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

I was just going to say that as the committee currently reports to the Executive, it seems rather odd that it cannot continue its work while Parliament is not in being. On the broader point, in a report which I wrote for my party I suggested that the committee’s future should be as a parliamentary committee and in that sense have a more normal relationship to the normal processes of accountability in our constitution. As I was about to say, we have not taken a view within the Conservative Party on whether we should introduce primary legislation, which is what that would involve. That is clearly a major issue. If we are going to do that, we need to get it right and look at all the issues. We came to the conclusion that this is not something that you can do until you can examine it from inside government, so we hope very much that we will be able to do it.