Intelligence and Security Committee

Debate between Malcolm Rifkind and Richard Ottaway

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway]

I completely agree, and I have always been hugely impressed by the vast quantity of information. When there was just one needle in the haystack, they might not have found it the first time around but they did find it the second time around and quite rightly, as my hon. Friend says, produced it for the Committee.

On the Green Paper, may I support the point that was made about the handling of sensitive material, which I gather was mentioned by the Chairman of the ISC in his opening speech? The recommendations in the Green Paper are sensible and offer the best way of dealing with sensitive material, but I do not think it has to be instead of using a special advocate. It could well be in addition to using a special advocate and using the presumptions set out in the Green Paper.

Let me address the role of the Committee and the way it operates. Parliamentary oversight of a secret service is always going to have limitations. I do not think there is a silver bullet, regardless of whether the Committee is a Committee of the House. Let me give an illustration. The major foreign policy objective of our engagement in Afghanistan is to deny al-Qaeda and international terrorists a base from which to carry out their operations. During the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report on Afghanistan, a number of witnesses told us that that is no longer a problem in Afghanistan, so at the Liaison Committee I asked the Prime Minister whether he was still receiving intelligence to that effect and he said he was. So, we are stuck with the same old problem that a major overseas deployment of the British Army and other armed services is based on intelligence that has not been subject to the scrutiny of the House. Those of us who were here at the time of the Iraq war know the problems that that can generate. This is an echo of the past. I have come up with a least-bad option and have written to the Chairman of the ISC to ask him to put it to the appropriate quarters when a suitable opportunity arrives and then to report to the House on the veracity of that information. I hope that, in the short term, that can be a way of dealing with the matter.

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

May I say that we have been in touch with the SIS and have asked it to respond on exactly the points that my hon. Friend is concerned about?

[Richard Ottaway]

I am delighted to hear that because that presents a channel—certainly in the current circumstances, until there is a change in the law—through which the House can make inquiries. However, it irritates the hell out of a lot of Members that we have to do that. The fact that the ISC is not a Committee of the House has long been a bugbear. I remember debates in which Andrew MacKinlay used to go on and on about this and challenge the legitimacy of the ISC. We all love him deeply, but I think it is time to move on. It is wrong that the ISC has oversight of the Cabinet Office, which is the Department that administers the ISC. Those who are critical see the Committee as being somehow made up of Government lackeys, but that is an insult to the members of the Committee. Those who have served on the Committee know that we behave as though we were on a Select Committee; indeed, there is far less partisan behaviour on the ISC than on any other Committee I have served on. This issue can now be addressed.

We have to accept that classified information can be handled only by those who are subject to the Official Secrets Act. If one accepts that principle, it does not make much difference whether the Committee is a Committee of the House or not, but there is a good case for it becoming a Committee of the House if only to remove the suspicion that has prevailed over the years. In making the move, the devil will be in the detail. There are a number of issues to address, although I will not go into the detail now, such as the question of appointments and the fact that the Official Secrets Act does not fit easily with freedom of speech.

I think it would be sensible for the Committee to have powers to call for information that could be withheld only by the Secretary of State, rather than what happens currently. When I was on the Committee, the question “Have we seen everything?” was always at the back of my mind. It took two reports on the 7/7 bombings for us to satisfy ourselves that we had done everything. The fact that there was a second report illustrated that we had not seen everything the first time around. Another problem to address is how redactions will be dealt with by a Committee of the House, as the Government will not be able to threaten a veto on publication. Obviously, the report will be to the House, but what will it report? It is no secret that some evidence submissions to the Government never saw the light of day in the previous Parliament. How would that be treated if the Committee were to become a Committee of the House?

This issue is a minefield, but the Government have found a way through it in their Green Paper and I support them. It is very hard to have democratic oversight of a secret service, but I think we are on the right track.