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Intelligence and Security Committee

Let me look into that. As the right hon. Gentleman will know from the numerous appearances that I have made in front of the Committee, I think that a culture of saying no to an idea because it has not been thought of before is absolutely hopeless in that regard. If, in fact, the knee-jerk reaction is always to say no, we must change it. I did not actually know of the case he mentioned, but in my experience, when Ministers are presented with such questions, they do not want to go with the knee-jerk reaction and say no, but want to go with the drive to have a strong accountability system. That is certainly what the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I want. In its latest report, the ISC made some administrative proposals about which I know there strong feelings—after listening to the contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd, I realise that they are stronger than I had thought. Those will be seriously considered and discussed, but they raise some quite tricky issues of practice and principle. For example, the proposal to link the ISC budget to the intelligence agency budgets is novel—our information is that that does not happen anywhere else. I believe that that could tie us in knots. Surely the baseline is to take seriously the commitment not only to independence, which I will come to later, but to the proper resources to do the job. If there is a compelling case that the resources are not available to do the job, the resources should be given to the Committee, whether that is to do with the expertise of the staff or overall funding. I was struck today by the force with which my right hon. Friend made the case about the allegedly baleful influence of the Cabinet Office on the Committee's proceedings. There are hard-working staff on the Committee and in the Cabinet Office, many with genuine expertise. We will look further at the question of whether changing the administrative label to the Ministry of Justice would have the impact that he suggests.