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Intelligence and Security Committee

I note that that is what the security services have said. I very much endorse the view expressed in the Committee's report, which is:""The Agencies' operational work is about knowledge and information, and the ability to retrieve such information is central to the work with which they are charged."" It goes without saying that an intelligence agency that spends a huge amount of time, resources and effort in collecting information, but then says, "We are unable to identify it within our own records," when it might be operationally desirable to do so has a lot of explaining to do. This matter should never have been allowed to reach that stage. If the agencies say that that problem is now in the past, I very much hope that that is right. If it is not, they need to be given the help, resources and support to ensure that their retrieval systems are so improved—within weeks, not years—that such a problem will not recur. That is a crucial consideration. I come to the second of the three areas that I wish to comment on, which is very much in line with what my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) said: we have to get the problem of whether there has been any complicity in improper behaviour into perspective. We are taking part in this debate in the aftermath of the Bush Administration in the United States quite explicitly giving authority to their interrogation officials to perform what was euphemistically described as "coercive" interrogation—similar language was also used—which by any normal standards meant "torture".