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Intelligence and Security Committee

I have had the honour to chair the Intelligence and Security Committee since October 2008, or for roughly 18 months now. This is the second time that I have had the opportunity to open such a debate, and it will be the last. I wish to put on record my thanks to members of the Committee and its staff for their hard work in what has been a remarkably difficult year for it in more ways than one, as I shall seek to illustrate. Some members of the ISC have announced their intention to retire as MPs. They include the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), who is the only ISC member to have served on the Committee since its creation 16 years ago. He is our remembrancer, and future Committees will greatly miss his pretty awesome powers of recall, and his sense of humour. The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) is another to be leaving. He has great experience of international affairs, and of matters relating to Northern Ireland and his spiritual home in the borders of Scotland. Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Ben Chapman) is also retiring. He has inevitably enhanced our deliberations with his unrivalled knowledge of Whitehall's administrative and political geography and its darker arts. For a Committee of nine to lose four of its members at one fell swoop is a serious blow against the cause of continuity and that is why I am going to concentrate in my contribution on one theme. In my view, it is the most important theme—that of strengthening and sustaining the independence of the Intelligence and Security Committee.