House of Lords

Debate between Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My noble friend Lord Sewel has said it is a pity that that happened. I have just been appointed a trustee of Age Scotland, the new body that replaced Age Concern Scotland and Help the Aged in Scotland. The director, Brian Sloan, said to me when I was appointed, “Of course, George, you’ve got more of a direct interest in our work now”. He was absolutely right. This is the kind of thing that we should be doing. We are not in favour of arbitrary retirement ages; I should not advocate that. However, I do not think this is arbitrary. We have looked at it carefully and made a serious recommendation.

We then come to the longer term, which is the more important debate—no disrespect to what my noble friend Lord Williams and others have raised about the current matter. In the longer term, we need to start with the purpose of this House: not how many we are, but what we are here for. First of all, do we need a second Chamber? An argument has to be made against unicameralism in favour of a second Chamber. I used to be a unicameralist, but if you go to Scotland and see what has happened with the Scottish Parliament, where there are no checks and balances on a Parliament controlled by one party, with a First Minister, the Presiding Officer, and the majority of the Select Committees of the same party, you begin to see the advantages of a second Chamber.

If noble Lords agree with that, how should the second Chamber differ from and relate to the House of Commons? I think it was the noble Lord, Lord Butler, who said that it should be complementary to it. I think the noble Lord, Lord Walton, raised the question of the council of experts that we have here. This is a really important dilemma about what we are here for. If we want to be a council of experts that is one thing, but it does not have the legitimacy of a body that has some form of election, whether direct or indirect. That is difficult. It is difficult to argue that a nominated body, however expert and brilliant it is, should be part of the legislature. That conflict needs reconciling.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

I suggest to the noble Lord that it is the primacy of the House of Commons that is the answer to that. The primacy of the House of Commons is because they are elected. This body can contribute its expertise without being elected.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

That is an argument. I am posing a problem rather than coming down on one side or the other. It is difficult. If one looks around the world, there is nowhere else where the second Chamber does not have some form of legitimacy. We need to look at that where we are participating in the legislative process.

I do not know whether this is going to cause controversy in relation to what the noble Lord, Lord Cope, said. He spoke about the culture of this place and some of us—I am sure he was not referring to me, but maybe to some others—not accepting it. With respect to the noble Lord, some people outside this place do not accept all aspects of its culture, particularly the privilege that is represented by the very nature of this building, this legislature and this part of the legislature. People have to recognise that. We do not all think that the comfort and the comradeship represented here is automatically the right thing. There are some good aspects, but there are also some legitimate differences between the parties. These ought to be represented and expressed in a legislature. There is nothing wrong with doing that in a forceful and eloquent way; that was done no better than by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. I agreed with everything he said in his speech today. That will not do him or me any good; we will be attacked by the cybernats—the nationalists who go online and attack us regularly—for being in cahoots again. I think it is good that on an issue such as this, which is not a party-political issue but one about the functioning of the second Chamber, we come to some kind of agreement.

I have gone on much longer than I intended. I apologise. In conclusion, the Labour Lords’ group recommended a UK constitutional commission, as my noble friend Lady Taylor said. That has been supported by the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, which Graham Allen MP chairs, by the Electoral Reform Society, by the Constitution Society, by Unlock Democracy and many others. Along with my noble friend Lord Purvis of Tweed from the Liberal Democrats, I have been involved in setting up an all-party group to look at ways that this can be pushed forward.

The leader of my party, Mr Miliband, has already said that a Labour Government would legislate for a senate of the nations and regions. With no disrespect, I say to him and to the leaders of the other parties, why can we not set up that constitutional convention now? Why can there not be some agreement between the parties? Why can they not show that they can work together and say, “This is how we want to go forward”? We need that sensible, holistic approach, with respect, to protect us from further constitutional Cleggery: poorly thought out, short-term changes in that outrageous attack from Mr Clegg on the House of Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said. By the way, that did not stop him stuffing lots more Liberal Democrat Peers into this place. There is a slight dichotomy there. Ah, a Liberal Democrat voice.

Justice and Security Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 19th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, commenting on what the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said at the end of her remarks, perhaps I may say that it was not today that the Intelligence and Security Committee considered amendments. The committee has not had the opportunity to consider the amendments she has put down. Therefore, in offering a comment, it will be personal rather than on behalf of the committee.

