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Intelligence and Security Committee

I stand corrected although, in my defence, I should point out that the report only came out at 10 o'clock this morning and we have all been running to catch up. I think that the right hon. Gentleman makes a point that his Front-Bench team should take into account. A theme of the debate so far has been how we reform the Committee. I agree with other right hon. and hon. Members who have said that the issue of independence is not critical, although we could examine it and that aspect could be improved—indeed, the report looks at that. I am talking not only about the appointment of members, although that is clearly important, but how the budget is put together. We could also examine the issue of public hearings, but I do not think that that is the crucial point. I come to the interventions that I made on the Chairman and the Foreign Secretary now, because I think that resourcing is crucial. Although I welcome the fact that we now have an investigator, that is just one investigator. We have already heard from a very distinguished member of the Committee, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), that what one would assume to be relatively run-of-the-mill investigations have already had barriers put in their way. Thus, there is a concern about not only the resources for the investigatory powers and abilities of the Committee, but how they are viewed by the security services, the Cabinet Office and others who have a say on how resources can be deployed. It is important to come back to that issue, because if the public are to have confidence in the work—if we across the House are to have confidence in it—we need to know that the people we are entrusting with this incredibly important job have all the tools that they need to do it. Lest people run away with the idea that I am completely uncritical of the Committee, I can say from the experience of supporting one of my constituents that I do not always agree with every word written in its reports. You would perhaps be surprised if I did, Mr. Deputy Speaker. A constituent of mine, Bisher al-Rawi, was in my view illegally rendered from The Gambia, where he was on a business trip, to Bagram airport, where he spent time in a dark hole and suffered torture. He then went to Guantanamo Bay and was there for four years. He was never told what he was supposed to have done and was eventually released. I worked with my constituent's family, and eventually with my constituent, from 2002. It was an informative experience. At first, my relationship with the intelligence services was very good, and the officers with whom I dealt were as helpful as they possibly could be, given the restraints and restrictions they were under. I pay tribute to them. However, I felt that when the ISC considered the case of Bisher al-Rawi, which is especially important given the issues and debates around renditions, it was a bit reliant—this came out in the report—on what it was being told by the secret services and it was not really able to question through investigation. The issue in Bisher's case was British complicity in his arrest and subsequent rendition—whether the British secret services tipped off the CIA in The Gambia and told the Gambian authorities to arrest him; he had been arrested at Gatwick airport and investigated by the British authorities. In a way, the ISC report gave our services a clean bill of health. I looked at the evidence—