Intelligence and Security Committee
George Howarth Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Sir Malcolm Rifkind
Even our worst enemies have not suggested that, as far as I am aware. I of course entirely confirm that.
My final detailed point on the report relates to a part of our intelligence community that is hardly even mentioned in this House or anywhere else: Defence Intelligence. It is part of the Ministry of Defence, but its contribution and role is greatly underestimated, if not entirely unknown, in the wider world, a point we draw attention to on page 51 of the report:
“Defence Intelligence provides the largest single all-source assessment capability within the UK intelligence community.”
As it is part of the MOD, it has perhaps been more subject to resource reductions than the other intelligence agencies. The report states:
“The prospect of further cuts—combined with the impact of cuts to BBC Monitoring, on which DI relies heavily—therefore has potentially very serious long-term consequences for DI’s ability to support military operations”,
which everyone tends to know about,
“and for the UK intelligence community as a whole.”
I hope that the Government can give some careful thought to how Defence Intelligence’s unique contribution to the UK’s overall assessment capability can be properly protected. I suggest that it perhaps needs a higher profile and status in the intelligence community than it has traditionally had so that there can be wider awareness of the benefits it brings to the national interest.
I deal now with the intelligence aspects of the Government’s Green Paper, particularly the control principle and the ISC itself. As far as the control principle is concerned, many Members attending the debate will be aware that what I am referring to, and what the Green Paper refers to, is how we deal with intelligence received from other friendly intelligence services. Anyone who has any awareness of the intelligence situation will know that that is crucial to the UK, particularly our relationship with the United States. If the special relationship means anything, it means a dramatic amount of intelligence, which has continued for around 60 years and benefited the UK enormously. However, it concerns not only the United States; to a lesser degree, we share and receive intelligence from other friendly agencies as well. Fundamental to the system is the deep principle that intelligence shared with another intelligence agency will not be made available to any third party without the consent of the agency that gave it in the first place. That principle has overwhelmingly been respected, but there have been individual exceptions that caused great concern. Following the Binyam Mohamed case, the Court of Appeal decided that such information should be released in a limited set of circumstances, and that caused great concern in the United States and elsewhere. I and the Committee greatly welcome the Government’s determination to deal with the matter in a way that strikes a proper balance between the national security requirement and the interests of justice, because that is the crucial debate in these matters.
Some might imagine that the Binyam Mohamed case was a one-off and that the Green Paper is an overreaction to the problem. With all respect, the Committee’s view is that it is not an overreaction. Although the Court of Appeal’s verdict might have been different in that case, we are today dealing with a situation that is very different from that which existed in the past. Information on this is given in the Green Paper, so I will share briefly with the House what the Government say. The Green Paper refers to judicial review, and not simply with regard to intelligence, but more broadly how it has increased over the years:
“Recourse to judicial review has increased significantly in recent decades, from 160 applications in 1974 to 4,539 in 1998. By 2010 the number of applications had reached 10,548.”
Judicial review and the overruling of the Government’s view—perhaps rightly in many cases—have become a major part of our judicial process, rather than an exception.
The raising of intelligence matters in court has also been transformed dramatically in recent years. The same page of the Green Paper states that
“in the first 90 years of the Security Service’s existence”—
meaning MI5—
“no case impacting directly on that Service’s work reached the House of Lords. In the last 10 years there have been 14 such case in the House of Lords or the Supreme Court.”
That is no longer an exception, but increasingly something we must be aware of and decide whether the previous balance is the appropriate one in the wider national interest.
Another point of interest, and one I was unaware of until recently, is that one of the circumstances in which these matters are being raised is not the release of sensitive documents to help in UK legal cases, as sometimes happens, but often the request for the release of this information to assist legal proceedings in other countries. The Green Paper states on page 7:
“The Government has strained key international relationships and risked compromise of vital sources and techniques in no fewer than seven court cases in which the applicants sought sensitive UK Government-held but very often foreign government-originated information for disclosure into foreign legal proceedings.”
Of course, Binyam Mohamed was such an example, because his appearance before a United States military commission led to the application in the first place.
Against that background and as the report states, I and the Committee very much welcome the Government’s proposals to modernise the procedure and their recommendation that the United Kingdom use the closed material procedure and involve special advocates, as already occurs in several areas, to deal with such cases. The only alternative, traditionally, has been the public interest immunity approach, but that is a blockbuster approach, and if one secures such immunity one finds that none of the information can be seen by anyone.
At least under the special advocate procedure, the special advocate—someone who has been vetted to be able to inspect such sensitive material—will have the opportunity to see it on behalf of his or her client, and, although they will not be able to reveal detailed information, they will be able at least to take it into account when advising their client on judicial proceedings.
That is greatly welcome and a step forward, but the Committee wants to make this point. If these proposals are implemented, the situation will improve considerably, but they do not provide an absolute guarantee that no information can ever be released at the insistence of the court, a fact that the Government acknowledge. Page 21 of the Green Paper states that closed material proceedings, involving a special advocate,
“reduce the risk of damaging disclosure of sensitive material.”
Such proceedings do not remove the risk; they reduce it. Likewise, on the following page, the Green Paper states that a decision to allow a special advocate to be available can
“be reviewable by the trial judge on judicial review principles if the other side decides to challenge the Secretary of State’s decision.”
We are therefore dealing with a very curious situation. If the Government’s proposals are accepted, the balance will change, and that is good and healthy, but the significant possibility will remain that in very special circumstances a judge might take a different view on such matters and the information could be released, with all the consequences that might flow from that.
Those who take the interests of national security very seriously indeed, as I certainly do and I am sure everyone here does, accept that, at the end of the day in a country that believes in the rule of law, the courts—in most circumstances, if not all—have to have the final word. I wonder, however, whether the Government ought to consider the argument that the provisions in the Green Paper need to be further strengthened: a belt and braces approach, which would not be inconsistent with the rule of law but would certainly provide added reassurance.
