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Madam Deputy Speaker (Sylvia Heal): Order. The right hon. Gentleman's time is up.
5.6 pm
Alan Howarth (Newport, East): I want to attempt to develop the case for a full and sustained ministerial engagement in determining the agencies' appropriate priorities. I very much welcome the fact that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor) has already told the House, the Prime Minister intends that the ministerial committee on the intelligence
services, the CSI, should meet, but I am not entirely sure that the full reasons why it is important that it should meet have been properly taken on board in the Government's response to our report. We are told that the Committee should meet when appropriate, and that Ministers will be involved at the beginning of the annual process as well as in authorising the final requirements.After the cold war, after 9/11, after the telecommunications revolution, we live in radically different circumstances. We are no longer in the world of set-piece, ritualised confrontation of superpowers and permanent alliances. There is no likelihood that tanks will roll across the north German plains, nor, I desperately hope, will we ever again face anything like the Cuban crisis. We live instead in a world where money, technology and people move rapidly across the globe, the most dangerous threats arise—I think—from cultural clashes, and the targets of our enemies are most likely to be parts of the critical national infrastructure, such as banking networks, water supplies or computer systems. The agencies will be crucial to our capacity to defend ourselves and to counter such threats. If they are to be able to do their work effectively, Ministers must be continuously and thoughtfully engaged in their tasking and in the Government's collective response to intelligence findings.
What we say in the report about collection gaps, and what the Government say in their response, is hugely important in this context. The threat to our national security is ubiquitous. I think I am correct in recalling—and this is a miserable statistic—that 60 per cent. of the world's countries now have a gross domestic product per capita lower than it was 10 years ago. The misery of the world is growing, and the anger that that breeds in turn breeds the pathology in which terror takes root.
As the Government fairly note, it takes time to build up new capacity in different parts of the world, to develop human intelligence and train recruits to their full ability. It is also, of course, extremely expensive. I take the view, however, and I think that my fellow members of the Committee would agree, that intelligence still represents extraordinarily good value for money, certainly when compared with the cost of military hardware.
We must keep our priorities under continuous review and ensure that our dispositions are genuinely up to date. We will need to be more and more ambitious in the scope of our intelligence.
We will also need to revisit some of our inherited and most cherished orthodoxies in relation to civil liberties and international law. Here, I enter perilous territory and speak with great reluctance and apprehension. All my instincts are to be suspicious of big government and of armed government, but we should consider the nature of modern threats to our security. Let us consider, for example, what threats to the critical national infrastructure might involve; let us and our Government assess our vulnerabilities honestly and courageously.
Cyber-assaults could be perpetrated on crucial institutions and organisations by aggrieved insiders, criminals, hackers, industrial rivals and, of course, by terrorists or military opponents; in fact, they could be carried out by small groups equipped with laptop computers. It would be very difficult indeed for Governments to know how to respond. I know that the
Government are giving a great deal of active thought to these topics, and that Ministers and officials are working on them, but let us suppose that there was an assault on our banking system and the networks that enable it to operate. Which would be the lead Department: the Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry, the Home Office, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence? In fact, all those Departments would have a contribution to make, which suggests that we need the engagement of a wider group of Ministers and a wider range of interests within government if we are to ensure that our defences match the nature of modern requirements.There is a difficulty, in that these days the critical national infrastructure is provided mainly by the private sector, which is naturally unwilling to share information. Its culture and practices are not such as to make compliance with our security requirements a natural reflex, whatever the patriotism and good will of individuals within such organisations. This issue requires fresh thought across government—for example, from Ministers in the DTI. Their customary mantra about burdens on business would not necessarily be helpful in such circumstances.
In future, our security will depend increasingly on the informed good will and good sense of many people in many different organisations—private, as well as public. That also raises questions about the need to know. How do we appropriately apply the need-to-know principle in a world in which the private and public sectors and a much greater variety of organisations need to have intelligent and constructive involvement? How does a person in one organisation actually know what a person in another organisation needs to know? Answers can no doubt be found to these questions, but they do need to be thought through.
So if we are serious—as we have to be—about defence and the protection of our security in these modern circumstances, we may well need to think again about the balance between liberty and security, and between market efficiency and security. We will need to reconsider the orthodoxies of international law in relation to pre-emption. It is not much use waiting until one has been attacked by weapons of mass destruction before acting in self-defence, but the terms of the United Nations charter give rise to difficulties in this regard. I question whether the dispensation that was formulated in San Francisco in 1945 for the 20th century meets the needs of the 21st.
We must ask questions about the circumstances in which it will be legitimate to intervene in foreign countries not only to protect against direct threats to ourselves, but to sustain democracy and human rights. Where democracy and human rights are not sustained, new threats may well emerge further down the line. After all, this is not an entirely new and contemporary issue. Would it seriously be argued that, if Hitler had not invaded Poland, it would have been appropriate for the international community to stand aside while he perpetrated genocide of the Jews within Germany alone? Under international law, it is not acceptable to intervene in the affairs of another country on the grounds of disapproving of what goes on in it. We must think again about all these wide issues, which take us across the whole realm of defence, foreign policy and homeland security. Intelligence matters obviously arise in respect of all of them.
