GCHQ

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 4:07 pm on 10 June 2013.

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Photo of William Hague William Hague The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs 4:07, 10 June 2013

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.