Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord King of Bridgwater and Lord Gilbert

Monday 19th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

I very much share many of the views expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Reid. I am not quite sure where the United States stands on advise and consent now, with the well established practice over there, or whether a strong lobby is still in favour, or whether there are the problems that the noble Lord has identified—I think that he is absolutely correct—in that deciding to consent and back people inhibits in some way the critical faculty that might otherwise apply.

I am pretty sympathetic to the noble Baroness’s amendment. In a permissive sense they have great merit—and, as has been indicated, public hearings certainly could be done. It is something that we have talked about for some time. It might be pretty disappointing for a public expecting some startling revelations to emerge. Also, I assume that if they were public they would probably be televised as well. While I am very grateful to the tribute paid by my noble friend to our former colleague, Lord St John of Fawsley, there is one great problem about Select Committees when they are televised, which I certainly appreciated not having to bother about when I chaired the ISC. Every member of the committee wishes to appear on television; they are only allowed to ask two or three questions before it is the next chap’s turn, but other members of the committee do not follow their line of argument because they have worked out exactly what they want to say to catch their headline. When I was chairing the ISC, with the absence of television and all that, we were able to have consistent follow-up arguments, and people could follow up with reasonably penetrating questioning at times—as I believe that the noble Baroness may have experienced. We did not have that problem.

One therefore has to recognise the apparent attractiveness of public hearings but I certainly agree that the bulk of the work will have to be done overwhelmingly in secret, as it is at the moment. I would not wish this proposal for public hearings to be put in legislation as a compulsion, but I hope that there will be an opportunity for them. Without embarrassing the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, she was very willing during her time in office to appear in public, make speeches and stand up and talk as widely as she could about the activities of the Security Service. The more that that can be done and the more publicity they receive, whereby they are not seen as rather sinister secret undertakings, the more it would be in the interests of the agencies themselves. These amendments are good ideas but compulsion needs to be avoided in the Bill.

[Lord Gilbert]

My Lords, the situation is considerably more complex than your Lordships have heard this afternoon. One has the impression from the debate that the only intelligence-gathering agencies are MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, and that is far from the case. We have the Defence Intelligence Agency and the intelligence work of the individual services, and a lot of other people in this country handle high-security intelligence by acquiring, analysing and distributing it. If we think that we have covered the waterfront just by approving the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, we are deluding ourselves.