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The report contains quite a lot about how the agencies set about establishing relative priorities and how the priorities for intelligence-gathering change over the years. For example, I believe that some 15 per cent. of the work of the Security Service is directed towards tackling threats from east Africa, and Somalia in particular. I hope that the successor Committee in the next Parliament will take forward that work and will also examine what demands are being placed on our services by concerns about terrorism within Yemen, which has been in the news a lot recently. I also noted the increased concern expressed by the Committee, on behalf of the agencies,
about the worrying resurgence of dissident terrorism in Northern Ireland. That is clearly something in which the House needs to take a continuing interest and I hope that the successor Committee will pursue it.
I am sorry that this afternoon's debate has not covered at all the threat from cyberterrorism. One worrying point that emerges from the Committee's report is the plethora of acronyms-the number of different Government bodies charged with addressing the threat to cybersecurity. The Committee expressed doubts about whether the Government's approach to cybersecurity was being co-ordinated effectively. Those of us outside the curtain who rely on media reports still know enough from what is in the public domain about the growing threat to this country's interests from cyberterrorism to believe that that should be a prime area for the Committee's work in future.
My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire rightly talked about the central importance to the effectiveness of British intelligence and security agencies of their being able to share information in confidence with allies-in particular, our critical intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States of America. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) made clear during his speech, Conservative Members regard the integrity of that intelligence-sharing relationship as of the highest importance to the security of the United Kingdom.
We support the control principle, and I reiterate the question that my right hon. Friend posed to the Foreign Secretary. In the light of the recent court judgments, do the Government believe that, regardless of the circumstances of any particular case, there is a need either for legislation or for some other means to assert the principle of control of intelligence by its originator and to ensure that that is protected against conceivable future challenges, or do they believe that the recent Court of Appeal judgment upheld that principle to such an extent that they can have confidence that it will not be threatened?
Having read through the reports, I came to the view that one important aspect of the ISC's work is the Committee's concern about the stewardship of resources by the various agencies. Perhaps with the exception of the hon. Member for Thurrock, who touched on performance targets, we have not really debated this today, but that element of scrutiny is significant. It was concerning to read that the Committee was dissatisfied with the amount of detail to which it was being given access over GCHQ's SIGMOD-signals intelligence modernisation-project, given that that involves the expenditure of many millions of pounds of taxpayers' money.
The saga of the SCOPE interdepartmental IT project is also disturbing. According to the Committee, that major project was initiated in 2001. By January 2008, it had clearly run into problems, but the Cabinet Office said that concerted efforts were being made to deliver it successfully and on time. Yet the implied note of exasperation comes through from the Committee's comment that, just three months later, the Cabinet Office announced that the project had been abandoned altogether. The Committee relates that that has probably meant the loss of tens of millions of pounds.
We know that the Committee has investigated that apparent debacle, but no report has yet been made publicly available. I do not know whether one will be,
and it appears that contractual disputes between the Government and the contractor or contractors involved are delaying that further. I hope that those long-dragged-out arguments can be resolved quickly, because it is in the public interest that we know as much as it is possible for us to be told about how mistakes came to be made in the management of such an important contract, and what lessons can be learned and applied for the future.
In paragraph 18 of the 2009-10 report, the ISC quotes all three agency chiefs as saying that they know that their agency is entering a period of financial austerity in which difficult decisions about resources and priorities will have to be made, despite the overall increase in expenditure that I am happy to acknowledge. Given that financial stringency, it is all the more important that Parliament makes sure, through the ISC reports, that the money being made available is stewarded properly and that the taxpayer and the British public get the best possible value for it.
To nobody's surprise, I think, my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) spoke at length about the unhappy saga of extraordinary rendition. I should like to congratulate him on his dogged-and, in the early months and years, rather lonely-persistence in following this issue through. There is no doubt in my mind that this business damaged the standing of our security and intelligence services in British public opinion. It has also harmed the reputation of the US, a development that I believe is very unwelcome indeed.
