GCHQ

Mark Pritchard Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

My hon. Friend is right to suggest that we should be able to celebrate the successes of our security services. Unfortunately, however, we shall have to continue to celebrate those successes in fairly general terms. As my hon. Friend will understand, if we proclaimed some of our most successful intelligence operations in public, it would be very difficult to repeat them. Unfortunately, we have to protect this country against the same type of threat again and again, and from terrorism in particular. I therefore cannot, at the moment, offer a more specific statement about what the security services have succeeded in doing, but my hon. Friend can take it from me that there is much that is not known in relation to the protection of this country from terrorism in particular, but also from organised crime, that the country would truly celebrate if it knew about it.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I join the Foreign Secretary in praising the professionalism and dedication of the staff of both the SIS and GCHQ. Edward Snowden, the CIA official who leaked the information, said that had he leaked it because he wanted to stand up against oppression and stand up for liberty. Is there not a perverse paradox that that gentleman made those claims not from Washington or London, but from the People’s Republic of China?

[Mr Hague]

Having earlier set myself the rule of not attacking the conduct of other nations, I am not going to break that rule now, but other people will be able to comment on this particular individual and his role. It is, of course, important for everyone who works for the agencies to remember that part of their responsibility is to uphold the laws of their country, and that in the case of the United States and the United Kingdom, those laws are designed to protect the lives and liberty of the citizens of those countries. That seems to have been too easily forgotten over the last few days.