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Joyce Quin (Gateshead, East and Washington, West) (Lab): It is a pleasure to follow the two previous speakers, the hon. Members for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) and for Newark (Patrick Mercer) because, although they are not members of the Intelligence and Security Committee, they have always taken a keen interest in its work and that of the intelligence agencies.
I had not intended to speak in this debate, partly because I am a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee and it is good to hear contributions from other Members. Also, given the time limit on Back-Bench speeches, I was conscious of the fact that there might have been too great a demand by other hon. Members to speak. However, I note that that has not been the case, so I shall take this opportunity to add a few comments to those that have been so well made by my fellow members of the Committee. I want to endorse strongly the words spoken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) when he introduced the report on behalf of the Committee, and to pay tribute to the work of our Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor).
The report rightly highlights a number of areas. It flags up circumstances in which the agencies have experienced success, and it is good that several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for New Forest, East, referred to what has happened in Libya, which the report flags up dramatically as a great success. It was a great success for the intelligence agencies, and for the Government and the Foreign Office, following the negotiations in which they took part, and I am very pleased with the way in which they turned out. As far as the intelligence agencies are concerned, that is a rare of example of our being able to give public credit, and for that reason, it is important to highlight it in this debate.
The Committee believes that the agencies need to be properly resourced, and we welcome the increase in funds that has been made available to them in recent years. I want to pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten), which was that it is important for the agencies to use the best of this country's talents by recruiting as widely as possible. Indeed, several of those issues are highlighted in our report. We refer to the need to bring in talented people from a variety of backgrounds, and we encourage the agencies to consider—without compromising security—issues such as the nationality rules, which have been in
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operation for a long time. Those rules have a certain rationale but, in a multicultural, multi-ethnic Britain, we would not want the agencies to lose out on being able to recruit people who perhaps do not rigorously fulfil the traditional nationality requirements.
In that sense, we were all pleased when GCHQ, for example, showed some flexibility in its recruitment so as to attract people who could play a useful role in that organisation, even if they did not comply with all the security requirements to the highest level. It will be useful for the other agencies to look at that kind of flexibility in recruitment.
One area that has not been touched on extensively in this debate is that of international co-operation and the work that our intelligence agencies carry out in co-operation with agencies in various different countries, and I hope that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will be able to address that point when he responds to this debate.
It is very clear from our work, and it is well known in the House, that the allies with whom we work closely in intelligence are ones with which we have had very close co-operation for a very long time: the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and so forth. Without doubt, those links are tremendously important in the modern world. But it is also right that the agencies, and the Government, who are ultimately responsible for the work of those agencies, consider extending our range of allies as widely as possible, while not compromising sources or security.
Certainly, in the European Union, there is a good deal of co-operation, particularly with those countries that have long-established intelligence agencies, with which we have worked over a number of years. Recently, within the European Union, there has been increased interest in intelligence, because of some of the tragic events that have occurred: most recently, in Madrid. I welcome the appointment of the co-ordinator, Gijs de Vries, whom I know from my days in the European Parliament as an energetic and capable person.
While EU collaboration is very useful, I would not want to see it adopt an unwieldy, bureaucratic form or in any way disrupt the existing partnerships and arrangements. At such a difficult time for security in the world, we do not want disruption; we want the existing networks to work even better and even more smoothly. We should take that very much to heart.
Alan Howarth: Is my right hon. Friend content that the provisions in the proposed European Union constitution covering these matters will be satisfactory to us in terms of our national security?
Joyce Quin: Indeed, I think that our Government have very satisfactorily negotiated the European constitution and I find quite puzzling some of the criticisms levelled against them in that respect.
Within the new European Union, we have some important allies. A number of countries that have recently joined the European Union have been particularly helpful in intelligence matters, and have worked closely with this country, even before they became part of the European Union. For that reason, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will be able to assure us that relations with those new
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countries, which have recently joined the European Union, will be beneficial to intelligence as well as to other matters.
In the situation in which we find ourselves, however, we need to consider and build up alliances sometimes even in unlikely quarters. I hope that the Government will also be able to reassure us on that point. We all remember how much responsibility was put on the Indonesian services at the time of the Bali bombings. They are dealing with a very difficult situation, given the scattered territory of Indonesia, and the existence of some extremist groups there, some of which are prepared to adopt fanatical means and terrorist ways of operating to try to achieve their goals. It makes sense for us to try to build up co-operation with a country such as Indonesia, perhaps using some of our expertise to help to train and develop the intelligence services in such a country. Obviously, Australia is geographically much closer to Indonesia, and has very good links with it. It makes sense, however, given the challenges that that country faces, for a number of other countries, including the UK, to seek to be as helpful as possible.
