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Intelligence and Security Committee

I agree. I cannot overstate my concern and dismay about the lack of discussion of the threat in this place or in the media. It is most serious and worries me enormously. In paragraph 60, the director general of the Security Service states:""It is a matter of some disappointment to me that I still have to devote significant amounts of equipment, money and staff to countering this threat."" I presume that he means the threat of China and Russia. I think that due diligence should apply when there is potential for espionage and getting our national secrets. However, I disagree with the director general when, on the few occasions he has spoken publicly, he used the term "political intelligence". I find it a serious threat to me as a Member of Parliament when the security services see it as their business to know whom I meet, where I meet and what I discuss. By definition, I have no state secrets. I could attempt to predict when Prime Minister Tony Blair would retire and when the next general election might be; I also have a view about the outcome. Those are not state secrets but my views. When the director general makes it his business to know whom Members of Parliament see, that poses a serious threat to us. I have not made that up. I have told the House previously how the former Chief Whip approached me about the matter, and I believe that a previous Chief Whip tried to get me off the Foreign Affairs Committee soon after the last general election, probably at the whim of MI5. That poses a serious threat to our political process, with which I will not put up and in which I will not acquiesce by my silence. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) rightly referred to paragraph 66, in which the Committee boasts that the Security Service has""established an 'Ethical Counsellor' post to provide staff with an internal avenue to raise any ethical concerns"." The small print in footnote 56 raises some interesting and concerning issues. In fairness to the Committee, it considered them important because they have been included in the report, albeit in a footnote. The footnote states that matters raised with ethical counsellors include:""whether the Service had adequate mechanisms to evaluate the mental and physical health risks to ICT agents; whether the Service should be involved in PREVENT work given the pressure it faces to tackle the terrorist threat directly"." I was interested in some of the comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Ms Taylor) made about Prevent's work. I have an open mind about whether it constitutes core business for our security and intelligence services. The footnote also states that concerns had also been expressed to an ethical counsellor about""whether it was ethical for the Government to seek to alter the ideological views of its citizens (as part of its counter-radicalisation strategy); and whether there were sufficient controls for sharing information with countries that do not comply with international standards for the treatment of those in detention"." That is a most interesting part of the report. However, I am not confident that an individual operative in our intelligence and security services would be treated fairly. I do not believe that sufficiently robust systems are in place to ensure that, by going to the ethical counsellor, operatives would not be disadvantaged in their career or worse.