I welcome the opportunity to introduce this debate. I am pleased to see the Minister for the Middle East in his place; I was expecting the Minister for Europe to answer the debate. The Minister for the Middle East is respected throughout the House.

I am glad that we have our security services MI5 and MI6 in place. It is difficult to imagine what sort of society we would have if such organisations were not doing that important work for us. However, I hope that the Minister will agree that it wrong to give any organ of the state, no matter what it does, a blank cheque. Hon. Members have a proper role in holding them to account—commensurate, of course, with national security.

We need a professional, properly funded and rational organisation in MI6. In my view, we want one that is free from inappropriate political interference and—a linked matter—one that acts in the British national interest. I want to explore today whether those two criteria were being met by MI6 in its present and immediately past activities. It seems to me—the Minister will doubtless respond to this point—that MI6 follows broad political objectives such as safeguarding national security and protecting our economic interests, and that it does so by providing the best, secure intelligence to further those aims.

In hindsight, it is clear that in the run-up to the Iraq war we were sold a distortion of intelligence to help a narrow political objective—to shape public opinion towards supporting a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. The Minister will doubtless be familiar with the responses in the Butler report, a useful document. It gives an interesting description at paragraph 32:

"The Government wanted an unclassified document on which it could draw in its advocacy of its policy. The JIC sought to offer a dispassionate assessment of intelligence".

At paragraph 34, the report states:

"We conclude that it was a serious weakness that the JIC's warnings on the limitations of the intelligence underlying its judgements were not made sufficiently clear in the dossier."

At paragraph 33, it states that

"judgements in the dossier went to (although not beyond) the outer limits of the intelligence available."

At paragraph 35, the report says that

"more weight was placed on the intelligence than it could bear."

Clearly, there are lessons to be learned. I do not want to revisit the entire history of the Hutton inquiry or of matters leading to the Iraq war, but that is an important perception. It would be useful to see whether the problem is being corrected.

I want to pursue two issues. The first is the role of John Scarlett, then head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, in the dodgy dossier and subsequently. The second is the use of information. It is clear that language was changed in order to turn neutral intelligence—the best available analysis, with all the caveats built into it—into something much more certain. In other words—I dare say that it was like a red rag to a bull—what Andrew Gilligan said was by and large right.

It is clear that words such as "might" and "possibly" were removed, and more certain words such as "can" and "will" put in their place. We also know from extensive evidence in the Hutton inquiry that many of those changes were proposed by Alastair Campbell and No. 10. I do not blame Mr. Campbell; he was doing his job. However, I do blame John Scarlett, head of JIC, for succumbing to that pressure and allowing what was supposed to be a neutral intelligence document to be manipulated for political purposes. We now know that no weapons of mass destruction were to be found. There is a serious question over why John Scarlett should have allowed his intelligence to be changed in that way. Indeed, that episode did the intelligence services, which we want to hold in the highest regard, a considerable disservice.

I draw the Minister's attention to the 45-minute claim, and also to a prominent article in The Observer of 15 May 2005 by the respected journalist Anthony Barnett. In it, he alleged that John Scarlett had asked another weapons inspector, the Australian Dr. Rod Barton, to sex up another dossier by inserting nine "nuggets". The article stated:

"Barton had been hand-picked by the CIA to be the special adviser to the Iraq Survey Group".

In that capacity, Barton was preparing a document, but the group was preparing to reach quite different and damning conclusions. The article reported that

"Saddam did not have any WMDs at the time of the US-led invasion", and it alleged—I have no knowledge of whether it is true—that Saddam

"had not had any programmes to manufacture such weapons after 1991."

In response to that, The Observer quotes Dr. Barton as saying that

"senior figures in British intelligence tired to stop the ISG publishing its interim report when they realised what it would say. He"— that is Dr. Barton—

"also reveals how when this failed, John Scarlett...tried to strengthen the ISG report by inserting nine 'nuggets' of information to imply Saddam's WMD programmes were active".

Included in that article were suggestions that

"Saddam was working on a smallpox weapon, did have mobile biological laboratories and was developing research equipment for use in nuclear weapons."

The report continues:

"I couldn't believe it...He"— that is John Scarlett—

"was suggesting dragging things from a previous report [that the ISG had found to be false] to use them to, well, 'sex it up'. It was an attempt to make our report appear to imply that maybe there were still WMD out there. I knew he had been responsible for your [government's] dossier and then I realised he was trying to do the same thing."

Anthony Barnett of The Observer makes a serious allegation. I am not aware whether it has been properly investigated or a proper rebuttal given—if, indeed, a rebuttal is appropriate. I ask the Minister to comment on that report. I ask specifically whether it is true, and if so where it leaves John Scarlett, who appears to be continuing the mistakes—I put it neutrally—involved in drawing up the dossier before the invasion of Iraq. It would be helpful if the Minister were to publish the e-mail correspondence between John Scarlett and the ISG in that regard. It seems not to be a security matter, but a matter of public interest with no security implications.

