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Intelligence and Security Committee (Annual Report)

In the wake of 7/7, several lessons have been learned, and as I promised yesterday, we will publish later a document on the lessons learned from 7/7 itself. One such lesson about intelligence and the communication of intelligence to the public was to do with threat levels; I dealt with that yesterday. Another related to the difficulties and shortcomings in terms of co-ordination across services. That was always the case, but co-ordination is now more imperative than ever because it is increasingly the case that there is a seamless web of terrorism that must be addressed across domestic, foreign and defence policies. Some operational lessons have also been learned. However, although we have learned some lessons, we will continue to learn. Like all human agencies, the intelligence agencies are not infallible, so we will continue to make mistakes on occasions, but I hope that we minimise them. The hon. Gentleman referred to Mohammad Siddique Khan. On the information that I have as someone who is not an intelligence practitioner but who has some familiarity with that world, my judgment is that at the time when the intelligence service was looking into him as a shaded identity—he was known as a character on the fringes of a specifically directed investigation into others—he was peripheral to the inquiry in question. So far as I am aware, the information that we had on him at the time—without the benefit of hindsight—indicated a wish to participate abroad in some form of unspecified action but did not indicate a wish, a desire, a motivation or a plan to take part in any action in this country. The judgment was made to pursue the main characters in the operation, and not to pursue a number of contacts who were regarded as peripheral. He was one of them, but there were several others. When the ISC looked into this, it came to the conclusion that the decision taken was—I think that this was the word it used—an understandable judgment. Of course, with hindsight—which all of us are now blessed with—we would have identified among the peripheral characters the two whom we now know were connected with 7/7. But, as I have said, that judgment is reached with the benefit of hindsight.