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

I will not comment on them going native. The Prime Minister is committed to considering further reform in the new Parliament. That is necessary, but we need to think this through carefully, because a number of issues come into play. I reiterate that the Government are committed to publishing as soon as possible our consolidated guidance to personnel on required standards for the detention and interviewing of detainees overseas. That the guidance has not been published does not mean that officers are currently operating in a policy vacuum. Consolidated guidance is based on the principles set out in previous documents. It differs in that it is intended to be applicable to both MoD and agency officers, and aims to set out publicly the responsible and lawful way in which we approach these difficult issues. Our policy across government remains clear. We stand firmly against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. We do not collude in, solicit, or participate in mistreatment. As the ISC has reported, operations have been blocked on the grounds that the risk of mistreatment is too high—this really happens. Careful judgments must be made, and we owe it to the personnel involved to provide clear advice. I thank the ISC for its review of the draft guidance. Its thorough and insightful report has raised a number of issues that require further and detailed consideration. I regret that this will result in a delay in publication of the guidance, but it is more important to ensure that we deal properly with the important points and get it right than that we rush it through on a self-imposed deadline. These things are too important: we owe it to our agents and to members of the MoD and the Armed Forces who are involved in this arena. Our aim is still to publish the guidance as soon as it is ready, but I do not know exactly when that will be. The report before the Committee provides an indication of the range of threats to the United Kingdom’s national security, and of the tireless work of the security and intelligence agencies in combating them. Areas highlighted by the report include cybersecurity, which I will come back to in a minute, counterespionage and the continuing threat of Irish-related terrorism, which has been worrying me over the past 18 months. International terrorism remains a key priority for the agencies. That the UK has not suffered a successful international terrorist attack since July 2005 is not down to luck, although I always touch wood and am not in the least complacent: it is a measure of the outstanding efforts by the staff of the agencies and others who played a crucial role in disrupting the plans of those who wished to cause us harm. I am afraid that a number of people wish to do that. The Government are committed to ensuring that the agencies are able to maintain capabilities commensurate with the threats that we face. As the ISC’s latest report makes clear, the single intelligence account was increased by 15 per cent in 2008-09 and by a further 8 per cent in 2009-10. We have not normally allowed to be shown the amount of capital spend—this question was raised by one noble Lord—because if one uses that with other information in the public domain, one can draw conclusions. Perhaps we should look at this more carefully to see if we could expose a bit more. That has always been our rather glib answer. I tried to see it from the point of view of someone looking in, because I was CDI for three years and also director of naval intelligence for three years. Possibly there is scope for doing something here: we need to look at that. I am sure that all noble Lords recognise that these increases are substantial sums and proof of the Government’s commitment. As a couple of speakers have said, it is absolutely right that we should have done that, and I thank all speakers for their support for the individuals involved in the agencies who deserve our full support. Since the publication of the 2009-10 ISC report, the results of further work on the feasibility of allowing intercept as evidence in the UK have been published, following the Privy Council review of January 2008. I welcome the Committee’s recognition of the comprehensiveness of the work on this issue, led by the Home Office, which has concluded that none of the approaches identified in the further scoping analysis is capable of meeting both the operational and fair-trial requirements. This conclusion has been supported by the Advisory Group of Privy Counsellors, which includes my noble and learned friend Lord Archer of Sandwell. It remains the Government’s desire to find a way to implement intercept as evidence, provided that that does not jeopardise the protection of the public or national security. The sharing of intelligence with partners—a number of speakers raised this—lies at the heart of the agencies’ ability to carry out their work. Huge amounts of information are shared every day on the basis of trust and the assumption that sensitive material will be protected by those who receive it. I share the ISC’s concern that the principle of originator control of intelligence material is upheld—a couple of speakers talked about this—and I welcome the Court of Appeal’s recognition and reaffirmation of the control principle in the case of Binyam Mohamed. That was slightly missed in the media frenzy around other aspects of the case. Links with the United States are still good. Do we need to do any more post all this? I think not; things have settled down remarkably. I have had more than 20 years of very close links with people in all the US intelligence agencies—I have grown up with them, in a sense—and I am not unusual in that. There are a lot of us like that, which allows us to have this amazingly close link. I have been very privileged in my career to have gained an insight into the importance of the work of the security and intelligence agencies to our national security and I am second to none in my appreciation of it. Indeed, I was deputy chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee for just over three years, just after the noble Baroness was chairman of it, and chaired a number of meetings. The staff of the agencies play an invaluable and often unsung role in ensuring our security and safety, as we have said, and I am sure that all in the House, not just in this Committee, will join me in paying tribute to their dedication, resolve and expertise. My noble friend Lord Foulkes talked about the delay in publication. This was extremely unfortunate. I will not go into when the drafts were received by the Prime Minister, as that would be nit-picking. One could say that this happened and that happened, but that is not important. The important thing is that these things come out in a timely way, and we must ensure that that happens in the future. As for the SCOPE project, the Cabinet Office is now working with the contractor to resolve issues arising from the termination of the programme. The aim of the work is to ensure that the Government and the taxpayer recover appropriate value from the supplier. The details of the discussions are obviously bound by commercial confidence and have to remain so, so I cannot say more. My noble friend Lord Foulkes and the noble Baroness talked about cybersecurity and duplication. There is some risk of duplication and cybersecurity because things are moving so quickly. The Office of Cyber Security in the Cabinet Office is looking at all the mechanisms in place that deliver the national cybersecurity strategy, and we are making sure that they are joined up. The office is working very hard. I have put it under immense pressure. It worked right up to Christmas and after, with very little break because we need to deliver stuff now, and we are working very hard on that. I touched earlier on the Northern Ireland issue, which worries me immensely. About 13 per cent of the security services’ resources were allocated to that in 2008-09. The amount went up to 18 per cent in 2009-10, and it is a real concern. One hopes that this will ease as a result of some of the recent political moves, but we need to watch this very carefully. My noble friend also touched on the loss of laptops. There is no evidence that any of the classified data on them have been compromised. It is likely that most of them were destroyed in GCHQ, but it is quite clear that the accounting controls were not adequate and there must be no complacency. This is a good wake-up call. Again, although this is a small thing, it is the sort of thing that the ISC can do. I was asked specifically about the investigator. My right honourable friend David Miliband has written to the committee and said that the Government will be happy to co-operate voluntarily with the investigator if he pursues the two politically non-sensitive topics that it has proposed during the election period, so that will be moving ahead.