Intelligence and Security Services

David Winnick Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I suspect that there will be a sharp divide in the Chamber, not necessarily on party lines, as in previous debates on intelligence and security over many years, even before the agencies were put on a statutory basis. Like everyone else, I do not for one moment doubt the need for the security and intelligence agencies to work as required. That would be so even were we not faced by the threat of acute terrorism. Let no one be in doubt that I entirely accept the necessity for such activities, as other Members have said.

There have, however, been scandals in the past. During my own parliamentary career, we had the “Spycatcher” episode, in which Peter Wright and other MI5 officers acted outside the law and in a way that was a disgrace to the organisation; the Government of the day tried to ban the book that Wright wrote, but finally “Spycatcher” was published. Some in the security agencies took the view that Harold Wilson was possibly a long-time Soviet mole. In 1988, Edward Heath—as a former Prime Minister, he probably knew what he was talking about—told the Commons in a debate that if some in the security services

“saw someone reading the Daily Mirror, they would say, ‘Get after him, that is dangerous. We must find out where he bought it.’”—[Official Report, 15 January 1988; Vol. 125, c. 612.]

Some would say that that was a long time ago, which indeed it was, but to bring ourselves more up to date, in February 2010, just before the election, there was the case of Binyam Mohamed, who had been the subject of extraordinary rendition. He was tortured. He had lived in Britain for many years, but he was not a British citizen, and there was no doubt that he was tortured in Pakistan. A federal court in Washington confirmed and upheld his story that he had been severely tortured.

The then Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, and his fellow judges concluded in 2010—not in the 1980s—that MI5 had misled the Intelligence and Security Committee and went on to say:

“Some Security Services officials appear to have a dubious record”

when it comes to human rights and coercive techniques. I would not have thought for one moment that when the then Master of the Rolls and his fellow judges made that comment they doubted the need for the security services. They were not in the business of trying to undermine the protection of our security against terrorism, but that was a very strong indictment, to say the least, of some officials. It was not argued that MI5 officials had been involved in torture. There have never been such allegations, but the argument was that MI5 officers were a party to it, knew what was going on and did not tell their political masters. In other words, they condoned it. So the security services have a record that we condemn.

This debate has arisen largely as a result of Edward Snowden’s disclosures and much of what has appeared in The Guardian. The general attitude of the authorities—politicians, the Government and others—is that we should not know about such matters, that The Guardian should not have published what it did, that Snowden is a traitor and that revealing what he did is not in the interests of the United States, Britain or other allies, so The Guardian has done a disservice. I could not disagree more.

[Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)]

If in the last few weeks, we had lost a city to nuclear terrorism or there had been a gigantic mass casualty, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituents would see Edward Snowden as a trendy, cool whistleblower or as a traitor.

[Mr Winnick]

I do not believe for one moment that The Guardian published material that would help terrorists. There is no evidence of that. It is all very well the hon. Gentleman acting as a spokesperson for those who want to damage The Guardian, but they do not produce any evidence. They simply say, as the hon. Gentleman has just done, that if there were some atrocity, The Guardian should be held responsible. Where is the evidence, and why would The Guardian or any other newspaper want to help terrorists? The hon. Gentleman is saying that The Guardian is totally irresponsible and willing to publish something that could aid terrorism, when there is not the slightest evidence of that.

On Friday, The Guardian published information that the German Chancellor’s mobile phone had been monitored for years by the US National Security Agency. Is he suggesting that that information will help terrorists, or that the international terrorist network is now in a better position to cause harm to us or our allies as a result of that information? Should we not know that that has occurred? If the hon. Gentleman wants to respond, I will give way.

[Mr Holloway]

I welcome this debate. I was making a simple point about Edward Snowden and whether the hon. Gentleman’s constituents would think he was a terrorist in the event that what I described had happened. I did not even mention The Guardian.