The Government have been good enough to refer in their Green Paper to the way that approach might be taken, and paragraph 2.78 on page 33 states:
“It would be possible for Parliament to provide the courts with clearer guidance in statute”.
The proposal refers to public interest immunity cases, but it could apply to special advocate cases, and the Government go on to state in the next paragraph:
“One such presumption”—
written into statute as a “rebuttable presumption”—
“would be against disclosure of sensitive”—
national security—
“material owned by foreign governments, obtained via intelligence relationships working on the basis of the Control Principle.”
That is exactly what we need seriously to consider. It would not be inconsistent with the rule of law, because at the end of the day it would be a rebuttable presumption, and the court would determine whether the presumption were rebutted.
As we have always known, the courts, when they interpret the legislation of this House, not only look at the words of an Act but try to identify, if they can, Parliament’s intention in passing it. If the statute stated that there were such a presumption against the disclosure of intelligence received from a foreign, friendly Government, the court would be able at least to take that into account before it reached a final decision, so I and the Committee hope that the Government give that proposal serious consideration.
One of the main parts of not only our report but the Government’s Green Paper concerns the future of the Intelligence and Security Committee, and although I note that it is a major issue I will not detain the House for long, as I hope to conclude my remarks in at most another 10 or 15 minutes in order to allow everyone else who wishes to speak the chance to do so. It is, however, a crucial matter.
Over a period of some 17 or 18 years, the Intelligence Services Act 1994 has become outdated: it no longer accurately describes how the Committee operates. That is part of the problem; another part of the problem is that the Committee, if it is to conduct its oversight effectively, needs additional responsibility and power.
It is worth remembering that when the 1994 Act was passed, the intention was not only that oversight would be provided for the first time, but that the public would be reassured that it was independent oversight—and to some degree that reassurance has not yet been achieved. The public, when they look at the Act, see a Committee that is not a Committee of Parliament, although it is a Committee of parliamentarians, because we are all appointed by the Prime Minister, we report to the Prime Minister, and only through the Prime Minister do our reports eventually reach the House. That obviously calls our independence into question.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
We are all nominated by the Prime Minister, but it is important to note that this House has to endorse the names of the Committee’s members before the Committee is formed.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind
The House has to give its view, but I say to the right hon. Gentleman, who also serves on the Committee and has done so even longer than I have, that the Prime Minister has the last word. Although Prime Ministers have in practice never overruled the view of the House, they have the statutory power to do so. The House gives its advice, thus illustrating the difficulty in terms of the public’s view. That is the first problem.
The Committee, in its report, recommends—we are delighted that the Government have accepted it in principle—that the Committee become a Committee of Parliament. It is a joint Committee of the House of Commons and House of Lords, with two distinguished Members of the House of Lords, Lord Butler and Lord Lothian, but we recommend that its appointment procedure be very similar to that used by the Standards and Privileges Committee or by all Joint Committees of Parliament. Names would be presented to Parliament, but Parliament would be able to veto them if it disapproved. If it disapproved, the names would have to disappear, and only when Parliament was satisfied with the recommendations would appointments be made. Parliament would have—in a way that it does not, and has never had—the last word on both the Chairman of the Committee and its members, and it would properly be a Committee of Parliament, albeit obviously required to operate under slightly different procedures because of the secret information that we deal with. That is the first reform of a fundamental kind.
On the second reform, the 1994 Act states that the Committee has responsibility for policy, resources and administration, but it does not mention operations, a subject in which there is overwhelming public interest and in which, on a simple literal reading of the Act, we appear to have no involvement. People who ought to know better have recently asked, “How can the Committee operate effectively if it cannot even look at operations?” In reality, it has been looking at operations over the past few years, whether on the treatment of detainees, the Binyam Mohamed case or the use of intelligence during the Iraq war.
The Committee has been able to look at the raw material and to question agencies about operations, but that role does not appear in the Act. That needs to be revised. We suggest that, instead of listing the issues that the Committee can look at, the Act should be reformed and simply state that “the Committee should have oversight responsibility for all the activities of the intelligence agencies”, thereby including operations.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
I shall follow previous speakers to some extent, particularly the latter remarks of the Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway). I see this as a continuation of the debate about the parliamentary accountability of the security services. Over a number of years I argued, with other Members—Labour Members—for adequate parliamentary scrutiny of the services involved in security. When I was looking up previous debates on the subject, I noted that 23 years ago, almost to the day, I argued that such scrutiny was important, and that it was therefore necessary to provide the mechanism for Members of Parliament to look into what the security services were doing.
Before the Intelligence Services Act 1994, which, as we know, established the Intelligence and Security Committee, a leading historian, Sir Michael Howard, observed in 1986:
“So far as official government policy is concerned . . . enemy agents are found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence is brought by the storks.”
In other words, children, Parliament and the public should not meddle in what were considered to be very adult matters.
At least we have a consensus that we need to move on from the limited parliamentary machinery that was established at the time. I welcome the fact that the Committee is in favour, as the Chair said and as the report makes clear, of expanding the role of the ISC. The Green Paper makes the same point.
I note that in its recommendations the Committee does not suggest public evidence, but the Green Paper does. I see no reason why such evidence should not, in certain circumstances, be given in public. If some members of the Committee immediately say, “Much of what we do can’t be revealed in public; it is confidential—classified”, I agree. When I spoke in 2008 and tabled an amendment, which I later withdrew, about holding public sessions, the then Foreign Secretary accepted that there was scope for holding some sessions in public and wanted to make progress on that. It was not made then, but I hope it will be now.
The then Foreign Secretary emphasised, as one would expect, the need to protect national security. Let me be clear: public sessions, yes, but most of the evidence and most of the Committee’s work would be in private. There would be limited scope, as I see it and as the Green Paper recognises, for public sessions.
