Foreign Secret Intelligence and State Secrets Privilege

Debate between Jeremy Browne and David Davis

Tuesday 27th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make the final speech—at your discretion—before we adjourn for Easter. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) on securing this debate and on the compelling way in which he laid out his case this evening. I recognise the strength of feeling and sincerity with which he raises this specific case and the wider associated issues it serves to illuminate. I will aim to do justice to the three questions he put to me at the conclusion of his speech, but first I would like to give some context for my answers.

The security agencies play a vital role. They gather intelligence to protect our national security, with particular reference to the Government's defence and foreign policies, in the interests of the UK's economic well-being, and to prevent or detect serious crime. They provide warning of states taking actions hostile to UK interests, or planning such actions. They disrupt terrorism plots. Intelligence disrupts counterfeiting, drug trafficking and other serious offences, and intelligence can provide information on the intentions and capability of hostile state or non-state actors to launch cyber attacks against UK networks.

The agencies conduct their activities in compliance with the law and in a manner consistent with our values. Agency personnel devote considerable time and effort to ensuring that this is the case, and a system of oversight exists. That oversight includes the invaluable work of the Intelligence and Security Committee, composed of parliamentarians drawn from both Houses of Parliament and of two former High Court judges, who act as independent commissioners.

As my right hon. Friend said, the Government published a Green Paper on this issue in October 2011. In doing so, and in considering now the responses, this Government were, are and always will be guided by respect for fundamental rights to justice and fairness. It is always right that the Government should be held properly to account. The Green Paper's proposals will enable better scrutiny, which is a vital element in a healthy democracy.

Let me say a word about foreign intelligence. Threats to our security cross borders. We cannot confront them on our own, neither can we do it without co-operating with intelligence partners on the basis of trust. We rarely have all the pieces of the intelligence picture, and we must analyse the information we have alongside that we receive from our partners to create the fullest possible picture of the threats to our national security.

The ability of other countries to share intelligence with us without fear that we will have to disclose it is absolutely vital to our national interest. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) made that point eloquently in a newspaper article this morning. If we cannot uphold the control principle—the rule that any further use of intelligence requires the agreement of the agency that provided it—and others do not share information with us as a consequence, we incur very real risks to our security. No responsible Government should willingly run such risks. We expect, and demand, the same protection for the intelligence we share with our overseas partners as we offer to those who have shared their information with us. However, under the current legal framework, sensitive material may have to be disclosed in civil proceedings, putting at risk the vital overseas relationships we depend on, as well as sensitive techniques and the lives and safety of individuals.

The Government aim to achieve in any new legislation a system in which there is justice and accountability, in which secret material is protected as it should be in all our interests for the reasons I have just explained, and there is fairness for all parties. We seek to balance all those laudable objectives, including a system where there is justice and accountability.

The Green Paper sets out proposals for handling sensitive material in civil proceedings, including the introduction of closed material procedures. At the same time, it proposed strengthening oversight of the activity of the agencies. Some 90 submissions were received in response to the consultation, of which Ministers will take account when making decisions on the measures to be introduced. I will not prejudge those decisions here.

Let me turn to the questions that my right hon. Friend posed at the end of his speech. On the specific case he raises, what I can say is that the Government are aware of the case, as he has said. We will continue to look into the matter and will decide how to respond to the representations already made on behalf of Mr Bentham and Lord Cecil in due course, and my right hon. Friend’s contribution to our deliberations this evening will of course form part of those considerations.

My right hon. Friend’s second question goes to the nub of the issue, and I can speak to the House at greater length on this broader principle. How do we ensure that new arrangements apply to only the most sensitive material and are not used, as he put it, “to cover up illegal acts and embarrassments”? Ministers will consider that carefully, but I can assure him now that this is not about covering up embarrassment. It is about facilitating the work of the courts by enabling them to look at all relevant material while giving the most sensitive material proper protection. It is about putting more information before the courts than is currently possible for the very small number of cases where sensitive material is centrally relevant. The court would play a critical role and would simply not accept Government justifications for public interest that it considered were made only for the purposes of hiding embarrassment or seeking to cover up unlawful conduct. The circumstances in which a closed material procedure might be necessary are exceptional and rare. They are not wide in scope. Sensitive information is central to a very small number of cases currently before the United Kingdom courts.

On my right hon. Friend’s final question, I am told that, in the United States, Executive Order 13526 provides for the classification and protection of information where

“the unauthorized disclosure of the information reasonably could be expected to result in damage to the national security, which includes defence against transnational terrorism”.

With regard to foreign Government information, the order explicitly states:

“The unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to the national security.”

[Mr David Davis]

I simply wish to make one point and ask that the Minister takes it back to his Department. In The New York Times v. the United States in 1971 the point about the disclosure of foreign information was advanced as one of the Nixon Government’s attempts to stop the Pentagon papers being published. It was rejected by the court on constitutional grounds, and constitutional lawyers have said that the Executive Order makes no difference to that and cannot transcend the constitution. I ask that his Department, in its approach to the Green Paper, makes it clear that there is not that absolute rejoinder the other way, because it is very important that we understand that we are at equal arms with our ally.

[Mr Browne]

I am grateful for that intervention, because it is obviously in our interests that there is reciprocal sharing of information with the United States and a clear understanding of the status of that information. I will certainly draw my right hon. Friend’s comments to the attention of people within the Foreign and Commonwealth Office so that they can consider them in any further submissions made by the Department.

The Government are committed to safeguarding national security. Drawing on our society’s fundamental values, we are also pledged to protect the liberties and way of life of our citizens. Those aims—protecting our national security and liberty and way of life of our citizens—need not be in conflict.