[Mr Winnick]

My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson) spoke about the latest technology. I opposed my own Government on identity cards because I thought they would be an intrusion into civil liberties. Such documents should not be introduced, except perhaps in war time, because they would not assist in the struggle against terrorism in any way. I was pleased that they dropped the proposal, but the growth in information technology to which reference has been made several times during the debate and the amount of information that the intelligence agencies can accumulate would have been unthinkable even 10 years ago and in some ways that dwarfs the dangers posed by identity cards. That is why I take the view that it is unlikely that the parliamentary oversight that we are debating today, despite some of the changes that I am pleased about, including the additional powers that have been given to the Committee, will be effective, but oversight is essential.

Going back to The Guardian, during Monday’s debate on the Prime Minister’s statement on the European Council, he said:

“I do not want to have to use injunctions, D notices or other, tougher measures; it is much better to appeal to newspapers’ sense of social responsibility. However, if they do not demonstrate some social responsibility, it will be very difficult for the Government to stand back and not to act.”—[Official Report, 28 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 667.]

That is the most blatant threat to the press in recent times. It says in effect, “Do as I say or the Government will take the necessary measures.” That is all the more unfortunate while we are debating a royal charter that is being described as no threat to the press. What the Prime Minister said on Monday is very much a threat to the press. I tabled a question to the Prime Minister asking what information had appeared in The Guardian on intelligence matters that the Government objected to on security grounds. The answer, which I could have given when I tabled the question, was that he had nothing to add.

[Mr Wallace]

I do not think the suggestion is that any newspaper should be above the law, whether it is The Guardian or a Murdoch newspaper. They are all subject to the law, as are all citizens of this country.

[Mr Winnick]

Indeed. No newspaper should be above the law, as I understand the position at the moment. I must be careful because something that is taking place in the courts is sub judice, but it demonstrates that newspapers are not above the law. When they break the law, they can be charged like any individual. I believe in a free press and I have mentioned the paper that is in the spotlight at the moment. If it were The Sun, the Daily Mail or The Times, I would take the same view. I do not take the view that I do because the newspaper in question happens to be The Guardian. I take it because a newspaper has the right to publish material that it believes is in the national interest. That is a free press, which I happen to be in favour of. I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman was also in favour of that. In the argument on another subject, it has been said that we have had a free press for more than 300 years. It has had many setbacks during those 300 years, but I am keen that we should continue to have a free press and not something that is more like what happened in the past in eastern Europe.

I have two hopes about the present situation. I hope that The Guardian will not give way, and that it will demonstrate that it will continue to publish what it believes is important. It is interesting that the Prime Minister said in response to a Conservative Member that the paper had agreed not to publish certain matters, so suggestions of irresponsibility are not relevant.

I also hope that there will be sufficient parliamentary support for what the paper is doing. If we believe in a free press, and no one on the Government side or members of the Intelligence and Security Committee would disagree for one moment that there needs to be a free press, I hope that we will uphold the right of The Guardian to do what it is doing and resist the Government’s pressure and blackmail. It is absolutely essential that the information that Snowden has revealed, which is not helping the terrorists, but which we should know about—really, to a large extent, it was done in our name—should be in the public domain, and I am glad that it is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wallace]

RIPA is not perfect. It has its flaws, like any legislation, but it was an attempt to put on a statutory basis what we were doing to protect our agents, our personnel and the functions that we carry out. Let us remember that spying is dangerous. It is about risk. Our men and women in Cheltenham, in Vauxhall and all over the country put their lives at risk to protect Britain, and there is a serious downside to getting it wrong. If they get it wrong, they do not get charged the wrong price, or something of the sort; if they get it wrong, people die. If that happens, constituents get very upset, and the country becomes less secure. Terrorists start to win; countries that are not our friends or allies start to win; and British industry starts to lose out. Spying has a strong role to play, but getting it wrong carries great risks.

I will not go on about The Guardian, but I will make one or two points. First, the newspaper has yet to specify any crime committed by the British Government, authorities or spies, even though that is what its public interest defence hinges on. It has yet to produce any evidence that British spies are breaking British laws. It is welcome to do so at any time, and I would be delighted to discuss that in a meeting with the editor of The Guardian. Until he publishes such evidence, however, the reports amount to saying, “Yahoo! Look how exciting technology is. Look what we can do.” That is not a public interest defence; that is an attempt to sell more newspapers.