In the past the heads of the two main security services, MI5 and MI6, were not mentioned, as though they and the organisations did not exist. The difference is that now we have become used to the head of MI5—the current head and his predecessors—making public speeches. There is nothing novel about that. It does not necessarily get great news coverage because, as I said, it has become quite common. Last October for the first time the head of MI6 gave a public speech. Parliamentary democracy survived. The intelligence services survived. Presumably, as in the case of MI5, the head of MI6 and his successors will continue to make public speeches, where appropriate. It is true, of course, that in giving such a speech, the head of MI6 was not giving evidence and being asked questions by Members of Parliament. That, I hope, will be brought about.
The Chair of the Home Affairs Committee made the point that when, from time to time, we have sessions with MI5—he mentioned MI5, so I will mention it as well—we are told that if we want to have such briefings, which obviously are private and remain so, we should go over to Millbank. I do not see any reason why we should do that any longer. If it continues, I for one, as a member of the Home Affairs Committee, would be most reluctant to do so. It seems to me that if MI5 is going to give briefings on a confidential basis, the director general should come to the House of Commons, not the other way round. It is not a major point, but it asserts the supremacy of Parliament.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy), a former Chair of the ISC, and a very good Chair, as is the present one, spoke about Members. I hope all Members of the House are reliable and can be given information on a confidential basis. I am not putting myself forward as a candidate for membership as I do not particularly want to join the Committee. If it was said in the past—not, I hope, in the present Parliament—that there are some rogue elements among Members, the same applies to the Security Service. Peter Wright and other elements, a small minority of the Security Service, apparently believed that Harold Wilson was an agent of Moscow and acted on the instructions of the Kremlin. Let us be clear that in the past there have been rogue elements—a very small minority—among Members of Parliament, as in the security services.
Mr George Howarth
Although what my hon. Friend says about some of the personalities involved is undoubtedly true, does he think it would give great cause for concern if there were rogue elements within the security services being overseen by rogue elements in the House of Commons?
Mr Winnick
Yes. I do not think it would help our national security. I hope that satisfies my right hon. Friend. I do not know what other answer I could give to that question.
In previous debates I have criticised the ISC. I do not believe, and I am hardly alone in this, that it has been robust enough about the allegations of complicity in torture. The present Chair of the Committee said that there is no allegation whatsoever that British security officials have in any way taken part in torture. I accept that entirely. I said in the previous debate that there is not the slightest evidence that such torture has been used by British security services, but clearly the allegation, which is a very serious allegation, is complicity in torture. In respect of what has been happening abroad—the water-boarding, 160 times in one instance, carried out by the United States on an individual, Guantanamo remaining opening, the practices that went on there, the Pakistan security service and so on—the allegation is that British security officials knew what was happening and took no action. That is an extremely serious allegation. Peter Gibson’s inquiry is therefore to be welcomed. I am not sure whether the inquiry is already under way or when it is likely to conclude and publish its report, but perhaps the Minister will clarify that when responding to the debate.
The question is whether the ISC was sufficiently robust when looking at the matter. In my view it was not. The Joint Committee on Human Rights, in a report produced last year, was critical of the ISC in such matters and expressed concern about the adequacy of the parliamentary mechanism for oversight of the intelligence and security services. I hope that there will be a different approach in future. It is very important that the ISC does not give the impression that it is simply the voice of the security services or that it is reluctant to criticise, because if that was its attitude it would not be doing its proper job. Unlike some Members, I have reservations about relevant sensitive material not being disclosed in court, and I will be very surprised if that is not the subject of further debate in the House.
In conclusion, I in no way underestimate the acute and continuing terrorist danger to our country. Sometimes critics such as me are accused of underestimating, not recognising or playing down, the terrorist danger, but I certainly do not underestimate the danger, and I take the point as well about republican dissidents in Northern Ireland. Even if 7/7 and what was attempted a fortnight later had not happened, I would recognise first and foremost that this country faces an acute danger from Islamists who clearly believe that murdering as many people as possible is the way to paradise. Hon. Members have today put various views and arguments on how we should deal with the terrorist danger, and that debate will continue for some time. However, the greater the danger and the greater the role of the security services in trying to protect our country from further atrocities and mass murder, the greater the need for effective parliamentary scrutiny of those involved. It is absolutely essential that the changes proposed by the Committee and set out in the Green Paper are implemented in the near future.
Sir Menzies Campbell
I see members of the Committee, both past and present, nodding in agreement.
I talked about independence a moment or two ago, but two other elements are important to the Committee’s membership: experience and judgment. The assessment of these is of enormous significance and importance, and, given that the ultimate responsibility for security in this country rests with the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister ought to play a significant part in the formation of the Committee. We can argue about whether he should play a part after or in advance of an election, but that is a detail for another day. I am in no doubt about the principle, however, that as the Prime Minister answers to the nation—to the country—for the security of the country, in this matter at least he ought to have a determining role.
One other thing that has been brought rather remarkably to my attention is that the success of the three agencies depends on their co-operation. Those with longer—or perhaps not that much longer—memories than I will remember that there have been occasions in the not-so-distant past when the agencies have to some extent seemed at odds, when there has been a certain amount of competition and when they have found it difficult to share common objectives and, indeed, common information.
The greater effectiveness of the services collectively has come about because of increasing co-operation. In the four years or so that I have been a member of the Committee, I have seen that co-operation grow and blossom. Co-operation is necessary because no one agency can hope to be the fount of all intelligence wisdom any more than one country can. That is why our relations with our allies are of very considerable significance, and why the debate and, indeed, controversy about the control principle have become so salient.
I echo what others have said. When we last went to the United States, there was strong anecdotal evidence from people in positions of authority and responsibility that their anxiety about the control principle, or the lack of its application, might—if it had not already—inhibit the volume and quality of intelligence that they were willing to share.
If someone has that anxiety and concern, they have a simple way of dealing with it: they just stop giving significant information. The problem is that if ours is the country expecting to receive information of that quality, we have no way of knowing that they have stopped. The supplier can simply turn off the tap, and we have no way of knowing whether what we still receive is of quality or, indeed, the sort of worth that the arrangements between our closest allies have often provided.
