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Mr. Davey: I will let the right hon. Gentleman intervene in a moment. The all-party group on rendition also considered the evidence and took a different view.
Mr. Davey: I will let the right hon. Gentleman intervene in a moment. All I would say is that I am sure that reasonable people could consider the same evidence and form different views, but I would love the Committee to have the resources to go after such things. I believe that the Committee was wrong in its conclusion.
Mr. Mates: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. The Committee did look at the matter; it looked at all the documents; it looked at the secret signals that were sent on this subject; and it was roundly critical of the United States authorities, because they broke an undertaking, which appears on the bottom of such secret reports, not to divulge them to anyone else. That criticism was as strong as we felt it needed to be, but stronger than some Ministers wanted, because we did not want to upset- [Interruption.] Yes, it is in the report. We concluded that the Americans had broken a long-standing tradition, for which we criticised them. That does not mean that our people were to blame. If the hon. Gentleman has another reason for criticising our security services, that is another matter.
Mr. Davey: I welcomed the part of the report that criticised the Americans, because no doubt they were at fault in many respects, but I was not completely convinced about our authorities. I shall move on, however, because this is obviously an individual case and I secured an Adjournment debate on it. I used the case to show that, while the ISC does a great job, it needs extra resources to do an even better job.
The House has already heard a number of statements from the Foreign Secretary about issues regarding allegations of complicity in torture. That relates to the debate about guidance. Those of us who are pushing the issue are doing so in the interests of our intelligence services. Much of the concern involves the fact that their reputation is being undermined. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks and I want to pursue the matter to ensure that it is dealt with and a line drawn under it so that we can move on.
Many of us who have had experience of our intelligence services believe that their reputation deserves to be restored and that the criticism levelled at them needs to be answered. I have seen no evidence at all that UK officers have ever been engaged in torture themselves. I am not sure whether that has been mentioned in the debate so far, but let us be absolutely clear: such allegations, which we sometimes see in the press, are completely false. I have never seen any evidence to back them up. Indeed, I have seen evidence that our officers have worked very hard to avoid being complicit in torture, but there are a number of serious allegations. We know about Binyam Mohamed and Shaker Aamer, but there are 12 legal cases before the courts. We have heard about the police investigations with witness B, for instance, and about the second investigation into the MI6 officer. There appears to be evidence-it needs to be questioned and examined-that suggests that there are concerns.
When the seven paragraphs were printed, it was clear that other people in the security service knew about them. It is not absolutely clear when or who, or whether Ministers knew about them, but it seems to me that these are reasonable questions to pursue
I have a slight problem with the Chairman's criticism of the judiciary in his initial remarks. When senior judges such as the Master of the Rolls and the Lord Chief Justice make the points that they have made, it is incumbent on this House to look at them and take them extremely seriously.
Andrew Mackinlay: An extraordinary statement is contained in paragraphs 151 and 152 on page 43 of the 2008-09 report.
"The Security Service officer who interviewed Mr. Mohamed on 17 May 2002 said that he could not recall whether or not he was aware of the information prior to the interview."
The reference is to information supplied to our people to the effect that Mr. Mohamed
"had been intentionally deprived of sleep by his captors while in detention".
I invite the hon. Gentleman to comment on that statement because, frankly, I find it incredible. I simply do not believe it.
Mr. Davey: I have similar concerns. The Foreign Secretary gave us fair warning that the case is sub judice so I will not dwell on it too much, but it shows the significance of the guidance. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks was pushing on that-
David Miliband indicated dissent.
Mr. Davey: The Foreign Secretary shakes his head, because he is obviously about to say that we are debating future guidance. However, the point that I wanted to come to is that the past guidance is not going to be published and so it will not be available to us. In answer to a question that I put to him on Thursday 11 March, the Prime Minister made it absolutely clear that the Government have no intention of publishing the previous documents, even in redacted form. It may be that the members of the ISC have looked at this matter and that they have asked questions and taken legal advice about it, but it is clear that many people both in this House and outside-including very senior lawyers and judges-are concerned that the previous guidance in operation was inadequate and could have exposed some of our officers.
Of course I shall not go into the details of the police investigation, but one point is really important in that context. If officers have acted against the guidance, they may be in a difficult situation: however, if they operated within the guidance and the guidance is found to have been faulty, the heads of the various intelligence services and the Ministers who signed off the guidance have legitimate questions to answer. I asked the Foreign Secretary about that when he made his most recent statement on Binyam Mohamed, but he made it clear that he was going to avoid such questions. This is a very important matter, and those of us who want to ensure that the reputation of our intelligence services is restored and that individual officers are not hung out to dry need to get to the bottom of it.
