Security Services: Supervision

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Soley most warmly for having had the courage to initiate this debate. If anything has been established in the very important deliberations so far in this debate, it is that there is a need for a proper, full debate, and a much wider public debate, about the issues at stake. If nothing else, my noble friend is to be congratulated on that.

I should say at the outset that I have, of course, been a Defence Minister and a Foreign Office Minister. I was a Defence Minister in the days when we had service Ministers, and I was very proud to be Minister for the Navy. As such, I was regularly briefed by the head of intelligence in the Navy, who was a very enjoyable admiral, so it was a good conversation. I shall always savour the day on which he came to see me with his briefings and said, “Minister, I think I ought to let you know that the head of the Russian Navy is describing you as Cold War Warrior Judd”. I am not sure that that would be immediately recognised by all my colleagues and the rest, but I will always savour that occasion.

I grew up in a non-conformist Christian family, and one of the realities of growing up in that kind of culture was that from a very young age I was encouraged to realise that, whatever I might do with my life, God knew everything. My theological thinking has rather moved forwards since those days, but I do not think that at any point in my evolution have I seen GCHQ or the NSA as God. That is the point. God was there as a moral balance in life. He was your conscience. There is immense power in the hands of these authorities now, but no one—including, I believe, most of those working in them—would begin to believe that they are the moral authority of the world; they are there to preserve security.

I have been convinced for a long time that if you make a hard analysis of the threats that face us as a nation, the combination of terrorism, the fact that small numbers of people can do terrible things and the increasing accessibility of the material for mass destruction is a nightmare. One only has to think of the whole business of germ warfare, crude nuclear weapons and the rest to imagine what could happen. If I have one comment for the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, after his very powerful speech, it is that I am not quite sure how he comes to his conclusion in the equation he put before us, because I do not think that it is just a matter of more localised, small incidents or nuclear war. I think that there is a whole gradation in between and that the real dangers lie in that area. That is why intelligence is indispensable. For a long time, I have felt that our security lies very much in the realm of intelligence and in ensuring that it is properly staffed and properly resourced.

Therefore, going back to my point about God, if I may, it is all the more important that everyone can be certain that in the leadership of the intelligence agencies there are people committed, second to none, to the principles of liberal democracy and freedom that they are defending. It is important that that commitment and understanding permeates the whole organisation and that the internalised culture is that what it is doing is defending freedom, democracy and a decent society. That is a terribly easy thing to say but a terribly difficult thing to achieve.

I believe that we need to look very hard at the criteria for selection in the intelligence services, the training and the leadership at all levels. Otherwise, the excitement, the intoxication and the challenges of the task could become dominant; there is also the danger of counterproductivity.

I emphasise that, like others who have spoken, I believe this country owes a tremendous tribute to the courage and dedication of the overwhelming majority of people working in the security services and what they do on our behalf. I believe, therefore, that it is our duty not only to scrutinise, which we are doing today, but to stand firmly by those who have this concept of responsibility and of what they really are there to do. We must deal very severely with those who abuse that task or who indulge in things that I believe could ultimately be described as treason. Extremists work best when there is a culture of sympathy. We must never allow things to happen which accentuate that culture and which introduce more doubt among thinking people, thus opening up the opportunity for extremists to recruit and to strengthen their cause, and I am afraid that we are in danger of that happening.