Before the Minister moves that the first statutory instrument be considered, I remind noble Lords that in the case of the four statutory instruments, the Motion before the Committee will be that it do consider the statutory instruments in question. I should make it clear that the Motion to approve each statutory instrument will be moved in the Chamber in the usual way. If a Division is called in the House, the Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Registered Foreign Lawyers Order 2009.

Relevant document: 12th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

In moving the Motion I shall speak also to the draft Legal Services Act 2007 (Registered European Lawyers) Order 2009. These orders update the regulatory framework for foreign lawyers. They extend and increase the powers of the Law Society and the Solicitors Regulation Authority to two categories of foreign lawyers: registered European lawyers and registered foreign lawyers. Registered European lawyers are lawyers covered by the establishment directive who have qualified in another EU state and who seek to practise in the United Kingdom on a permanent basis. Registered foreign lawyers are legal professionals qualified in another jurisdiction not covered by the establishment directive.

Many rules applicable to solicitors, such as the solicitors’ code of conduct, are already applied to both registered foreign and registered European lawyers. These orders update and extend the application of such rules, reflecting the amendments introduced by the Legal Services Act 2007.

Before my noble friend concludes on this densely written legalese, can he tell us how many lawyers are defined as foreign and how many as European?

I am sure that I shall be able to do so in my winding-up speech.

Amendments made in these orders reflect the changes made to the regulation of the legal professions, in particular solicitors in England and Wales, as a result of the Legal Services Act, and bring a consistency of approach to the Law Society’s regulation of all lawyers registered with it, not only solicitors. The 2007 Act, in particular Schedule 16, introduces a number of changes to the way that solicitors in England and Wales practise and are regulated. The Government have already begun to commence the provisions in the Act. For example, 31 March 2009 saw the introduction of legal disciplinary practices which allow lawyers and non-lawyers to form practices that provide legal services. Registered European and registered foreign lawyers are both entitled to benefit from these new structures by potentially collaborating with other lawyers and non-lawyers in a legal practice. It is, though, essential that targeted, proportionate and consumer-focused regulation go hand in hand with these reforms.

Further reforms under the Act are due to be introduced in July to the Law Society’s regime of practising certificates, its powers of investigation and the routes of appeal available to solicitors against decisions of the society, among others. In introducing these reforms, there is need for consistency with the society’s approach to foreign lawyers. These orders achieve consistency by applying the Law Society’s powers to rebuke or fine solicitors to registered foreign and European lawyers. This will enable the Law Society to impose a fine of up to £2,000 on these individuals for minor incidents of misconduct or failure to comply with Law Society rules. They also apply the powers used in investigating the conduct of solicitors to investigations of the conduct of registered foreign and European lawyers and extend to them the offences which may be committed during the course of an investigation.

The orders align the powers and jurisdiction of the solicitors’ disciplinary tribunal in respect of solicitors with those for registered foreign and European lawyers. They prohibit the unauthorised employment of foreign and European lawyers who have been struck off the Law Society’s register. They also align the Law Society’s powers to impose conditions and to suspend solicitors’ practising certificates in relation to the registration of foreign and European lawyers.

Additionally, the new regime of sole solicitor endorsement will now apply to registered European lawyers. This creates a separate applications regime and approval process for solicitors seeking to act as sole practitioners, acknowledging the greater responsibility that accompanies these powers. This regime is not applied to registered foreign lawyers who may not practise as sole practitioners.

Finally, these orders acknowledge the transfer of appellate functions from the Master of the Rolls to the High Court, which is consistent with the approach of the 2007 Act. Similarly, these instruments amend other instruments or legislation to ensure consistency with regard to appeal routes and grounds. It is proposed that these orders come into force on 1 July 2009. This is to coincide with the aforementioned amendments, under the 2007 Act, to the Law Society’s powers of investigation. It will be the fifth commencement order under that Act.

These orders form just one part of the process in realising the benefits of the 2007 Act—benefits for both consumers and the legal sector itself. To maximise these benefits it is essential that a balance is struck between reforming the legal market and ensuring proportionate and effective regulation. I am confident that these orders address this balance successfully, placing consumer confidence and consumer protection at the heart of the reforms. I commend these orders to the Committee. I beg to move.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, for introducing the first two orders before us this afternoon. When these were debated in another place, my honourable friend Mr Bellingham made it quite clear that we had broadly supported the general thrust of the Legal Services Bill. I am grateful that I was not that actively involved in that legislation as it passed through the House, but no doubt the noble Lord saw something of it. As I say, we broadly supported it. It is important that we continue to ensure that the United Kingdom, particularly London, remains a very important centre for world-class legal services, which it has been in the past and will be in the future. We hope that these orders will make it easier to continue to attract legal practitioners, and those who make use of legal services, to London.

I want to pick up on a couple of points raised in the noble Lord’s comments and in the comments of my honourable friend in another place concerning the whole question of reciprocity. Am I right in thinking that, as far as the EU is concerned, we will now have total reciprocity between lawyers in the United Kingdom and lawyers in all the other 26 EU countries, or are there differences between us as to where there will not be reciprocity? Can the noble Lord expand a little on what his honourable friend Bridget Prentice said in another place about reciprocity with other parts of the world? She referred to the negotiations which she has been involved in with the Indian Government and, more importantly, with the Bar Association of India and various regional Indian Bar Associations. However, other parts of the world are equally important. I would be grateful if the Minister could expand on the degree of reciprocity for lawyers working in one country or the other and what the Government are doing to assist that.

I am grateful to the Minister for his introduction of these two orders. I declare an interest as a practising lawyer. As I have spent considerable time practising in Hong Kong, Asia and the West Indies, I have some experience of practising abroad. We welcome these orders. We think it right that foreign and European lawyers who are registered in this country should be subject to the same degrees of discipline and control as UK-approved lawyers.

The noble Lord, Lord Henley, raised the issue of reciprocity. I, too, would be interested to know whether it is possible for a lawyer from England and Wales to practise without hindrance in Scotland and Europe and the other parts of the world from which we have allowed registered foreign lawyers to come here. The noble Lord, Lord Jones, has raised the question of how many lawyers we have registered—and from what parts of the world, I would add to that—so that we can see the scope of the issue. I am most grateful to the noble Lord for his introduction of these orders.

In reply to my noble friend Lord Jones, according to the latest statistics from the Law Society, there are currently 312 registered European lawyers and 1,780 registered foreign lawyers in England and Wales. As such, the proposed order will impact on a limited number of practitioners.

I thank the noble Lords, Lord Henley and Lord Thomas of Gresford, for their questions on Europe and general reciprocity. The establishment directive ensures that solicitors and barristers who have qualified in the UK receive the same opportunities to practise in other member states as registered European lawyers have in seeking to practise permanently in the UK. However, I would offer a slight caveat there because some minor derogations apply to European lawyers in the UK; I believe that there is one around probate. I am sure that those minor derogations must also occur in other countries where the establishment directive has been accepted. So with that slight caveat to the overall statement, the answer, relatively simply, is yes.

The Government are keen to ensure that lawyers who qualify in the UK are able to practise in as many jurisdictions as possible. In an increasingly international market, this is crucial to the reputation and development of providers of legal services.

Fruitful discussions have taken place with the Bar Association of India and the Bar Associations in some of the Indian regions about opening up their market. Slow progress is being made, although the Law Society is optimistic that opportunities for UK and Indian firms to work together will increase in the light of the recent Indian elections. Earlier this month the Law Society held a UK-India legal practice conference, and the Government look forward to hearing what progress can be made in the light of the discussions that took place.

Being among lawyers, I should like to offer a final caveat. I may have got a subtlety wrong. If I have, I shall write to noble Lords.

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Legal Services Act 2007 (Registered European Lawyers) Order 2009.

Relevant document: 13th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Probate Services (Approved Bodies) Order 2009.

Relevant document: 15th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

In preparing for this Motion, I discovered the hazards of being a jobbing Whip: three hours into reading my papers, I realised that I had to declare an interest. My son is some sort of certified accountant and he could conceivably be allowed to do probate work as a result of this order. I hope that the Committee is content for me to continue to take the order through.

