Schedule 1 - The Intelligence and Security Committee

Part of Justice and Security Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 4:22 pm on 29 January 2013.

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Photo of Julian Lewis Julian Lewis Conservative, New Forest East 4:22, 29 January 2013

I might be able to assist the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North with her question about the significance of paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) in amendment 32. When I saw the amendment originally, I thought the word “or” should be inserted at the end of line 4, which would make it clear that the ISC would normally be investigating only retrospective matters under paragraph (a). However, under paragraph (b), as an alternative, if the Prime Minister asked the ISC to investigate a matter that was more current, it could do so, and then “or” again, under paragraph (c), if the security and intelligence services were to offer certain current information to the Committee, it could look into those matters. As I understand it, the difference between the provisions of paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) is that whereas under the new regime, in relation to paragraphs (a) and (b), the Committee will be able to require answers to their questions, under paragraph (c)—as we would expect, given that such matters are only being offered to the Committee for consideration—the existing situation would apply, where we would be able to request information but not require it. That is probably why the Government wish to flag up the word “voluntarily” in paragraph (c).

The reason why we are concerned is partly presentational and partly practical. As everybody has acknowledged so far, the ISC has no wish to get in the way, interfere with or become some sort of obstacle for current operatives to be tripping over when they are engaged in operations. However, as the Bill was originally drafted, it would have ruled out some of the most important and sensitive inquiries that the Committee has undertaken even in the two years that I have been a member of it, as those reports were done on current matters directly for the Prime Minister, to the Prime Minister. Clearly, that omission has now been rectified.

We are a little concerned about the use of “voluntarily”. It seems to suggest that we would not even have the ability to request the information, although we cannot require it, and that sends a message suggesting that unless the security and intelligence agencies volunteer it, we cannot even ask for it. A good example that I can share with the Committee is what happens when—heaven forbid, but it happens from time to time—there is a terrorist incident, or more frequently, there is an arrest in order to head off such an incident. Usually, with something such as that, the relevant agency will write to the ISC and say, “You may have read in the media that we made an arrest. This is the background to it. We feel that you should be informed.” The agencies do that more often than not, but not invariably, and we feel that the use of “voluntarily” seems to suggest that if they did not take the initiative and take the trouble to write to us about it, we would not be able to request that they gave us some background about what was happening in the news. Although we have no wish to interfere with current operations, we certainly feel that it is sensible for us to have such information about current operations as the services themselves might think it useful to volunteer, because often, inaccurate matters will be reported, on which the Committee could be of assistance in setting them straight, when there might be no other convenient way of doing so.

Therefore, although this is not a big issue, we feel fairly strongly that the word “voluntarily” is largely superfluous, could be a bit obstructive and certainly sends the wrong signal presentationally. That is why we urge the Government to remove it, because the important distinction between “require” and “request”—that is, between paragraphs (a) and (b) on one hand and paragraph (c) on the other—will be laid out elsewhere in the legislation.