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Intelligence and Security Committee

I welcome this opportunity to acknowledge the valuable role performed by the Intelligence and Security Committee and its members from all parties, in particular those retiring from the House—my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Ben Chapman) and, of course, the right hon. Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells). I salute the latter for his chairmanship of the Committee, his memorable speech today, to which I wish to return, and his 21 years in the House. He and I are parliamentary twins—we might not look like it, but we came into this House in a pair of by-elections 21 years ago, and we have been good friends ever since, fortified by a common interest in foreign affairs and a passion for everything Welsh. I, personally, will miss him very much in the Chamber. This is a very important and interesting debate. I apologise in advance, however, because, given that I have to give a speech this evening, hundreds of miles away, I will not be here for the winding-up speeches. However, the Committee's annual report for 2008-09, and now for 2009-10, reminds us of the sheer breadth of the responsibilities of the UK's intelligence and security agencies. As the Foreign Secretary has said, they protect this country against not only terrorism in all its forms, but espionage, weapons of mass destruction, cyber-attacks and threats from unstable regions. They also support UK military forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere. We owe a great deal to the members of these agencies. In the recent words—it was a good summary—of a distinguished former director general of the Security Service, they are""men and women of different backgrounds, beliefs and ethnicity who wish to work, without any chance of personal fame, or recognised success, because they believe in the UK, its rights and freedoms and because they wish to protect it, as far as they are able against threats"." That we have so many people prepared to work on that basis is a great asset to this country, and we could not do for an hour or a day without them. The scale of the threat from terrorism has perhaps made it inevitable that the Committee has devoted an increasing amount of time in recent years to that issue, with four reports having been published: a March 2005 special report into the handling of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, a special report three years ago into rendition, and two—I think—unpublished reports into the Binyam Mohamed case and the treatment and interviewing of detainees overseas. I think that the House will agree that the wider issues thrown up in the course of these inquires—about the nature of our irreplaceable intelligence relationship with the United States and the balancing of the needs of national security with the requirements of accountability in our democratic society—go to the heart of the protection of the security of our nation. We therefore welcomed the commitments made by the Prime Minister a year ago today—on 18 March 2009—when he said that the Government would take action to""protect the reputation of our security and intelligence services and to reassure ourselves that everything has been done to ensure that our practices are in line with United Kingdom and international law"." Such action was clearly needed, and we have supported the Government in giving the Attorney-General time to review allegations of complicity in torture, as well as respecting the role of the Committee in assessing and reporting on developments. We have also recognised that there are current legal proceedings that have to be taken into account by the Government. However, it seems extraordinary that they have been so slow—a theme of Government slowness now runs through this debate—in fulfilling the Prime Minster's commitments to the House. Those were commitments that he said were important to""put beyond doubt the terms under which our agencies and service personnel operate".—[Official Report, 12 March 2009; Vol. 489, c. 55WS.]" This slowness is part of a pattern of unfulfilled commitments, extreme tardiness, administrative confusion and evidently threats to the independence of the Committee, for which Ministers must be held responsible. The first of the Prime Minister's commitments was to publish the guidance given to intelligence officers—the Foreign Secretary has just been talking about this—and service personnel about the standards that we apply during the detention and interviewing of detainees overseas. He said that the guidance would need to be consolidated and reviewed by the Committee before publication. Yet the right hon. Member for Pontypridd has described how it took a full eight months for the Prime Minister to allow the Committee to see the guidance, despite his repeated requests. It will be a matter of concern and surprise to the House that the guidance was only handed over on 18 November last year, well after the date on which the Committee would have been able to scrutinise it as part of this annual review—a delay that Ministers have not even attempted to explain, except to say that it is a difficult process. The Foreign Secretary spoke, throughout his speech, about the need for a strong and robust Intelligence and Security Committee, but recently the Government have not been treating that Committee as being entitled to be strong and robust. The most immediate consequence of the delay is that Parliament is not only debating this issue today without having been able to examine the detainee guidance, which has still not been published, but is doing so without having the benefit of the Committee's assessment of that guidance. In his statement just last week, the Chairman said that his Committee had been assured by the Prime Minister that both the report and the guidance would be published "in good time" before today's debate. I imagine that, having made a public statement to that effect, the right hon. Gentleman is now a little disappointed that these assurances have not been kept. The fact that they have not been kept merits more explanation from Ministers about the delay. The Foreign Secretary has just said that the guidance will be published at the earliest possible opportunity, but he then went on to point out that the Committee would be away all next week, and that he would be away for the first two days of the following week. As I understand it, the House will then go into recess, and the election will be called the week after that, unless it is not going to happen until June. The earliest possible opportunity is therefore not going to be very early. Only a week ago, however, the information was to be provided before today's debate. The Government's proceedings are not only slow but incompetent. They continually make these commitments, but this does not fortify public confidence in their approach to the work of the Committee or in the way in which our intelligence services operate.