Clearly, if international co-ordination and co-operation is important, so is having the best co-ordination within our domestic system. I agree with what a number of my colleagues have said in terms of the very positive establishment of the joint terrorism analysis centre, the work that it does, and the way in which our agencies have been particularly successful in working together and sharing information to the best possible effect. I also agree with those who said that it was important for Ministers to meet occasionally to discuss these issues on a cross-departmental basis. I became convinced of that during events in Afghanistan, when I observed links between Foreign Office concern about terrorism and Home Office concern about drugs. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) referred not just to terrorism but to the drugs trade, and spoke of the importance of co-ordination in the tackling of drugs problems in the Caribbean. I think that if Departments—including the Department for International Development, the Home Office and the Foreign Office—worked together more effectively and provided even a modest increase in resources, that could help a great deal in the Caribbean.
Intelligence has been centre stage ever since 9/11. I believe that the Committee's report and its recommendations recognise the crucial role played by the intelligence agencies. We are counting on the Government to go on responding positively to their needs, thus ensuring that we can all enjoy a safer future.
4.51 pm
Mr. Michael Ancram (Devizes) (Con): I apologise on behalf of my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, who cannot be here for the winding-up speeches. He notified the Foreign Secretary that he would be unable to do so, for specific reasons.
I congratulate the Intelligence and Security Committee on its work, and on the effort that it has put into the production of this and other reports during the year. It has undoubtedly been a busy year for the intelligence community, and hence for the Committee. The Committee fulfils a vital role in ensuring that there is democratic oversight of our security and intelligence
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services—a role that is not always recognised as widely as I think it should be. Debates such as this are important in that respect. I also pay tribute to the work undertaken by members of the security and intelligence services—often at great personal risk, as I know, and often inevitably unknown to many people—in protecting us as we go about our daily lives.
We have had a fine debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) on being a more than competent substitute for the Committee's Chairman, the right hon. Member for Dewsbury (Ann Taylor). I entirely understand why she could not be here today. The right hon. Gentleman presented not just a good report but an impressive future work load. It is clear that the Committee will not be looking for things to do over the coming months. He made a particularly important point in connecting the risks to our intelligence with gaps in collection, and called for further resources for the security and intelligence services. That was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer).
The hon. Member for Winchester (Mr. Oaten) made a number of important points, but one of the most important—and I think that both of us Opposition Members agree on it—was his observation that it is the duty of Opposition parties to probe and ask questions, and that they should not be accused of disloyalty for so doing. If we appear unhelpful sometimes, it is because that constitutional role is incumbent on us, and we would be remiss if we did not fulfil it. [Interruption.] The Foreign Secretary will have a long time in which to wind up the debate. I am sure that he will be able to make all the comments he wishes to make from a standing rather than a sedentary position.
The right hon. Member for Newport, East (Alan Howarth) was critical of the weakening of counter-espionage. I think that that is a lesson we have learned since the end of the cold war. I hope that the increased support for the intelligence services that has been announced will go some way towards putting things right.
The right hon. Member for Newport, East talked about the world being small for terrorists and large for intelligence services—a point that was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), who discussed the limitations of the intelligence services.
My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) talked about what the terrorist is seeking to achieve. I know that this subject is something of a sore, but the chilling statement made by a member of the IRA—he said, "You have to be lucky all the time. We only have to be lucky once"—is absolutely true. With due respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Newark, the situation is not quite like the bombers getting through; they got through because there was a very large number of them. In this case, we are talking about specific, targeted exercises which we have to spot and deal with individually. If we fail, we will see a terrorist incident. That is the background to so much of what we are discussing today.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire surprised me when he spoke of someone failing to recognise which party he belonged to. Perhaps
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he will vouchsafe to me in privacy to which party they thought he did belong; that question has been puzzling me ever since he mentioned the incident. He also talked about the limitations of intelligence, and it is indeed the duty of the Government to ensure that those limitations are minimised as far as possible.
The right hon. Member for Edinburgh, East and Musselburgh (Dr. Strang) provided an important and valuable analysis of al-Qaeda's decentralisation and the increasing threat posed by it. That was a good reminder that the threat continues. Although we hear of successes in the campaign against international terror, such terrorism is still there and we certainly cannot afford to become complacent.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North-East Hampshire (Mr. Arbuthnot), in one of his usual succinct contributions, talked about the funding of GCHQ and pointed out that this year, it produced unqualified accounts. I welcome that good discipline, which also helps the morale of the service. He also talked about the Prime Minister's letter concerning the detainees, which is printed on page 23 of the report. I have been pursuing this issue through written questions and I am delighted that the Committee is going to follow it up. Important questions remain, and they need to be answered urgently.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) underlined the feeling that the various processes are not achieving what we need to achieve if we are to recreate public confidence. We need to feel that we have not just the truth, but the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We need to wait and see what next week's Butler report comes up with, but we must insist that until we have the truth, public confidence will not be restored. We will go on working to get that truth, however long it takes.