This order is presented under Section 55 of, and Schedule 9 to, the 1990 Act. It will enable the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants—the ACCA—to become an approved body and authorise suitably qualified members to provide probate services for a fee, gain or reward. By probate services, I mean of course the preparation of any papers on which to found or oppose a grant of probate or a grant of letters of administration.

At the moment, Section 23 of the Solicitors Act 1974 restricts the provision of probate services for a fee, gain or reward to specified legal practitioners, but Section 55 of the Act provides an exception for members of an approved body. The ACCA is the third organisation to seek parliamentary approval to become an approved body since Section 55 was commenced in December 2004. Two other organisations, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, became approved bodies to provide probate services on 1 August 2008. However, only the Council for Licensed Conveyancers has begun to issue probate licences to members. To date, it has issued 18 probate licences.

The application, received in January 2008, has passed through the required statutory approval procedure set out at Schedule 9 to the 1990 Act. In doing so, it has been considered and approved by the Legal Services Consultative Panel and the President of the Family Division. The panel was keen to ensure that the arrangements the ACCA proposed to put in place in terms of training, regulation and consumer protection were on a par with those of previous applicants and existing providers before recommending approval. As a result, this application has my full support.

The ACCA is a professional body of accountants. It received its royal charter in 1974 and has more than 53,000 members in England and Wales. Members are required to meet the academic and post-qualification requirements before being eligible for membership and obtaining accountancy practising certificates. Approximately 6,400 members currently hold practising certificates.

Under the terms of the application, probate practising rights will be granted to members who currently hold practising certificates in accountancy and who wish to provide probate services in England and Wales only. Before members of the ACCA are granted practising rights, they will need to show that they can satisfy the requirements set out in Section 55 if they wish to provide probate services. These include: completing the required training course and ensuring their employees are suitably trained and satisfy the continuing professional development requirements set by the ACCA; having satisfactory insurance and compensation arrangements in place to cover adequately the risk of any claim made against them and to protect the client in the event of them ceasing to provide probate services; and having a complaints scheme in place, including a route of appeal to the Legal Services Ombudsman.

The ACCA has demonstrated in its application that consumer protection is something that it takes seriously. As an established professional body in its field of expertise, it already has in place effective systems of monitoring and enforcement and will ensure that there are additional, suitably robust monitoring systems in place for members now providing probate services.

The potential benefits to the consumer of this application being approved include more choice of provider, more competitive prices and the opportunity for ACCA members to provide a more cost-effective and efficient service to existing clients. This is precisely what Section 55 was intended to do and is in keeping with the principle central to the Government’s policy of providing new and better ways of providing legal services, with a wider choice and at more competitive prices.

Consumers who are unhappy about the way in which the ACCA has dealt with a complaint about the provision of probate services can refer the case to the Legal Services Ombudsman. The LSO’s jurisdiction was extended in October 2004 to cover bodies authorised under Section 55 of the Courts and Legal Services Act, shortly before the relevant provisions were commenced. If the order is approved, it is not anticipated that the LSO will receive a high number of additional complaints per year. In the longer term, complaints about ACCA members will be dealt with by the new Office for Legal Complaints, in line with complaints about members of other legal professional bodies.

If this order is approved, a subsequent order will need to be laid amending the Legal Services Act to bring the ACCA under the jurisdiction of the Legal Services Board. This will ensure that the ACCA retains its probate rights in the future regulatory regime and that it is subject to the same oversight as other regulators, such as the Council for Licensed Conveyancers and the Law Society. I commend these orders to the Committee.

I thank the Minister for introducing the orders. I also commend him on confessing that he has devoted three hours to being briefed on this very detailed legislation—it shows extraordinary assiduity and devotion to duty. And I commend him on declaring his interest, albeit it is a fairly remote one.

The ACCA is the third body to have applied under the Act to provide probate services. Two previous bodies have done so, and the Minister has stated that one of them has so far granted 18 licences. I should be interested to know whether he can offer any predictions on how many more licences are likely to be granted in the light of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants also being able to provide such services, and whether the Government have made an estimate of what sort of percentage of the probate services market this might involve. My honourable friend Mr Bellingham spoke in another place about this market being worth some £440 million annually, and he reckoned that about 5 per cent of it might migrate to new providers. Obviously, we always believe in competition. However, this might have an effect on some of the small solicitors who are often dependent on these services. Having said that, we believe that it is right that they should face competition. But I should be very interested to know whether the Government have estimated whether the figures provided by my honourable friend are accurate. No doubt the Minister can tell us when he responds.

I also express my gratitude to the Minister for introducing this order. We have been through this mill before in relation to the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland and the Council for Licensed Conveyancers, and I am very interested to note how little take-up there has been. As I understand it, there has been nil take-up from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland. Presumably they have found that it is not possible to make any money out of it. Only 18 certificates have been issued by the Council for Licensed Conveyancers. I would like the Minister to spell out in detail, if he can, how the licences which have been granted are monitored. I do not think that such schemes should be monitored only at the beginning of their introduction, nor should it be for the consumer or client to have to raise matters by way of complaint. There should be a way in which the Ministry of Justice carries out some oversight of how the system is working.

It is an extremely vulnerable area, of course. People who go to solicitors with probate papers seeking probate are generally the bereaved family, who are at a very delicate time. They have no way of knowing that they can trust the solicitor unless there has been a lengthy solicitor-client relationship over a period of time. I think that the public generally rely on the good reputation of the legal profession, but that does not always help. I can give one instance of a solicitor who was dealing with a will in which the Polish community was the residuary beneficiary. Having paid out substantial sums to clients, he failed for 12 years to pay the residuary beneficiary, the Polish organisation that looks after the Polish community in London. It was only when the police became involved that it was discovered what had happened. That, of course, leads to the very important question of compensation.

The conditions for anyone wishing to practise in the probate field in the organisation which we are concerned with in this case are actually quite large hurdles to get over. They have to ensure that there is proper training. They have to ensure that there is a compensation scheme that must be no less than the compensation scheme that applies to solicitors. It would be quite wrong for there to be any competitive advantage by those seeking work in this field who are not solicitors in having to pay less in premiums and so on. All these things require considerable oversight, as I said. It is not enough to make this field of potentially difficult legal work open to all without a proper consideration of how the consumer can be best protected.

Having said that, I raise no further objections to the order going forward. I simply require assurances on the safety of the provisions for consumers.

On licences, it is difficult to quantify exactly the numbers. However, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants does not estimate that many will take up the opportunity initially. The CLC has issued 18 licences but 89 of its members are working to gain qualification. ICAS has not yet awarded any but it is waiting to see what happens in Scotland.

I shall deal first with the market and the policy direction. Clearly the policy direction has been developed over a number of years, and it is to open up legal services to competition. However, legal services are pretty efficiently delivered at this level in the UK. Frankly, what we are now doing is in practice likely to relate to the current customers of chartered accountants. As one noble Lord mentioned, some families have a family lawyer and, if a bereavement occurs, it is natural for them to contact that lawyer. Other families have a long relationship with their accountant, who may deal with their tax every year and look after their affairs.

Does the Minister agree that “run-off procedures” is perhaps not an appropriate phrase?

I am sure that I meant something intelligent by that. I shall perhaps send a note with a better term. Or perhaps the noble Lord could use in his mind the phrase that I should have used.

That the Grand Committee do report to the House that it has considered the Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003 (Designation of Participating Countries) (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) (No. 2) Order 2009.

Relevant document: 15th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments.

The Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003 streamlined and modernised the United Kingdom’s mutual legal assistance relations with the rest of the world. Today, in an effort to further improve international co-operation, we are seeking to designate Switzerland, Iceland and Norway for the purpose of various sections of that Act.