I have no objection to Amendment 9 because it is a permissive amendment. However, Amendment 11 states:

“The ISC shall each year call the heads of the Agencies and the Secretary of State to give evidence before them in a session open to the public”.

In principle, there is no objection to that. Indeed, the chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee says that it is the committee’s intention to have a public hearing. The arrangements for that are being considered at the moment. However, one would not want this to be a public hearing that is too staged, which would be worse than useless. I would counsel against passing an amendment which makes it compulsory for the Intelligence and Security Committee to have a public meeting each year. That may well be the outcome but there may be times when the work programme simply is not consistent with it. That is my only cavil against that.

I would not be in favour of Amendment 12, which states that the committee,

“shall conduct its proceedings in public, save when it determines that members of the public shall be excluded”.

There would be so many meetings for which that resolution would have to be moved that it would be a matter of public comment and derision, which would reduce confidence in the ISC rather than increase it.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, I have made a mental note never to tut tut silently in future, especially since that silent tut tutting can be observed by noble Baronesses even about 10 yards away. So I will be careful. The reason why I asked whether the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, had been able to attend the debates that we have had in the Moses Room is because, when I served, as I did for four years, on the Intelligence and Security Committee, I had the privilege of introducing and replying to those debates. We had great difficulty in encouraging people to attend and participate. If more Members of the House had attended and participated, it might have added to the information available in the debates that we have had at different stages.

A few years ago, when we had a Labour Government, before the Conservative Government came in, the Intelligence and Security Committee reported to the House on almost all, if not all, the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, has raised—on diversity and all the other points that she raised. We had indications and reports about it, and people raised it during the course of the debate. Even all those years ago, we discussed holding hearings in public; we discussed that in the debate in the Moses Room, along with the problems and opportunities that might be available if we held them in public. I hope that I am not giving any secrets away in saying this, but I was in favour of moving towards holding a meeting or two in public if we could do that. It is the right thing to do.

It would help and inform the debates that we have on legislation if Members came along to the annual debate. I presume that either the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and the noble Lord, Lord Butler, will introduce the report and reply to the debate. Noble Lords would find it a very interesting and educational experience.

Intelligence and Security Committee Annual Report for 2010-11

Debate between Lord Butler of Brockwell and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Monday 12th December 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, it is an honour to represent your Lordships’ House on the Intelligence and Security Committee, not least because I share the view which has been expressed that the committee’s work is very important. It is also a pleasure to serve on such a distinguished and experienced committee, which is very ably chaired by Sir Malcolm Rifkind, with his experience as a former Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary, and is supported by a first-rate secretariat. I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, refer to that. The committee also contains others with ministerial and Front-Bench experience in the Home Office and the Northern Ireland Office, including, notably, the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, with whom it is a special pleasure for me to share the representation of your Lordships’ House.

As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, has referred to the chairmanship of the committee, I see the argument that such committees should have a chairman drawn from an opposition party. However, I am absolutely confident that I speak for the whole committee when I say that when we have the good fortune to have a chairman of the calibre, energy and experience of Sir Malcolm Rifkind, that trumps every other argument.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Perhaps I may make two things clear. First, I was repeating the argument that the noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, made last year; it was not I but he who was arguing for an opposition chairman. Secondly, having known Malcolm Rifkind since we served together on Edinburgh City Council, I wholly endorse what the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has said.

[Lord Butler of Brockwell]

My Lords, the importance of the work of the committee has grown because of the greatly increased salience that the intelligence services have gained in our national life. It is a long time—many decades—since their activities were directed only against foreign antagonists of this country. Sadly, the growth of terrorism—first Irish and then other forms of criminality and terrorism, not only Islamic—has meant that the activities of the intelligence services have had also to involve citizens of our own country. It is therefore right that the agencies should no longer operate wholly in the shadows but that legislation should have been passed to put them on a statutory basis, to regulate them and to hold them accountable to Parliament.

At the same time, much of their activity has to remain secret. On that secrecy their effectiveness and the trust and co-operation of allied countries and those who would help them depends. We have to combine accountability with the protection of legitimate secrecy, and that is where a committee of parliamentarians has an important role to play.

Two other circumstances have affected the role of the intelligence agencies in today’s world. One—and this point has not been made this afternoon—is that their work has become much more international. Terrorism, espionage and criminality no longer respect national boundaries, if they ever did. This means not only that we have to work much more closely with allies and other countries with shared interests, but that the agencies within our own country—both outward-looking and inward-looking—have to work much more closely together. The committee has seen that development and it welcomes and encourages it.

