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Intelligence and Security Committee: Annual Report 2007–08

I should declare an interest in that the report covers some of the time that I was director-general. I did not retire until April 2007. I am not entirely certain, therefore, whether it is proper for me, rather unexpectedly, to be in the position of responding to a report which is partly about my performance. However, if the Committee will forgive me, I should like to make some comments. For example, we established the ethics councillor while I was director-general. I congratulate the committee on its industry. There were times when we in the service would have preferred it to be a little more dilatory and idle, because meeting every week—despite the view that we were not put under pressure—actually required all the intelligence organisations to do a lot of work to prepare and to make sure that their state of knowledge was sufficient to give the committee full and proper answers to its questions. If the Committee will indulge me, I should mention something about the committee’s history, which is important and may not be in the public domain. Before 1989, my service, the Security Service, sought legislation to put itself on a statutory basis, which culminated in the Security Service Act 1989. We strongly argued for a parliamentary committee at that stage, because we felt that not having that sort of scrutiny meant that there was a democratic deficit that needed to be filled. The Prime Minister of the time was not in favour of this subversive notion from the Security Service and the committee was not created until 1994. I very much welcome its evolution. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, mentioned, the legislation says that it is confined to policy, administration and finance of the agencies, but that is absolutely no longer the case. It is entirely right that I, my predecessors, my successors and the heads of the other agencies have responded to the committee’s very understandable wish to extend its remit beyond what is, strictly speaking, the letter of the law. I think that that is in everybody’s interests. Although we are not going to discuss the 7/7 report, I hope that the Committee will allow me to make just two or three general points before I sit down. The 7/7 report, the details of which are absolutely scarred on my memory, is a very helpful account of an extremely complex situation. I remember saying to my staff when I addressed them on 8 July that they should brace themselves because by the end of the week the attack would have been our fault. I was wrong on the timing; it took about 18 months for it to be our fault. The report represents a much more detailed account than has ever been given of how the Security Service and the police work. The fact that it was possible to put that in the public domain safely is very commendable, and I am glad to read it. At the risk of stating truisms, I remind the Committee that there is no such thing as complete security. The Government, the police and the Security Service cannot "ensure" the safety of all our citizens, but I know that my former colleagues and others will do their best to make it as complete as it is possible to be. Equally, in a country of 60 million-plus people—the Home Office will probably tell us there are many more—you cannot anticipate what everybody is going to do. The remark of Jonathan Evans that you can know somebody without knowing what they will do is worth remembering because you cannot always get into everybody’s heads, and their interest is in concealing what they are planning to do. At the time of 7/7, the service of which I was then the head was two years into a major expansion because of its appreciation, which was accepted by the Government, that it was far too small to cope with the threat that it faced. It may never be large enough to cope with all the things with which it would wish to cope. There are other calls on public expenditure and prioritisation will always be necessary, however painful that may be. I would like briefly to comment on two other points. Suggestions have been made in the press that the service blackmails young Muslims to make them work for it. This is utterly untrue. I think we would all hope that members of communities would come forward to assist the authorities. We must work as hard as we can towards achieving an environment where that becomes more normal and standard. However, there is no substitute for the recruitment of secret agents with direct access to terrorist networks—access which is tightly held and which they do not wish the authorities to discover. No amount of community information is likely to deliver that key, detailed stuff. There is not time today to go into the complex subject of intercept as evidence. I will merely say that in 1988, to my certain knowledge, my service proposed to the Government of the day that we should raise this question as a policy discussion to see whether it would be possible to achieve it. The fact that it has not happened since then is not because of objections from my service or, indeed, objections in principle from the others, were it possible to do it safely and securely. Finally, I mention asterisks. I have no current knowledge. When I left the building my pass was removed, I signed the Official Secrets Act, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, knows far more about current secrets than I do. As others will have done, I have had fun trying to imagine what lies behind the asterisks and felt a little frustration that I do not know, but I acknowledge and remember that this was exactly the process that is described. If you wanted something not to go in for national security reasons, you had to argue strongly. During my service I took a policy decision of trying to suggest as few changes as possible. Many of the asterisks have to come from the other two services because of foreign policy implications, but obviously it is in the interests of the entire intelligence community that as much as possible is included in the report.