Oliver Dowden MP: speeches

Speeches

• 17 Jun 2026 · National Security (State Threats) Bill · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is of course entirely correct. Members on the Labour Back Benches are, given their presence in the Chamber for this debate, at the more hawkish and national security end of the left-wing spectrum, but there are elements of the liberal left who succumb to that equivalence argument and it is profoundly dangerous. The 2015 review of the Muslim Brotherhood concluded that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered a possible indicator of extremism. A decade later, in the current far more dangerous geopolitical environment, we need to look again at that assessment. That is why I continue to believe that the Government should take up the opportunity to do so. Some of our closest allies have done so and indeed have taken a much more robust approach. For example, the United Arab Emirates has designated the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organisation. We should ask ourselves why a country such as the UAE has such concerns about the radicalisation of its own students in our mosques that they are restricting their study here. The test under this Bill is rightly a foreign powers threat test, and there may well be other avenues for addressing this issue, but none the less I make the point that where an ideological body or a body linked to an ideological movement is acting to the benefit of a hostile state, this regime, alongside others, should apply. Finally, I would like to address the future-proofing of this legislation, which has been touched on by some Members. Just as threat actors have evolved, so too have their methods, and foreign powers and their proxies no longer exclusively rely on the old-school methods of human surveillance, forged documents and so on. They can deploy bots that distort the democratic debate, as we have seen; ransomware to cripple business; cyber-attacks to disrupt public services; and deepfakes to impersonate trusted public figures. That list goes on, and AI will accelerate all of that—a point I made at the UN General Assembly ahead of the Bletchley Park AI safety summit. Cross-Government co-ordination to address this issue is more urgent than ever. In this country we cannot just look at state threats purely in a physical silo, detached from the digital domain. Hostile states will use AI to automate reconnaissance, scale spear phishing, identify vulnerabilities, and so on. A criminal who once needed specialist skills may increasingly be able to purchase or access those capabilities through AI-enabled tools, and hostile states that once needed sophisticated cyber-units may be able to outsource, automate or accelerate parts of that work. Many Members will be familiar with the concerns and indeed opportunities surrounding Claude Mythos and its advanced cyber-capable AI models. That is a warning to us, but it is a warning of much more to come in this space.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West (Dame Chi Onwurah), who has brought tremendous expertise to this debate. In my previous role overseeing national resilience and cross-Government co-ordination of national security threats, cyber-security was probably the one area that caused me the greatest number of sleepless nights. There has been a lot of talk in recent months and years about the increased need to defend the realm and the steps that need to be taken to address the defence of the realm. We all know from past experience that the first line of any attack on the defence of the realm is highly likely to be through cyber-attacks. Indeed, in a completely different context, we need only to look at the public comments made by the President of the United States a couple of days ago about the first steps that the United States took in its intervention in Venezuela: he talked about the United States’ capability to knock out the power supply there. If we look at our adversaries, particularly Russia, North Korea and Iran, we can see that they are actively inculcating and encouraging environments in which cyber-attacks can be planned and take place. Whether that is done explicitly by private sector individuals or with the connivance of the state, a deliberate grey zone is created, with the desire to increase knowledge of cyber-risks to the United Kingdom and our allies, and to carry out penetrative attacks to that effect. We are likely to see this grey zone warfare continue to increase as a result of the actions that we see in Ukraine and elsewhere. We just have to look at our own experience. Many hon. Members have made the point that the initial attack on JLR rapidly cascaded and affected many others in the supply chain. From the Government’s own research and testing—this is in the public domain—one sees that a cyber-attack can rapidly cascade into other areas. For example, when we test the impact of a cyber-attack on our electricity system, it rapidly cascades into our water system, which is dependent on electricity. Clearly, it also rapidly cascades into our transport system. Before long, a small cyber-attack becomes a very, very large cyber-attack. In common with all other advanced countries, the United Kingdom is highly exposed to cyber-attacks—a point that I made repeatedly from the Dispatch Box. I welcome this legislation and the steps that the Minister has outlined today, but I gently caution against what he said. I do not think it was his intention, but he said that this legislation will fix the cyber-security problem. It will not fix the cyber-security problem. No single piece of legislation is ever going to fix the cyber-security problem, nor is this a question of good guys and bad guys or of, “The last Government did nothing, and this Government are doing something.” Each Government must have a fresh look at the challenges of cyber-security, and take necessary and proportionate steps to address the risks.

