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Intelligence and Security Committee

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are two basic questions about the guidance. First, is it legal and does it ensure that officers who follow it are meeting Britain's domestic and international legal obligations? Secondly, is it being enforced, in the sense that officers are made aware of it and are trained in it? We must make sure that the operational guidance flows well from the overall policy guidance framework. We may not need to know the operational guidance that officers use on a weekly basis in different theatres, but we must be sure that it is in tune with the overall strategic policy guidance. I have no doubt that, in due course, the new guidance will meet all our legal obligations and that officers will be trained on it, but the allegations that we know about all relate to the past guidance, so I am concerned that Ministers seem to be dodging that one, and at some stage we will have to get back to it. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks said that he was inclined towards some sort of judge-led inquiry, and I am delighted that he has repeated that, because he knows that we share that approach. Yes, there may be issues about its timing, but that is the only approach that will draw a line under this. I do not believe that the alternatives—ISC inquiries or the Investigatory Powers Tribunal—meet the test that will be needed to ensure that all the questions that I have raised are fully answered. I want to make one or two brief remarks on substantive issues raised by the report. The first concerns intercept evidence and whether that could in due course become admissible. I think that in the 2009-10 report, which I had a chance to scan, there is a suggestion that the work on this is going into the quicksand, and that the Committee feels that it will be all too difficult. If so, I am quite worried, and I would like to hear more of the reasoning behind it. Perhaps those Committee members who speak can justify such comments, but as I understand it, when Sir John Chilcot considered that issue when he was leading a slightly different inquiry from his current one, he said that he thought that it would be possible to make intercept evidence admissible as long as certain problems were dealt with. He seemed to imply that they could be overcome. If something has changed, it is such an important issue for the way in which we debate counter-terrorism policy that we need to learn more about it. My final point again concerns Binyam Mohamed, but it is about some of the issues that the ISC looked at in relation to generic lessons. It slapped the wrists of the intelligence services for poor record-keeping, and it is quite likely that there has been poor record-keeping. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and others have commented on this over a period of time. But the way in which the papers were not given to the ISC seemed to be not simply a question of poor record-keeping. The Prime Minister himself stepped in to ensure that it did not get all the papers that the courts were getting, but I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate he can assure us that that did not happen. However, the distinct impression that we have had from previous debates is that obstacles were put in the way of the ISC getting all the information that it should have received. That would have been a real problem, so I hope that the Minister will reassure me on that point.