We need an urgent enquiry into interference in the eu referendum | thearticle

Anyone expecting the Intelligence and Security Committee’s Russia report to be a damp squib looks very much mistaken. It could not be worse timing as Mike Pompeo the US Secretary of State,

landed in London this morning. The report casts serious doubt on our credibility as an intelligence partner, not to mention the sheer scale of Russian penetration and influence in UK

society. The report makes clear that the horse of Russian influence and intelligence interference bolted long ago. Indeed Russian influence in the UK is indeed the new normal and the

Government is now playing a woefully inadequate game of catch up. We now know that the real scandal is not the failure to publish this report in December but that “the Government did not

take action to protect the UK’s process in 2016 [before the EU referendum]”. Furthermore it has not bothered during the following four years “to establish whether a hostile state took

deliberate action with the aim of influencing a UK democratic process, irrespective of whether it was successful or not. In short the Government “badly underestimated the Russian threat and

the response it required.” Few select committee reports have been written in stronger language. It could not be clearer why the Government sought to delay publication. Extremely serious

questions are now raised about the Government and intelligence agencies’ lack of action during 2019, despite grave warnings from the report delivered in March last year. Dominic Raab has

already admitted Russian interference in the December 2019 General election. That means that government had a whole nine months to respond to the report even if it hadn’t been published.

Instead they did nothing. The report’s most serious, overarching accusation is that Government has taken its “eye off the ball…Protecting our democratic discourse and processes from hostile

foreign interference is a central responsibility of Government, and should be a ministerial priority.” The implication is that it is not a priority. It is hard to imagine a more serious

charge being laid before Government. Someone within Government must now take accountability for not stopping Russian election interference despite the strongest possible warnings. The

report’s picture of buck passing and repeated failure to act within Government is shambolic. Russia is described as a “hot potato”, meaning that there is little clear accountability or

responsibility for dealing with a complex issue that requires a coordinated response across Government. As the report makes clear, the murder of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 should have been

the turning point for taking the Russian threat much more seriously. Instead the bulk of intelligence agency activity has been focused on counter terrorism. Now the Committee warns that the

agencies are playing “catch up” to deal with the threat. The Committee “was struck by the relatively small proportion of… work that is carried out by the Agencies in relation to Russia,”

the report said. There is a secondary problem. The intelligence agencies are accused of “extreme caution… that they might have any role in relation to the UK’s democratic processes.” The

report found this “attitude is illogical; this is about the protection of the process and mechanism from hostile state interference.” The strongest criticism of all, however, is reserved for

MI5, the domestic Security Service. The Committee quotes back MI5’s statutory responsibility for “the protection of national security and, in particular, its protection against threats from

espionage, terrorism and sabotage, from the activities of agents of foreign powers and from actions intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy.” On the issue of EU

referendum interference by Russia, MI5 provided just six lines of text, all of which was open source. In relation to the issue of Russian nationals at threat in the UK, such as Alexander

Litvinenko and the Skripals, the Committee “questioned whether the intelligence community has a clear picture of how many Russians there are in the UK who are at risk… This would appear to

be an immediate and obvious way in to the issue.” The picture is of an agency not in charge of its brief. It is hard to imagine that the Director General of MI5 can now credibly remain in

post in the wake of this report. In reality the brunt of responsibility actually lies with his predecessor Sir Andrew Parker, who he succeeded in April this year. But the problems go far

beyond just the Security Service. Britain now has a yawning credibility problem to bridge with the US and the rest of the 5 Eyes Intelligence sharing community. There is now the issue of

deterrence. The heads of Russia’s intelligence agencies must be laughing that they achieved so much with comparatively little resources. The UK government, given the startling content of the

report, must take serious action to remedy these gross deficiencies within our national security system. At stake is the very essence of democracy in this country. We cannot allow the

report’s insight to go unheeded, however uncomfortable it may be for Government at the highest level and our intelligence agencies.