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Terrorism Bill

We are not worried about bugging, intercepts and all the rest of it—of course that can be done, and there is no danger if it is found out. It is an embarrassment; you have to find another way of covering the target—you have to start again. We are talking about the rare and almost irreplaceable human source who takes years to get into place. If he or she is lost, the replacement is extremely difficult. I say nothing about the fact that they may be killed but, practically speaking, in terms of value to the country, they are lost and you have to start again, maybe waiting two or three years. Northern Ireland is not a fair example, really, because there were so many things going on there that it was probably quite possible to obscure a human source, and there were umpteen covering operations and intercepts—bugging people’s cars and all the rest of it. Now we are talking about very sophisticated targets that are not under our control in many ways. The person involved may be sitting in Pakistan or Hamburg, and be very difficult to protect once the defence realises that you have intelligence and cannot account for it. You cannot say, ““It’s bugs”” or ““It’s this or that””. It is something that is human and very difficult to create or replace. That is what we are worried about.