It has been said—it is an entirely logical position to take—that if there is to be protection of information provided to us under the control principle, that enhances the argument for scrutiny at the instance of the Committee of the services. I certainly agree with that principle. That is why I hope that I am in the vanguard of those who support the proposal that the Committee become a Committee of Parliament, perhaps selected using the same method as that used by the Standards and Privileges Committee. However, as I have said, an important role and responsibility should rest with the Prime Minister.
Like some more long-standing Members, I remember the debates that surrounded the creation of the Intelligence and Security Committee and the atmosphere in which it was launched, which was very different from that now surrounding the Committee’s activities. Although I was not a member of the Committee at the time of its inception, I imagine that the atmosphere was also very different then between the Committee and the services. I do not doubt for a moment that the services were perhaps suspicious but certainly apprehensive about the extent to which the Committee might inhibit or create some kind of obstacle to their activities.
For that reason, we are entitled not only to change the form of the Committee but certainly to increase its powers. That is why the recommendation that we be able to “require” information rather than request it seems an essential part of the change that the Green Paper envisages. However, as others have said, the Committee staff is very modest in number. If the Committee is to fulfil this wider remit, it must have many more resources; otherwise it will have greater responsibility but less capability. That would be bound to reduce not only the quantity but the quality of scrutiny.
I am amused by the suggestion that rogue elements of Parliament might be keeping tabs on rogue members of the security services. It occurred to me that perhaps the best way to keep tabs on rogue elements of Parliament would be to employ the services of rogue elements of the security services. The latter proposition may prove more powerful than the first.
This is an annual debate of great importance. It is true that the quality of the Committee’s work depends to a large extent on the quality of the work done by its staff. That in turn depends on the quality of the activities carried out by those who work for the agencies. My experience of these people is that they are professional, unassuming and that they essentially live in the shade. There is no glory attached to what they do and there is hardly ever any public recognition. It is not the most generously remunerated occupation and it necessarily imposes considerable restrictions on personal life, on the ability to live in a normal way and even sometimes on someone being able to say what their occupation is. These are people of enormous quality. If one were looking for a fictional comparison, which is always dangerous, it is rather less like Ian Fleming and rather more like John le Carré.
The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East very properly paid tribute to the quality of the members of the agencies, and I would most certainly like to do so too. I also pay tribute to the leadership in the agencies, because that has not been expressly referred to. Daily challenges have to be faced. One substantial challenge coming down the track is the Olympic games. I am not an entirely impartial observer of that because I attend the Olympic Board under the chairmanship of the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport and, indeed, the Mayor. The Olympics will be a very formidable challenge.
Let me say, in parenthesis, that everyone with any interest in sport remembers the horrific outrage of Munich. If anything of that kind were to happen in any other games, it would inevitably be definitive. Therefore, in the next 12 months or so these unassuming professional people will, perhaps from a domestic point of view, face a more severe challenge than they have ever faced before. I am confident that they will meet that challenge.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), who has demonstrated the qualities that we have all come to respect in him: first, he has good judgment; and secondly, he is unerringly fair in the judgments that he exercises. It is a pleasure to serve with him. I think we are now the two old lags of the Committee.
Mr Howarth
In my case, yes. [Interruption.] We are both certainly young in our outlook.
I should like to echo the praise that the right hon. and learned Gentleman gave to the agencies and to the staff of the ISC, who are very open with us, very helpful, and enable us to do the job that we have been appointed to do. When we go to visit the agencies—sometimes we do have to make visits, like other Committees—or when they come to give evidence, those events are invariably well organised and well informed. Our most recent visit, which was to GCHQ, was no exception, and I learned a lot from it. It was well structured and well organised, and it is important to acknowledge that.
Before I move on to the three key issues that I want to cover, it is important to recognise that the impartiality, or independence, of the Committee is paramount and, in my experience, can be relied on. Michael Mates, a former member of the Committee who, until he retired at the last election, served on it from the outset, used to say that when the Committee meets, our political affiliations are left at the door. In my experience, that is the exactly the case. We are seeking not to score party political points, but to get at the truth and carry out the job of scrutinising the work of the agencies concerned.
That leads me on to my first point, which is about the reform of the Committee. A great deal has been said about that already, and I will not repeat it all, but I want to make two observations. First, I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife and my right hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Paul Murphy) in that I am unconcerned about whether the Chairman of the Committee is a member of the governing party or of the Opposition party. I have served under four Chairmen—their downfall, in three cases, had nothing whatsoever to do with me—and I have found them all to be extremely capable and experienced. Whatever their political affiliation was, it never influenced how the Committee was conducted. The most important thing is that we get the right man or woman in the job. I hope, like the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway), that we might have some continuity with the current Chairman during the course of this Parliament, because that is helpful.
Secondly, I support the reforms of the Committee set out in the Green Paper and covered in our report. Let us be brutally frank: there are now two Prime Ministers who have wanted reforms in this direction, and it would be a very foolish Committee that did not notice that they were both from different parties and that perhaps the time for change had arrived. I therefore have no problem with the reforms.
However, we need to be careful about one thing. We should not set up the expectation that these reforms will make the whole operation of the services and everything that they do a matter of public knowledge. As the Chairman of the Committee said at the outset, there is information that we are party to that we can never make public because we sign the Official Secrets Act and, by and large, retain the trust of the agencies. That is why we sometimes, reluctantly, have to put redactions in our annual reports. Principled critics of the Committee criticise it because we have access to privileged and secret information. States will always have secrets, and necessarily so. We should not lead anybody to believe that everything that we know will be made public as a result of the reforms of the Committee. I know that nobody is claiming that and I do not mean this as a criticism of the Government or other Committee members. However, it is important, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) made clear at the outset, that there will not be a free-for-all in relation to the information that the state has and what can be made public. The brutal truth is that a state secret that becomes public is no longer a state secret and is therefore useless.
