Intelligence and Security Committee

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to be able to make a brief contribution to this important debate. Let me start by congratulating the Chairman, and the members, of the Intelligence and Security Committee. When I held that position some years ago, I was unable to open the debate, as the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) has done so ably today. Indeed, I barely missed being constrained to 10 minutes because I was speaking from the Back Benches, so I am glad that addressing that issue was one of the first reforms to be implemented.

The right hon. and learned Gentleman made an excellent speech outlining the work of the Committee, touching on the important point that, inevitably, people outside—or, for that matter, inside—do not know exactly what members of the Committee do. By its nature, the Committee deals with secret business and secret matters, so it is inevitable that people will be simply unaware of the huge amount of work that goes into what it does. During my time on the Committee, the amount of work that the Chair and the members put in meant that they were virtually doing a full-time job. My right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) and the Marquess of Lothian are the only two current Labour and Conservative members with whom I served on the Committee, but I know that the current members, from all parts of the House, do an excellent job. I pay tribute to them, as I do to the intelligence agencies and the great work that they do in keeping our country safe from terrorism and other important threats.

However, there is one thing in the report that disturbs me. The report refers to the terrorist attacks of July 2005. The House will know that the Intelligence and Security Committee issued two reports on that terrible event—one when I chaired it and the other when it was chaired by Dr Kim Howells, my successor but one. It is important for the House to understand the point that the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington made about those reports, for which Dr Kim Howells and I were responsible, both of which came to the same conclusions about that event as the coroner: that the intelligence agencies could not have prevented what happened in 2005, because of resources and prioritisation. However, it disturbs me to read in the annual report—although I am pleased that the excellent director of the Security Service has indicated that he was sorry about this—that the information that the Committee received was not up to it, and that the work had not been done and the intelligence not looked at sufficiently well for the Committee to be properly informed about what had occurred.

I want to confine my remarks, however, to the important business of the reform of the Intelligence and Security Committee, a matter that has been before the Committee for at least four years, and rightly so. The Government are to be congratulated on the Green Paper, which was referred to earlier. My right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) was right to emphasise that reform must come, as the Chair of the Committee said. However, we have to do that in such a way that we balance the significance of the Committee—by ensuring that secrecy is maintained—with the importance of ensuring that people in our country are aware that it is doing a proper job, and that is not easy. Every other Select Committee in this House can do all sorts of things—here in the Chamber, in the Committee Rooms and outside, even on visits—that the Intelligence and Security Committee cannot do. How do we square that circle? How do we ensure that people are sufficiently assured that the members of the Intelligence and Security Committee are, in fact, doing the job that the House of Commons and the House of Lords have asked them to do?

There is a problem with trying to make the Committee exactly the same as any other Select Committee or Joint Committee of both Houses. We have gone down the right road by ensuring that this House and the House of Lords have the right to propose names. It is important that this should continue and that there should be a requirement that the Government respect the names put to them for membership. At the same time, however, the vital issue of trust—a word used throughout this debate —is critical, whether it be trust between our international allies or trust between the Committee and the intelligence agencies. If that trust breaks down, it will be a purposeless Committee that simply will not work.

It has been said—the Chairman of the Committee himself said it—that when the Committee was set up back in the mid-1990s, it was an extremely different creature from what it is today. It did not deal with operational matters, but simply with finance, resources, structures and so on; but now, of course, operational matters have been dealt with. It is important that the Green Paper recognises that this should be put into statute, with a legal requirement for the Committee to deal with operational matters. I agree with the hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis) that the Committee is obviously not going to walk across to the MI5 or MI6 buildings every day, knock on the door and say, “Let’s have a look at what’s happening now,” as may happen in other countries. That is not going to happen, nor should it. However, I am sure that it is the experience of the current members of the Committee, as it was when I was the Chairman, that when important issues arise, such as Libya or others that I can recall, the agencies will take it upon themselves to inform the Committee, and certainly the Chairman, of the significance of those issues. However, that has to be formalised, because at the moment we cannot insist that the Intelligence and Security Committee can deal with operational issues, which is a problem.

Ultimately, it all comes back to trust. Whatever the legalities, if the agencies do not trust the Committee, for fear of leaks or whatever, they will simply—and quite rightly—not discuss sensitive intelligence matters with it that could present a danger to our country. Incidentally, I do not think for one second that any current or previous member of the ISC would do that, but that is obviously an issue that the intelligence agencies have to consider. I am therefore very much in favour of extending the Committee’s remit.

As to whether the Chairman of the Committee should be an Opposition Member, it is quite interesting that the noble Lord King, who was referred to earlier, was a Government Member when he was appointed. It has rightly been said that when Labour won the election in 1997, he continued as the Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee. It is quite interesting that when I was appointed in 2005, he rather grizzled and grumbled about it and said in the House of Lords that I should not have been appointed because I was not an Opposition Member, but still a Government Member. My view is that, ultimately, we need the right person for the job. Although there is an analogy between the ISC and the Public Accounts Committee—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford who served on that Committee has made it—I think we need to be careful how far we go down that line. It is important that the person chosen has the respect and confidence of both sides of the House of Commons and also, of course, of the agencies themselves.

The other important issue that has been mentioned—I talk about it elliptically—is that of having consensus in the Committee. I cannot recall a single instance when a vote was taken in the ISC. It is not that there were no disagreements—there were many profound and deep disagreements about the members—but as a Committee we took the view that whatever our profound and difficult disagreements, we would have to find a way out of them. To my knowledge, only one single vote has ever been taken on the ISC—on whether a visit to particular place should be by plane or by train. That was the only real vote. Every other issue has been decided by consensus. It was obvious—no, perhaps it was not that obvious—that this place was in the United Kingdom. This shows that members of the Committee, usually senior Members who are there to serve their country in a special way, put aside party political allegiances and are on the Committee to do a particular job.

I think that a difficulty might arise if the ISC were exactly the same as a Select Committee. That needs to be considered when we think about how the ISC should develop over the years. There is unquestionably a need for greater accountability, and the ISC, the House, the Government and my Front-Bench colleagues must work out how to achieve it.

The other very important issue raised by my friend Dr Kim Howells when he chaired the ISC was the Committee’s independence from Government. I believe that this is critical. How do we achieve it? First, I do not think it was a good idea for the Committee to meet in the Cabinet Office. It should be removed from Government premises altogether and put somewhere on the parliamentary estate. The excellent people who work in the secretariat—they are indeed excellent—would work to Parliament rather than to the Government.

I do not undervalue for a second the significance of the Prime Minister’s role in this because he has ultimate responsibility for the security of our nation and has to ensure that these hugely sensitive issues and materials are dealt with properly. However, I still think that there is a lot of work to be done to ensure the Committee’s independence—removing it physically from the Cabinet Office, and perhaps also taking the food and rations, so to speak, away from the Cabinet Office to ensure a genuine independence in the ISC.

Work has been done and I am delighted to note the Government’s efforts in the Green Paper to ensure that we make progress. I was pleased with the remarks made by my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary and, as I said earlier, pleased with the excellent remarks of the current Chairman of the ISC. We all owe the Committee a great debt, just as we do to the intelligence services. There is a balance to be struck between accountability on the one hand and the security of our nation on the other. It is one that we have struggled with for a long time, but I think that we are getting there at last.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Menzies Campbell]

That is a matter of judgment. Members of the Committee sign the Official Secrets Act and are subject to constraints when it comes to any criticism directed at them either collectively or individually. Based on my experience, however, I have never seen any action—or lack of action—on the part of the Committee which suggested a lack of independence of thought.

[Paul Murphy]

indicated assent.

[Mr George Howarth]

indicated assent.