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Intelligence and Security Committee

Given that it seems that the Committee tabled the motion, not the Government, it is nice to be able to open a debate without having to apologise for something that the Government have done or failed to do. I will bear your comments in mind carefully, Mr. Deputy Speaker, as I frame my remarks. Mr. Speaker warned us severely not to take too long on our speeches, and I shall try to be as brief as I can while doing justice to the issues involved. I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells), who I think spoke for the whole ISC with passion and verve. I thank him for his outstanding work over the past 18 months, and I also thank his colleagues. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) has sat on the Committee for 16 years, and my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Ben Chapman) and the right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) have also served on it with distinction. In my experience they are all men of principle and passion, and they have discharged their responsibilities with a view not just to the task that the House has given them but to the duties given to them by the country, which expects the parliamentary aspect of oversight to be as effective as the ministerial and legal aspects. I thank them sincerely for the work that they have done and wish them well in the future, and I hope we can do justice to their work. I have felt at times that the annual reports of the ISC, and indeed its work as a whole, have not received the attention that they deserve in Parliament or outside. I know that a number of dedicated hon. Members, to their credit, follow intelligence and security issues closely. My right hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd talked about the lack of credit given to the Committee for its work. One important lesson of the past year or two is that more public discussion of the work done by the different branches of the accountability system, and of the dilemmas and challenges posed by the modern world, is welcome. It is a good thing in the drive for demystification, which my right hon. Friend rightly said was important. The issues involved are complex and profound. That is true not just of the policy issues, some of which I shall touch on, but of the governance issues. The Intelligence Services Act 1994 was intended to balance secrecy and accountability. Secrecy is necessary for the effectiveness of our intelligence agencies, and accountability—not just the fact but the perception of it—is necessary for their legitimacy. That accountability cannot be of a normal kind, but it must be thorough, systematic and effective. Any organisation depends on appropriate oversight as well as good management, and the intelligence agencies are no different. The two ISC reports before us—the one referred to in the motion and the one that we are allowed tangentially to refer to—are serious pieces of work. As I said recently in another debate, there is a myth that our security and intelligence services operate without independent oversight. That is not true. The Government want a strong and robust ISC, and as far as I am concerned it is vital for any Secretary of State to know that all the checks and balances work properly. That includes checking organisations for which Secretaries of State are responsible. Last year, the High Court called the ISC""a very significant means of democratic accountability."" Independent judicial oversight is different. It is provided by the Intelligence Services Commissioner and the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who report to the Prime Minister and through him to Parliament. As my right hon. Friend said, however, effective oversight is not the same as openness. Because the ISC meets in private, and because its reports are redacted before publication, some say that it cannot do a proper job of holding the Government and the agencies to account. In fact, the opposite is true. It is precisely because the Committee operates inside the so-called ring of secrecy that it can have access to material and question witnesses on very sensitive issues to a degree that makes its scrutiny effective. In my experience, its dialogue, debate and probing questions speak to that. That is not an easy message to get across, but it must be said.