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Intelligence and Security Committee

I have always found the right hon. Gentleman's words to be very wise, but on this point we are very close to drifting towards gesture politics. I am not sure that the hard, central question of what the Committee does and how it has that access would be addressed by such a change of title. I agree entirely, however, that it should always be ready to evolve. This House should take a great interest in the way it evolves and should shape that evolution, but I cannot see that it would make an enormous difference to call it something else. Perhaps it would be more acceptable in the eyes of some, but I am not sure that I see that. There are changes that need to be made to the Committee, however, and that need to be made very quickly. They concern the need to maintain and reconfirm the Committee's independence from the bodies and agencies that it oversees. Put bluntly, these changes must help to guarantee in the eyes of parliamentarians and the public that there must be no threat to the independence of the ISC and that its future independence will be protected. Our critics, because they cannot see what we do, presume the worst when it comes to our independence. They presume that we sit and nod at the agencies and agree with everything that they say. They do not know, because they cannot see it, so how can they know that we act with a robustness and a determination that are the equal of any Committee in this Parliament? Having spent a number of stimulating years as a belligerent member of a particularly ruthless Public Accounts Committee, I can swear to that. All our members have sat on Select Committees and they will reassure anyone that they act just as robustly on the ISC as they would on any other Committee.