• 6 Jan 2026 · Cyber Security and Resilience (Network and Information Systems) Bill · Hansard source

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  Yes, I totally agree. Indeed, that is why the National Cyber Security Centre, working in conjunction with the last Government and now the current Government, has set out the whole-of-Government approach. It cannot just be about the actions of individual Government Ministers or individual actors in the private sector; the whole of Government need to act together. On the further steps we could and should have taken—this goes back to my intervention on the Minister—I do think that more pressure needs to be brought to bear on Ministers in terms of their accountability for cyber-security, and I fear that if we do not put this into primary legislation, it can slip further and further down Ministers’ in-trays. Although Ministers have a desire to address it, more pressing and immediate problems distract their attention. I have some constructive suggestions about how we can improve the proposed legislation. The first is about many of the powers being delegated to secondary legislation or ministerial direction. I do not have a problem with that, because it is essential that we have a framework piece of legislation and then the flexibility to allow secondary legislation to be brought forward to address challenges as they arise, but I urge Ministers to undertake a meaningful and mandatory consultation on any secondary legislation that comes forward, so that businesses and others can contribute to it. I also caution against Ministers devolving to regulators their duties in respect of cyber-security. Too often—again, this applies to Governments of both colours—regulators are empowered to address cyber-security problems or any other problems. They then charge off in one direction and fail to take into account questions such as proportionality—the impact of the regulations versus their economic burden—and Parliament and Ministers cease to have a significant role. I urge Ministers to keep a tight grip on regulators and on the instructions that they give them. I would also be a little cautious about some of the arguments made by hon. Members about the need constantly to expand the scope of this legislation to further areas of the private sector. It is very easy for us in this Chamber to talk about the need for further legislation, but when a small business is faced with a huge Act and required to interpret it, it looks a very daunting prospect. My preference would be to continue the sort of co-operation that we have seen through the whole-of-society approach advocated by the NCSC. On proportionality, I urge Ministers to embrace AI. There are opportunities to use AI to triage incoming attacks and avoid duplication, for example, and a lot of streamlining of the system can be done in that area. On the flipside of AI, we must take very seriously the risk of cyber-attacks posed by agentic artificial intelligence. It appears that we reached an inflection point in November 2025, when Anthropic reported disrupting what it described as the first large-scale cyber-espionage campaign executed largely via agentic AI. We are likely to see much more of this. I would welcome the Minister saying in his concluding remarks what the Government intend to do to ensure that we keep up with this threat, because we are only in the foothills of the risk posed by agentic AI. Further to the point about the role of the public sector, 40% of incidents handled by the National Cyber Security Centre when I was the Minister responsible were from the public sector, so I question the exclusion of the public sector. I appreciate that the Government have announced a plan. I have not had a chance to look at it, but I can imagine what it contains broadly. The key thing is what stick is applied to public officials and Ministers, outside the core responsible Government Departments, to make sure that they take their responsibilities seriously, so I think some legislative proposals may be needed in that area. Similarly on budgets, again the core responsible Departments—the Cabinet Office and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology—will prioritise cyber-security. I fear that other Departments may not, so there is a strong argument for ringfencing cyber-security budgets for all Departments so that money cannot be transferred to more pressing short-term problems, as has often been the case, particularly, for example, in the NHS. It is very important that we do not overlook the basics. It is very easy to talk about legislation or to talk in high-level terms about threats, but probably the single biggest thing we could do to deal with cyber-risks in this country is to make sure that every time every single business and private individual gets one of those annoying pings on their phone saying that they need to upgrade their software to the latest operating system—it is the same with their PCs, iPads and so on—they do so. That is done by providers, because they know that there is a cyber-risk, and there is a patch to address it. If the patch is applied immediately, that can have a huge effect on the resilience of the whole of society, and the NCSC constantly puts out that message. We need to look at our resilience in society as a whole when we have a major cyber-attack. We have had major cyber-attacks, but they have tended to be in just one sector, albeit with cascading effects, as with JLR. We have not yet had a whole of society cyber-attack—either one that flows out of control from a criminal attack, or a deliberate attack from a hostile state cascading widely across all of society—affecting our electricity, water supplies and so on. I fear that it is only a matter of time before that happens, and we need to look at the resilience of individuals, including the ability to have analogue systems such as battery-powered torches, rather than electric torches, and so on. I started the work on that as a Minister, and I think more needs to be done in that space. We also need to look at the question of emergency communications. It was certainly my experience that public sector broadcasters—such as, I think, the BBC—are not required to take emergency communications from the Government in such situations. I think that is a loophole that could be exposed in such a situation. On resilience more broadly, we are in the foothills of the impact of AI. We are going to see vast impacts on employment and how people lead meaningful lives as AI advances more and more rapidly. For the resilience of our society, this House needs to have a much wider debate—not on this Bill, but more generally—about how we address the epoch-changing challenges we are facing. In conclusion, I think this is a welcome piece of legislation and an important step forward. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Julia Lopez) correctly highlighted the very important challenges, and they will need to be addressed as this Bill passes through the House. I think it is an important step forward, but it is only one step, and once this legislation is enacted, we will need to be prepared to return to this issue again and again.

