger strategically important subjects—for example, Arabic, other languages and even chemistry?

Lord Wallace of Saltaire: That is a very complex question. I am conscious that discussions are under way in the British Academy on the teaching of unusual foreign languages, which is rather different from the future of chemistry and STEM subjects. We are conscious of the need to protect those specialist subjects, but, as I have emphasised, the interests of the top 10 universities in Britain and those providing very worthwhile foundation degrees are part of a highly diverse sector and we need to consider all those interests.”

Lord Wallace ironically was Treasurer of the All-Party Arab League Group until the General Election.

Nevertheless, he still seems to think that the language with the fourth highest number of native speakers in the world (exceeded only by Chinese, Spanish and English)  is “unusual” – so unusual indeed that it is one of the six official languages of the United Nations.

But then that is not the sort of detail that an Emeritus Professor of International Relations at LSE would be expected to know, is it?

I wonder what William Hague thinks?

Last week at ten hours notice I was asked to speak at a major conference on security and resilience (I’m not proud – I knew I was standing in for another speaker who had dropped out at the last moment).  One of the topics that came up was the importance of small and medium-sized businesses in the supply chains of parts of the critical national infrastructure and the fact that such businesses are often likely to be less well-protected in terms of cyber security.  The consensus view was that more needed to be done to encourage and support such businesses to adopt better security.

I raised the issue again this morning at a private briefing given by Melissa Hathaway, the former Senior Director for Cyberspace for the US National Security and Homeland Security Councils.  She agreed with my concerns on the matter, but then took my breath away by referring to a current case working its way through the US Courts (which I had not previously heard about) where a bank is suing a company for not having adequate internet security in connecting to the bank for internet banking purposes.

What seems to have happened is this:

In early November 2009, cyber thieves initiated a series of unauthorized wire transfers totaling $801,495 out of the account of Hillary Machinery, a Texas-based machine equipment company.   The bank, PlainsCapital, managed to retrieve roughly $600,000 of that money, but are now suing the company for the balance on the basis that the bank had processed the transfers in good faith.  Apparently, the fraudulent transactions were initiated using Hillary’s valid online banking credentials.

It would appear that the transfers were initiated from computers in Romania and Italy, among others, and sent to accounts in Ukraine, Russia and other Eastern European nations – allegedly using credentials stolen from the computers of Hillary Machinery.

No doubt, this case will make some businesses think twice about whether their own internet security is good enough.  It may also make them think twice about using internet banking.

However, there has to be a better way of ensuring that businesses improve their own security without the banks resorting to suing their customers.

I’ve just finished reading “Race of a Lifetime: How Obama won the White House” by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin.  I found it hugely enjoyable and engrossing.  Definitely a good read.

It is, of course, more journalism than history, but it is clearly well-researched and – in a style that UK readers familiar with Andrew Rawnsley will recognise – puts us in the minds of the key protagonists.

The focus is primarily on the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but there is insight into the John Edwards camp, and fascinating sketches of John McCain and Sarah Palin.  Obama and Clinton themselves are sympathetically portrayed, but the turmoil amongst their respective teams is described pretty unflinchingly.  The picture of John and Elizabeth Edwards is not a flattering one and the impression given of Sarah Palin is frankly scary.

However, what grips is the momentum of the campaign and its twists and turns.  It was like reliving it except with a ringside seat and with live feeds into the contestants’ dressing rooms.

There are Presidential Elections in Colombia at the end of this month.  Whilst there are no doubt attempts to influence the result through scare tactics, the country’s Defence Minister has warned that “hackers plan to disrupt” the Elections.  This apparently follows an attempt to disrupt the legislative elections that were held in March that affected the company hired to transmit the results over the internet and explains why the head of the National Electoral Council has said that the voting system is “falling apart”.  However, his solution was to propose a wider use of electronic voting systems, which would not obviously deal with the problems if there are concerns about people hacking into the existing systems.

It certainly raises questions about whether enough work has been done on the protection and security of electronic voting systems and of electronic counting systems like those used in the London Mayoral elections.

The full Government list has now been published and I note that no fewer than ten Ministers are not drawing a salary.  I think this must be a record.

Presumably, some Ministers are sufficiently wealthy that they regard the Ministerial stipends on offer as just not worth bothering about – although there are clearly  others who despite being very well off have decided to take the money.

It would be interesting to know whether any of those declining a salary have been given any exemptions from the usual rules about holding other external appointments whilst serving as a Minister.

For the record the unpaid ten are:

• Lord Howell of Guildford – Foreign Office
• Lord Freud – Department of Work and Pensions
• Lord Marland – Department of Energy and Climate Change
• Baroness Warsi – Minister without Portfolio
• David Heath MP – Deputy Leader of the House of Commons*
• Brooks Newmark MP – Whip
• Philip Dunne MP – Whip
• Baroness Northover – Whip*
• Lord Taylor of Holbeach – Whip
• Lord Wallace of Saltaire – Whip*

The three marked with an * are LibDems.

Associated Press has reported that a man has been detained at Karachi airport after electrical circuits and batteries were found in the soles of his tennis shoes.

The man concerned told investigators he bought the shoes from a market in Karachi and had no idea there were circuits inside the soles.  Ostensibly, the circuitry is for massaging the feet (sic), but batteries and circuits hidden in a shoe are reminiscent of Richard Reid, the 2001 shoe-bomber.  Pakistani police are still examining the shoes, pointing out that similar materials can be used in the construction of bombs.

Whatever the outcome of this particular investigation, it seems likely that the practice of requiring airline passengers to remove their shoes for scanning will continue and perhaps be intensified as a result of this incident.

There is a certain amount of hysteria in various quarters as to why Gordon Brown is still Prime Minister and is still at Number Ten.

Yes, of course, Labour “lost”  the General Election.  It lost its overall majority in the House of Commons by losing 91 seats.  No-one is arguing about that.

Equally, no Party “won” the General Election.  The Tories gained seats, but not enough to give them an overall majority in the House of Commons.

And just for the record the LibDems lost seats.

So we are now witnessing what happens in most other countries after a General Election – especially those where they have PR-based elections – negotiations between the political Parties to see whether an administration can be formed that can command a majority in Parliament.

But, in the meantime, the Queen’s Government must continue.

So – as is the norm – in every other country where they go through similar processes the out-going Government remains in power on a caretaker basis until they are either confirmed in power or a new administration is agreed.

The Cabinet Office has strict rules as to what Ministers can and cannot do during such a period.

Britain cannot go unrepresented internationally.  There are key meetings in Brussels in the coming week of EU Foreign Ministers and EU Finance Ministers.  Britain will need to play its part in these.  So Ministers will attend, but will keep their counter-parts in the other Parties fully informed throughout.

That is right and proper.  It is not Labour clinging to power.  It is Labour playing its appropriate part in a constitutional process.