My second point is about cyber-security. That issue has been covered extensively, but I want to cover it in a slightly different way. It is not a new issue. In June 2009, the Cabinet Office produced the “Cyber Security Strategy of the United Kingdom”, which rightly stated that it was an urgent, high-level issue that could not be ignored. More recently, in October 2010, the national security strategy cited
“Hostile attacks upon UK cyber space by other states and large scale cyber crime”
as a tier-one risk, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington has said. For several years, the importance of this issue has been acknowledged. However, for national security and diplomatic reasons, the UK has been coy about naming those responsible, at least until recently. I will say a little more about the recent developments where those responsible have been named in a moment.
First, I want to use this opportunity to emphasise how important this issue is for our country. Our annual report makes it clear that we generally approve of the cross-cutting approach that the Government are taking on cyber-security. It states rightly that the Government’s decision to move ministerial responsibility for the issue to the Cabinet Office, which is better placed to deal with such issues across Departments, is appropriate. That was a good move on the part of the Government.
It is also important that we seek better international cyber-security controls against cyber-attacks. I do not underestimate the difficulties that that presents. I am well aware that the Foreign Secretary is on the case and is raising this issue in international forums, no doubt discretely. I believe that we need to develop international protocols and controls over the coming years to make it easier to get control over what is going on across the world. I do not make that point in a spirit of criticism, I merely say that the matter has to be given some prominence. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), might be able to support that point of view when he winds up the debate. It is in the interests of our national security, and of businesses in the UK, that we take such an approach.
I wish to make one further point on cyber-security that is perhaps less driven by consensus than those that I have already made. It concerns the role and status of the Prime Minister’s official representative to business on cyber-security, Baroness Neville-Jones, who was of course Security Minister until May. Over recent years, our Committee has struggled with both the current and previous Government on whether those primarily responsible for attacks could be named in our reports. I am sure the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife would bear me out on that. Up until this year, we were losing that struggle. However, there has been movement. In his recent signed article in The Times, the head of GCHQ, Mr Iain Lobban, flagged up the importance of the issue, but sensibly declined to say which countries were responsible.
In our report, published in July, we went further, stating:
“The greatest threat of electronic attack continues to be posed by State actors and, of those, Russia and China are”
suspected of carrying out “the majority of attacks.” That form of words, carefully nuanced and the product of thorough negotiations between the services, the Government and our Committee, was the best way of putting it. Certainly the Government and the agencies concerned seemed to believe that that was the right way to describe the situation. However, when Baroness Neville-Jones was pressed in an interview on Radio 4’s “The World at One” about whether China and Russia were involved in such attacks, she responded, “They certainly are”. That is rather further than anybody else has gone.
The reason for highlighting that is straightforward. Either it is right to be circumspect about naming the states concerned, or it is not. It is not clear to me whether Baroness Neville-Jones speaks for the Government or whether she is, as it were, a free spirit in these matters. We need to know with what authority she speaks, and to what extent anything she says can be attributed to the Government or to the agencies concerned. Perhaps the Minister might be able to say a little about the noble Lady’s position, and what her status and authority is.
I turn to the use of intelligence material as evidence. The issue has arisen principally from the Binyam Mohamed case, and the Government have brought forward a way of dealing with it that may or may not work. I agree with the points made in our annual report about the matter, but what concerns me is that, no matter how Parliament may express itself on the issue, what guidance is given to the judiciary or what clauses are put in Bills, at the end of the day judges who will handle such cases will have to make a choice between, on the one hand, what is in the national interest and important for national security, and on the other hand the conduct of the court and the particular trial that is taking place. My fear is that the conduct of the trial and the proceedings of the court will, in some cases, as in the Binyam Mohamed case, take precedence over what Parliament intended, anything in any particular Act of Parliament, and the national interest. This is not an attack on judges. I have tried to think of this by asking myself, “What if I were sitting in that chair and had to make that choice,” but they might ask, “What am I responsible for?” The answer is that they are responsible for the good conduct of that trial.
Why is that important? Several hon. Members, including the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington, who chairs the Committee, have made the point that it is hugely important that the co-operation we have with foreign Governments on intelligence remains something on which we can rely. In turn, it is vital that those Governments feel that intelligence that is passed to the UK will not be made public in court proceedings. I would go slightly further than the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife. I believe that the amount and quality of intelligence that we have received from the US since the Binyam Mohamed case has declined. As the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, that is a difficult case to prove, and I cannot within the confines of this debate give chapter and verse on it—certain issues of which I am aware cannot be discussed in public—but most well informed people who have made a judgment on the matter believe that co-operation between the US and the UK has declined.
That is important not from the point of view of the volume of information that we receive, but because incidents have been prevented on the basis of intelligence co-operation not only with the US, but with other close allies. The reputation of the UK could become such that foreign agencies and Governments feel they cannot share information with us because it will end up being broadcast all over the place in a court case. As has already been said, there is evidence that fishing trips are being made in the British courts to support cases elsewhere.
I am not necessarily saying that the Government have got it wrong. My point is that we need to think long and hard about how we will handle this, not because of any political matter that might attach itself to the problem, and not even because of day-to-day political relationships with other Governments, but because getting as much information as we can is in our national interest and the interests of the security of our people. I hope that will be addressed fully and sustainably as things develop and in legislation. It should be addressed in a way that does not leave the courts feeling that they can do what they like regardless.
As other hon. Members have said, it is an enormous privilege to be a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee—it is now six years since I was fortunate to be appointed to it. The Committee is sometimes criticised not for what we do, but for what we cannot say. We should be careful in how we deal with that. Hopefully, we are all big enough and experienced enough to know that we sometimes have to take a hit as a Committee and as individuals because some sections of the press and the media want to know what we know and we cannot tell them, but at the end of the day, being able properly to oversee the activities of the agencies and knowing why the public need to be protected overrides our concerns about any criticism we might get in the media.
Border Checks Summer 2011
George Howarth Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) has just told the House that he is ready to wait for the evidence and the results of the inquiry before reaching conclusions, and I think he is right to do so. It is a great shame that the Secretary of State jumped to conclusions impetuously, without any proper evidence and without allowing others to respond.
