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Intelligence and Security Committee (Annual Report)

As the Home Secretary has just said, hindsight is a wonderful thing. But let me explain one of the problems that the security services—and, indeed, ourselves—have been coping with since 7 July. The so-called responsible press—I am not talking about the red tops—continually speculate and pick up little points, and then move on from that to come to conclusions. We have tried to put them to bed in the report, but the difficulty is that there have been occasions, one of which occurred two or three weeks ago, when the press were actually told that what they were about to print was untrue. But, of course, that spoiled the story, and it concerned Siddique Khan. I hope that the Home Secretary will condemn the press for that, as I do. There are two consequences of that action. The lesser of them is that the security services and the police, who are working very hard to try to solve such situations, get rather downcast about lies coming out in responsible newspapers. But much more important are the families, who get upset, and who believe as a result of what they read that perhaps the tragedy that affected them could have been avoided, when those of us who have spent the whole year looking into the matter know that it could not.