Given the importance of being able to put the episode behind us and draw a line beneath it, I am surprised that the Government have baulked at the sort of judge-led inquiry to which my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester alluded, and that they seem to be dragging their feet when it comes to subscribing to the UN convention on enforced disappearances. The former Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown, championed that international instrument when it was agreed back in December 2006, but as yet the Government have neither signed nor ratified it.
After I had been pressing this matter, the Foreign Secretary wrote to me in October 2008 to say that the Government were considering their position with regard to signature and ratification. He said that the FCO was consulting other Departments, but he also said:
"As the UK does not hold people incommunicado, or subject any person to enforced disappearance, we had not considered the ratification of this treaty an urgent priority against other business."
Now I am no lawyer, but it seems to me that what we now know about the renditions through the UK territory of Diego Garcia leaves open the possibility, at the very least, that we would have been in breach of our international obligations, had the UN convention been in force. I hope that the Minister for Europe will be able to assure me-either now, or when he replies to the debate, or perhaps in writing later on-that the Government are now showing rather more urgency in addressing this matter than they have up to now.
The core of the debate has been the question of how we strike the right balance between secrecy and accountability. Critical to that is the independence of the ISC, and its relationship with the Government and Parliament. I am more than willing to agree with the right hon. Member for Knowsley, North and Sefton, East (Mr. Howarth) that the state has matters that it
must keep secret, in all our interests. That is completely unavoidable and any grown-up involved in politics has to accept it. However, it is also inevitable that secrecy breeds suspicion and mistrust, especially in an age when people are no longer deferential and when they are much less inclined to take on trust anything said by any kind of public agency. People are also now used to being able to access and collate vast quantities of information instantly through the internet.
Allegations of torture and mistreatment in particular do untold damage to the UK's reputation, not only here but worldwide. When a senior foreign visitor to the UK was detained and temporarily imprisoned the other week, it was striking that within a matter of hours international satellite television channels were reporting that this man was being denied consular access, visits by relatives and legal advice as though it were fact. I do not want to stray into the details of that case, but it illustrates how quickly this country's reputation can suffer around the world, and not just among our own people.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) pointed out that when we are dealing with the issues raised by allegations of torture or mistreatment, we need to look not only at the detail of individual cases, but at processes, at habits of working by the agencies, both internally and in their relationships with agencies in other countries. We have to assure ourselves, largely through the Committee, that we have been able to draw a line under previous allegations and that we have the systems in place to ensure that we are true to the values and standards that we champion in the world and to which we urge others to adhere. Our inclination to support a judge-led inquiry derives from our concern to draw a clear line and to allow the agencies to get on with their job on behalf of all of us in the future.
Parliament and the public need the confidence that the ISC has all the access it needs to do its job, that it will be given all the information it seeks from the agencies, that Government will respect its independence and respond fully to its criticisms, and that Ministers will publish reports without undue delay and then take action and carry through the reforms that they have publicly promised to make.
It does not give me pleasure to say this-because this above all should be an issue where we should be able to count on the maximum level of cross-party consensus-but all through the debate we have heard from both sides of the House a catalogue of examples of delay, incompetence and failure to co-operate fully with the Committee. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire spoke about the Government's failure to fulfil their promise to make available the Committee's report on the guidance on treatment during the interview of detainees overseas and to publish the guidance by the promised date. I think he said that publication was put off because certain people would find it embarrassing. The Foreign Secretary, in response to an earlier intervention from my right hon. Friend, seemed completely unsighted on the proposal for an investigation into vetting. I hope that the Minister will have brief available when he replies to the debate, but it struck me as extraordinary that Ministers charged with the supervision of the intelligence and security agencies apparently did not know that such an investigation was being proposed.
Most trenchantly, we had the opening speech from the right hon. Member for Pontypridd, the Committee Chairman. He gave an account of his battles with the Cabinet Office, and denounced the "Whitehall insiders" who were trying to thwart the efforts of his Committee to do its job and the unnamed officials who refused to co-operate with the Committee or who even sought to intimidate the staff assigned to work directly for it. Frankly, if that were happening in any part of Government I would regard it as scandalous, but it is a national disgrace for it to be happening in respect of a body whose independence is so critical to public confidence in our secret agencies. It is the responsibility of the Ministers in the Government of the day to know what is going on, to take appropriate action to put things right and to ensure that certain behaviour ceases without further delay.