Sir Alan Beith: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is equally important to ensure that officers are aware of the guidance? In the past, the ISC has had to draw attention to their lack of awareness of it. The task goes beyond determining whether they had been shown the guidance at some point-or, possibly, that they had not been shown it. We need to be sure that they are aware, when they are in a situation in which these issues can arise, that their work must be covered fully by the guidance and that it falls within it. That means that the guidance needs to be agreed quickly, and that this delay must be brought to an end.
Mr. Davey: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are two basic questions about the guidance. First, is it legal and does it ensure that officers who follow it are meeting Britain's domestic and international legal obligations? Secondly, is it being enforced, in the sense that officers are made aware of it and are trained in it? We must make sure that the operational guidance flows well from the overall policy guidance framework. We may not need to know the operational guidance that officers use on a weekly basis in different theatres, but we must be sure that it is in tune with the overall strategic policy guidance.
I have no doubt that, in due course, the new guidance will meet all our legal obligations and that officers will be trained on it, but the allegations that we know about all relate to the past guidance, so I am concerned that Ministers seem to be dodging that one, and at some stage we will have to get back to it. The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks said that he was inclined towards some sort of judge-led inquiry, and I am delighted that he has repeated that, because he knows that we share that approach. Yes, there may be issues about its timing, but that is the only approach that will draw a line under this. I do not believe that the alternatives-ISC inquiries or the Investigatory Powers Tribunal-meet the test that will be needed to ensure that all the questions that I have raised are fully answered.
I want to make one or two brief remarks on substantive issues raised by the report. The first concerns intercept evidence and whether that could in due course become admissible. I think that in the 2009-10 report, which I had a chance to scan, there is a suggestion that the work on this is going into the quicksand, and that the Committee feels that it will be all too difficult. If so, I am quite worried, and I would like to hear more of the reasoning behind it. Perhaps those Committee members who speak can justify such comments, but as I understand it, when Sir John Chilcot considered that issue when he was leading a slightly different inquiry from his current one, he said that he thought that it would be possible to make intercept evidence admissible as long as certain problems were dealt with. He seemed to imply that they could be overcome. If something has changed, it is such an important issue for the way in which we debate counter-terrorism policy that we need to learn more about it.
My final point again concerns Binyam Mohamed, but it is about some of the issues that the ISC looked at in relation to generic lessons. It slapped the wrists of the intelligence services for poor record-keeping, and it is quite likely that there has been poor record-keeping. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) and others have commented
on this over a period of time, but the way in which the papers were not given to the ISC seemed to be not simply a question of poor record-keeping. The Prime Minister himself stepped in to ensure that it did not get all the papers that the courts were getting, but I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate he can assure us that that did not happen. However, the distinct impression that we have had from previous debates is that obstacles were put in the way of the ISC getting all the information that it should have received. That would have been a real problem, so I hope that the Minister will reassure me on that point.
Dr. Howells: That was never the case as far as records were concerned. We looked very hard at this and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that although the record-keeping was very poor, people kept digging back into previous computer systems and discovering material, some of which was hopeless. Eventually we got everything, or at least we assumed that we got everything that there was on the subject. I would not be surprised if stuff turns up in the future, but that would be because of the nature of the record-keeping, not because things were kept from us.
Mr. Davey: I am happy to take the right hon. Gentleman's word on that.
This is an important debate. I hope that in the new Parliament we can have a rather quick follow-up, both to allow us to debate the 2009-10 report properly once we have had a chance to look at it, and to debate the guidance, which I hope will be published at the earliest opportunity.
Mr. George Howarth (Knowsley, North and Sefton, East) (Lab): May I begin by echoing the sentiments that have already been expressed about the members of the Committee who are retiring, not only from the Committee but from the House of Commons? The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), who, as my right hon. Friend the Committee Chairman said, is the Committee's longest-standing member, has been an enormous source of guidance to me during my time on the Committee. I have appreciated his wise counsel and sometimes his convivial company, too.
The right hon. and learned Member for Devizes (Mr. Ancram), with his great legal knowledge and ministerial experience, has also been a great addition to the Committee and will be sorely missed. I shall personally miss my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, South (Ben Chapman)-he is a great personal friend but he has also been a fantastic member of the committee. Of course, my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells) is retiring from Parliament, too. I have known him since before he was a Member of this House, when he was an employee of the National Union of Mineworkers at the time of the strike. One thing that can never be said about him is that he is not his own man. In every circumstance in which I have ever known him, he does what he thinks is the right thing to do. He has demonstrated that again today.
Andrew Mackinlay: That is why they could not find the computers-they have hidden all about him.