• 26 Nov 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Of course there will be the occasional person who falls on hard times, but the hon. Lady should try saying what she did to the many of my constituents who are unable to have more children. They took the choice not to have them, but that option is now there. There is an imbalance between the situation that my constituents faced and the approach taken on welfare. At a time when the United Kingdom is embracing higher taxes and an ever-greater role for the state, lower-tax dynamism abounds beyond Europe. We can see the US surging, with freer markets and a tech and energy bonanza. We need only look to the Gulf, where states like the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia embracing tech, finance and alternative energy. A generation ago, this would have mattered less, but labour and capital are now highly mobile, and more and more people are voting with their feet. They are leaving the United Kingdom in their tens of thousands. This tide is washing the very brightest and best away from our shores, and I fear that once those people leave, it will be very hard to get them to come back. The sadness of all this is that the United Kingdom remains a wonderful country. It is a beacon of stability, and we have the rule of law, the English language, our time zone, great research universities and a highly talented workforce. Indeed, having criticised the Government a lot, I pay tribute to them for successfully concluding a number of free trade agreements, including with India and the United States, and I hope that others will follow, including with the Gulf Co-operation Council. At a time when other countries present challenges—whether we are talking about the security situation in China, the unpredictability of the United States or stagnation in Europe—the United Kingdom has a golden opportunity to be a magnet for investment from businesses and entrepreneurs around the world. However, we risk consigning ourselves to what a Scottish entrepreneur described to me a couple of days ago as a “why bother” economy. What he meant was that of course people are not going to disinvest, but they will not actively choose to invest in the United Kingdom, because we are not creating an environment that rewards risk-taking and entrepreneurship. There are a few simple steps that we could take to seize this moment, and I urge the Chancellor to take them and light the fire of competitiveness. First, instead of trying to drive away the wealthiest and biggest global investors, as we have done with the abolition of the non-dom status, we should welcome them and gain more revenue at the same time. One need only look at the Italian model; they have imposed a relatively high fee, but have in return exempted wealthy mobile people from paying further taxation. As a result, investment in Italy is surging, as is the number of wealthy people choosing to locate there, with all the opportunities that brings for growth and investment. Secondly, instead of obsessing about policing social media, we should be aggressively policing the sort of low-level crime that drives people away from locating in this country, whether it is phone snatching, shoplifting or the general sense that the streets of this country have become less safe than they were a few years ago. Thirdly, instead of clobbering entrepreneurs, wealth creators and hard-working Brits with ever-higher marginal rates, we should have confidence that lower marginal rates generate higher revenues in the long run and benefit absolutely everyone. Fourthly, and most importantly of all in relation to this Budget, instead of consigning a generation to welfare, we should aggressively reform the welfare state to create opportunities for all. It really is not too late for the Government to seize this opportunity, but sadly, I fear that only a change of Government, and a Conservative Government, will be able to deliver those things.