Secondly, how do we know the whole picture? I am assured that grown-up people in The Guardian are sitting down in a sealed room and looking through all the evidence. Perhaps they could have asked for help from their former features editor, Richard Gott, who had to resign in 1994 after allegations emerged that he had taken money from the KGB. He would have been a good man to review the evidence.

Who should be the judge and jury in this case? I venture to suggest that a state with some form of oversight would be a better judge and jury than a whole load of journalists locking themselves up in a room with the evidence. Until The Guardian produces evidence of a crime that our agents are supposed to have committed, it has no public interest defence. That is all that it has to answer, and I will defend its right to publish if it produces evidence of a crime.

[Mr Winnick]

What sort of oversight was there in the case that I have mentioned of Binyam Mohamed, who was tortured with the knowledge of MI5 officers? I am not aware that such information was reported to the Intelligence and Security Committee, or that it took the initiative in trying to find out whether other such cases occurred. To a large extent, oversight has been defective, either because of indifference on that Committee’s part or because the security agencies have not been willing to provide the relevant information. The hon. Gentleman is putting a total gloss on the practices of the past—I hope that they are in the past—which were unacceptable to Parliament and to the British public.

[Mr Wallace]

I totally agree that there have been failures, which is why we introduced new legislation to give greater powers to the Intelligence and Security Committee. It does not have to take things at face value; it can appoint an investigator to go in and do what it wants to do, not what it is told to do. I recognise that there have been failures in the past, but that is why, step by step over the past 20 years, we have seen layer on layer of new legislation and new oversight. Yes, there were failures and no one is perfect, but our state has oversight and a democratic legitimacy that many of our opponents do not.

Let us remember that Mr Snowden could have gone to Switzerland—the Americans have been after Roman Polanski for decades and they have never got him back—but, no, he went to China and Russia. I am not sure whether he is a traitor, but I question his judgment about the countries to which he decided to run off. Russia, for example, is killing journalists and lawyers as we speak. We must keep in mind the motives behind that so-called whistleblower.

The world will become increasingly vulnerable to abuse of communications data, which will be used by more and more people for criminal reasons. I am conscious of the sub judice rule here, but I must point out an irony regarding communications data that is so viciously opposed by several colleagues. Should we ever, have to investigate, say, a couple of journalists exchanging e-mails, if we were to go to an internet company to ask for the e-mails between Mr A and Mr B, there is no guarantee that it will have kept that data. Internet providers currently have no obligation to keep records in the same way as mobile companies. The hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson)may want to reflect on that.

I have issues with the way that intelligence is used as evidence by politicians. I risked my life in Northern Ireland to avoid shortcuts and the imposition of 28 or 90-day detentions without charge, which I opposed, ID cards, which were a complete waste of time, and detention without trials. Spies have risked their lives to keep us within the law. Politicians have a duty to ensure that they do not bend the law to try to cut corners on good intelligence gathering, to turn it into evidence to get a conviction in court.

[Mr Graham Brady in the Chair]

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[Martin Horwood]

The hon. Gentleman makes a humorous point, but the activities of the Vatican bank and other things have been the subject of conspiracy theories, so who knows? Yes, of course, it is surprising that the Pope was bugged. However, the point is that we do not know the rationale for any of the intercepts, the precise thinking behind them or the precise techniques involved.

Quite apart from the overall democratic oversight, there is a sophisticated whistleblowing process, leading right up to the independent tribunals outside the intelligence services. The test for the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) is not whether Edward Snowden is obviously a traitor, but whether we would have thought he was a traitor if, instead of going through the medium of The Guardian, he had simply handed thousands of pages of top-secret documents directly to foreign intelligence agencies or terrorist networks, because that is, in effect, what he has done. In those circumstances, if he had not used the media as a medium, nobody would have hesitated to call him a traitor.

[Mr Winnick]

Does the hon. Gentleman recollect what happened in the 1970s, when Daniel Ellsberg released papers relating to the Vietnam war? He was described as a traitor at the time by some in the United States—certainly in the Nixon Administration—but he is now considered to be a hero who did a great service for his country.