Mr. Howarth: I have to say that my hon. Friend can occasionally be funny; on this occasion he was not.
It was also good that my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) took part in the debate. He led the Committee very well, with his often understated way of presenting himself. He was a great leader of the Committee and, I am pleased to say, he will still be with us after the next general election, subject, of course, to the electorate re-electing him.
I also want to echo the comments that have been made about the secretariat of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It has gone through a difficult period over the past few months and I do not intend to trail through the entrails of that, but each and every one of its members provides us with a fantastic service. They put in huge numbers of hours above those that they are contracted to, and to preserve the independence of the Committee they have, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd said, put their careers in jeopardy on occasion-not because they have done anything wrong, but simply because they have stood up for the independence of the Committee. I hope that, as my right hon. Friend said, when the Dissolution of Parliament takes place-I hope that the Minister takes note of this-it will not be seen by some senior civil servants as an opportunity to get rid of the current secretariat and put somebody else in before a new Committee is formed. It is important both for the integrity of the future Committee and as a matter of fairness that that does not happen.
The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) almost invited me to speak on the question of intercept as evidence. I am not saying this as a criticism-I realise that it was difficult for anybody to get to grips with all the information in the time that they had to read the 2009-10 report-but at paragraph 58 on page 19 there is a whole section headed "Intercept as evidence". The most important thing to draw to his attention is the fact that the Home Office carried out a trial of a system-indeed, some members of the Committee were able to attend sessions of that trial-in which it tried out some cases in a synthesised situation to see how it would work if intercept were used as evidence. As a result, the Home Secretary produced a report, the conclusion of which was:
"The collective view of the departments, intercepting agencies and prosecution authorities engaged in the work programme is that despite best efforts to design, build and test the model, it does not provide a viable basis for implementation, without breaching the operational requirements set out by the Privy Council."
It is, therefore, not true to say that they threw their hands up and said, "It's all too difficult." It was as a result of trying to make a system work that it was concluded that it probably could not.
Sir Alan Beith: As one who is still engaged in overseeing the work being done in the Home Office and with the agencies on how effect can be given to the Government's declared wish to see intercept used as evidence, perhaps I ought to make it clear that there are several models for doing that. The right hon. Gentleman rightly points out the part of the report that states that one particular model, when tried, did not prove to be effective or workable, but work has continued on a range of models.
Mr. Howarth: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman who, as Chair of the Justice Committee, has good reason to have in-depth knowledge of the subject. Previously, he was a very distinguished member of our Committee. I am sure that there are alternative models that could be trialled, but it was concluded that the one that was trialled was not workable. I am sure that it is open to the Home Secretary to try other models in the future, but as matters stand, it is not a case of people saying, "It's all too difficult, we can't go there." It is on the basis of evidence that they have arrived at that conclusion.
The first of the two further points I want to make today relates to the whole business in a free society of having secrets. I am reluctant to prod my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), but I shall do so none the less by saying that it is perfectly possible to construct a theoretical argument that a state should never hold any secrets, and I suspect that he might hold that view.
Andrew Mackinlay indicated dissent.
Mr. Howarth: I am glad to see that my hon. Friend does not think that. However, the underlying assumption of many of the writers of the articles criticising our Committee over the recent past seems to be that states should never hold any secrets-or that if they do have any secrets, there should be some means of making them public. I do not know how we could function in that way.
No doubt more will be said about this during the debate, but it has already been pointed out that in reality, in the dangerous world we live in-a world where people are willing to strap on explosives, go into London's transport system and blow themselves up, along with anyone within a reasonable radius-public safety, state secrets and what we know about what people intend to do are of paramount importance. If we cannot protect that information we are, to be frank, a less safe nation. That may seem a trite and obvious thing to say, but the tone of much of the media criticism levelled against our Committee seems to start from the presumption that it does not really matter whether the state cannot keep its secrets. Well, I beg to differ.
On occasion, we have been given evidence about incidents that might have happened but, mercifully, information was intercepted. That evidence has made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up in fear of the true potential for such an incident happening in this country. The state has to hold secrets.
The question then is how we oversee the organisations that hold those secrets. There has been an argument about whether we should use a Select Committee model, or whether the model we have is the right one. I think that there are real reasons why John Major's Government set up the Committee the way they did. It was not that they did not want effective oversight. The right hon. and learned Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) told the House earlier that they thought long and hard about the matter, giving it a great deal of consideration. What they wanted was an effective way of overseeing what the agencies do, while ensuring that the confidential, secret nature of much of the material was protected. It is because we work in that way that I sometimes think we are unfairly criticised.
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