Schedule 1 - The Intelligence and Security Committee

Part of Justice and Security Bill [Lords] – in a Public Bill Committee at 3:00 pm on 29 January 2013.

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Photo of Diana R. Johnson Diana R. Johnson Shadow Minister (Home Affairs) 3:00, 29 January 2013

I will deal with Government amendments 35 and 36 head on. Earlier in the debate, the Committee agreed to give witnesses certain protections, although a number of Committee members voiced concern about the extent of that protection. If we are to award that sort of privilege and protection to witnesses, it is sensible to place obligations on them as well. The last thing we want is evidence to be given in bad faith or with the deliberate intention of misleading the Committee. As evidence presented to the Committee cannot be used in court proceedings, it is essential that we give other sources of redress to ensure the validity of the evidence.

As I said during debate on clause 1, the Opposition in the other place argued for the ISC being a Select Committee, which would have given an established model for protecting witnesses where appropriate and imposing sanctions on witnesses who mislead the Committee. The Government have not adopted the measure of setting up a Select Committee, but are now trying to introduce some elements of Select Committee procedures.

Due to the need to introduce a special provision in the amendment allowing oaths to be taken by this Committee of Parliament, will the Government treat the evidence given by witnesses as evidence given to Parliament? If the witness misleads a Select Committee, it is up to Parliament to impose sanctions. In this case, where there is a Committee of Parliament, not a Select Committee, who will impose the sanction? Where will it start from, and who will take it forward? Would misleading the Committee of Parliament be a criminal offence? Would the police and the CPS need to be informed to take action? Does the power extend to enabling the new parliamentary Committee to compel a witness to give evidence? Is that what the amendment could do?

I seek clarity from the Minister. At the moment, the Prime Minister would have to consent before someone is called before the ISC, but can he veto an individual’s  appearance? Do the individual agencies also have a veto? Can an individual refuse to appear before the ISC even if the Prime Minister and the agency have consented? If an individual acting in a personal capacity, potentially as a whistleblower, attempts to present information to the Committee, could the Prime Minister prevent that individual from appearing at the Committee and the Committee taking the evidence?

Amendment 10 does two things: as the Minister set out, it would oblige the Committee to hold an annual public hearing and to consider whether it could hold public sessions while investigating a matter. I noted what the Minister said about the Committee already looking to hold its first public hearing, and I know from the comments of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) that he is keen for this to happen. That is welcome, but we think that public hearings should become part of the ISC’s formal structure, which is why we would like a requirement in the Bill for such hearings to be held at least once a year.

The ISC oversees secretive institutions, but it is itself largely a secretive institution. At the moment, the public have two ways of engaging with the ISC’s work: through its excellent reports, including its annual reports, and through the annual debate in Parliament on the Committee’s report. The Opposition believe that making the ISC and its role more widely known and understood would be greatly aided by annual public hearings of the Committee.

The ISC’s annual report was published in July 2012 and the Government’s response followed some months later, but we have not yet had the parliamentary debate in the House of Commons. I understand that a debate took place in the House of Lords a few days ago, but we in the Commons are still waiting. I raise that because there are often delays in matters being taken forward, and we think that to stop annual public hearings being delayed, it is important to set out clearly in the Bill that at least one public hearing is expected every year. Putting that requirement in statute would give it additional force.

Recent appearances in Parliament by high-profile witnesses such as Rupert Murdoch, Hugh Grant and Russell Brand have attracted a lot of public attention. It is unlikely that the ISC would ever have such celebrity witnesses, but a public hearing would help the ISC to raise its public profile and people to understand more about what the Committee does and its role within Parliament.

On the duty to consider other public sessions, the requirement is only “to consider” whether it would be appropriate to hold public sessions during the Committee’s inquiries. The Opposition do not expect that consideration to take long. In the majority of cases, as the Minister said, it would be manifestly impractical to hold public hearings, and in such cases and whenever public hearings would compromise national security, we would expect the Committee to remain private. I should emphasise that amendment 10 does not go as far as the one proposed by the noble Baroness Hamwee in the other place, which would have introduced a presumption in favour of public sittings. This is only about consideration of the question.

I noted what the Minister said about the drafting of the amendment and the reference to sensitive information, and I take his comments on board. The Opposition were keen to table the amendment because of two examples of when it might have been appropriate for the ISC to hold a public meeting, or at least to consider holding a public meeting. The first relates to the unfortunate death of Gareth Williams, about which the coroner’s report made some strong comments and recommendations. As I am sure the Committee will recall, Mr Williams was an employee of GCHQ, working on secondment at the Secret Intelligence Service. Members may also know that, in her report, the coroner, Dr Fiona Wilcox, was very critical of Mr Williams’s employers. In particular, she singled out problems of co-operation between them and the Metropolitan police and the general pastoral care provided by GCHQ and SIS to Mr Williams.

The pastoral care given to employees should or could have been debated in a public hearing of the Committee. Obviously, Mr Williams was in a top secret job employed to do work of a secretive nature, but he was employed by the state and most people would be concerned if they felt that the employer—the state—was not taking the care it should in looking after very important members of staff. The ISC might want to look at the support given to staff.

Recruitment is the second area that could be open to a wider audience. As I have said, the security agencies are facing completely new challenges, and they have adapted accordingly. They have had to reform their recruitment policies and ensure that they recruit more widely, from communities from which they perhaps did not recruit in the past. The new challenges have fuelled a need to recruit more women and ethnic minority people into the services. Security agencies are not the only Government bodies seeking to improve diversity; I am also thinking of police forces, which are obviously trying to do the same thing. We could all benefit from hearing at least some of the agencies’ experience of broadening recruitment. Public hearings on those two areas could be useful to share the experience of the security and intelligence services.

Amendment 25 is about referrals from Select Committees. I do not want the amendment to disrupt or distract the ISC in any way from its work programme, but given that it is to become a Committee of Parliament, we must look at the relationship it will have with Select Committees and other parliamentary Committees. Several Committees, in particular the Select Committees on Home Affairs, Foreign Affairs and Defence, already find that some of their inquiries cover operations that relate to the security agencies or come across matters that should be investigated, but they are not in a position to deal with the sensitive information that might flow from such an investigation.

As it is not possible to afford the other Committees the protections that the ICS in particular will have in order to access highly sensitive and confidential information, it seems sensible to set out that there is a relationship between Select Committees and the new ISC, and what they will do together. It is currently standard practice for Select Committees to receive requests from one another.  The Joint Committee on Human Rights, in particular, receives many requests asking it to use its specialist knowledge to investigate particular areas of human rights. It could be the same for the ISC.

The need to have such a relationship was debated in the other place, as the Minister mentioned. The Government’s response then was not their strongest. He referred to it when he said that the reason for rejecting giving the ISC a role in relation to referrals from other Committees was that it would be overwhelmed. That misunderstands the amendment and how the power would work. The amendment would not place an obligation on the ISC to take up every request that was made to investigate and then report back to the Select Committee making the referral. That information would be passed to the Committee, which can decide whether it should deal with it.