Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord King of Bridgwater

Monday 19th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I vigorously support this amendment because it has always been my view that the chairman should be remunerated. I served under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, and he should have been remunerated, as indeed should my noble friend Lady Taylor of Bolton. However, what worries me a little is that the matter is to be left to IPSA. That is a very controversial proposition to put, not because IPSA is as unpopular in the Commons as we know it to be, but why should an organisation established to deal with parliamentary allowances and expenditure be required to deal with the expenditure of an outside body? This is the first body, but are we to presume that in the future IPSA will extend its tentacles to managing the financial arrangements of more bodies that are established under statute? Is this the beginning of the growth of IPSA into something even larger than the current organisation which is causing so much grief to Members of Parliament? I simply put the question. If a mechanism is to be found, perhaps I may suggest that IPSA is not the ideal organisation to proceed with this responsibility.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has just said—in the knowledge that there is no back pay in this world. It does seem very weird to be considering this. I am not sufficiently familiar with the remit of IPSA, but although we have been arguing about the extent to which this committee is or is not part of Parliament, in the area of pay and rations it appears to have been put right inside it.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If it were indeed the whole House, then I would oppose the amendment, and I will explain why. I sat on the committee for five years when the chairman was the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater. In my experience, and this will be the experience of those members of the committee who now serve under the chairmanship of Malcolm Rifkind, I noticed that this relationship was very special. I balance the openness of the Select Committee with, on the other hand, the special nature of that relationship between the agencies and the chairman. There are circumstances in which I can imagine that relationship breaking down. That is why it is an extremely sensitive appointment. You must therefore have a narrower shortlist, to put it bluntly, than simply the membership of the whole House of Commons.

I have another argument as well, although perhaps I am doing somersaults here. I have a reservation. Subject to the shortlist that I have just referred to, I have argued in the past that not only is the relationship between the chairman and the agencies very special, but I would take it far further than the Government propose to provide for in the legislation. I believe that the chairman of the ISC should have access to everything that goes on within the agency—everything operational or whatever—and should be the only person on that committee who has total access. The legislation before us will provide a qualified element of access to operational material, but it will not provide for looking at the activities of the agencies in future. It will essentially be about retrospective operations. Ideally, in the committee that I would like to see constructed, the chairman would have access to everything—future, prospective, current and past operations—but would be the only member of the committee to do so. In those circumstances, the idea that any Member of the House of Commons could stand as chairman of the committee would be ludicrous.

As I say, I have very mixed views. If it comes to a vote, I shall probably vote for the amendment, in the hope that it is much harder to overturn a resolution in the House of Commons when it has come from the House of Lords than simply to initiate a debate on an amendment in the Commons. On that basis, I hope that the amendment is carried.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, I share some confusion over this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, has asked whether it is intended that the chairman should come from a group that has already been put forward and proposed, while the noble Lord, Lord Reid, made the point about the membership of the House of Lords. As I read the Bill, you could end up with one Member of the Commons and eight Members of the Lords. That is pretty unlikely, but I can certainly see that we have moved from having one Member of the Lords as a member of the committee to having two. I can see a situation in which the new Opposition do extremely badly in an election and are very short of membership in the Commons but still have to man all the committees and so on. In those circumstances, they might well prefer it if they had one or two extremely well qualified members, perhaps recent Members who had lost their seat and moved into your Lordships’ House and who would be very useful members of the ISC.

Against that background, there would then be the problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Reid, has said, of whether or not the Commons should vote for Lords. I would trust the members of the committee, knowing the ways in which they have arrived on it, to be well capable of deciding who should be their chairman. That is well established practice, as we know from elsewhere. I therefore feel that, subject only to the qualification that the noble Lord, Lord Gilbert, raised, I support the idea that the chairman should be a member of the Opposition. I feel an amendment coming on at Third Reading, and that is one that the Government might like to prepare for.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Campbell-Savours and Lord King of Bridgwater

Monday 9th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I have reservations which I will deal with when I speak to my amendment arguing the case for a Select Committee to take on these responsibilities. Parliament is being required to approve wording which suggests that this committee is controlled by Parliament, but without recognising what the Justice and Security Green Paper of October 2011 says at paragraph 3.19. It states:

“However, under such arrangements”—

that is, the arrangements of a Select Committee—

“the Government would clearly have no veto on publication of sensitive material”.

I repeat:

“no veto on publication of sensitive material”.

