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Intelligence and Security Committee

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have a chance to ask the Home Secretary or a member of the Committee whether they can give him some hint on that. Because of the need to avoid compromising the ability of our security services to defend the safety of our citizens, the detail in the report will always have to be limited, but we need to ask serious questions about the scale of the redactions. It is impossible for Parliament sensibly to debate value for money as most of the figures are replaced with asterisks. On page 13 there is even a footnote for the asterisks that explains helpfully:""This relates to GCHQ's various activities ***."" That is not very helpful or enlightening. On page 9, a whole table is printed showing the overall resource and capital spending projections for the different agencies, but no amounts for each agency. I can see why it is important that information that is a threat to national security is not placed in the public domain, but I wonder whether the degree of redaction in this report allows Parliament to fulfil its role as examiners of the public purse. That is especially true given that the agencies are costing more and more to run. For GCHQ, the SIS, the Security Service and what are termed "Additional elements", spending over the five years to 2011 will almost double from £1.2 billion to just over £2 billion. In total, spending on counter-terrorism will increase to £3.5 billion. What was originally a relatively small item of Government expenditure is expanding steadily to the point where it is close to the size of a small Department on its own. Clearly, we should not know or expose the full detail of that expenditure, and we face new challenges—the report rightly points out that the increased use of the internet by terrorists has become a priority for GCHQ, which will create a whole new set of challenges, requirements and investment needs. We accept also that the security services are operating in a difficult environment, but there are legitimate questions to ask about the overall value for money being obtained by them.