Proceeding contribution from Chris Bryant (Labour) in the House of Commons on Thursday, 18 March 2010. It occurred during Debate on Intelligence and Security Committee.
Intelligence and Security Committee
I thought so. That is probably why my right hon. Friend asked about the integrity of the Committee after the general election. He is absolutely right that we need to ensure that there is no attempt to nobble—to use a word used by another Member—the Committee's structure or secretariat so that it is able to do less of a job after the general election than it has been beforehand. My right hon. Friend raised a matter that is important in the debate about whether the Committee should be a Select Committee—the fact that it has to report to the Prime Minister, as an essential part of the process, whereas all other Select Committees report to the House. I am not sure that the ISC should report to the House without having reported to the Prime Minister, because a specific responsibility and a specific degree of trust come with that element of reporting. The right hon. Member for East Hampshire—I should also refer to him as gallant; nobody else has done so, but as a Lieutenant-Colonel in, I think, the Coldstream Guards, he is undoubtedly gallant, and he certainly has the best eyebrows in Parliament now that Denis Healey has departed—pointed out that Committee is certainly not a set of patsies; the scars on the backs of several Ministers in the past few weeks are evidence of that. He made important points about the difference between torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, the fact that one is more clearly established in law than the other, and that in some areas there is a wide divergence as to what is understood by cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. He felt there was a strong argument that there was no need for a judicial inquiry, and I rather agree with him about that. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), who is no longer here, made the point about public sittings, on which I have already commented. The hon. Member for posh places—the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind)—referred to the problems with record keeping. He is absolutely right. This is something that we accept, and the Committee has done an invaluable service in pursuing the matter. We believe that we have put in place much better record keeping, which should have been done before. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that it is not good enough merely to ask for assurances in relation to Diego Garcia. The difficulty that we have—
Secondary information
- Type
- Proceeding contribution
- Reference
- 507 c1071
- Session
- 2009-10
- Chamber / Committee
- House of Commons chamber
- Subjects
- Accountability Administration Finance Intelligence services Intelligence and Security Committee National security Parliamentary scrutiny Location Terrorism Select committees Torture Rendition Diego Garcia Espionage
- Link
- View this Proceeding contribution on www.publications.parliament.uk
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