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Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney): I am following my hon. Friend's remarks with interest. He will have received, as I have, a letter from the much- respected chief constable of Gwent, who seeks an assurance that the principles described by my hon. Friend are laid down in the Bill. Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the Bill meets the points raised by the chief constable?
Mr. Michael: That is precisely what we have been drawing out in Committee. It is difficult to get all the principles we want written into the Bill. It is important that, wherever possible, the important elements should be in the Bill. Where there is any doubt, there should be absolute clarity about what the House intends. That is why it is right to raise the important issues to which my hon. Friend referred and which were raised also by the Intelligence and Security Committee and a variety of chief constables and others. These matters must be absolutely clear. It has been an important search for agreement on the principles that underlie the involvement of MI5 in supporting the police and other law enforcement agencies in the fight against organised crime.
I use those phrases carefully because that is what we are seeking to do, although some of those words do not actually appear in the Bill. The reason for that is that we agreed with the Government's objective to have a simple piece of legislation that would not constantly be chewed over in the courts, with lawyers dancing on the point of a pinhead. I am pleased to see the Home Secretary nodding his agreement with that description of the profession to which he belongs.
We want clarity so that we can ensure that the public are protected, that the police are clear about their responsibilities and that there is no interference from the Security Service in the role of the police.
Mr. Rowlands:
The point made to us is that there needs to be transparency. I ask my hon. Friend--and perhaps the Minister will also answer--whether the Bill is transparent about responsibilities and about the role of MI5 and its relationship with the police.
Mr. Michael:
Yes, I believe that it is now. The mechanism that we put forward, which was debated in Committee and then agreed in a slightly different form, means that the chief constable designated by the Home Secretary will be the guardian at the gate. That is an important change.
It was also clear in our debates that we were considering Security Service involvement in the fight against organised and serious crime. Although only the phrase "serious crime" appears in the Bill, the Government's and Parliament's intention for how that power should be used was made absolutely clear.
There was also agreement on the five principles set out during proceedings of the Intelligence and Security Committee: that the primacy of responsibility for
countering organised crime should lie and remain with the law enforcement agencies; that in respect of intelligence work the Security Service should work through the NCIS and the existing co-ordinating groups--and in relation to that the Home Secretary has agreed that the chief constable who acts as Director-General of the NCIS should be the chief constable designate; that the work of the Security Service should be in support of the law enforcement agencies, not self-tasking--that horrible word that the police tend to use; that the skills and the full range of abilities of the Security Service should be drawn on, but only in support of the police; and finally--an important point that I mention in passing--that the Security Service should bear the cost of its own contribution. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) would not want me to leave that out, and neither would the chief constable of Gwent.
The amendment takes the agreement and understanding which we reached in Committee, and which we put clearly on the record, a little further. It is that, in making arrangements, the chief constable
It is the search for transparency and accountability, on which there is no difference across the Floor, on which we understandably want to push Ministers a little further, to gain greater clarity than there was at earlier stages of the Bill.
I ask the Minister to agree to the amendment or at least to confirm that the way that I described the relationship is the Government's intention--and therefore that of the House--of how it should work.
Mr. Maclean:
I certainly agree with the description given by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), which largely encompasses the way we expect the arrangements to work. In fact, the way in which the hon. Gentleman answered the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) means that I can scrap a couple of pages of my notes, as the hon. Gentleman made some of my speech for me.
There has been general agreement in the House about the principles underlying the Bill. Such disagreement and debate as there has been, both on Second Reading and in Committee, has been on how best to give effect to the principles. We must produce legislation that will strike a proper balance between the right amount of control and accountability over the work of the Security Service in pursuit of its new function and ensuring that it is able to operate effectively, with the risk of spurious legal challenge minimised.
The way that the Government have sought to strike that balance is by the provision in the Bill placing a new duty on the director-general to ensure that there are arrangements for co-ordinating the activities of the Security Service with those of the law enforcement agencies that it will be supporting. As a result of an amendment that the Government introduced in Committee, those co-ordination arrangements have to be agreed with a designated person. It has been made clear by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary that he intends to designate the Director-General of the
NCIS. That requirement for agreed arrangements will ensure that the Security Service will not be able to act independently. However, it is important that we should understand what those arrangements are designed to do and, therefore, how we envisage the role of the Director-General of the NCIS.
In moving the amendment to which I have just referred, I paraphrased a part of the report to the Home Secretary that was prepared by the interdepartmental and inter-agency working group, which was set up to consider a role for the Security Service in supporting the law enforcement agencies in their work against organised crime. I should like to repeat some of what I said on that occasion.
The Security Service's contribution will be delivered through existing structures. That means co-ordination through the NCIS and membership of the relevant groups. The Security Service will accept tasking on organised crime from the NCIS and relevant co-ordinating groups. Those arrangements should not replace or prejudice existing bilateral arrangements between the security services and other agencies, such as Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, the Secret Intelligence Service and Government communications headquarters, Cheltenham.
The point is that although the NCIS clearly has a pivotal role, it is possible that the overarching arrangements will allow for sub-arrangements between the Security Service and other law enforcement agencies. A good example of that may be Customs and Excise, with which the Security Service will want to work closely on international drug trafficking. The Director-General of the NCIS will clearly want and need to be aware of the broad spheres in which the service is supporting Customs and Excise. The scheme for tasking, to which I referred, will ensure that.
However, the Director-General of the NCIS may not need to be aware of every operational detail that flows from the arrangement with Customs and Excise. Indeed, I suggest that the role that the amendment envisages for the Director-General of the NCIS would be very time- consuming and would take him and his staff into spheres where the Security Service already enjoys effective bilateral arrangements with other bodies.
Mr. Beith:
When we discussed in Committee whether it would always be possible for individual chief constables to be told that an operation was taking place, the Minister argued that that would be difficult--especially when people were moving quickly around the country--when reliance was placed on the head of the NCIS to be the route by which chief constables would, in some cases, be made aware that something was happening in their area. If the Director-General of the NCIS does not know what is happening, because it has all been delegated to Customs and Excise and the Security Service, he will not be in a position to alert chief constables.
Mr. Maclean:
The right hon. Gentleman is reading too much into my remarks, and he is perhaps inadvertently exaggerating the position. I said that I expected the NCIS to be the funnel--the route of communication--between the chief constables and individual forces, at the bottom end, which would pass tasking requests up through the NCIS, to be agreed with the Security Service. The NCIS would then, of course, be the funnel of communication back to the chief constables. I picked on the odd case. We
"shall be responsible for agreeing to the specific arrangements of any operation or operators resulting from each individual request, which shall include arrangements as to the accountability of the persons and, bodies involved."
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