The second development is that the advance of technology means that the methods and instruments of intrusion into the lives of individuals and institutions have greatly expanded. The noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, rightly referred to cybercrime and the threat that it presents to public and private institutions in our country. Other examples are the extraordinary development of satellite imagery and the more mundane but equally intrusive proliferation of close-circuit television cameras, through which those pursuing their legitimate business around the streets of London may these days be recorded several hundred times in a single day. Quite rightly, the Protection of Freedoms Bill before your Lordships’ House provides for regulation of the uses to which such recordings can be put.

I mention these developments because it must be the responsibility of those who supervise the agencies on behalf of Parliament, within the ring of secrecy, to ensure not only that the agencies are efficient and effective in their vital work, but that they use the instruments of intelligence-collection available to them both proportionately and responsibly. I want to refer to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, picking up on the report, about the remuneration and character of those who work within the agencies. On the character of those people I think that I can reassure him. When one has the privilege of meeting staff of the agencies, one can be certain that it never has been the case that they are conventional, like any other civil servants. There are a lot of unconventional personalities.

Two other things hold them to the agencies—in addition to remuneration, which is very important. One is the importance with which they regard their work, which is a very important factor in morale, and the other is the excitement, originality and opportunities for enterprise within the law. They are the sort of people who can be relied on to operate in that way.

I was Cabinet Secretary when the legislation establishing the Intelligence and Security Committee was passed in 1994. I well remember the hesitation and anxiety with which the Government and agencies regarded the admission of parliamentarians into the ring of secrecy at that time—hesitation and anxiety which I confess I wholly shared. The committee has come a very long way since then in building the confidence of successive Governments and the intelligence community. The fact that it has done so has been due to the responsibility and wisdom shown by successive members of the committee, and I pay tribute to them. Over the past 17 years, there really has not been a major incident to damage that confidence, and that is essential to the work of the committee. The committee needs to be prepared to be a frank critic of the intelligence community when criticism is justified, but also—as was said earlier—its champion when external criticism and antagonism from those who know little of the agencies’ work is unjustified.

The noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, made the point that, as the confidence of the intelligence community and the responsibility and discretion of successive members of the intelligence and security community have grown, the committee’s work has extended well beyond the restrictions in the original legislation. This has benefits for Parliament and the intelligence community itself. The committee’s surveillance is no longer restricted in practice to the administration, policy and expenditure of the Security Service, SIS and GCHQ, the terms in which the original legislation was expressed. It has extended more generally to the work of the intelligence community as a whole, including—retrospectively—specific operations. This has been of general benefit.

However, if the committee is to achieve its full value, it needs to command the confidence not only of the Government and the intelligence community but of Parliament and the public generally. What has happened de facto therefore now needs to be recognised in legislative changes while retaining the necessary safeguards. The committee should now become a parliamentary committee instead of a government-appointed committee of parliamentarians. The wider extent of its activities should be explicitly provided for. Picking up the point that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, made, this would increase the independence of the secretariat of the committee who would then become servants of Parliament and not simply members of the Executive. I agree that that would be valuable. The committee should be able to reassure the public that it can require information from the intelligence community and not just request it—require it subject to the veto of a Secretary of State, without being at the mercy of the agencies in respect of the information they can obtain. These are changes that the committee has proposed; in fact, successive committees have proposed them. It is very welcome that the Government have endorsed them in their Justice and Security Green Paper.

As the noble Marquess, Lord Lothian, said, the Government have so far reserved their position on the extent to which the committee should oversee the operational activity of the agencies. Like the noble Marquess, I urge the Government to have confidence about this. I make one point in particular. The committee has already shown itself to be competent in examining specific episodes, often at the Government’s request. However, the public are much more naturally concerned with the operational activities of the agencies—such as their part in the treatment of terrorist suspects or the events leading up to 7/7—than in the agencies’ financing and administration. If the committee is to command the public’s confidence in holding the intelligence community to account, it must reassure them that the agencies are being properly supervised by Parliament. It is essential that the Intelligence and Security Committee be able to play a role in that, as indeed it already has done. It is not as though we want to look at such operations currently; we will always look at them retrospectively. Nor do we want to go as far as the US congressional committees, which are required by legislation to be informed of the agencies’ current operations. Does the Lord Chairman think I am going on too long?