The order reflects the fact that the European Union has concluded two agreements with other states: on 26 October 2004, a co-operation agreement against fraud was signed between Switzerland and the European Union, and on 19 December 2003, the European Union concluded an agreement with Norway and Iceland allowing them to accede to certain articles of the 2001 mutual legal assistance convention and its protocol.

As a result, it is now necessary for the United Kingdom to designate these countries as participating countries for certain sections of the Crime (International Co-operation) Act 2003. Designation of the three countries for the purpose of Sections 32, 35 and 43 to 45 of that Act will allow for requests for locating bank accounts and providing banking information relating to criminal investigations to be executed in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and for such requests to be made to Norway, Iceland or Switzerland by the United Kingdom.

Norway and Iceland will also be designated under Sections 31, 47, 48 and Paragraph 15 of Schedule 2 to the Crime (International Co-operation) Act. This will allow the United Kingdom to execute requests for witnesses to be heard by telephone in criminal proceedings and allow for prisoners in the requesting country to be temporarily transferred to the requested country to help with domestic investigations.

Paragraph 4.8 of the Explanatory Memorandum states:

“This is subject to the consent of the prisoner”.

Does my noble friend know how often such travel occurs? Will he be able to answer that question later in the debate?

I cannot answer it right away, but I am sure that my team will look at that and I am sure that I will be able to do exactly as my noble friend asks.

We also propose to designate Switzerland under Sections 4 and 4B of the Act in order that process documents should be sent directly from the United Kingdom to the individuals affected. The United Kingdom is determined that criminals will not escape justice simply because the evidence required is located overseas, and equally determined to improve the United Kingdom’s ability to achieve justice for British victims of serious crime. Accordingly, I commend the order to the Committee.

I thank the Minister for his explanation of the order. As always, I had some problems with the drafting of the statutory instrument and started trying to use what I think are called Venn diagrams to indicate which bits applied to Iceland and Norway, which bits applied to Switzerland and which bits applied to both. I then tried to make use of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is, despite improvements in Explanatory Memoranda over the years, not as clear as it could be.

However, I offer a deep expression of thanks to the Minister for making it clear in his speech, so that my Venn diagrams became unnecessary and I think I now know exactly which bits apply to which countries: that is, that telephone evidence can be taken in relation to Iceland and Norway, but that does not seem to apply to Switzerland; whereas in Switzerland, there is a process relating to documents under Section 4B. When he comes to wind up the debate, perhaps the Minister can explain why there should be a difference between Iceland and Norway on the one hand and Switzerland on the other. Other than that, I thank him for his explanation; I have no further questions.

The Minister will know that we have particular problems with Swiss banks and their secrecy laws. Those Swiss banks have in the past failed to co-operate with requests for information made to them. I would like to know whether the protocol which has now been entered into, and which is envisaged in this order, means that the Swiss banks are likely to be more co-operative. I recall that in the BAE investigation it was the desire of the Serious Fraud Office to obtain details of accounts from Swiss banks that really caused the whole thing to blow up. One hopes that this agreement will make the procedures a great deal simpler than has been the case in the past.

As for the Norway and Iceland agreement, all we can say is that the Iceland banks have enough problems on their plates and it may not be too difficult to obtain information from them. However, I respectfully suggest to the Minister that a major hindrance to dealing with international crime is bank secrecy, whether it is in the European countries which are the subject matter of these orders or in offshore banks where money can be laundered and can disappear for ever. The assistance of the noble Lord in these areas would be very acceptable. I am grateful to him for proposing the order, to which we have no objection.

I thank noble Lords for their various comments and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Henley, for his kind words about my exposition at the beginning of the debate. I had to get that spelt out to me by the team because I was a bit confused myself, so I am glad that it was useful. I appreciate the views expressed.

I shall run through various points. As regards the consent of the prisoner, I am unaware of the exact total. The team is not aware of that but we will write on that specific point. The noble Lord, Lord Henley, asked why different countries are designated for different sections. This reflects the terms of the international agreements to which the order gives effect. I hope that that is a good enough answer. If it is not, I am very happy to explain more expansively in writing, if that would help.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, was absolutely right about banking in Switzerland. As I understand what we are doing now, under the terms of the agreement between the European Union and Switzerland, Switzerland has agreed to provide such evidence. We think there is no reason to believe that it will not fulfil its obligations under that agreement. We will have to watch very closely and see that that happens. I agree entirely that this has not always presented a very good picture in the past and that it has been an area of great difficulty. As regards BAE, I will not speak on an individual case but I know the sensitivities and issues that surround that. However, as I say, I will not talk about an individual case today.

One thing I did not mention, which I think I probably should have talked about, is Scotland. Scotland brings forward its own secondary legislation, and has done so. It is being debated and should pass into law. Then the whole of the United Kingdom will move forward from there.

I think that that covers the points raised. I believe that this order is necessary to allow the United Kingdom to continue to fulfil its international obligations and ensure that we can successfully prosecute international crime and achieve justice for British victims of such crime. As such, it is a good thing to happen. I commend the order to the House.

I am grateful to my noble friend; he is, quite rightly, in an expansive mode. Does he agree that Mr Jonathan Evans, the head of MI5, is a dedicated public servant and is a successful head of the Security Service, and that the Security Service is a complex team that has served Britain well at a time of grave challenge?

I agree with everything that my noble friend has said and I shall elaborate further on that later in my speech.

As my noble friend Lord Jones knows, the Intelligence and Security Committee has as its statutory duty a remit to examine the administration, policy and finance of the UK’s security and intelligence agencies. We report on these annually to the Prime Minister, and we meet with him to discuss the details of our report. The report that we are discussing today covers the period from December 2007 to November 2008. During that period, the committee held 26 formal meetings and 25 other meetings—51 in total. It also undertook a number of visits. All of its members attended the vast majority of those meetings—well over 90 per cent. I commend to this Committee the hard work and constructive approach that each member brought to our committee’s work. Never before, in all my time in the other place and here, have I served on a committee where attendance has been so high or its members have been so expert or diligent in their work—an issue to which I shall return.

Our most time-consuming task during the period that the report covers was the completion of our review of the intelligence on the London terrorist attacks of 7 July 2005. I understand that the noble Baroness, Lady Park of Monmouth, may wish to say a word about that review; I am sure that that would be welcome in our debate.

This issue has been the subject of a separate and detailed report which we sent to the Prime Minister in July 2008. It could not, however, be published at that time for legal reasons. The trial that was ongoing at the time has concluded, and the reporting restrictions have been lifted. To reflect recent developments, the committee updated the report. We did not rewrite it, as some have suggested, but we produced a separate additional annexe. We sent that update to the Prime Minister on 6 May 2009, and the report and update were published together on Tuesday 19 May.

This was a very long inquiry and the report contained a huge—I repeat, huge—amount of information. Many people who had previously been sceptical were pleasantly surprised to see how detailed the report was. I shall not go into its detailed findings here as we are not debating that particular report, but I reiterate and reinforce the comments that Kim Howells made at our press conference. He said that there will be those who do not like our findings because they do not reflect their own assumptions, but we reported the facts as we found them after painstaking and detailed investigation, and we cannot alter those facts just to fit a story or just to please some people.

As the annual report makes clear on pages 44 to 49, during 2008 the committee also began investigations into a number of other areas that were still continuing when this report was published in March. Some of those investigations have now concluded and we will report on them in our next annual report, on which we are already working, and then they will be covered and discussed in the second of these annual debates.

Quite properly, the annual report deals with the nuts and bolts of the agencies’ operations, their administration, policy and finances. That may be of less interest to some than the more controversial issues that we cover in our ad hoc reports, but as my noble friend Lord Jones rightly said, they are essential, and today I will provide a short overview. I refer first to the threat which Jonathan Evans spoke about. A wide range of threats, both terrorist and non-terrorist, continues to be posed to the United Kingdom. The current threat to the UK from international terrorism is assessed as “severe”. This means that there is a continuing high level of threat to the United Kingdom and a high likelihood of a further terrorist attack in this country.

