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Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for 2008–09 (Cm 7807)

The noble Lord has a point. As I said earlier, the operational arrangements of the committee have developed and will continue to develop. That is something that the new committee could look at in more detail. The noble Lord asked about access for investigators. As the noble Lord, Lord King, rightly said, the investigators were appointed only relatively recently as part of the expansion of the work of the committee, and we are in the process of discussions with the Executive about arrangements for access. I hope that the new committee will take that up vigorously with the Executive, because we must ensure that the committee's independence and standing are safeguarded for the future. The development we need is for it to be moved away from the central intelligence co-ordinating machinery. I hope the Government will agree and that we will get some indication of that today. The Foreign Secretary helpfully stated in the debate in another place that although the reaction of officials to proposals to enhance oversight might be a default "no", Ministers, ""do not want to go with the knee-jerk reaction and say no, but want to go with the drive to have a strong accountability system. That is certainly what the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and I want".—[Official Report, Commons, 18/3/10; col. 1007.]" That is very encouraging.