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Intelligence and Security Committee

The Foreign Secretary will, I think, agree that the speech by the Chair of the Committee about what he described as the interference in the independence of the Committee was the most severe public condemnation of interference that I can recall in the whole 16 years that the Committee has operated. I am not a member of the Committee, but will the Foreign Secretary acknowledge that there must be a real issue for the Chair to have expressed himself publicly in such severe and unambiguous terms in this debate? He made it clear that it was not the agencies whom he was accusing of that interference, which made it obvious whom he was accusing. Will the Foreign Secretary acknowledge the seriousness of what has been raised today and give some indication of how he proposes to respond to it?