The threat of international terrorism comes from a diverse range of sources, including al-Qaeda and its associated networks and those who share its ideology but do not have direct contact with it. Al-Qaeda and related terrorist groups have shown exceptional ambition and willingness to carry out indiscriminate terrorist attacks, and the threat they pose is likely to persist for a considerable time. That places great and growing pressure on our intelligence and security agencies, together with the police, Government departments and other key partners, all of whom are working together to find those who are planning such attacks and to prevent them carrying them out.

Counterterrorism work is both demanding and dangerous for those involved. It is no exaggeration to say that many of those who work for our agencies put their lives at risk to protect our country, as the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, knows better than anyone. They have achieved notable successes over the past year, with plots disrupted and individuals brought to trial and convicted. I record our thanks to them for all their hard work, not only for the successes that we know about, but equally—if not more important—for those that can never be publicised.

All three agencies, particularly the Security Service, have over the past year continued to receive increased resources dedicated to counterterrorism work. However, while discovering plots and pursuing terrorists is vital, the Security Service can never guarantee to stop every plot; it continually plays catch-up. It is therefore essential that high priority is given to preventing individuals turning to extremism in the first place, and that is why we must not forget that work on the “Prevent” strand of CONTEST is crucial if we are to tackle the longer-term threat.

Although the primary focus of the United Kingdom’s intelligence and security agencies is necessarily on international counterterrorism work, they also dedicate resources to countering threats posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional instability, espionage and other challenges. What I find really impressive is that, in addition, the agencies continue to provide exceptional and unprecedented operational support to United Kingdom military operations in the field.

However, the committee also expressed concern that the necessary focus on counterterrorism work has resulted in a reduction of the proportion of effort allocated to non-counterterrorism threats, possibly to our future detriment. The Government’s response to the committee acknowledges that the proportion of work on other intelligence and security requirements has been reduced as a result of the continuing focus on international counterterrorism work. It remains a source of great concern to the committee that we may be storing up problems for the future if we neglect other areas of work, and we are pursuing that to ensure that more will be done over the next few years in these areas.

As well as examining work on counterterrorism and other threats, the report also looks at expenditure issues, at how the agencies allocate their resources and how we can ensure that they provide value for money. The National Audit Office audits the agencies’ accounts, as it does for all government departments, and we then question the heads of the agencies in detail about aspects of the accounts, including any priority issues that the NAO has raised with us. I am glad to tell the Committee that as of this year, the NAO will be providing our committee with a financial investigator, who will provide expert advice to us on specific issues concerning the agencies’ budget plans, to ensure that they have effective business continuity plans effective security procedures, such as vetting, in place. The committee and I welcome that development.

Although the committee’s formal remit covers the Security Service, the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ, it is clear that those agencies cannot work in isolation. Given the challenges that they face, constructing close partnerships with the wider intelligence community is essential. In overseeing the security and intelligence agencies, we in the committee also examined the work of the wider intelligence community. As we are the only parliamentary body whose members are subject to Section 1 of the Official Secrets Act, only the ISC can hold to account all the agencies and bodies dealing with secret material. These include the Defence Intelligence Staff, some areas within the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism in the Home Office, the intelligence structure in the Cabinet Office, including the Joint Intelligence Committee, which the noble Baroness who will speak for the Opposition, knows well, and the assessment staff, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre and the Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure.

The committee also addresses issues that affect the intelligence community as a whole. For example, we have expressed our dismay—that word was chosen very carefully—that phase 2 of the SCOPE IT communications system has been scrapped. That is a matter that we were still investigating when our report was published, and our next annual report will include that in great detail, so noble Lords can look forward to discussion about that.

Similarly, this annual report covers our findings of the Privy Council review of intercept evidence, led by the right honourable Sir John Chilcot—he is being kept busy these days, one way or another. We welcome the review's conclusion that intercept evidence should be introduced only if the intelligence and security agencies’ capabilities are properly protected by the provision of the nine key conditions and tests. It is not an easy issue; it is complicated—far more complicated than some who comment on it sometimes realise. We have continued to consider the issue carefully and have been briefed in great detail on the work being done in the Home Office, by my noble friend Lord West's department. We in the committee have debated the matter at length and, again, we will report our further and fuller considerations in our annual report, although I can tell your Lordships that, having been privy to the evidence to the facts behind the misconceptions, as a committee, we remain wholly unconvinced of the overall benefit of using intercept product in evidence.

I assure the Committee that the ISC takes its job of holding the agencies to account very seriously. If we cannot always provide the full detail of our work in public, that does not mean that it is not being done. In the debate in the other place—a lively one—comments were made about the redactions in our reports. Some of those comments were quite amusing. There is, however, misunderstanding about the nature of those redactions.

It may be helpful to your Lordships if I briefly explain the process. The committee produces its initial report in full. It always contains a great amount of detail, a lot of it secret and sensitive information, so we invite the agencies to highlight what information they believe would cause damage were we to publish it. That is my first point. They cannot request the redaction of any material on grounds other than potential damage to national security. Also, when they make a request for a redaction, they must give a clear, detailed explanation of exactly what damage would be caused. We consider each of their requests individually on a case-by-case basis and evaluate their explanation.

In some cases, we agree with them—where, for example, to publish details of how they are tackling a specific threat would give valuable information to our enemies. However, in some cases, we do not agree with them and we reject their request. Your Lordships will, I am sure, be reassured to know that nothing has ever been redacted from a report against our wishes where we have not agreed that to publish it would damage national security. Some here may highlight the asterisks to criticise the fact that information is being withheld from them. However, I am sure that Members of this House do not expect us to publish secret material—I know that we all take the security of the UK rather more seriously than that. If others thought about it objectively, they would see that the existence of asterisks was in fact a positive sign. They show that we in the committee have full access to all the information and that we undertake full and proper oversight. That is why the committee publishes the report with asterisks, rather than taking what might be an easy way out and producing a seamless but bland report.

The ISC is objective in its deliberations and each of its members brings to the deliberation something additional and, in my view, something especially relevant. All my colleagues are experienced, long-serving and well respected Members of the Commons. Often, but not always, they have served as Ministers or shadow Ministers, and sometimes, but not always, they have served in departments or in committees that have given them first-hand experience of intelligence, security, defence and policing matters. Without exception, they bring with them the benefit of diverse experience both within and outwith Parliament.

There is a tendency for some of those who favour conspiracy theories to assume that the ISC is part of a cover-up—those who call our reports a whitewash before they have even read them, for example—so let me follow the example of our chairman in the debate in the other place. I speak as someone who was a Minister for five years, who was a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the other place and who spent nearly 15 years on the opposition Front Bench—I can tell the noble Baroness opposite that it is a hard grind being on the opposition Front Bench, but I hope that she is looking forward to 14 or 15 more years there. However, having done those 15 years, I can say that I have never encountered a more rigorous, tougher or independently minded investigative committee than the ISC.

Of course, like any organisation, the ISC has its weaknesses and limitations—not least the fact that it has been under-resourced. However, it is served by a superb, small, hard-working secretariat, which is frequently tested to the limit in undertaking its duties. We on the ISC have argued that we need more money and more staff, especially if we are to continue to undertake additional investigations of difficult and complex issues, such as the London bombings of July 2005. I am pleased to say—particularly thanks to the noble Lord, Lord West—that that need has now been recognised and some additional resources have now been provided through the Cabinet Office, which means that the committee will employ independent investigative resources. I am sure that when the noble Lord, Lord King, hears about this, he will be pleased that his calls have been heeded, including on specific administrative issues, legal matters and, as I said earlier, expenditure issues.

These changes are welcome as the committee develops, and it has changed considerably since it was first established by a Conservative Government in 1994. It is right that our work continues to evolve, as the agencies themselves and the wider intelligence community have evolved, and the threat that they are tackling has also expanded and evolved. Much has changed since 9/11 and even more so since 7/7.

One of the welcome changes is this opportunity to enable us in this House to debate, at least annually, the important—indeed, the essential—work that our security and intelligences agencies do for us. I welcome this change and I hope that the House does also. I look forward to hearing contributions from the wealth of experience that there is here, and I look forward to further such debates in the future.

