---

Intelligence and Security Committee

Of course, and I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. The fact remains, however, that while we are doing parish notices some extraordinary work has gone on in Ulster and I believe that it deserves to be recognised. I underline the work of the OSCT, as well as that of the PSNI and others. Let me return to the second 7/7 report and shall posit a number of questions that fall within the overall structure of the ISC report. I ask the Home Secretary and the Chairman of the ISC why a second report is being produced. I then want to ask the Chairman a number of questions and, if those points are not covered in any great detail, I suspect that there will still be many more questions to be asked. May I quote Rachel North? Many of us in this Chamber will know who she is. She is certainly the most vocal of those who were injured during the 7/7 attacks, and is an extremely articulate young women who has made her views clearly known. She said:""Two things are important to victims of terrorism, crime and violence: justice and truth.""There will never be justice in the 7/7 matters since the 4 murderers chose to die willingly by their own hand rather than face a jury and a Judge. The legal process has ended in acquittals, the police investigation has met with silence and acquittals. In the absence of justice, we must at least have truth.""What we have always asked for is an inquiry independent of government, police and security services with the power to compel and cross examine witnesses and call in documents, files and other relevant evidence such as computer evidence—an independent investigatory body that the public can have confidence in."" Those are the words of someone who was very seriously injured by terrorists. She was the closest person to one of the devices on 7/7 actually to survive. I ask the Home Secretary and the Chairman of the ISC to give us a broader view of the events of the last few years, and to start to come clean about why so much was left unanswered after the bombings of July 2005. First, we had the Crevice fertiliser bomb incident of early 2004, and the subsequent trial. Then there was 7/7 itself, and the much-forgotten attempt on 21/7. After that came the airline plot of August 2006, which was followed by the Glasgow bombings of June 2007. Lastly, there was Operation Pathway, about which we cannot ask too many questions because I suspect that there is unfinished business there. What are the links between those incidents? How much was known by the security agencies? Why were there such glaring omissions in the work of the Home Office and the security agencies, especially in relation to 7/7 and 21/7? Those omissions led to a successful bombing that killed 52 people and injured several hundred. If the subsequent bombing attempt of 21 July had gone ahead, I suspect that it would have killed many more than that. Various questions need to be asked. First, after the initial bombings of 7 July, why were the Government so quick to claim that the people who died by their own hands were "clean skins"? Why did they claim that nothing was known about them when it subsequently transpired that Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer had been traced for several months beforehand? They were traced inside this country and they were involved with the Crevice fertiliser plot, but they were also traced as they travelled abroad to Pakistan and then back into this country. Why were the Government so keen to insist that all the individuals involved in 7/7 were new on the radar? Secondly, why were we told that there was no apparent connection between 7/7 and 21/7, let alone between the Crevice plot and the London bombings of July 2005? How could the Government possibly be so ham-fisted as to claim that they were not connected, when the modus operandi in each was almost identical? The targets were very similar, the timings were uncannily similar, and many of the lessons from the 7/7 attacks—the things that did not work as well as the perpetrators would have liked—were implemented and put into practice by the bombers of 21/7. How on earth can the Government claim that the two incidents were not connected? I am grateful to the Chairman of the ISC for telling us when the second ISC report will be produced. I shall be extremely interested to read it and to see what has changed between it and the first report. The next question that I should like to be cleared up in some detail concerns Muktar Said Ibrahim, the leader of the 21/7 plot. He had a criminal record, was awaiting trial on charges relating to terrorism and was being tracked by the Security Service. Why was he allowed out of the country, despite being stopped at Heathrow and being found to be in possession of large sums of money and terrorist-related documents? Why was he allowed to go to Pakistan? When he was out of the country, he missed his trial and a warrant was issued for his arrest. When he came back to Heathrow, he was wanted by the police—why was he not stopped, arrested and brought to justice before he was in a position to carry out the failed attacks of 21/7? That was an extraordinary omission. Unless the second report from the ISC covers every detail of what happened, we will continue to need to ask very serious questions. Next, why was the alert level dropped just a few weeks before the bombings of 7 July? Even more remarkably, the alert level had risen by the morning of 21 July but it was about to be dropped back again on the very morning of a second series of attempted attacks. Why? That is not widely known to be the case, but it is the truth. That suggests one or two things: first, a complacency, which I simply do not believe, because I was heavily involved in the workings of the Government and the Opposition at the time; and, secondly, a hole in our intelligence. Why was it allowed to open up, particularly when so many individuals had been traced for many months beforehand? The next question is about the involvement and the masterminding—the oversight—of terrorist incidents by Mr. Rashid Rauf. I ask the Home Secretary: where does he fit? Is he alive? Was he or was he not killed—do we know?—in the autumn of last year on the Waziristan border? If it is proved that he was the guiding hand behind all or some of the incidents that I have discussed, what debt of horror do we owe that man? If we know that he was sufficiently important to be arrested at the behest of the United States in Pakistan at the start of the Operation Overt inquiries in August 2006, why was he allowed to run fast and loose inside this country for so long and with such devastating effect? It concerns me that after the horrors of the July 2005 bombings, the first Intelligence and Security Committee report, which was received then, needs to be revamped. However, I have huge faith in, and admiration for, the Committee, our security services and our police, but I very much hope that the next report, when we receive it, will answer all the questions that I have just posited. If it does not, I suggest that its parameters have been drawn too tightly, and that, instead of answering questions, it will simply place in the public domain more questions that need to be answered, and need to be answered urgently.