[Martin Horwood]

Given my age at the time, I do not actually recall that. However, the principle here is that if illegality is alleged, there are methods by which people can address it. In our system, the powers of the tribunal in RIPA are very broad. It is able

“to consider and determine any reference to them by any person”.

It is

“the appropriate forum for any complaint if it is a complaint by a person who is aggrieved by any conduct falling within”

the relevant subsections

“which he believes…to have taken place in relation to him, to any of his property, to any communications sent by or to him, or intended for him, or to his use of any postal service, telecommunications service or telecommunication system; and…to have taken place in challengeable circumstances…on behalf of any of the intelligence services.”

The tribunal has a broad remit, and systems have been set up in addition to all the democratic oversight through the Intelligence and Security Committee, and the fall-back processes involving the commissioners. People can use those processes in a responsible way, rather than act in the way we have seen.

In terms of having a debate, quite properly, about whether the oversight processes are working properly, the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) made some important points, including about whether people are overseeing decisions they made in office. There is an issue there, and perhaps there is further refinement and definition of the Intelligence and Security Committee’s work to be done. However, if we are to find needles in a haystack, we need to allow people to look at the haystack. We need to accept that there is a balance to be struck between access and surveillance, but that access is an important part of that balance.

When Winston Churchill talked about the role Bletchley Park played in the second world war, he called the staff there the geese that laid golden eggs and never cackled. We owe similar respect to the staff of GCHQ now.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I join this debate on the oversight of the intelligence services as a former diplomat who, on his first posting overseas, made a telephone call to a western ally embassy that was interrupted by a third party with the phrase, “Please repeat the last sentence.” I mention that to suggest that the timing of this debate seems to be driven by an element of possible hysteria and even naivety. Intelligence agencies do eavesdrop. It might well be that the motivation behind the debate of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) was perhaps an overreaction to media suggestions that every e-mail is indeed read by someone in Gloucestershire. As the Foreign Secretary said, our intelligence agencies

“have neither the interest nor the capability to do so.”

The hon. Gentleman said that this was a surveillance society, that there was a natural trend towards more surveillance and that privacy in a digital era would be one of the determining questions of our age. I do not believe that that is the case, but let me tackle the oversight of the intelligence service within the time allowed.

There is of course legitimate interest in the matter in Parliament, which, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) rightly highlighted, is responsible for oversight of our intelligence services. The suggestion earlier on in a series of bizarre allegations from the hon. Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) that our intelligence agencies were responsible for the bugging of every reader of the Daily Mirror is one that we can put to one side. The intelligence agencies of course cannot answer for themselves.

The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) rightly alluded to various aspects of the oversight of the intelligence service that have, of course, been strengthened in exactly the way to which the Chairman of the ISC referred. The key aspect in that is the role of the intelligence services commissioner and the interception of communications commissioner, who review all the licences approved by the Foreign Secretary, the Home Secretary and other Cabinet members. The interception of communications commissioner, who is a senior judge, said:

“It is my belief that GCHQ staff conduct themselves with the highest levels of integrity and legal compliance.”

Personally, I prefer to take his word on that issue and to reassure my constituents that I believe that those staff operate with the utmost morality, rather than to take the word of the right hon. Member for—I forget his constituency, although I know that he spends a lot of time in the Cotswolds.

[Mr Winnick]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Richard Graham]

Alas, there is no time. The right hon. Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) referred to the intelligence agencies operating under outdated laws without a genuine public mandate. That is absolutely not the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Winnick]

rose—

[Richard Graham]

I am terribly sorry, but my time has already been reduced.

[Mr Winnick]

On a point of order, Mr Brady. As I understand it, the hon. Gentleman was alleging that I said that MI5 had bugged every reader of the Daily Mirror. I said nothing of the kind. I quoted Edward Heath, who made the remark.

[Mr Graham Brady (in the Chair)]

The hon. Gentleman has corrected the record, which is a point of debate and not of order.