I must begin with a profound apology. I have read and written about the wrong report. I read Could 7/7 Have Been Prevented? with great care, but I have only just been able to read the major report that we are considering today. So I deeply apologise. My comments will necessarily be very fragmentary, but perhaps the Committee will allow me to make them just the same.

I would in any case have said that the existence of the committee, and the reports that it produces on the basis of full access to knowledge of secret operations, is in itself a guarantee of good government and the protection of the population from serious threats from our enemies. That is true of the committee to a high degree. It goes far with its authoritative reports, based on real knowledge, to prevent the use of intelligence as media fodder. I quote from the Hutton report—a discussion between persons with no status in the intelligence hierarchy, or indeed in government, discussing a draft by e-mail. The writer comments in the e-mail:

“Ownership, the foreword is good but whose voice is it? Do we need a minister to sign it off? Probably not. Who will issue the text? Us? The Cabinet Office? Why don’t we issue it in the name of the JIC? Makes it more interesting to the media”.

The existence of this committee has gone far in making it much more difficult than it was for people who are not in a position to speak, and do not represent anything, to do so.

I also believe very strongly that the existence of the committee itself makes it highly undesirable that we should pursue the further suggestion that there should be open meetings of the committee. There is no way in which that can be done without a threat to sources. It seems to me that the degree of knowledge and detail that the committee produces is enough. We should not allow a situation in which anyone can come to ask questions and have to get answers. From that point of view, I again commend the committee and its existence.

In my very brief reading, I have noted with great pleasure the 10 per cent of SIS officers who are working in joint operational teams with the Security Service. I had experience of this in the IRA context, and it is extremely valuable. I notice that there is some concern about the SIS spending too much time and diverting resources to tackle the current terrorist threat, and therefore perhaps neglecting long-term challenges. I suggest that jihadism is a long-term challenge, and it is an international one. Therefore, it is entirely proper and necessary to devote the resources.

Other than that, I can only say with great apologies that there are many other things that I should have liked to have said. One thing I will say which will not surprise the noble Lord sitting opposite me is that I commend very strongly the position that the committee has taken on the question of intercept. I hope that note will be taken of that when we discuss it again, as I believe we are due to do at the Report stage of the Policing and Crime Bill.

I shall not waste noble Lords’ time by trying to produce a hasty comment on an admirable and deeply interesting document. I am very sad not to be able to do more, but I look forward to what everyone else will say, particularly perhaps my neighbour, the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller.

I should declare an interest in that the report covers some of the time that I was director-general. I did not retire until April 2007. I am not entirely certain, therefore, whether it is proper for me, rather unexpectedly, to be in the position of responding to a report which is partly about my performance. However, if the Committee will forgive me, I should like to make some comments. For example, we established the ethics councillor while I was director-general. I congratulate the committee on its industry. There were times when we in the service would have preferred it to be a little more dilatory and idle, because meeting every week—despite the view that we were not put under pressure—actually required all the intelligence organisations to do a lot of work to prepare and to make sure that their state of knowledge was sufficient to give the committee full and proper answers to its questions.

If the Committee will indulge me, I should mention something about the committee’s history, which is important and may not be in the public domain. Before 1989, my service, the Security Service, sought legislation to put itself on a statutory basis, which culminated in the Security Service Act 1989. We strongly argued for a parliamentary committee at that stage, because we felt that not having that sort of scrutiny meant that there was a democratic deficit that needed to be filled.

The Prime Minister of the time was not in favour of this subversive notion from the Security Service and the committee was not created until 1994. I very much welcome its evolution. As the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, mentioned, the legislation says that it is confined to policy, administration and finance of the agencies, but that is absolutely no longer the case. It is entirely right that I, my predecessors, my successors and the heads of the other agencies have responded to the committee’s very understandable wish to extend its remit beyond what is, strictly speaking, the letter of the law. I think that that is in everybody’s interests.

Although we are not going to discuss the 7/7 report, I hope that the Committee will allow me to make just two or three general points before I sit down. The 7/7 report, the details of which are absolutely scarred on my memory, is a very helpful account of an extremely complex situation. I remember saying to my staff when I addressed them on 8 July that they should brace themselves because by the end of the week the attack would have been our fault. I was wrong on the timing; it took about 18 months for it to be our fault. The report represents a much more detailed account than has ever been given of how the Security Service and the police work. The fact that it was possible to put that in the public domain safely is very commendable, and I am glad to read it.

At the risk of stating truisms, I remind the Committee that there is no such thing as complete security. The Government, the police and the Security Service cannot “ensure” the safety of all our citizens, but I know that my former colleagues and others will do their best to make it as complete as it is possible to be. Equally, in a country of 60 million-plus people—the Home Office will probably tell us there are many more—you cannot anticipate what everybody is going to do. The remark of Jonathan Evans that you can know somebody without knowing what they will do is worth remembering because you cannot always get into everybody’s heads, and their interest is in concealing what they are planning to do.

At the time of 7/7, the service of which I was then the head was two years into a major expansion because of its appreciation, which was accepted by the Government, that it was far too small to cope with the threat that it faced. It may never be large enough to cope with all the things with which it would wish to cope. There are other calls on public expenditure and prioritisation will always be necessary, however painful that may be.

I would like briefly to comment on two other points. Suggestions have been made in the press that the service blackmails young Muslims to make them work for it. This is utterly untrue. I think we would all hope that members of communities would come forward to assist the authorities. We must work as hard as we can towards achieving an environment where that becomes more normal and standard. However, there is no substitute for the recruitment of secret agents with direct access to terrorist networks—access which is tightly held and which they do not wish the authorities to discover. No amount of community information is likely to deliver that key, detailed stuff.

There is not time today to go into the complex subject of intercept as evidence. I will merely say that in 1988, to my certain knowledge, my service proposed to the Government of the day that we should raise this question as a policy discussion to see whether it would be possible to achieve it. The fact that it has not happened since then is not because of objections from my service or, indeed, objections in principle from the others, were it possible to do it safely and securely.

Finally, I mention asterisks. I have no current knowledge. When I left the building my pass was removed, I signed the Official Secrets Act, and the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, knows far more about current secrets than I do. As others will have done, I have had fun trying to imagine what lies behind the asterisks and felt a little frustration that I do not know, but I acknowledge and remember that this was exactly the process that is described. If you wanted something not to go in for national security reasons, you had to argue strongly. During my service I took a policy decision of trying to suggest as few changes as possible. Many of the asterisks have to come from the other two services because of foreign policy implications, but obviously it is in the interests of the entire intelligence community that as much as possible is included in the report.

I congratulate the committee on its hard work and on the production of this report, and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, on the way he has presented it to us today. It is clear that the committee was not asterisked out, and I do not regard this as an asterisked whitewash, as people might think. Having looked at the asterisks, it is obvious that they deal with resources that are not of a great deal of interest. A number of points raised by the committee makes me confident that it takes its task seriously and is critical when that is justified. Perhaps I can put the points that concern me in the hope that the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, will be able to answer some of them, subject of course to any asterisk that may be necessary, but those are probably asterisks that he uses in a naval capacity.

The first issue is that of recruitment. Paragraph 42 points out that GCHQ has long-term problems in recruiting and retaining specialists, including linguists, analysts, technologists and internet network experts. In 2007 it introduced a new policy to ensure that it paid the market rate to its operatives. However, the report records that the director remains concerned about the retention of these specialists because people drop out after five to eight years, when they have become experienced, because the rates of pay are simply not comparable with the earnings they can achieve in the outside world. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, pointed out to me the other day that there is no shortage of information. Indeed, the services are overwhelmed with information, so analysts who are highly trained should be encouraged to stay. If it requires more pay to do that, they should receive it.