At the heart of this debate are the issues of the conduct of the Home Secretary and the level of ministerial responsibility, in terms of both competence in running a Department and moral responsibility for what happens in that Department.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
There is a long-established principle that Ministers take responsibility for what goes on in their Departments, and to be fair, the Home Secretary confirmed that principle earlier in the week. Would my right hon. Friend care to speculate on what she means by taking responsibility for her Department?
Mr Straw
As I shall explain, the issue is not whether a Minister mouths the words, but whether, in practice, that Minister acts in a way that demonstrates his or her responsibility for what happens in his or her Department.
The truth about the Home Office—which is the subject of all kinds of dark jokes, particularly when new Home Secretaries enter it—is that things are more likely to go wrong there than in any other Department. That is not because its staff are of less high quality than other staff; far from it. Overwhelmingly, the staff in all parts of the Home Office who served me during the four years for which I was Home Secretary showed the highest possible skill, dedication and commitment. They possessed the added attribute that they were dealing with people—such as prisoners, criminals and illegal immigrants—with whom most of us would not wish to deal day by day or week by week.
The fact that the Home Office is so often in the limelight for the wrong reasons, because there is a “fiasco” or “crisis”, is due to the nature of its business. Other Departments generally work with the grain of the people with whom they deal. There are two obvious examples. In schools, parents and pupils want, roughly speaking, what teachers and the Secretary of State want, which is better education. When it comes to health, patients and their relatives want the same as nurses, doctors and the Secretary of State, which is improved health care. The same does not apply in the Home Office, which is at the sharp end of the operation of the state. However much we may dress it up, the business of the Home Office is actually about enforcing the state’s monopoly over the use of force, and its monopoly over the deprivation of other people’s liberties. It is a hard, tough job, both for the person at the top and for those all the way down.
The other aspect that lies behind one of the core arguments in the debate is that, because the Home Office’s business is about the use of force, the deprivation of liberty and the refusal of rights, junior, young and quite inexperienced staff must often be accorded a very high level of discretion—discretion to arrest people, to allow them in, to lock them up, and so on—which is not accorded to equivalent people elsewhere. The whole system will seize up unless those lower down believe that those at the top are worthy of their confidence, and are ready to take responsibility when things go wrong.
I am not dewy-eyed about what can go wrong in a very large Department—of course not—and no Secretary of State is responsible for locking every cell door or checking every border. I recall occasions when, after a full and careful inquiry, one or two people had to be invited to pursue their careers elsewhere. That is inevitable. However, I believe that it must be done in a way that is judicious and judicial. Secretaries of State must ensure that they take the overwhelming majority of their staff with them. What they should not do—I am sorry that the Home Secretary has embarked on this—is adopt what appears to me, whatever the right hon. Lady’s personal motives, to be both a vindictive and a punitive approach of hanging someone out to dry because it seemed to her that that would be a way of saving her career.
Hillsborough Disaster
George Howarth Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
Every weekend, hundreds of thousands of people attend public events, including many sporting events. They leave their homes in the not-unreasonable expectation that those who are responsible for the management and safety of those events will do their jobs professionally, thoroughly and properly, and that all the experience available will be brought to bear in those situations. What they do not expect is that if something does go wrong, as things do occasionally at events, any victims will be turned into villains. At the heart of the continuing problem that the families, I and many Members have about what happened at Hillsborough is that that is exactly what happened—there was an attempt to turn the people who were victims, in the ways described by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), into villains.
My hon. Friend spoke movingly and eloquently, and I think that he spoke for the whole House. His speech was thorough and covered all the events, problems and things that have gone wrong since, but what he did by reading out the names of the victims was to bring things back to the human scale. I want to do that now by mentioning two people who were constituents of mine at the time—they have since moved—Mr and Mrs Joynes. They lost a son, Nicholas, who has been named by my hon. Friend, and I had a lot to do with them in the early years after the tragedy occurred. They would not want to be seen as being any different from any of the other families concerned, but I single them out because they typify the dignity with which people have responded to the loss of loved ones.
I mention Mr and Mrs Joynes because it was at their request that I attended a day of the inquest hearings, at which I was appalled. It was clear from the way those mini inquests were handled that the whole event seemed to be geared up to proving how much or little alcohol was in the blood of those who had been killed in that tragic and awful disaster. I note that there is a whole debate to be had about mini inquests, but it might be best to have that debate on another occasion. Is it any surprise that those people who had lost loved members of their families at Hillsborough were offended when, on top of the attempts to turn the victims into villains, they found that the inquest, which was supposed to be about establishing cause of death—nothing more than that—seemed to be a perpetuation of that calumny?
Mr Howarth
Indeed—it was.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on the role they have played in bringing about the release of all these documents, and I welcome, I think, the statement that the Home Secretary made today. As I understand it, she has said that all documents, including Cabinet minutes, will be made available and that nothing will be withheld from the glare of public scrutiny. If that is what she was saying, I very much welcome that. I followed her comments carefully and that appears to be what she said.
I want to make a slight qualification about the process of redaction. The Home Secretary will be aware that, wearing another hat, I sit on the Intelligence and Security Committee. When we produce annual reports or any other kind of report we use the process of redaction, which is necessary because issues of national security are sometimes involved. However, I am aware that redaction causes suspicion. What is left out gives the media vent to speculate about what might have been in there. In this particular case, the families who want to know everything, and rightly so, might feel that something has been excluded. The point I want to make to the Home Secretary is that more thought needs to be given to how that process is to be conducted, who is to be involved in it and who will have the final veto. The default position should be to have no use of redaction unless there are issues of personal medical evidence or of data protection to consider. Data protection should not be used to protect those who may have been culpable of failing in their duties, but other issues of data protection, including in relation to the families themselves, might be relevant. There should be redaction only in those circumstances, and even then each decision should be open to question by the families and the independent panel.
Mrs May
It might be helpful if I clarify these issues and respond to the points that the right hon. Gentleman has made. As far as Government papers are concerned, there will be no redaction by Government. Those papers will be available to the independent panel and it will be up to the panel to decide whether there should be any redaction. Having spoken to the panel I know that its view is that redaction should be minimal, but it will wish to discuss with the families the possible redaction of some personal information relating to the victims. I hope that everybody making papers available to the panel will follow the Government’s lead in ensuring that there is no redaction in those papers.
