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

My Lords, perhaps I, too, may crave the indulgence of the Committee to make a short contribution in the gap. I was disappointed by the answer to my intervention on the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, who suggested that it was not the responsibility of his committee to make any recommendations about ministerial responsibility. The Intelligence and Security Committee that I sat on, under the chairmanship of my noble friend Lord King, had no such worries. We produced a report some time in the 1990s stating that there should be a Minister of State answering for the Cabinet Office who would be responsible for all of the intelligence agencies. Quite clearly, that was not acted upon. It was interesting because another member of the committee at that stage was the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, who was then Member of Parliament for Dudley East. Shortly before the 1997 election, he was rung up by the office of the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Tony Blair. It was suggested that it would be a good idea if he moved out of his seat in Dudley and went to the House of Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, was not very impressed by that argument and did not think it a compelling case, so another telephone call came through in which he was asked, "Would you think of giving up your seat in Dudley if you were offered a post in the Government"? "Ah", said the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, "now that is entirely different. There is one post which I would accept in the Government: Minister of State in the Cabinet Office answerable for the intelligence services". "Deal done", they said. "Will you now stand down?". He did, and some Blair acolyte was stuck into Dudley. Then in 1997 came the question of confirming all of that. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has now left and is no longer in his seat, because I believe that he came in at this point and said, rather as in the television programme, "Very brave, Prime Minister". The whole idea was kiboshed and, as we know, what actually happened was that the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, ended up as Minister of State for Defence Procurement—a job that he had done either 18 or 19 years earlier. I thought that it was worth recounting that story, because our committee thought that it was important to bring all the intelligence agencies together. I do not think that anything has changed, except that the terrorist threat is now much worse. People say that we live in a very dangerous world. I would argue that the territorial integrity of the United Kingdom has rarely been safer in the past 100 years. Clearly, however, we are threatened in a way that we never have been before by terrorism. Therefore it is absolutely critical to have somebody responsible in government to counter that threat. The intelligence agencies should be brought together so that the whole exercise is co-ordinated and we do not have the agencies answering to different Secretaries of State in the Cabinet. That cannot do anything for the co-ordination and unity of purpose needed to counteract the terrorist threat to this country.