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Intelligence and Security Committee

My right hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. I have simply said that there is a dilemma, and I shall come to that dilemma later in my remarks. Before that, I shall address the other fundamental problem, which is that we are sponsored by the Cabinet Office, which provides our staff on secondment from other Departments. This arrangement was fine in 1994, when we started, but since then the development of the supervision of intelligence and the way in which it is administered in government has changed so that more and more parts of the Cabinet Office have been involved in what we oversee and we do indeed oversee some parts of what it does. Matters have come to a head this year, and that has led us to believe that the situation should change. That is why we made a formal request for a change in our sponsor Department. We put it to the Prime Minister who instructed that this should be looked at in detail and this has been followed up with exploratory talks as to how best we could achieve what should be perceived as further steps towards showing our independence. A small group of us—we are all in our places—including the Chairman, the right hon. Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) and I, met the head of human resources in the Ministry of Justice, which seems a logical Department for us to move to. Although it has no oversight of any of the intelligence and security services, it does have a certain familiarity with what is going on and it is also used to handling several other independent bodies, such as the Supreme Court and others, on which no one could doubt its independence. Being linked to those would have helped. All have now concluded that there are no practical difficulties that could not be overcome. That is what the Government have said. But what is needed is the political will to make the change. We have urged that it should happen this side of the general election so that the successor Committee—this has been at the forefront of our mind—can get off to the best possible start in the next Parliament without becoming involved in procedural matters and old arguments. It is to my great regret—and, I am sure, that of every other member of the Committee— that the Government's response today to our 2009-10 report, in which we specifically made these proposals, is simply that issues must be looked at and that they will do so in the future. In other words, they are saying, "Let's kick the issue into the long grass, wait until after the election and hope it goes away." That is thoroughly unsatisfactory. On the issue of the guidance, it seemed to me that we were going round in ever-decreasing circles and starting to dance on the head of a pin because nobody knew what its status was, and I raised that point in an intervention on the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey). Let me say—because these are facts and do not need to be hidden—that the guidance was given to us in November. Yes, it took a long time, and there are some reasons for that. It was amazingly complicated. We spoke to the Attorney-General, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary about it, who are all concerned with it. We also understood how difficult it had been to set out guidance for the security services that would hold water and not be subject to legal challenge, and would also be of practical use. The whole Committee worked very hard on this and we turned it around as quickly as we could. We sent the draft guidance and our response back to the Prime Minister, who had himself said that he was keen to get the guidance out and that we must not mess about any longer. There we were, not 10 days ago, in the Cabinet room with him, when he asked his staff, "Can this be done?" The Cabinet Secretary said, "Yes, it can be done." Well, it has not been done. That is a matter of great regret to us all because we cannot now debate or consider it, because it is not yet there. I shall not say what the differences are, because that would not be right, but the fundamental reason is that the Government disagree with one of our conclusions. To be fair, the Government have said that they think that this conclusion misrepresents something that a Minister said to us. That is as maybe, and were it a matter of national security, they would have every right to say, "We're not publishing this." I can tell the House, however, that it is not a matter of national security in any way, shape or form; it is a disagreement, which is going to be there because the Committee has signed off the report, and if, as a result of further evidence, which the Foreign Secretary mentioned, we come to another conclusion, or additional conclusions, they will have to be published separately. What the Government refused to publish today will have to be published as it is, because there is no alternative—that is what the statute says. What a shame it is that publication has been put off just because certain people think that it would be embarrassing. In my view, it would not be embarrassing. There is no harm in having a healthy disagreement with a group of parliamentarians who have looked at a subject and come to a different conclusion from the Government. The real point is that the guidance is still not in the public domain—the public are the real losers. If it gets altered as a result of what the Committee has said, we will all say, "Hallelujah!" Then the public and the House of Commons will be able to see what the original guidance was, what our comments were and what changes were made.