---

Intelligence and Security Committee (Annual Report)

I join the Home Secretary in offering our condolences to the families and friends of the victims of the outrage in Mumbai. I am tempted to continue by referring to the Home Secretary as my right hon. Friend, as he just referred to me, but we would probably do each other equal harm. A cosy consensus may break out, but I think not. However, I do join him in welcoming the annual report of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It is a thorough and wide-ranging report that raises several crucial issues. It is a fair reflection of the objective and serious manner in which the Committee, led by the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), approached its scrutiny of the intelligence and security communities. The House knows that I have some trenchant views—although I am probably in a minority in the Chamber—on the structure and powers of the Committee, and I shall say more about that later. However, I wish to put on the record that I do not, for one moment, accept the accusations made on ““Newsnight”” last night. The Committee is doing its job to the best of its very great ability. I also join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to the work of the intelligence and security agencies. As the Committee’s report highlights, the threat from international terrorism remains serious and sustained. It comes not only from al-Qaeda, as the Home Secretary pointed out, but from its associated networks, dissident groups in Northern Ireland, Iranian state-sponsored terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and foreign espionage. We are all too familiar with the events of July last year—but it is thanks to the efforts of the security and intelligence services, as the Home Secretary said, in combating those diverse and complex threats that there have not been similar attacks both before and since then. I have to break the cosy consensus on the issue of the Government’s response to the Committee’s comments on the combination of the post of the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the security and intelligence co-ordinator. I defer to nobody in my admiration for Sir Richard Mottram, with whom I have worked on several occasions, but the ISC raised a substantive point and I hope that the Home Secretary will look at it again, in slow time, perhaps before the next Committee report arrives. The Committee also reports that the Government have recently concluded a study into the impact of new technology on interception of communications. The report was agreed between the Home Secretary’s predecessor and the Opposition in response to our call for the use of intercepts. As the tragic events just over a year ago demonstrated, terrorists will stop at nothing to inflict death and destruction on their enemies and innocent members of the public alike in the name of their cause. In combating that threat, we must consider all possible measures to detect terrorist suspects and to bring them to justice. Two weeks ago, I wrote to the Home Secretary urging him to review the prohibition on the use of evidence from UK-warranted interception in our courts, as I also did with two of his predecessors. It is vital that our courts system has the tools to convict and lock up terrorists. Intercept evidence could also alleviate the need to lock up terror suspects arbitrarily or to impose control orders, by bringing them into the justice system on an evidence-based basis. The previous Home Secretary claimed that"““the use of intercept will not result in our being able to prosecute more terrorists””." He also said that it"““would endanger sources, damage relationships with foreign intelligence agencies or expose highly sensitive techniques””." I do not accept those arguments. From the briefings that the Homer Secretary’s predecessor made available to me from representatives of GCHQ and other interested parties, I am convinced that the obstacles to the use of intercept in our courts are not insurmountable. I have come to the conclusion that every problem can be overcome. The Government’s own terrorism adviser, Lord Carlile, says that intercept evidence would be ““very useful””. The Metropolitan police say that it makes us look"““a little bit foolish that everywhere else in the world is using it to good effect””—" but we are not. More than a year after the attacks in London, we are still in the absurd position in which intercept evidence from foreign jurisdictions is admissible in our courts, but evidence from our own agencies is not. The Home Affairs Committee has said that"““outside the Government, there is universal support for the use of intercept evidence in the courts. The Home Office has not produced convincing evidence that the difficulties are insuperable””." The last Government review—the fifth in 10 years—maintained the prohibition. Since 7 July last year, the Government have conducted another review, which the Committee tells us is now complete.