The right hon. Member for Pontypridd argued for measures to entrench the independence of the Committee, including a move from the Cabinet Office to another Department. Whoever forms the Government after the next general election should address seriously and urgently the proposals that he made and the proposals that have come from other Members of the House who have contributed to the debate.
As the right hon. Gentleman said, the agencies are the first to realise that they benefit most from rigorous scrutiny and from being seen to be accountable, through his Committee, to Parliament and to the British people. The safety of every family in this country depends in considerable part on the professionalism, dedication and, in many instances, raw courage of the people who work for our security and intelligence agencies. They cannot respond to criticisms or challenges. We collectively owe it to them to protect their public reputation, and that imposes on us the duty to ensure that we have effective, trusted arrangements for scrutiny and accountability and that Parliament and Government do a better job than has, as the report makes clear, been the case in the past two years.
5.27 pm
The Minister for Europe (Chris Bryant): Let me start by paying another full set of tributes to my right hon. Friend-and, indeed, my right hon. neighbour-the Member for Pontypridd (Dr. Howells). When I was first chosen as the Labour candidate in the Rhondda in the year 2000, my right hon. Friend and, for that matter, his lovely wife Eirlys were very welcoming to me in a kind way. I think of him as something of a mentor in this House.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the work that he has done. It is a tribute to Parliament and to the principles of Britain that a man who led the May 1968 student sit-in and was the first person to break the cordon outside the US embassy when protesting against the Vietnam war should end up chairing the ISC. There is a particular beauty to the fact that a former member of the Communist party should assume that responsibility. One thing that has not yet been mentioned in this debate is a key difference between this Committee and many others-the Chairman of the Committee is unpaid. One cannot say that this is a Committee chairmanship that is the result of the patronage of the Prime Minister. We all want to pay to tribute to him for the work that he has done in this capacity and in many others. He has
also provided some of the most enlightening criticism of modern British art and other matters in history, but I shall not recite them.
I shall try to answer directly as many of the points that have been raised by right hon. and hon. Members as possible- [ Interruption. ] Unfortunately, I hear a Whip coughing at that. I shall include the points raised by Members who are no longer in their places. That is a growing tendency and it is probably one that needs to be deprecated.
The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) raised several matters. First, and perhaps most importantly, he effectively made the allegation that because the consolidated guidance has not yet been published, agency staff are, in some way or another, working either according to old guidance, which would be inappropriate, or in some kind of vacuum. Of course, that would be wholly and utterly inappropriate, and it is not the case: there is no policy vacuum. Officers and agency staff are all working under a clear set of guidelines. The Prime Minister's commitment was to consolidate and publish that guidance, and we should not overlook the fact that that is a remarkable thing to do. Not many other countries in the world have published guidance and it is a first step for this country, so it is significant and not something that we should do lightly or without serious thought. We are keen to make sure that we do that as swiftly as possible, commensurate with getting the policy right. I heard what the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates) said. His interpretation of the process that we have gone through is not entirely a set of events that I recognise.
The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks asked about the control principle-the principle that intelligence belonging to another country and that has been created by another country should not be released without the agreement of that country. We believe that that is absolutely essential to maintaining our own security. Otherwise, why would any other security agency in the world volunteer its information to us? That is a matter of ongoing concern, but the situation is always complicated. We have a very close relationship with a small number of intelligence agencies in countries around the world-they are known to the House, I am sure, but the list starts with the United States of America-and we have to proceed on the basis of trust in that relationship, because otherwise the relationship would not be worth having and nor would the intelligence. We are committed to protecting the intelligence received from our partners and maintaining that control principle, but we are also keen to make sure that, particularly when dealing with agencies where we are less certain of the processes and procedures used, we take a robust line on ensuring that there has been no abuse. The right hon. Gentleman said that, broadly speaking, he agrees with us on that point. I wholeheartedly agree with this point made in the Committee's report:
"The Committee is concerned that the publication of other countries' intelligence material, whether sensitive or otherwise, threatens to undermine the key 'control principle' of confidentiality, which underpins relations with foreign intelligence services".
