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

My Lords, I chime with the noble Lord, Lord King, in his view that the chairman of the committee should be in the Opposition, as happens on the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons. The chairman is invariably a prominent member of the Opposition. I will concentrate my remarks on the question of accountability to Parliament and on the question of a Joint Committee of both Houses. As the noble Lord, Lord King, will recall, in 1998 during my membership of the committee I was constantly arguing the case for the committee structure to change to that of a Joint Committee of Parliament. At the time, the argument that the Conservatives had to consider about whether primary legislation was necessary was used to counter my case. I had discussions with the Clerks in the other place and we worked out that the committee’s powers could be circumscribed by a series of special resolutions which would apply only to the committee so that it would not enjoy all the powers of existing Select Committees. Those powers were modified to deal with its special conditions, particularly the fact that it reports primarily to the Prime Minister. At that stage I did not depart from the principle that the committee’s report should go first to the Prime Minister before being reported to Parliament. I still believe that that is an important principle to preserve. It is also worth noting that in the House of Commons generally—what has happened over the past 12 months with the Cabinet Office serves only to confirm this—the committee is seen as a creature of the Executive. I know that people in the departments do not like to hear this. I remember conversations with Kevin Tebbit, who was very hostile to the proposals that I made in 1998. Stephen Lander was more open-minded about the matter, and the MI6 people maintained a discrete silence on my arguments but were clearly equally hostile to the proposals for change. However, they all failed to recognise the attitude of Members of Parliament and the fact that the committee was not reporting to committees of the House of Commons. I hear that over recent years members of the committee have argued for evidence to be given to the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee. Indeed, it was even suggested to me the other day that they should have access to the Public Administration Committee—the high-profile committee that spends most of its time undoing reputations, in many cases quite validly. But the point is that there should be a structure within Parliament to take evidence. I am sure that the great body of Members of Parliament—certainly in the Commons—would accept such an arrangement. I understand that my views are now reinforced by a recent contribution to the debate by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, the former head of MI5. I understand that she is in favour of a Joint Committee arrangement being established. Therefore, I hope that we can move forward, whichever Government are in power. I think that many of the original papers that I wrote on these matters in the late 1980s still circulate around Downing Street. I even went as far as the Prime Minister in the late 1990s and the early 2000s to plead my case on the need for this change to be made. I remember that there was a lot of resistance to taking evidence from officials lower down the line. However, I never doubted the word of those who gave evidence to the committee. I always felt that the power of a Select Committee, whereby if a person gives false evidence they are in contempt of Parliament, was a very strong one—in other words, they would be held in contempt. I always felt that that would impose a discipline on officials. The notorious case that has run through the press recently is an example of where better arrangements for accountability would have been more appropriate. The reference to poor record keeping is something that I find very hard to believe. In fact, to be frank, I do not believe it.