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Mr. Dalyell: On the question of openness, could I go back to the question that I asked earlier, or is the Home Secretary is coming to that?

Mr. Howard indicated assent.

Mr. Dalyell: If he is coming to it, I shall wait.

Mr. Howard: The Committee reports to thePrime Minister. It is then for the Prime Minister, after consultation with the Committee, to decide whether there are any parts of an ISC report that should, for reasons of sensitivity, not be laid before Parliament. As a matter of policy, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will always seek to publish as much as possible of any ISC report and only withhold information that is genuinely sensitive.

We would certainly expect that it would almost always be possible to publish in full any ISC report, or part of an ISC report, dealing with the new function that the Bill confers on the Security Service. We recognise, as do the movers of the new clause, that such work could be less sensitive than other areas of the work of the service. It follows from what I have said that I can without any difficulty give the hon. Member for Blackburn the assurance that he sought that the sense of any recommendations of the Committee and any observations contained in its report would, of course, be taken extremely seriously.

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Nevertheless, it is possible that, in carrying out its function of examining the expenditure, administration and policy of the Security Service in relation to its new function, the ISC may want to deal with sensitive information. It may want to report to the Prime Minister on the implications for the other functions of the service arising from its work against serious crime. It may want to comment on issues of policy arising from on-going investigations or completed cases that had become sub judice. It would be wrong to place the Committee in the position where it was required either to leave important points out of its annual report or to run the risk of putting sensitive information into the public domain.

5.45 pm

The force of those reasons was recognised in the decision of Parliament not to qualify the exactly analogous power given to the Prime Minister in respect of ISC reports on the role of the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ in relation to serious crime. It is equally important that the Prime Minister should retain the discretion, after consultation with the ISC, not to publish parts of its reports that deal with the serious crime work of the Security Service.

Before I sit down, I shall deal briefly with the question raised by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), remote though it is from the subject matter of the new clause. He asked about the circumstances in which evidence is given by members of the Security Service in court. As he rightly surmised, I would be foolish to trespass into the province of the practices of the Scottish courts.

In England and Wales, it is not the case, as the hon. Gentleman suggested, that members of the Security Service are immune from cross-examination; their evidence is subject to it. It has been the practice for them to give evidence in such a way that the identity of the officer is not disclosed. It is given from behind a screen or something like that. But members of the Security Service are not the only people in sensitive occupations for whom similar arrangements have been made. Those arrangements are made by decision of the court on the basis of the particular circumstances of the case. I expect that to continue. I hope that that answers the hon. Gentleman's question, at least in respect of England and Wales.

Mr. Dalyell: Does that answer coincide with the advice that the Home Secretary has had from senior police officers? Without trespassing on the Scottish situation, there is unease about the matter among senior members of the Scottish police.

Mr. Howard: I do not want to follow thehon. Gentleman along that line. I have acted on the basis of close consultation with the police service generally. I do not believe that his point is a matter of continuing concern.

Mr. Beith: Perhaps for the purposes of shorthand, the Home Secretary used words such as "sensitive" to describe the things that the Prime Minister might seek to exclude from the Intelligence and Security Committee report before it came before Parliament. He did not use the words of the Intelligence Services Act 1994, which refers to a matter which

"would be prejudicial to the continued discharge of the functions"

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of the service. I hope that he will put that point on record, because it is not intended that that power should allow the Prime Minister to exclude matters that are merely inconvenient or embarrassing.

Mr. Howard: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister always acts in accordance with the language of statute, and will do so in the context of this statute as in all others.

I hope that the hon. Member for Blackburn will accept that the power to withhold from publication part of an ISC report would never be used lightly but that it is important to retain it for all elements of the work of the Security Service because all of them may involve sensitive operations and methods or information prejudicial to its operations.

Mr. Allason: May I take my right hon. and learned Friend back to my mistaken use of the words "excess capacity" for which he rightly corrected me? I refer him to the Official Report of 10 January, when my righthon. Friend the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), was asked what was the catalyst for the legislation. He replied:

"The answer is that we have identified that in the Security Service there are some skills, especially analytical skills, and it has some resources and, God willing, if Northern Ireland continues in its present course, it may have some capacity to contribute to the battle. I simply say to the House, if there are those skills, if there is that capacity, we should all be pretty daft to look that gift horse in the mouth."--[Official Report, 10 January 1996; Vol. 269, c. 300.]

It seems to me that my shorthand of "excess capacity" reflects precisely what my right hon. Friend the Minister of State said, and that that remains the catalyst for the legislation.

Mr. Howard: I am afraid that my hon. Friend and I will have to differ on that. He has been good enough to read from Hansard the precise words of my righthon. Friend the Minister of State. It will be possible for everyone to make an easy and straightforward comparison between those words and the characterisation of them that my hon. Friend gave earlier. I am perfectly satisfied that there is a wide gap between the characterisation that he previously gave and the words used by my righthon. Friend the Minister of State on Second Reading.

In the light of everything that I have said, I hope that the hon. Member for Blackburn will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. Straw: I am grateful for the assurances that the Home Secretary has given. In the light of what he has said, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New clause 6

Review of PACE

'. Six months after this Act has come into force, the Secretary of State shall consult with the Director-General of the Security Service, the person designated under subsection (3B) of section (2) of the Security Service Act 1989 and the chief officers of police forces and other law enforcement agencies as to whether the activities of the Security Service in pursuance of the prevention and detection of serious crime indicate that any changes are required to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984.'.--[Mr. Michael.]
Brought up, and read the First time.

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Mr. Michael: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

New clause 6 is important: it concerns the application of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 in the new circumstances created by the Bill. It suggests that, six months after the Act has come into force, the Home Secretary should consult the Director-General of the Security Service and the person designated under the Security Service Act 1989--the chief constable, who is deemed to be, as it were, the guardian at the gate, along with the police and other law enforcement agencies. That is a new development following the Committee stage. After that consultation, attention should be paid to whether any amendments to PACE are needed to cope with the new operations of the Security Service.

It may be found at that stage that there is no need to change PACE, and that its operation should apply to the activities of the Security Service in support of the police and other law enforcement agencies. It would, of course, be ideal if the Act that is designed to regulate such matters were found to be appropriate. There has, however, been considerable concern that the Security Service might operate outside the requirements of the law in relation to criminal evidence in supporting the police and other law enforcement agencies, crossing boundaries in a way that the House would consider inappropriate. The new clause is intended to ensure that the issue is aired, and that, under PACE, the correct rules for dealing with the collection of evidence and presenting it to a court is observed by the police when supported by the Security Service, as they are by the police alone.

In recent years, serious attention has been paid to the way in which PACE operates. None of us want the powers of the police and other law enforcement agencies to be misused, or abused. I hope that the Minister, when he responds to what I expect to be a short debate--this is a narrow issue, although it is important--will agree that the existing standards should be observed, that they should not be changed as a result of the alterations proposed in the Bill and that the public should be able to have confidence in the rules according to which evidence is collected and put before a court.

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