The right hon. Gentleman expressed a great deal of scepticism, not to say sarcasm, about the national security forum. In contrast, I believe that it is an important body. The forum consists of a group of independent
experts, who are able to provide intelligent advice to Ministers on a series of national security issues in a way that would not necessarily come through to the individual agencies through their Departments. Seven meetings of the forum have taken place since it was set up in March last year, and we believe that those meetings have been valuable and useful.
The right hon. Gentleman raised the question of Diego Garcia, as did several other right hon. and hon. Members. My right hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd made it clear that, when he made the comments he did as a Minister, speaking at the Dispatch Box, he did so in good faith. I do not think that anyone can doubt that the categorical statements that we were given, and that we were therefore in no position to say other than, were given-by ourselves anyway-in good faith. The question for us now is how to make sure that such situations cannot arise in future. We are keen to ensure that we are as diligent as possible in respect of Diego Garcia and any other overseas territory.
The right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks insisted that there should be full investigation in all cases, and he is absolutely right-of course there should. Several speakers this afternoon have referred to the fact that several civil cases are going through the courts, and there are two Metropolitan police investigations. However, I was disappointed by the comments made by the right hon. Gentleman and, for that matter, his hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington), because I thought they used weasel words.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to being "inclined" to hold an inquiry as long as the timing could be got right, and I do not think that that really satisfies the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie) at all. Then I noticed that the hon. Member for Aylesbury said, first, "We support the idea of a judge-led inquiry," and then, "Er, we are inclined to support" such a proposition. I have a sneaking suspicion that that means that somebody is trying to provide themselves with a vast amount of wriggle room, because they know that in opposition sometimes people say one thing, whereas if they were in government they might say another.
Mr. Lidington: The Minister is letting election fever get the better of him. Our position is that we are strongly inclined in favour of a judge-led inquiry, but we know that, first, there are possible legal proceedings that would affect, or probably affect, the timing of any such inquiry; and secondly, if my party forms the next Government, we would have access to information, and it would be possible to make to us representations that are not possible when we are in opposition. We are simply saying that, if we form a Government, we want to ensure that we take a decision on the basis of all representations and all information that is available, quite properly, to the Government of the day. Our approach is exactly as my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond, Yorks described it.
Chris Bryant: If I were to look up "wriggle room" in the dictionary, I would be provided with exactly what the hon. Gentleman has just said, so I am grateful to him for deliberately un-clarifying the situation.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy)-this has been something of a Welsh debate-was a much respected Chairman of the Committee. I shall not praise him as fully as I have others, because he is continuing as a Member. He raised the issue of whether some sessions of the Committee could be held in public, and that issue has been much discussed this afternoon. I note what was said earlier about when Ministers say, "My own personal view," but my own personal view is that there must be occasions when it would be possible to hold some elements of the Committee's deliberations in public, but, as nobody has denied, it is also absolutely the case that the Committee must have the power to reserve the large proportion of its sessions for deliberation in private; otherwise, it simply would not be able to consider secret material. There is more or less a consensus in the House on that.
My right hon. Friend asked whether the Committee should move from the Cabinet Office to the Ministry of Justice, where he said he did not get his pay for a month. That is what trade unions are for, of course-to make sure that one does get one's pay in time. However, I am unconvinced that the move from the Cabinet Office to another Department is the most important element of the reforms that will need to take place. Although I fully accept that the Committee's recommendations in relation to the Cabinet Office have some merit, not least because in terms of security issues the Cabinet Office has taken on a much more significant role than it had when the right hon. Member for East Hampshire joined the Committee, I do not think that where it is based is the single most important issue that we need to address.
The hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) spoke about a series of different issues and, in particular, about intercept evidence. The committee said in its report:
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