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Intelligence and Security Committee (Annual Report)

I do agree, and I shall offer a model of how I think the Committee should be set up. The hon. Gentleman may remember that I was one of the Ministers on the Bill to which he referred. I recall that I said at the time that the then Government expected the Committee, and its relationship with Parliament, to evolve. I am sure that he can look that up if he wants to. Prior to the ISC’s existence and, indeed, for the past decade or so, a great deal of oversight had been provided to the secret arm of Government by the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee sitting as a Committee of one. From memory, that arrangement applied to various aspects of the operations undertaken by MI6, MI5 and GCHQ. If he casts his mind back, the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) will recall the publication of the report on the £150 million overrun on the cost of the buildings for MI5 and MI6. My predecessor in those days was Robert Sheldon, now Lord Sheldon. He tried to get that report published, but the agencies told him that the information was so secret that it could not be put in the public domain. Tom King, now Lord King, was the ISC Chairman at the time, and he also said that he would like to see the information in the public domain, but he, too, was told that it was too secret. In the end, all three of us ganged up on the Government—this Government—who were persuaded that information such as that could be put in the public domain. A redaction process then started, as I wanted to make the final report as accountable as possible. I received two documents—one each from MI5 and MI6—containing all their proposed deletions. The chapters that they wanted to redact looked almost identical, but the proposed redactions were different. I therefore wrote to the agencies. I asked MI5, ““If MI6 allows us in, why can’t MI5?”” I also asked MI6, ““If MI5 allows us in, why can’t MI6?”” The agencies’ opposition to the report collapsed and it was published almost in its entirety. I do not think that any aspect of our security and intelligence operation was damaged—