As part of the Government’s implementation of the recommendations of the Butler review, a new post called the professional head of intelligence analysis was created, and Miss Jane Knight was appointed to be the champion—a favourite word of the Government—on behalf of analysts and to establish a distinct career specialism for this group. In the earlier report we learn that the committee had taken evidence from the professional head of intelligence analysis. Her team promulgated an analytical competence framework for professional development and conducted a survey of analytical capabilities across the intelligence community—developing courses, filling in perceived gaps in training and so on. This is a critical issue and could go very much to the future effectiveness of the security services.

I see also from the report that the Defence Intelligence Staff suffered a cut of 20 per cent of posts based in Whitehall. The committee was concerned about that and commented on it at paragraph 157. I see that the Government’s response to the committee’s criticism of the cut in these services states that:

“Analytical effort will be carefully prioritised”,

with regard to the cuts being imposed. When one hears from the Government about the security of this country, I wonder whether it is appropriate that specialised and experienced people of this kind should be lost to the service by reason of what they do. I am grateful to the committee for raising a very important point.

The committee states that the focus of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre is on current and immediate threats based on secret intelligence, and its purpose is to analyse the threat from international terrorism and to use those assessments to set the UK threat level. However, it appears to have been given an additional task in March 2008 with quite a different remit. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, emphasised that it is crucial to implement the Prevent strategy, which is a strand of the Government’s counterterrorism strategy. I am grateful to the committee for setting out in paragraph 117 what it considered to be the important features of the Prevent strategy, which are:

“challenging the ideology behind extremism and supporting mainstream voices; disrupting those who promote violent extremism and those who support the institutions where they operate; supporting individuals who are vulnerable to recruitment by proponents of violent extremism; increasing the resilience of communities against violent extremism; and addressing the grievances that ideologues are exploiting”.

To my mind, that is the long-term solution for terrorism and the threat of terrorism in this country. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, was right to say how crucial it is that that service should be given priority.

The committee felt that it was wrong that the task of investigating the path to violent extremism had been handed to a small department of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which seems to have a completely different remit. It made a recommendation at paragraph 137 of the report to the effect that consideration should be given to moving the new team to a more appropriate location such as the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office. It is a complete mystery to me what goes on inside the Home Office—I have my darker suspicions and your Lordships have very often heard me voice those suspicions—but the committee may have hit on something important. A small department in, I have to use the phrase, JTAC—this is like appearing in a military case where one is surrounded by initials of this kind—is not the way to put forward an extremely important part of the counterterrorism strategy.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, and the report referred to SCOPE. A major cross-government programme aiming to improve the intelligence community’s secure communications, it was apparently subject to constant delays. Phase 1 crept in but phase 2 has been scrapped with tens of millions of pounds thrown away. He said that we will hear in the next annual report what happened to the tens of millions and why phase 2 was scrapped. I hope that we might have a little more transparency in that regard. At this stage, I think that it would be appropriate for the Minister to explain to us what went wrong and what is to be put in its place. I look forward to that.

I turn to the subject of intercepts—a favourite topic. I note that the committee was unconvinced that intercept evidence should be heard in court, but it is very interesting that the Chilcot review agreed with the principle that intercept as evidence should be introduced. We heard a short time ago from the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, that the point was first raised in 1988 and that there has been no objection to it in principle either from the department that she headed or from the other agencies. Therefore, we continue to plod towards what I am sure we will ultimately be given—that is, some access to intercept evidence in the courts, which of course I know a little more about.

The Chilcot review set out nine requirements. I do not know whether there was a criminal lawyer on the review but those requirements, or recommendations, which had to be satisfied before intercept could be used as evidence, rule it out completely. Let us look at the first requirement:

“The intercepting agency shall decide whether a prosecution involving their intercepted material shall proceed”.

All of a sudden, the Chilcot inquiry takes away from the Director of Public Prosecutions—or, in the ultimate, the Attorney-General—the right to decide whether a prosecution should proceed. That is a very interesting and unusual introduction into the criminal justice system of this country.

The second requirement was:

“Intercepted material originating from the intelligence agencies shall not be disclosed beyond cleared judges, prosecutors, or special … advocates, except in a form agreed by the originator”.

Therefore, MI5, MI6, GCHQ or whoever can carry out their own redaction of material that they have and that apparently binds everyone. It will not even go before a judge to decide whether the redaction should be kept secret or made more public.

The third recommendation or requirement was that material intercepted using sensitive Sigint, which I understand is signals intelligence techniques—

“shall not be disclosed unless the Secretary of State is satisfied that disclosure will not put the capability and techniques at risk”.

Therefore, we have the agency determining whether a prosecution will proceed, how much intercept evidence should be disclosed and in what form and how it should be redacted, and the Secretary of State having an overall responsibility to decide whether material intercepted using these techniques should be disclosed at all.

At the end comes requirement nine, which makes me think that a criminal lawyer was not involved in the Chilcot inquiry:

“At trials (whether or not intercept is adduced as evidence) the defence shall not be able to conduct successful ‘fishing expeditions’ against intercept alleged to be held by any agency”.

Presumably it can conduct unsuccessful fishing expeditions but it is not allowed to conduct successful ones. That is paranoia about the way in which criminal lawyers go about their business. Fishing expeditions have never been allowed. Disclosure of documents does not depend upon fishing expeditions, whether successful or not. The judge controls a trial and he controls what disclosure is necessary. If disclosure is objected to, the judge will control what can and cannot be disclosed. There is a paranoia about lawyers, echoed yesterday by the Prime Minister, when he said that to hold the inquiry into Iraq in public would mean “lawyers, lawyers, lawyers”—echoes of Tony Blair's “education, education, education”. That is the paranoid approach to the way in which we lawyers go about our business.

I will not pursue the intercept argument any further, but simply note that the committee is unconvinced—and remains to be convinced, I am sure—of the value of intercept evidence in trials. After all, we want people who are guilty to be convicted. That is the important point. All parties in Parliament want the guilty to be convicted. That depends on evidence and on proof. If intercept evidence can make the difference between proving and not proving things, it should as a matter of public policy, as it is everywhere else in the world, be part of the trial process.

I have probably spoken for too long. I again congratulate the noble Lord on the report.

This afternoon we are debating what is, compared with some of its earlier reports, one of the more detailed and informative reports that the Intelligence and Security Committee has produced. I follow others in the Committee in congratulating the committee on its work. I need no convincing that the committee does important and very detailed work. I am not fooled by the notion that asterisks mean that something has not been gone into seriously.

However, I am sad that more of the committee's work does not get into the public domain because I believe that, were it to do so, that would help public understanding of the agencies and the important work that they do. I think that that is necessary. Although I have to disagree, I congratulate the member of the committee who introduced the debate—it is a great innovation that he is doing so—on the ingenuity of his argument that asterisks are a guarantee of the probing nature of the work done by the committee. Having said that, I think that important work is done.

The committee has arrived at a number of notable conclusions and recommendations. The Government have in some cases responded to them in a rather cursory fashion. Of the 17 recommendations and conclusions of the committee, 11 of them get just a one-line response. I hope that the Minister will take that observation away to see how the Government could increase the level of response to the committee's work. That is particularly necessary for a number of the findings that point to some problems or weaknesses in the central intelligence machinery. I want to consider some of those in greater detail but, before I do so, I want to say that I share the opinion of many others in this House in valuing the probity and integrity of the work done by the intelligence agencies. It is extraordinarily important to our national security.

The committee criticised the decision to subsume the role of the Professional Head of Intelligence Analysis within the role of the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee—a point made by the previous speaker. It is an important issue. The committee stated:

“given the importance of the Professional Head of Intelligence Analysis post, we are very concerned by the plan to subsume the role within the Joint Intelligence Committee Chairman’s post as this may actually lessen the priority given to this crucial role. The Committee is disappointed that the post has not been maintained as a distinct and separate role”.

That was a recommendation of the Butler report and we take it seriously. We think that the post should exist and that it is important. As the Minister is here today, I hope that he will be able to tell us when a separation is going to take place again and when a proper career specialism in intelligence analysis will be recreated.

