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Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for 2010-11

My Lords, may I enter a rather eccentric note of dissent? I was listening with great care to my noble friend's speech. I thought it extremely well informed, and I was not surprised at that. My point of dissent is that I do not approve of this committee being translated into a parliamentary committee. I see great virtue in it being the only committee of parliamentarians that reports directly to the Prime Minister. In my experience, when I was on the committee and Sir John Major was the Prime Minister we used to have meetings with him at No. 10 to discuss our reports in detail. I know of no other committee that has that sort of access and I think that the Prime Minister and the committee benefited from it. The other benefit which you have from it being a non-parliamentary committee but a committee of parliamentarians is that you hugely diminish the role of the Whips in who goes on that committee. Both those things are matters of supreme advantage, which we would sacrifice by transforming this into a parliamentary Select Committee—a development which I personally deplore.