Ministers are going to have to engage with those issues. It is unrealistic and inappropriate to expect officials and agencies to formulate the answers. All we really know about the world's future is that it will be radically different from the past. In that light, it is difficult to develop a vision for the future. We have to ask the right questions, which needs imagination and originality. By and large, bureaucracies do not do originality or challenge orthodoxies, but Ministers must. They should lead our thinking; our security depends on it.
5.16 pm
Simon Hughes (Southwark, North and Bermondsey): I am grateful for the opportunity to add to what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Mr. Campbell) said. He concentrated on foreign affairs, whereas I shall seek to highlight issues relating to home affairs, in line with my usual responsibilities.
I am conscious that we have had two intelligence debates in this Parliament. The first reflected back on the events of 11 September. We were concerned last year to make sure that the intelligence services were able to make an adequate contribution in response to those events. The report produced last year pointed out that we were somewhat overstretched in delivering the desired intelligence capability. One issue was whether enough people were recruited, trained and around—not least in some of the trouble spots of the world—to do the job properly.
This year, it is interesting to note that reflection has moved on to consider how we organise ourselves to collect, manage and process the information, and to make an examination of the effect of that oversight. My right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said that there may not be a huge difference in practice between having a Select Committee or a Committee appointed by the Prime Minister. Our party has always taken the view that the scrutiny should be done by a Select Committee and I pay tribute to those Committee members, including my right hon. Friend, who serve and assist us greatly.
We appear to have made some progress this year—indeed, on this very afternoon—on the question of how the Government are to get their act together. The Government's written response to the strong view of the Intelligence and Security Committee that the ministerial committee on the intelligence services should meet regularly acknowledged that it was appropriate to have that committee, but gave no commitment to call it. As others have pointed out, it was helpful when the Minister for Europe pointed out that the long-existing committee would now meet. We have one further step to go. The Minister put it on the record that it would meet in due course, but I invite the Home Secretary to confirm in his winding-up speech that it will meet soon, and then regularly. That would reassure us all.
That is not a technical or a party-political point. The country and parliamentarians of all persuasions in both Houses would be reassured to know that our intelligence information was regularly presented to the appropriate group of people, led by the Prime Minister and supported by other Ministers, and was thus subject to regular oversight. That would support the existing role
of the Home Secretary and the Foreign Secretary and it might undermine the arguments for appointing a Minister for homeland security or a Minister in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister or the Cabinet Office dedicated to security. Such an appointment would not be as strong or effective as the current proposed arrangements, which make for proper governmental control. I hope that we are offered that final commitment either from the Home Secretary tonight in a few minutes' time, or as soon as possible from the Government or the Prime Minister himself.This is terribly difficult territory for any state to manage, as has been noted by the right hon. Members for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) and for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot). It is about the interface between the liberty of the individual, and the power of the state to intervene in that. The most sensitive issues are involved.
If things go wrong, we criticise the authorities for not reacting fast enough, or for underreacting. Sometimes it looks as though there has been an overreaction when something goes wrong, and that there has been a compensation in the other direction. Although the Committee has not yet done its work on Iraq, the report makes it clear that it is not acceptable that reports that draw on the work of intelligence professionals—to whom we pay tribute—are not treated properly, quoted accurately or reported in a politically responsible way.
Paragraphs 80 to 82 make very clear the Committee's view on those matters, which Liberal Democrat Members endorse. Paragraph 82 states:
- "We believe that material produced by the Agencies can be used in publications and attributed appropriately, but it is imperative that the Agencies are consulted before any of their material is published. This process was not followed when the second dossier was produced in February 2003. Although the document did contain some intelligence-derived material it was not clearly attributed or highlighted amongst the other material, nor was it checked with the Agency providing the intelligence or cleared by the JIC prior to publication."
I shall reinforce the points made by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife and by the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire briefly but firmly. It is unacceptable that people who are thought to have broken the international rules on warfare and military behaviour should not at least be brought to a place where they can be charged and processed according to the normal rules of civilisation.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife said that such people were effectively stateless, but they are not. They have fewer rights than stateless people in some ways. They have states, but no legal process applies to them. That is unacceptable. There can be nowhere on this earth where people are outwith the judicial process. The Government must do far more, for the sake of British citizens and others, to ensure that that injustice is ended.
I turn now to the matter of special branch and the security services. I am grateful that the Committee investigated that matter. I encourage those responsible to do two things. First, they should pick up what hon. Members of all parties have been saying—we must have a better common border force around this country. That recommendation has been made by the Home Affairs Committee. We cannot continue to have three different agencies—the police, Customs and Excise and the immigration service—and also have the special branch in a particular role.
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