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Intelligence and Security Committee

I shall follow up some of the remarks made by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), but first let me make an apology. As I have informed the Chair, I have to leave at 4.15 pm for a constituency engagement. I regret that I will not be here for the winding-up speeches or to listen to other hon. Members, and I apologise for that. The Chairman of the Committee made some critical remarks about some Members of Parliament, the media and the judiciary for criticising the security services. I only say that I would not wish to live in a country where that freedom was undermined in any way whatever. As Members of Parliament who are not on the Committee, we have a responsibility, along with the media, to criticise when we consider it appropriate to do so, and we are all responsible for our remarks. As I might be considered something of a critic, let me make it clear straight away that I am not criticising individual members of the ISC. However, I have a number of reservations about how the Committee was formed in the beginning and about how it continues. I would like the Committee to conduct its activities somewhat differently, something to which I shall return in a moment. However, at no stage would I want to give the impression that I minimise the acute terrorist threat facing this country. Even if 9/11 in the United States or 7/7 in this country had not occurred, I would certainly recognise that there is an acute terrorist threat. As we know, it is also an ongoing threat, and there is no guarantee—far from it—that the horrors and atrocities of 7 July 2005 could not be repeated. It is difficult to make a distinction, and I do not see any reason why one should, between one form of mass murder and another. The IRA terror campaign, which took the lives of so many innocent people, whether service personnel or civilians, as in the Birmingham pub bombings of 1974, involved crimes and atrocities. What is different about the latest terrorist threat is that we are dealing with religious fanatics who actually glory in death, and who believe that paradise will be reached through mass slaughter. No one, I hope, could accuse me of minimising the terrorist threat. Of course I accept that the security services carry a heavy responsibility in trying to prevent such atrocities. Even if we were not faced with terrorist threats, as we have been over the past 30-odd years, it would be right for our parliamentary democracy, like other democracies, to have agencies to help and defend the country against those whose purpose is the destruction of our rights and liberties—not necessarily through terrorism, but politically. I was critical to some extent when I spoke in the debate on the annual report two years ago, but what concerns me particularly on this occasion is the mention by the right hon. Member for East Hampshire of allegations of torture. No Member has suggested that British security officials have been directly involved in torture; no one has made any such accusation. Torture certainly took place in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s, and we know only too well how counter-productive it was. As many Members have said, including Conservative Members, it served as a recruiting sergeant for the IRA. This is a different accusation: that British security officials have engaged in a form of complicity when torture has taken place and people have been detained, be it in Pakistan or the United States. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire quoted the judgment of the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger. Let me do so as well. Lord Neuberger said:""Yet that does not seem to be true: as the evidence in this case showed, at least some SyS officials"" —security officials—""appear to have a dubious record when it comes to human rights and coercive techniques"." Of course we must take that seriously. The right hon. Gentleman was critical of the Master of the Rolls, but I am not at all critical of him. He must have reached his conclusion on the basis of evidence in his possession. It is not likely that he would make such remarks lightly, so he must have had a very good reason to make them. That is why I believe that the right hon. Gentleman was wrong to criticise him.