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Simon Hughes: The right hon. Gentleman raises a matter that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) and others in my party have raised. Does he share our view that British citizens at Guantanamo bay should be allowed to return to the United Kingdom or should be transferred to the British authorities so that if there are charges, they can be dealt with in this country, or if there are no charges, they will be released in the normal way?
Mr. Ancram: I have set out a series of questions, which I hope will inform the House and upon which we can make judgments on what is the best way to proceed.
The debate provides an important opportunity for the House to consider the intelligence and security services and their work in broad terms. It also allows us to pick up on some specific areas of concern. We can be satisfied with the Committee's report—at least those parts that were not asterisked. Even the Government's response, replete with its usual dose of blame avoidance, meets at least some of the points raised. However, the Government's response fails to face the strongest public concern about the allegations that the Government cynically misuse intelligence material as a tool of their propaganda and seek to make the intelligence services unwilling accomplices. Their characteristically arrogant dismissal of these allegations has neither persuaded us nor the British people.
The greatest service that the ISC can perform is to bring it home to the Government that first and foremost the British intelligence services work on behalf of the British people, and they cannot and must never be a malleable tool of government. We respect our intelligence services, and I hope that the Government will do the same.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before I call the next speaker, I remind the House that Mr. Speaker has placed a 15-minute limit on all Back-Bench speeches, and that applies from now on.
3 pm
Ann Taylor (Dewsbury): Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall try to keep within that limit.
I very much regret the fact that the Foreign Secretary cannot be with us, as I know that he takes a direct interest in these matters. There would have to be a very good reason and a very serious illness for him to be away. However, I welcome the Minister's comments,
although I regret that he cannot stay to the end of the debate because he has to go to Gibraltar. I suspect he regrets that he cannot stay, but I hope he will continue to take an interest in these matters.The debate on the Intelligence and Security Committee annual report provides an opportunity to highlight our main concerns. The Committee has oversight of all the intelligence and security agencies, and it is important that we concentrate on issues of concern. However, while the report concentrates on problems, the Committee makes it clear that it wants to put the work of the agencies in context. I would draw the attention of my colleagues to paragraph 6, which states that
- "it is important to highlight the numerous successes that the Agencies have had in the last year, many of which cannot be reported to avoid prejudicing current and future operations."
There is much interest in the issue of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, on which the right hon. Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram) commented. Many other colleagues may wish to speak about Iraq, but it is important to stress that at this stage the Committee will not add to what it says in the annual report. However, I want to put our remarks in paragraphs 80 to 83 in context. We received ongoing briefings throughout the build-up to the conflict and, indeed, throughout the conflict itself, by the JIC Chairman and others in the agencies about what was happening. Indeed, we first took evidence on the problems associated with the preparation of the document to which the right hon. Member for Devizes referred in February. That is why we made the comments that I referred to in my intervention on him in paragraphs 80 to 83 on Iraq. We say clearly in paragraph 81 that the agencies were fully consulted in the preparation of the dossier produced in September 2002. However, we say in paragraph 82 that that procedure was not followed for a second document produced in February. As I pointed out to the right hon. Gentleman, we acknowledge that there is intelligence-derived material in that document, but it should have been clear what was intelligence derived and what was not. We have been assured that the JIC Chairman will in future endorse any material, and we shall want to follow up that important matter, as will the right hon. Gentleman and the House.
Lynne Jones (Birmingham, Selly Oak): Paragraph 80 of the report refers to intelligence passed on to UN inspectors. Is my right hon. Friend aware whether all relevant intelligence in the hands of the British authorities was passed to both the weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency?
Ann Taylor: That is not covered by our report. We have said that we will not give a running commentary on
our current inquiries. Such issues are the subject of the report that we are getting on with as quickly as we can, so at this stage I do not want to make any comments that would pre-empt any final decisions or recommendations that we might make.When we took evidence in February, we decided, as we record in paragraph 83, that we wanted to examine in more detail the available intelligence and its use, and that is what the Committee is doing at present. However tempting it is to give a running commentary, I am afraid that Committee members will not do so. However, we have received a number of letters about our inquiries, including from colleagues, suggesting lines of investigation. I hope that it goes without saying, but I shall put it on record none the less, that if anyone has evidence either of pressure on or within the agencies or of inappropriate behaviour, we want to see that evidence, whether from Members of Parliament, the media or people working in this field.
Andrew Mackinlay: I have been listening carefully to my right hon. Friend's invitation to colleagues to make representations to the Committee, which I welcome. However, I am bewildered by paragraph 90, in which she says that her Committee has not looked into the question of the abuse of the Wilson doctrine. She merely says that the Prime Minister has not told the Committee of any change in the application of the Wilson doctrine, so it just lies there. Bearing in mind press reports and concern and reaction in the House about the bugging of MPs' telephones, why has her Committee not looked into that with vigour?
Ann Taylor: I know that my hon. Friend is usually assiduous, but for once he has not done his homework. I know that he was here last year when we put in context our discussions on that matter—we said that we would report to the House if necessary. We look at the issue and report on it on an ongoing basis. I know that my hon. Friend is also interested in our current inquiry, so I shall make some final remarks about that. We want to complete it as soon as possible but, inevitably, that will take some time, as we want to be thorough and are treating the issue extremely seriously. We are having meetings and taking evidence in the summer recess. I hope that the work that the Committee has done in the past, for example on Bali, will give people confidence in our current work.
I shall move on to what I regard as one of the most fundamental points in our report—the way in which intelligence machinery works, particularly the relationship between intelligence assessment and policy formation, and the extent to which Ministers are engaged with that machinery. The Committee, as the right hon. Member for Devizes said, has highlighted concerns before, particularly about the fact that the ministerial committee on the intelligence services—the CSI—has not met. We repeat that criticism this year, and we are not, as the Government response seems to imply, suggesting that there is not a good relationship between the Foreign Secretary, the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ, or between the Home Secretary and the security services. We are not saying that at all—we are saying that there should be a collective overview across Government of the abilities of all the agencies and the challenges facing them. It is important that that
overview is in place and that Ministers collectively can talk about the issues and problems facing us. If we are to maximise the contributions that the agencies can make, we need not only co-operative working between the agencies—a great deal of that already takes place—but a long-term strategy that involves Ministers collectively establishing priorities and requirements in order to determine the resources that are needed.It has been mentioned, and the Minister indicated, that there might be a meeting of the CSI—I think the words were "in due course". It is not telling any secrets to say that when we met the Prime Minister recently, he said that there would be a meeting of the CSI and that there was an acceptance that there should be a collective overview, which we think is a significant step forward. We believe that, particularly given current and potential threats, Ministers are not sufficiently engaged in setting requirements and priorities, and we think they need to be aware of the totality of the intelligence capability that exists and how it can be used to best effect.
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