The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) talked about the missing eight Joint Intelligence Committee papers that were later handed to the Intelligence and Security Committee, and which are referred to at recommendation DD. I accept that there was no deliberate attempt to withhold information, and that what happened did not alter the conclusions. However, if the Committee is to feel confident in its dealings with the intelligence services and the JIC in particular, and if the public are to have confidence in the Committee's findings, it is important that this failure to provide all the information be rectified. If that failure was a systematic one, it is incumbent on the Government to ensure that it does not occur again.
My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East raised a very important set of questions about the political scale of terrorist operations. We sometimes think of terrorist operations in terms of what we experience from, and in, Northern Ireland; but as we learned on 11 September 2001, we are now talking about terrorism of a very different scale. He rightly pointed to some of the failures in respect of being ready to deal with such a disaster, should it occur.
How will society cope? That question was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark, and a balance must always be struck between giving the public sufficient information to allow them to help in the fight against terrorism, and not frightening them. If the public are frightened, to an extent the terrorist has
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succeeded. I agree with him and my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East that we have yet to strike the right balance in that respect. I hope that we continue to consider how much more information we can give in order to recruit the public in the fight against terrorism.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newark also talked about homeland security, a subject on which he is our spokesman. He rightly pointed out that there is a strong case for having one Minister devoted to that area, with proper back-up. We believe that that would provide a better answer to some of the problems that he identified.
The right hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West (Joyce Quin) pointed out that we had a great success with Libya. As she knows, I had my doubts about the speed with which we were dealing with that country and I had some suspicions about the ship that was arrested last September after the negotiations were in process, which showed that at that date there were still ongoing intentions relating to the construction of nuclear weapons. Equally, I agree that it was an intelligence success—and at a time when the intelligence services are feeling pretty demoralised about some of the things that have happened recently. It was an important success and we should all welcome it and pay tribute to the intelligence community for the work that was done.
The remainder of my remarks will be directed towards the work of the Secret Intelligence Service and the collection, subsequent analysis and use made of intelligence material. My right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary dealt with the other issues fully and I do not wish to repeat what he said.
Iraq and the search for weapons of mass destruction, coupled with public confidence in intelligence and its use in the lead-up to conflict, remain of crucial importance to the conduct of—and, indeed, confidence in—the United Kingdom's foreign policy. Paragraph 3 of the ISC report notes that military commanders reported that they had been
"well served by the intelligence community during military action."
That is an important finding, which I welcome, because it is a testimony to the good tactical intelligence that we possessed. However, significant questions remain over the gathering and analysis of intelligence at a strategic level, particularly over weapons of mass destruction.
I have to say that doubts about the intelligence on WMD have been exacerbated by the shifting position of the Prime Minister over the past 22 months, which the ISC has, quite rightly, pursued. I need to remind the House of those different positions because we still need to ask what they were based on. On 24 September 2002, the Prime Minister told the House that the SIS
"concludes that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which"
"could be activated within 45 minutes . . . and that he is actively trying to acquire nuclear weapons capability."—[Official Report, 24 September 2002; Vol. 390, c.3.]
On 18 March, speaking in the House, he said:
"We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years . . . Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd".—[Official Report, 18 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 762.]
Those were the words that he used—"palpably absurd". On 8 July 2003, in front of the Liaison Committee, he said:
"I don't concede it at all that the intelligence at the time was wrong . . . I have absolutely no doubt at all that we will find evidence of weapons of mass destruction programmes".
That was a change in emphasis rather than a change in nuance. Then, before that same Committee this year, he said, earlier this week:
"I have to accept that we have not found them and that we may not find them."
I think that we must ask about the basis on which those different statements were made. Either they were misinterpretations of the intelligence or the intelligence was changing. If we are to have confidence in the intelligence, we need to know the answer to that question.
On "Frost on Sunday" last weekend, Sir Jeremy Greenstock went further when he said:
"There's no doubt that the stockpiles we feared might be there are not there."
"It's only again with hindsight . . . that the evidence is just not there. We were wrong on the stockpiles, we were right about the intention."