Mr Howarth
I am very grateful to the Home Secretary for that clarification, but I still make the point on redaction that there needs to be some thought about how those three different groups, including the Government, will handle that process. I welcome the fact that she said, I think, that the default position should be to publish rather than redact and I hope that that process prevails.
I shall conclude now because I know that many others want to speak. The most important thing for those who have lost loved ones is that light should be shone into all the dark corners that so far have not been revealed, and I hope that the process will do that. I know that nothing can bring comfort in bereavement, particularly given that so many of those who died were so young, but I hope that families will at least feel vindicated in having defended the reputation of their family members and of those who were, collectively, so badly smeared at the time.
Liverpool Passport Office
George Howarth Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs Ellman
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments and certainly agree. Indeed, she provides an example of the human cost of what has happened in Liverpool.
It has been said that the decision to dismiss the 14 employees was taken on the basis of “legal advice”, and it has even been claimed that to maintain their employment would have been “illegal”. I challenge that. I have seen no evidence that any formal legal advice was sought or obtained, and Paul Luffman’s letter seeking such advice was never sent.
Telephone conversations and personal discussions, which I am told took place, do not constitute formal legal advice; nor is there any record of the questions to which any verbal advice responded. The suggestion of “illegality” in allowing those employees to continue with the permanent status that they were awarded is grossly misleading and an attempt to divert attention from what has happened and from the culpability of those who are responsible.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate about a running grievance that affects a number of our constituents. Does she agree that, regardless of the recruitment method and whatever flaws it had, there is no real evidence that it would be illegal to rectify the situation, so the Department and, by extension, Ministers have a real opportunity to redress a terrible example of bad faith on the part of the Department?
Mrs Ellman
I thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution and certainly agree. During the course of my contribution, I will suggest what I think needs to be done to redress the situation.
It is possible that, given the circumstances in which the permanent employment status was awarded, continuing with it was contrary to an interpretation of current departmental rules, but that is a very different proposition from any notion that it was illegal. We are, indeed, discussing a unique situation, and it required an imaginative and flexible approach. In any case, advisers advise, Ministers and their staff are responsible for decisions and the advice itself is influenced by the question posed. Where is the instruction from the Civil Service Commission to dismiss the 14 staff? Does such written instruction exist? If so, will the Minister publish both question and answer?
Correspondence from the then Liverpool regional manager in June 2010 refers to advice that the Civil Service Commission could make an exception to permit these employees to be made permanent staff. Annexe E of the internal review quotes the human resources business partner as stating:
“The Civil Service Commissioners recruitment principles do allow for some exceptions—I believe there could be a small opportunity to attempt these”.
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman invites me to take a legal decision, but a legal process is in action under the tribunal, and what he calls hiding behind legal niceties I would call obeying the law, which it is a good idea for Ministers to do.
Mr George Howarth
The Minister will know that, while a tribunal is pending, it is open to any employer to review the situation, decide that it is not worth proceeding to a tribunal and try to rectify the situation by their own actions. If he wanted to be bold, he could overrule what his officials are telling him and say, “Look, there is a moral case here.” It has been put effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), and in the light of what she said, I think that we should resolve this situation before the tribunal.
Damian Green
I am conscious of the strong feelings involved, and as I said, I would be delighted to look at the new information that she has revealed to the House this afternoon.
The hon. Lady made a number of other legal points. As she will be aware, the civil service rules do not permit exceptions to enable permanent appointment under this type of system, although they can enable the extension of fixed-term contracts up to a maximum period of two years. She mentioned the letter from Paul Luffman, which was indeed a draft letter that was never sent. It was not sent to the commissioners because the Home Office human resources team were dealing directly with the commissioners, not the IPS.
I want to put on record what happened. The core of the problem sits with an error made by the Liverpool passport office in September 2008 in preparation for the peak demand period starting in March 2009. At that time, the Liverpool office ran a recruitment exercise using friends and families as a candidate-attraction method. The IPS issues more than 5 million passports each year and demand is subject to seasonal peaks. It manages the seasonal variations through the use of flexible employee deployment and through a variety of employee contracts. These contracts include full-time, part-time and part-year appointments and will occasionally include the appointment of staff on fixed-term or casual contracts.
For a number of years, the IPS has, in areas of the country where there are challenges for the permanent recruitment and retention of lower graded staff, used a localised process for the recruitment of fixed-term appointment or casual staff. In this case, short-term opportunities were advertised through the existing network of IPS staff. The recruitment process is closed, which means that the job opportunities are not advertised publicly and therefore other potential candidates are not given access to information about the opportunities available. However, those candidates given the information are selected fairly and are required to demonstrate appropriate levels of competence and behaviours through an application and interview. They are also subject to normal referencing procedures.
Posts advertised under the friends and family scheme should be clearly described as either casual or fixed-term appointments. By definition, friends and family schemes are not fair and open campaigns and, under the civil service Order in Council, cannot result in a permanent appointment to the civil service. Posts advertised and appointed in this way can result only in fixed-term or casual appointments for a maximum of two years. IPS works to defined policies for deploying and recruiting staff. Since 2005, the management and administration of IPS recruitment has been overseen by the IPS central resourcing team in human resources at its headquarters in London. The error made by Liverpool passport office in 2008 and 2009 was that it employed those 14 staff on a permanent basis. The recruitment had not been authorised by IPS’s head of resourcing and the Liverpool office had not described the scheme as falling under the friends and family provisions. This resulted in a list of candidates being subsequently employed on permanent civil service contracts by mistake.
In March 2010, the IPS central resourcing team carried out a routine audit of IPS external recruitment. The audit identified concern about the friends and family recruitment scheme that was adopted at the Liverpool office in 2008 to employ staff in 2009. The concern primarily arose from the fact that staff had been permanently recruited without any open competition or advertisement of the vacancies. IPS considered that the civil service Order in Council had been contravened on the grounds that permanent contracts had been agreed through a process that was not subject to open competition. In view of the contravention, IPS looked to withdraw the permanent contracts and place the individuals involved on fixed-term contracts.