I turn to another MI6 strand, which is the activities carried out by the information operations unit. The interests of the Government of the day are not necessarily those of the nation as a whole. That message is well understood by civil servants—it is established in the civil service code of practice—and it also applies to intelligence officers. Yet Nick Rufford, a journalist with The Sunday Times, produced a story on 28 December 2003 in which he alleged that attempts were made by MI6 through something called "operation mass appeal" to plant stories in the media about Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. Scott Ritter, the former UN weapons inspector, was reported as saying

"The aim was to convince the public that Iraq was a far greater threat than it actually was".

If that is so, it suggests that MI6 was being used to further a narrow political objective rather than anything in the national interest. If I worked for MI6, I would be rather concerned that my activities were being manipulated in that way. Nick Rufford's story was backed up by a report by the respected journalist Seymour Hersh, on the other side of the pond, in which he reported a former American intelligence officer as saying,

"It was intelligence that was crap, and that we couldn't move on, but the Brits wanted to plant stories in England and around the world".

We need to know what MI6's role in this country is. Many of have naturally assumed that its activities have taken place abroad, but there are clear suggestions that it has been involved in disinformation campaigns on the UK mainland. Other newspaper reports, which I do not have time to refer to, suggest that the information operations unit has been planting favourable stories with friendly journalists and stories in other papers that are damaging to those who are critical of MI6's activities—or perhaps I should say of the Government's activities.

The other strand that I want to touch on in my last five minutes is the closeness of this country to the United States Administration. That has of course been a great strength to us over many years—indeed, since the second world war. The difference now is that the present US Administration are operating on a different basis of morality from that on which previous Administrations operated, up to and including the Clinton era. We have seen an abandonment of some of the norms of behaviour that the US introduced after the second world war with support from other western countries.

That is a matter for the US, except that too often it appears that UK foreign policy is merely a subset of US foreign policy. Nothing that has been overheard in conversations on microphones in recent days has done much to dispel that. For example, US foreign policy now appears to accept the principle of pre-emptive military action. Al Gore, the former vice-president, said that the doctrine would replace

"a world in which states consider themselves subject to law" with

"the notion that there is no law but the discretion of the President of the United States."

That is his take, and he ought to know.

Again, in a sense that is a matter for the US, except if we follow that policy. As we indeed appear to follow US foreign policy quite slavishly, it is legitimate to ask the Minister whether other aspects of US foreign policy have been followed by the UK, through MI6. Can he tell me, for example, what the MI6's involvement in Guantanamo Bay has been? It is well documented that MI6 officials have been over there. What have they been doing? Have they made it plain to the US that Guantanamo Bay should be closed down or have they been following a different policy of accepting that it is there—whether or not we would have started it—and trying to deal with it as it is?

The US has also been involved in the horrors of Abu Ghraib. I hope very much that we would never endorse that sort of thing in any shape or form. We have heard allegations of extraordinary rendition, which the Intelligence and Security Committee is now looking into. I would be grateful if the Minister said something about that and whether we have had any involvement at all in extraordinary rendition, either directly or through connivance.

The US has offered support for regimes across the world that are questionable in morality terms—let me put it as neutrally as I can. The Minister will be aware of the publication about Uzbekistan by Craig Murray, the former ambassador, which suggests that there was torture, imprisonment and all sorts of human rights abuses that we did nothing about, mainly because we thought that we had a geopolitical interest in having the President there on board.

There is also the issue of legitimised assassinations. I refer the Minister to a report in The Guardian on 29 October 2001 that said:

"Bush gives green light to CIA for assassination of named terrorists", overturning a 25-year ban on assassinations. That was referred to in a further report in The Guardian on 13 August 2002 that said:

"The US government is considering plans to send elite military units on missions to assassinate" terrorists

"in countries around the world, without necessarily informing the governments involved, it was reported yesterday.

The Pentagon is discussing proposals which could see special operations units dispatched to capture or kill terrorists wherever they are believed to be hiding."

What is the Government's policy on that? Do we accept the truth of that report in The Guardian? If the Minister thinks that it is untrue, he can say so; if he thinks that it is true, what policy have we adopted on it? Are we informed by the Americans of what they are doing? Given the close relationship between the CIA and MI6, are we—horrible as it is to ask—in any way involved in such a policy?

I need to ask the Minister a number of questions. Will he publish the e-mails and other correspondence relating to John Scarlett's dealings with the ISG and the influencing of the report? Will the Minister set out the boundaries of action for MI6 in operating within this country, as opposed to operating abroad? Will he clarify the role of the information operations unit and whether it has been involved in briefing journalists and putting out information or disinformation to the British press in order to influence public opinion in this country? Will he confirm whether MI6 was in any way involved in extraordinary renditions? Does he have any knowledge at all of whether MI6 is involved in the apparent US policy of targeted assassinations in this country or elsewhere?