In other words, the provision is being introduced as a way for the Government to secure control outside of Parliament, through this half-measure of a committee, over the publication of sensitive material. My view is very simple. If they want to do that, let it be done through a full Select Committee structure. That is the substance of my amendment which will come later.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

My Lords, if I may intervene in this discussion, I seek to bring to it the “veneer of experience”—to quote the Deputy Prime Minister, as the noble Baroness on the Front Bench did on Second Reading—that this House can contribute on these matters. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, who is an excellent member of the committee that I had the privilege to chair for a number of years. In listening to this debate I am absolutely sure that we have reached the time to move forwards. However, I am torn between Amendment 1, the significance of which I have to admit I do not fully understand, and Amendment 3, which proposes moving to Select Committee status. Early in our committee’s discussions we considered the role of a Select Committee, and—if I can stop the noble Lord mucking up my papers—I shall find a quote from a report that our committee produced in 1998 or 1999. We said:

“There are arguments for and against such a status, and we have not as yet formed a view on the issue … Even if thought desirable, however, such changes would take time to introduce, and could alter significantly the structure of relationships between the Committee and the intelligence community”.

I think that, as time has moved on, we have established that sort of relationship.

It is important to remember where we have come from. Although the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, rightly points out that the agencies were not resistant to the establishment of a committee—that certainly matches my own impression, and she knows the situation much better than I do—many serving in the agencies wanted not only an Intelligence and Security Committee but, in their own interest, for that committee to be as thorough and active as possible so that it could carry credibility. As one of the big problems facing the agencies was false allegation and rumour, an independent and credible body would be seen to address and deal effectively with those issues—in secrecy if necessary, and without disclosure of operational information or other evidence, some of which might come from other countries.

My feeling at that time was that it was critical that we should establish credibility, because although many of the agencies were in favour of the committee, others were nervous about whether parliamentarians could be trusted, whether information would be secure or whether it would be leaked—all the problems that one might advance. There was a lot of hostility. I recall that, way back in the early 1980s, Jonathan Aitken was an original proposer of an intelligence and security committee, and he was interrupted by an old colleague, Ray Whitney—a distinguished former member of the foreign service, and a Member of Parliament at the time—who said that whatever one says about the Senate intelligence committee, there is general agreement that it has destroyed the American intelligence capability. That was an exaggeration of the sort of strong feeling common at the time. Having had the privilege of serving under the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who was not the first outspoken advocate of this particular approach, I can attest that there was a lot of resistance to it.

When our committee started out it was very important to establish its credibility. I felt at that time—and members of the committee shared this view; I think that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, was a keen advocate of it—that it was more important to establish the trust of the agencies, to make sure that they were forthcoming with information, because they could switch us off at any time. After all, we were into the “don’t-know don’t knows”, so establishing that trust was important. I believe that that trust, confidence and relationship have been established now—more than established, I hope, given the passage of time. I am therefore very torn between these amendments, Amendment 1 or 2, which propose setting up a Committee of Parliament, or whether there is not an argument for going straight to a Select Committee. I have learnt something today from the noble Lord, Lord Butler. After spending a brief period of 30 years in the House of Commons, I had not understood that the PAC was set up under a different arrangement. One learns something every day. It sounds attractive for the IC to be on the same wavelength.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support the amendment. My parting speech in the House of Commons in 2001 was on the very issue of the payment of chairmen of Select Committees. I wanted to see the development of what you might call a separate career structure in the legislature as opposed to the Executive. When I was a member, the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, did excellent work. When I think of the amount of work that he took on, it is inconceivable that we should now push through legislation without taking full account of that work and the need to ensure that it is remunerated.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

I intervene very briefly. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, for his comments and for those that he made at Second Reading, for which I am grateful. I am not sure whether this amendment can be made retrospective, but it seems an excellent idea. I do support it—it seems logical if a Select Committee chairman in the House of Commons now has it. I understand my noble friend Lord Lamont made the point. The point the noble Lord, Lord Butler, raised is pretty fundamental because it applies to every Select Committee of this House. If the House is not sitting, people do not get any allowance even if those committees are working. The issue goes a bit broader than just changing it for the ISC.

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[Lord Campbell-Savours]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 6 in this group. My amendment deals with the wording in Clause 1(5) of the Bill, which states:

“Before deciding whether to nominate a person for membership, the Prime Minister must consult the Leader of the Opposition”.

