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

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in the gap if I may. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for the way in which he introduced this most interesting debate and for speaking for the committee. I reassure the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, that I remember our committee visit to Menwith Hill, which I much enjoyed. The idea that we were not able to go there is news to me. Having been the chairman for the first seven years of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I think that it has lost some of its momentum. I sense that it is perhaps just picking it up now. I have been very concerned that it has not had an investigator. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is absolutely right. We started off with fairly limited official terms of reference and we gradually expanded them. We did so originally with the good will of Ministers such as Robin Cook and Jack Straw, and we gradually spread our wings and covered the whole remit of intelligence security, as the Minister remembers well, because he was one of the witnesses who came—not under our area of responsibility, but as Chief of Defence Intelligence, which was a critical part of the intelligence picture. Considering the concerns of the committee, and picking up on something that my noble friend said—the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours will be surprised to hear me say this—I think that with the problems that are emerging, the case for a Joint Committee of both Houses is getting stronger. One thing that worried me when I was chairman, and which has continued, is the question of what happens to the staff of the committee. They were seconded from departments and had the devil’s own job in getting back into any career stream. They had been isolated; they were viewed with some distrust; and they were not welcomed back by accounting officers who did not want to add to the numbers when they were trying to slim down. Considering their loyalty and the arrangements, there is a strong argument for moving in that direction. I am not impressed by the suggestion to move from the Cabinet Office to the Ministry of Justice—that is out of the frying pan into the fire. It still leaves behind the basic problems. I have two points to make on my hobby horse. I care passionately about the reputation, independence and integrity of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It is of great value to the intelligence agencies and should not be seen as a threat and a menace to them. I remember the Mitrokhin inquiry, when the committee dug the SIS out of a deep hole because it had credibility. No Minister could have done that by saying, "There is no problem; there is nothing to answer for here". However, an independent, all-party committee with full access to all the information beyond what the Act officially said we could have was able to do a proper job. At the moment there are eight Members of Parliament and one Peer on the committee. When we consider the shape of a new Parliament, with goodness knows how many new Members with no experience in this area, there is a strong argument for a significant increase in the number of Members of the House of Lords who serve on the committee. The Act allows it; it does not specify the number of Peers or MPs. My other hobby horse, which is a brave statement considering that I am looking forward to a triumphant Conservative victory in the forthcoming election, is that I believe strongly that the chairman of the committee should be a member of the Opposition. I look with despair at previous chairmen—not with criticism of any individual, but because if we treat the post as a consolation prize for losing a place in the Cabinet, there is no continuity. I did the job for seven years, and I think that I am right in saying that we have had three different chairmen in the past four years. That is not the right way to run it. There would be added credibility if the chairman were a member of the Opposition. I hope that we will bravely adopt that approach.