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Intelligence and Security Committee

That is for good now. I am very grateful, as ever, to my hon. Friend for bringing these matters to our attention, and I am sure that they will be discussed by the usual channels. This debate should be on the Committee's 2008-09 annual report on our work from December 2008 to July 2009. We sent it to the Prime Minister in December 2009, but unfortunately it has taken more than three months for it to be published. We have complained bitterly about that delay to both the Prime Minister and his security adviser. Given that the Committee signed off the text in July 2009, eight months ago, that is simply unacceptable. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will give an undertaking that it will not take this long again. There is no good reason for the delay, other than bureaucratic inertia, to use one of his own favourite phrases. Such has been the delay in publishing the 2008-09 report, that in the meantime the Committee has completed its 2009-10 annual report, which we sent to the Prime Minister on 5 March. When we sent it to him, we requested that it be published by 17 March—yesterday—at the latest, to ensure that right hon. and hon. Members would have the opportunity to read it in good time for this debate. We were assured that it would happen and I have every sympathy with hon. Members who have not had sufficient time to read it. It is also very disappointing to the Committee that, despite the fact that the Government have had sight of our report in draft form for some time, we have had to fight the Cabinet Office, even yesterday, to be given sight of the Government's response to our report in sufficient time before this debate. It is a shame that they do not place more value on our being able to have a well-informed debate in the Chamber.