Secondly, I turn to another point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas. A related finding of the committee concerns the Defence Intelligence Staff. We know from the Butler report that the DIS was described as a critical part of the intelligence community—indeed it has one of the larger intelligence analytical capabilities in the UK—and yet we know that efficiency savings which resulted in staff cuts have taken place in this capability despite the fact that the Butler report recommended extra funding to allow DIS to have a greater influence on national intelligence assessment. We know why because we know what happened in the case of the Iraq intervention. I should like to know from the Minister, if he can tell me, how these two considerations are reconciled. This is a matter of concern.

The committee’s third finding also relates to a recommendation made in the Butler review concerning the role of the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Head of Security, Intelligence and Resilience in the Cabinet Office. These two roles have correctly been separated, although I have to say that the grades of both posts are now lower than they were when they were combined. On a point of note, we on these Benches would look carefully at the role and grading of the JIC chair and the security adviser. In our view, they must have the necessary authority to carry out their important roles, and of course they have to deal with the heads of the agencies. There is also a new line management role for the Cabinet Secretary, so I am quite confused about the central arrangements. It is clear from the committee’s report that the Government have not taken it seriously in so far as this could negatively affect the functioning of the central intelligence machinery and the UK’s analytical capability, and I hope that we can be given some reassurance on that point.

There is one other problem I want to raise which relates to the centre. The committee placed a question mark over the value of the Government’s National Security Strategy, saying:

“We have questioned whether the strategy will achieve any benefits in real terms or whether it is simply a paper exercise … The National Security Strategy does not create new areas of responsibility for the Agencies or the wider intelligence community. The Heads of the Agencies have indicated that they were consulted about the strategy and are broadly supportive of it, but that they do not envisage that it will result in any significant change in direction for them”.

I want to make a number of comments about that. People will have differing views on whether the National Security Strategy as it exists at the moment is an operational or primarily a descriptive document, but I find it surprising that even if it would not result in a change in the roles of the agencies, it does not provide for them. These days the agencies seem to be absolutely central to the national security of this country and I believe that they should be part of the debate. I hope that in the future—we do not know when the Government will create it—the Prime Minister will finally, having proposed a Joint Committee of both Houses on national security, cause it to come into being; that these issues will be debated and that the agencies will be a part of that debate. I am aware that my noble friend Lady Park of Monmouth does not think that the committee should ever meet in public but I am afraid I disagree. There are occasions when it would be right and appropriate for the world to know how important the agencies are to our work and to take part in those aspects of their work which are perfectly capable of being open to scrutiny. Their contribution to the National Security Strategy is one of them. We are not asking for and should not receive operational information, but the strategy is something the public should know about, understand and be supportive of. It is much harder for them to do so if they are kept in the dark.

I wish to raise two or three points on strategic direction. The committee rather worryingly calls into question the issue of intercept evidence. This was dealt with in detail by the previous speaker and I shall not go over it again. The only point I wish to bring out in this discussion is that there is a tension between two public goods: the need to protect sources, national security and the operational capabilities of our agencies on the one hand, and the need for the evidence necessary to put people behind bars on the other. In the end, that is the greatest deterrent against terrorism. Two things will enable us to overcome the terrorist menace. One of them is putting people behind bars, and the other, as has been correctly said, is a fruitful, positive Prevent strategy. Putting people behind bars is important for the public good and I remain unconvinced that it is not possible to find a way to add to our ability to do that—I know that it is no silver bullet—by using intercept evidence in criminal trials.

My second point concerns the Prevent strategy. The committee rightly said, and its members are not the only people to feel this, that it is difficult to measure its real success or outcomes. This is partly because of the inherent nature of the strategy itself. Nevertheless, it is important because significant money is being poured into it and we on these Benches have called for—and in office, if we get there, we will conduct—a review of the Prevent strategy as a matter of urgency. We support its objectives and we want to see it operating effectively.

Thirdly, the committee expressed the opinion that there remains “scope for improvement” in the resilience and business continuity planning of the agencies. Perhaps this is also a matter for Ministers to make a priority. I do not need to go over it in detail, but it is certainly the case that we need to safeguard the operational activities of the agencies and their staff, but it does not seem necessary as a result of that to cover quite so much of the information about financial expenditure in asterisks. For example, I cannot see that great damage would be done to national security for us to know how much money is being spent on capital expenditure. While I accept the need for safeguarding information that is really important to national security, I hope that over time the line can be drawn in a different place from where it is at the moment.

It would be helpful for us all to have more financial information about the way in which the intelligence account is being spent. After all, it now stands at £2 billion and is going up—it is double what it was in 2002-03—and is, frankly, about the same as the cost of a small government department. We do not know even in broad terms how the sums are divided between the agencies, what is spent on operations and what is spent on capital. I know that the agencies are operating in a challenging environment, but it is legitimate and right—and there will be increasing pressure, as the sums of money are now so big, for there to be adequate information coming forward on value for money. It is very helpful, as the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, told us, that the NAO will be offering help to the committee in its investigations of that issue. I hope also that the public can learn more as a result of what the committee discovers.

Mention was made earlier of the problems of the IT programme, SCOPE. We on these Benches feel that this is the kind of issue where aspects may need to be kept confidential but, nevertheless, why it went wrong and what the management problems were do not seem to be matters of national security and should be discussed in the open so that everyone can learn the lessons. As was rightly said, “tens of millions of pounds” have already been spent on it, and I assume that there are likely to be cost implications in abandoning the project. That needs to be in the public domain.

Closed forum discussion carries penalties, which is not to question people’s commitment. The inquiry into the 7/7 attacks was conducted in private and led to those involved and the families of the victims attacking it, not accepting it and feeling that ultimately they had not been given reassurance. That is a pity. I do not question the seriousness with which the investigation was conducted, but it is a pity that the last stage of what one hoped this work would produce— trust and reassurance—was not achieved because too much was kept back. We have the committee’s conclusions but we do not have enough of the reasoning that led it to those conclusions. Therefore, the conclusions tend to be disputed by those who are unable to see why the committee reached them. I could name a number of other instances of that kind, but I urge the committee to think hard, when things happen in the future or indeed generally, about the extent to which there is value of another kind in allowing the public to know more about what happened, not least with regard to the great achievement of the services, and in being frank when things go wrong.

I have one last question. The committee does not see everything in a timely manner, and its members have made one or two comments about that. I think that it has still to see some of the material on SCOPE. As I said, there is also the subsequent problem of what the public see. I hope very much—this is really a question of trust—that the committee’s further report on the alleged complicity of the agencies in torture or in cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which was submitted to the Prime Minister in March, will be published and not suppressed. I am sure that it is a serious report; this is obviously a serious matter of public concern. There will be significant interest in it and I hope very much that it will be allowed to see the light of day. It obviously affects the reputation of our agencies, so I hope that it is a reassuring report. The failure to publish such things after an investigation adversely affects the reputation of the country. I hope very much that we will be allowed to learn more about this matter. I shall be glad to know, if the Minister is able to say, when it is intended that the committee’s report will be published. It relates to one aspect of the rather peculiar position of the committee. It is not a full-blown parliamentary committee and the Prime Minister has the last word on what is published.

The final set of issues that I want to talk about concerns the committee’s operations. Your Lordships will be aware that in March last year, as part of the White Paper entitled The Governance of Britain—Constitutional Renewal, the Government proposed a number of reforms to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which I assume have the support of the committee itself. These included public briefings where they can be achieved without compromising national security or the safety of individuals. Certainly the committee has presented some of its reports in more detail, and I hope that we shall see more of that.

There is also a proposal to reinstate the investigative capacity of the committee, in particular by giving consideration to creating a pool of individuals on whom it could call. I am glad to hear about the extra muscle that the committee will be given, but this recommendation seems to go a bit wider. Another reform is to explore alternative accommodation in order to emphasise the committee’s independence. It would be interesting to know where it meets now and where it may meet in the future. Is it getting other premises? A further reform is to make sure that the debates on the committee’s reports take place in your Lordships’ House. That is a welcome innovation and I hope that we will do so more thoroughly in future. It is regrettable that so few people are interested in debating this important report today, but I hope it is an activity that will also grow.