I have great reservations about this, and I will explain why. I think that this is the product of muddled thinking. This is an appointment of trust. The appointment requires the Prime Minister’s knowledge of opposition politicians. I think that Ministers very often do not understand what motivates opposition politicians.

As an example I take my own appointment. It is utterly inconceivable that the then Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, now the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, would have appointed me to that committee. She would have referred to my record in the 1980s when I was running with the hounds on the issue of Peter Wright and we caused some considerable difficulty, I was informed, in the House of Commons. I had endless arguments with the Table Office over the tabling of Questions. On a number of occasions my Questions, which, it was thought, would have breached national security had they been tabled, were submitted to the Speaker of the House of Commons under the appeal procedure. If, in the 1980s, I had applied to be a member of this committee, I feel quite sure that if it had been left to the Prime Minister of the day—I am arguing the converse—the Prime Minister of the day might well have objected to a person like me being a member of that committee.

The problem was that, at the time, people did not know what we were campaigning about. It was about reform of Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act and about the need to introduce freedom of information legislation. In both areas we were successful. All I am saying is that, before we go down this route and require the Prime Minister to consult with whomever, we should have in mind that it is possible that people might be blocking appointments in an unfair manner.

Amendment 8 deals with the issue that the chair of the ISC is to be chosen by its members. This is the product of muddled thinking among those who fail to understand the internal dynamics of the committee. It is as if someone has sat down to devise systems of greater accountability that enable them to avoid taking the big question on going for full Select Committee status. In my view, the chairman needs the respect of the agencies, and new members appointed in a new Parliament will have no knowledge of the relationship between the chairman or any member of that committee and the agencies. There is a real danger that the Whips will seek to influence members’ decision about whom to appoint as chairman. It might be that there is an exercise in handing out the jobs going on. I feel that it is wrong that the committee should be placed in a position where it has to choose its chairman at the beginning of a Parliament. New members might be unduly influenced by previous members against their better judgment. As I said at Second Reading, if when I was selected to sit on the committee, I had been asked to vote for the chairman, I would never have voted for the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, because he was not top of my list of popular Secretaries of State, but within a matter of months I realised that he was ideal for the job. You need the experience of being on the committee before you start picking the chairman. What we are doing here is establishing a procedure whereby a chairman will be selected by new members going on to a committee without any knowledge of who they might be appointing.

If a chairman does not fully enjoy the trust of the agencies, there is a danger that that lack of trust may impede the work of the committee by denying access to material that is on the margins of the memorandum of understanding. There will be material on the margins of the memorandum of understanding to which the committee wants access, and it is vital that the chairman is someone who has been picked not by members of the committee but by the Prime Minister.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Butler, that the Bill is inadequate without Amendment 5 because it is simply a diktat. The fact that the Houses of Parliament vote on the members is not a really democratic position. We hope to see a more acceptable position.

The question I would put to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, on Amendment 6 is: when he was active on some of these issues, would he have been appointed or recommended by the leader of the Opposition? He says that there was no way in which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, now the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, would have appointed him. Would the leader of the Opposition have appointed him?

I do not see how else you can do this. It is really down to the calibre, resolution and determination of the leader of the Opposition. In the end, he is in a very powerful position if he says, “These are the people I want. These are the people I think should be from the Opposition”. I do not know—and I do not know whether the noble Lord has any background on this—whether a Prime Minister has refused to accept the recommendation of the leader of the Opposition.

[Lord Campbell-Savours]

If my noble friend Lord Kinnock had been Prime Minister, he would not have been put off putting me on that committee because he was well aware of the campaign that we were running and its objectives.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that comment.

I would like to support opposition Amendment 7. It has not been spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, but I imagine that he will speak to it. It says that the chairman of the ISC should be “from the Opposition party”. In principle, I support that. One of the ways for the committee to gain credibility is for the chairman to be a member of the opposition party. However, I would not wish to see it written into the statute in this way. I will, if I may, cite my own experience. We started this committee with considerable uncertainty and considerable reservations in a number of quarters—in some of the agencies and other places—as to whether it would be reputable. A great effort was made by both the Prime Minister and the then leader of the Opposition to get a pretty experienced bunch. They were mainly ex-Ministers, and I think almost all were privy counsellors. The desire was to have a really credible, reputable and senior committee. It was certainly the most senior of all the committees, and in calibre and experience outranked the PAC, which would otherwise be seen as a pretty senior committee. That was the right way to start.