The following month, April 2010, IPS notified the civil service commissioners that a total of 14 permanent contracts were being withdrawn and replaced by fixed-term appointments of under two years. However, that action was not taken immediately. Instead, IPS explored whether alternative approaches existed that could alleviate the potential impact on the staff employed. That process was protracted but IPS was unable to find new evidence to support any other approach. It was not until February 2011 that the final decision was taken to cease the permanent contracts. Having reached that decision, IPS briefed the local senior management team and national trade union representatives from the Public and Commercial Services Union. The PCS local branch was briefed on 16 March 2011 to allow employee representatives time to prepare and consider an appropriate response. On 21 March 2011, the decision to dismiss the affected staff was carried out. The 14 staff affected, still in employment, had their permanent employment contracts terminated immediately and four of those staff, who had already completed two years’ service, by exception were offered a five-week paid notice period. The remaining 10 staff were offered and accepted fixed-term contracts of up to two years, including time already served. Of those 10 fixed-term contracts, three were scheduled to end on 14 June 2011, two on 31 August 2011 and five on 30 September 2011.
Prevent Strategy
George Howarth Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
I certainly agree that we need to challenge the ideology. I also agree that the means by which we deal with violent extremism, or people who are vulnerable to radicalisation towards violent extremism, need to be separated from the wider task of community cohesion and working towards greater participation in society. In the past, people came to look with some concern at what was being done in the name of Prevent because it was trying to mix up those two aspects of work. It is important that we separate out the community cohesion work, which is overseen by the Department for Communities and Local Government.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
As somebody who has high regard for the Home Secretary, I, too, express regret that she has chosen to express some of her views in such party political terms. Surely it is right that we seek unity across the House on this issue.
Given that several thousand young Islamists in this country have been through training systems in Pakistan, can the Home Secretary give the House an assurance that that will be borne in mind in future and that the good work that has been carried out in Pakistan under Prevent and associated programmes will not be jettisoned, because it is important for the terrorist activities that take place in this country?
Mrs May
It is certainly the case that a strand of Prevent work takes place overseas and is overseen by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and it is important that that work is properly evaluated and evidence-based so that we ensure that the money is being spent where it can be seen to be properly working. We need to look very carefully at how the money is spent in that area of activity, but we also need to ensure that it continues to take place, and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will be doing that. Separately from that, because the Department for International Development does not fund Prevent-related work, the work that DFID does in building up society has an impact in this area as well.
Counter-terrorism Review
George Howarth Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend is obviously particularly concerned about the civil liberties aspects of the proposals. I believe that the package that I have announced contains a series of measures that will enable us to protect the public and maintain our national security, while at the same time reducing our civil liberties—[Interruption.]. I mean that the measures will enable us to increase our civil liberties and reduce infringement of them. I am sorry: I was thinking about my hon. Friend’s reference to a “murky, spooky world”.
Let me simply say to my hon. Friend that it is necessary for our security services to be able to operate. The security services and the intelligence agencies do a valuable job for us in this country, and, by definition, what a security service does must remain secret.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
In the context of civil liberties, which does the Home Secretary consider to be more draconian, a control order or 24-hour round-the-clock surveillance?
Mrs May
There is a significant difference between telling people that they cannot do something and watching people while they are doing certain things, while enabling them to lead as normal a life as possible commensurate with the protection of the public. That, I believe, is the balance that we have achieved in these new measures.
Policing in the 21st Century
George Howarth Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
Can the Home Secretary tell the House whether she has had any independent assessment made of the likely impact of these proposals on crime rates?
Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism
George Howarth Excerpts(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Keith Vaz
I understand that; it is exactly the point that Ian Blair, now Lord Blair, made to the Select Committee. However, as we have heard today from the Home Secretary, this power has not been used very often. I am sure that she was in the Chamber when the Attorney-General spoke on the issue—it was one of the best speeches that I have ever heard here—and opposed what the last Government were going to do. To be perfectly frank, if one has a power that one does not use, why have it?
It is important to consider who supported the longer detention period. Only the police came before the Committee and said that they supported it. Ken Macdonald—now Lord Macdonald—who is conducting the review had no reservations when he was Director of Public Prosecutions, but had reservations after he ceased to be DPP. He brought those reservations—
Mr Howarth
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for reluctantly giving way. Does he recall that when those debates were going on, the claim was never that these powers would be used frequently, but that they might be necessary in very exceptional circumstances?
Keith Vaz
My right hon. Friend is right, but we now have the facts and some evidence that we did not have before. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton mentioned the security services. The security services have never said, on or off the record, that they wanted an increase in the detention period. When they met the Select Committee, they were very clear that they were not taking a position on this, and that was echoed in the statements made by the head of MI5. In their view, it was a decision to be made by politicians.
My next point concerns the impact on the community. I listened to what my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary said, and I have great admiration for him. However, I do not believe that the so-called independent research conducted by officials at the Home Office—or consultants, or whoever did it—truly reflects the views of the community. This matter impacts on the community, and that includes the ethnic minority communities of this country, specifically the Muslim community. There was huge disquiet about these powers being sought by the last Government. I have 10,000 people of the Muslim faith in my constituency; others have more. It was not only the Muslim community but the entire ethnic minority community that was concerned, although they may not have wanted to relate their views to consultants for a research document.
The Home Secretary is coming before the Select Committee tomorrow morning—I hope she has not forgotten, because we are all turning up and it would be terrible if she were not there—and we will of course probe her about her review. I am sure that she will deal with all the points that we raise in the competent way she has done since becoming Home Secretary. However, in answer to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) she said that she was personally in favour of 14 days. She had me until that point. If she believes that 14 days is the right limit, how can she come before the House and ask for 28? On that point alone, and having been convinced by right hon. and hon. Members, I will vote against the motion.