My hon. Friend has made a valid point. I studied the evidence to the Select Committee and its conclusions very carefully. The emphasis is that a Committee, be it the Home Affairs Select Committee or any other Select Committee, would not examine the day-to-day operations. No one would expect such a Committee to do that. However, the overall policy matters and financial aspects would rightly be subject to question.

I do not want to go over the ground of previous debates on this subject. However, it is necessary to remind the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, who is standing in for the Home Secretary tonight, of the serious concern that has been expressed over various happenings in recent years.

The response of the Minister tonight, or of other Ministers, may be that everything that I am going to mention in passing occurred before MI5 was placed on a statutory basis. That is undoubtedly the case, but it does not alter the fact that these incidents occurred, and not so many years ago.

If a quarter of what Mr. Wright said was true—much more may have been true, for all I know—that shows that, instead of combating subversion, senior officials of MI5 were actually engaged in it against an elected Government who did not meet with their approval. That was unforgivable. As I have said, that organisation has a job of work to do to combat subversion, but all the stories seem to confirm, to a certain extent, much of what Mr. Wright said. Senior officials, although we do not know how many or at what level except that they were certainly senior officials, were involved in what can only be described as subversive action against a Government whom they did not happen to like politically.

There were also investigations by the F branches—F1, F2, F3 and sub-branches of MI5—and allegations by former MI5 employees such as Cathy Massiter. As I have said before, that person who worked in MI5 is to be congratulated. No prosecution has been brought against her, and rightly so. No one has really disputed what she said. She worked in MI5 and concluded that some of the activities were not in any way necessary, but were against the spirit of what should be the work of the security services.