I am not questioning the sincerity of any of those particular statements, but I am asking what it was that allowed them to change so dramatically. Those are not differences of nuance, but inconsistencies of fact. Such unexplained changes of belief at the heart of the Government on this most crucial issue of WMD cast doubt on the accuracy of our intelligence—and, more particularly, on how that intelligence was used.
In paragraph P of its conclusions, the ISC expressed concern that in their response to its report, "Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction: Intelligence and Assessments", the Government emphasised only four key conclusions and effectively provided an inadequate response. I hope that the Government will not merely apologise and say that they will not do it again, as they did in their response to the report. I hope that they will respond to the original questions point by point. Until they do, the doubts to which I have referred will continue to exist.
One of the basic weaknesses of intelligence gathering in general in the post-cold war world, and certainly in operations in the middle east, appears to have been the over-reliance on electronic intelligence, and in some cases on individual and uncorroborated sources, rather than on sustained human intelligence—that is, men on the ground who understand the region and speak the language fluently. That is one area in which weaknesses have been identified.
We have heard much today about intelligence requirements in the current circumstances, and the need to resource them financially and in terms of manpower. Although increased resources have been available since 9/11, there is no doubt that the shift of focus from
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international terrorism and al-Qaeda to Iraq caused great strains on that manpower. In particular, does it not appear that the greatest shortfall was in Arabic speakers?
The recently declassified Congressional report states that there were only 20 linguists at the National Security Agency and GCHQ who were extremely skilled in Arabic. Does the Foreign Secretary agree? At a time when so much of the threat is coming from that part of the world, as many speakers today have said, that seems to be a deficiency.
Do the Government have plans to reopen the internationally respected Arabic language school at Shemlan near Beirut? It provided exceptional language training to British intelligence officers and diplomats, as well as important background studies, until its closure in the late 1970s. If not, is there some plan to recreate something similar that will provide that resource in the future? I think that that will be necessary.
Is the Australian Parliamentary Committee right to assert that intelligence reports on Iraq from the US and the UK in the six months before the war increased tenfold compared with the eight months previously? That would indicate a genuine shift of intelligence focus away from al-Qaeda that could have serious implications for the international fight against terrorism. In light of the genuine and current threat from terrorism about which we have heard today, we need real assurances that those deficits will be urgently rectified.
Given those shortages, is it not time that we looked for support from our allies, as the right hon. Member for Gateshead, East and Washington, West suggested? What are our current relations with French security services? Is it true that, in the past 12 months, the French have offered to collaborate with the SIS on human intelligence and Arabic speakers? If so, what has been our response?
Is it true that the offer was turned down, with the knowledge and approval of the Prime Minister, and that the Americans are now benefiting from that help by the French? If so, what were the reasons for declining the offer? What effect has that had on the relationship between our intelligence services? I hope that the Foreign Secretary will be able to respond to that.
It is clear that errors of interpretation may have occurred between the raw intelligence—such as it was—being fed into the analytical processes of the SIS and DIS, and then the JIC. The decisions that were made were not made in a vacuum, free of expectations at a political level.
Paragraph 68 of the report states that the Committee was content with the process by which Mr. John Scarlett was appointed as chief of the SIS. However, the report does not say whether the Committee was content with the appointment itself, or with its timing. I was sorry that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley was caught by the clock and was not able to finish his explanation of that matter. I do not want to point the finger at any specific person, but it is an important question that we need to consider.
Press speculation over the past week about the forthcoming Butler report tends to support my view at the time that it was inappropriate to make the
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announcement in advance of the report. In that context, Dr. David Kay, the former head of the Iraq survey group, appeared on yesterday's "Newsnight" programme. He has been quoted by the Government with great approval on many occasions in the past, but he made the following rather surprising comment about George Tenet:
"He took the honourable step, as well as the pre-emptive step, of resigning rather than waiting to be replaced. Obviously, in your system you draw a different conclusion"
"decide to promote the individual".
Does the Foreign Secretary have any response to Dr Kay's comments?
In conclusion V, the Committee says that it
"believes that candidates for the position of JIC Chairman should be drawn from as wide a field as possible."
The Government say that they agree. I go a little further. The position is a most sensitive one, the independence of the person holding it must be above question, and there can be no inference of politicisation. It is and should be a position of assessment and counselling between those who provide the intelligence and those who must decide how to use it. There will always be pressure on whoever holds that office to lean towards one or the other. That can best be avoided by appointing someone who has come to the effective end of their civil service career and cannot be accused of seeking to secure future preferment. I look to ex-ambassadors and senior civil servants who carried out that role in the past very well.
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