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Intelligence and Security Committee

That is a very good question. I would have no objection to the Chair of the Committee being a member of Her Majesty's Opposition. That does not seem to me to strain credibility in any shape or form. I hope to deal in a moment with the question of its becoming a Select Committee. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come to that shortly. The ISC has been in existence for 16 years. It is controversial and it attracts much comment and criticism. This arises primarily from the way in which we conduct our work, the vast majority of which is private. Anything done behind closed doors leads to gossip, and the ISC is no different. There has been much comment on and speculation about what the Committee does or does not do, how it does or does not hold the agencies to account, how it would be better to hold meetings in public, and how we should have some kind of running judicial inquiry instead. The complaints, the wish lists, the conspiracy theories and pies in the sky keep tumbling off the fevered production line week by week. I want to tell the House a few things about the ISC. We meet in private because the things that the agencies talk to us about are secret. Therefore, if we met in public they could not talk to us about secret things. If they can talk to us about non-secret things, it would be a pretty pointless discussion. So if we meet in public, Parliament will get less oversight of the agencies' work, not more. I do not think that that is a difficult concept to grasp, but still people keep talking about the ISC meeting in public or becoming a Select Committee. If the House wants to make the ISC a Select Committee—at least the kind of Select Committee that we have currently—so be it, but I want to say as a matter of record that a Select Committee will not get the access that the ISC gets, so oversight will not be strengthened but weakened. It is only because of that that I and other members of the ISC would not recommend this oversight body becoming a Select Committee. The present arrangements are far from perfect, as we know, but it is my view and, I believe, that of the Committee, that this Parliament would end up with far, far less accountability if the ISC were a Select Committee. I hope that both Houses will consider any proposals with great care before such a transformation is agreed.