These cases showed that often hostile foreign powers were not only using their intelligence agencies to undermine security in the UK, but were also hiring criminal proxies through other state-linked organisations such as the Wagner Group and the IRGC.
It meant that the National Security Act 2023, which focused on foreign intelligence services, was quickly out of date.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “Where foreign states are found to be engaging in activity that threatens lives or undermines our democratic institutions, we must ensure that such actions have consequences.
“We will not tolerate hostile actors paying petty criminals to do their dirty work.”
Mahmood said: “Foreign states are becoming ever more aggressive – attacking our communities, our way of life, and our institutions – and hiding their tracks behind proxies.
“We must adapt to keep pace.”
The bill is seen in Whitehall as a vital upgrade of the National Security Act which was only passed three years ago.
Officials say they have been seeing unprecedented levels of threat from people and groups working on behalf of foreign states.
The Director General of MI5, Sir Ken McCallum, said the security service had “tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots” in just one year.
The prime minister and home secretary fast-tracked the legislation after recent attacks on Jewish targets.
Several of those were claimed by a new group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin.
The IRGC was set up after the 1979 revolution to defend the country’s new Islamic system, but has since become a powerful arm of the state with a reach beyond Iran’s borders.
In the impact assessment accompanying the bill, it is anticipated that 10 or fewer organisations will be designated as state threats in the first year after the legislation is passed.