I would be grateful to know from the Minister what progress has been made on these various recommendations, particularly whether there is to be a move to different accommodation or a major increase in investigative capacity. We would like to feel that the committee, which does hard and diligent work, is adequately provided for in every sense. Indeed, in our view, the committee should be upgraded. It should have the authority of Parliament behind it and Parliament should take the decisions on what is published. There will be special procedures appropriate to the sensitivity of the subject matter, but other democracies manage it without prejudice to security, so I am sure that this country and these Houses of Parliament can do likewise. Although safeguards will need to be put in place to prevent genuinely damaging disclosure of matters such as operational detail, that in no way contradicts the ability to hold more committee meetings in public, and for the committee to have a staff of its own with a power to call for papers.

As I said at the beginning, this is a good and helpful report, and the detail in it is very welcome. It is a tribute to the hardworking members of the committee. As I also said, however, I would like to see even more. I am sure that as intelligence work has now become central to national security and commands so sizeable and growing a budget, it is right and necessary to have adequate accountability to Parliament and public understanding of this part of national security. As I said, we need less mystery and more open discussion, and Parliament should be at the centre of this. We on these Benches look forward to strengthening the arm of the ISC in its important work.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate. I am sure that we all join together in welcoming the reforms. Noble Lords have not touched on this matter, but we are debating the report for the first time in the House of Lords and that is a great move forward. The other place had a similar debate on 7 May and it is good that we have this opportunity. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, for opening the debate so ably, and I thank all those who have contributed and made important points today.

I pay tribute to the sterling work of our security and intelligence agencies, an issue on which a number of speakers have touched. These agencies are staffed by men and women who work day and night—in fact, I was at a briefing in Vauxhall Cross at lunchtime today with someone who had been debriefing an agent for more than 18 hours solid over the weekend—to protect our country and its interests both at home and overseas, and they often put themselves at great risk. I know that we all admire them for that.

The agencies are rightly recognised as world-class organisations. They have had major successes since 2001. With the help of the security and intelligence agencies, more than a dozen attempted terrorist plots in the United Kingdom alone have been disrupted, and almost 200 people have been convicted of terrorist-related offences. The diligence of our agencies is crucial in helping us to tackle some of the most difficult security challenges that we face, both overseas and across the board, in large areas of national security.

By necessity, of course, an awful lot of this work is invisible but, given what crosses my desk every day—a number of the speakers in today’s debate have been in the same position in the past—I can assure noble Lords that that does not mean that the work is any less important. I am very glad to agree with those who have spoken and, like them, I admire the efforts that are made in this regard.

I add my thanks to those of other speakers to the members of the Intelligence and Security Committee for their hard work over the past year, which is very impressive. I share the view of a number of speakers that the product coming out of the committee and its oversight have got better and better, which is good. My final note of thanks goes to those who undertake the necessary judicial oversight of the agencies—the Intelligence Services Commissioner, the Interception Commissioner and the president and members of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal. The challenge that they help us to uphold is striking the right balance between protecting the most important of human rights—the right to life—and protecting the other rights that we in our democracy hold so dear. I am convinced that the right balance of mechanisms is in place—legislative, ministerial and parliamentary scrutiny—and that it is provided by the committee and the Members of both Houses to ensure that the agencies fulfil their lawful duties.

The tragic events of 7 July 2005 are etched on the memory of the British people. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, told of the impact they had on her when she was in her previous post. We all express our regret and condolences to those whose family members were killed and to the survivors of the bombings, some of whom were very badly injured. I am very grateful to the ISC for conducting a very thorough and comprehensive review of the intelligence relating to that attack. I accept the committee’s assessment that decisions made by the Security Service and the police in 2004 and 2005 were understandable and reasonable. The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, said that some people did not want to accept that. I am afraid that that is in the very nature of things. I know from my own experience when my ship was sunk that, when people look at things later in the cold light of day, it is very easy to be wise after the event. I remember one young man who had been in a compartment that was on fire with dead people around him, and one of the people on the board—I was allowed to sit in on all this—on a lovely quiet sunny summer’s day in Devonport asked, “Why did you switch such and such a valve to such and such a position?” I felt that he had no understanding at all of what actually happens at such times, with the pressures on people and so on. We must always remember those things. These are the sorts of pressures that some of these men are under. Given what they knew at the time and their resources and priorities, there is no doubt that MI5 and the police made very understandable and reasonable decisions, and I thank the committee for coming up with a very good outcome on that.

However, things can be learnt from the report and the committee was quite right to point them out. The main criticism was about information flows between MI5 and the police in 2003-04, which should have been better. We always have things to learn, but we have made enormous strides in that area and we picked those up very quickly. The police counterterrorism network has now been established containing CTUs—for example, in Manchester, which I visited very recently, and Leeds, Birmingham and the Thames Valley. I went to the one in South Wales on Monday when I was doing a counterterrorist launch down there. The Security Service now has offices across the United Kingdom. I could not help noticing that most of the people who work in them during the day seem to wear trainers. However, they are working very hard and provide local intelligence direction through daily contact with the police.

The noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, mentioned the importance of Prevent, as did a number of other speakers. That is absolutely correct. It was quite clear to me when I came into post—I discussed it with the Prime Minister and others beforehand—that we cannot arrest and protect our way out of this problem. That is just an impossibility. I can think of a nation that has tried to do exactly that and it does not work. We have to reduce the number of people who become radicalised and become violent extremists. That is why we have put so much effort into the Prevent agenda over the past two years. We have a very comprehensive and good Prevent agenda, to which I shall come back a little later.

The noble Lord also mentioned dismay over SCOPE. We take this issue very seriously. There is a large loss of funds, and there have been cases like this in the past. When I was chief of defence intelligence I found that the big computer system that was being set up was not fit for purpose and was not working. I had to make the very difficult decision to pull the plug and say no. We have to learn from these things. The Cabinet Office has given the ISC a memorandum dealing with all aspects of that programme, although the financial details have yet to be finalised. Commercial sensitivities are involved because of the negotiations going on between the Cabinet Office and the firm involved at the moment. What is good is that SCOPE 1 is up and running and gives a good link at top-secret strap-2 level. However, we are looking at other options for interactive working and chat-room working and so on, which we will have to do in the future. It is not a good story, but it was absolutely right that we stopped the system where we did and we are looking at all the options. I cannot say much more on that because of the commercial sensitivity of some of those issues.

The noble Lord and a number of other speakers mentioned intercept evidence. I do not want to go into huge detail; all I will say is that the Chilcot report was produced and Chilcot felt that nine tests had to be met. That was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford. A Privy Council advisory group is looking at this. The Chilcot study group was a cross-party group. The Government are very open to using intercept as evidence as long as we can protect the crown jewels and the things that we need to protect. There is a feeling that this is a silver bullet, but it is not. Having spent many years—probably going back to the 1970s—listening to intercepted material, I know that you do not get clear-cut answers. Normally, you do not get the answer in court. Where we have looked at this issue in a number of cases, that has not always been achieved.

Even so, the Government are very content to go down this route as regards intercept evidence and would like to do so for reasons of openness and so on. However, we have to meet the tests. There is no doubt at all that the people whom we are chasing and running down are very cute, and they learn very quickly when we give anything away. When something is given away, you can see, almost within a matter of weeks, how it permeates out through their organisations and we begin to find that we cannot use that evidence again. We need to be really careful in that area. We will have many more debates about this issue, so I do not intend to go into it any further. I understand the strength of feeling on it, but Chilcot set nine tests. We have to go through each hoop to see whether we will meet them, and we will move forward on that basis.

Perhaps I may say how delighted I am to see the noble Baroness, Lady Park, back and in such good form. That is good news. I understand her point on open meetings, and we will debate and look at this issue further. There are arguments on either side, and it will be interesting to see where that debate goes. The joint operations between the SIS and the Security Service, which she mentioned, are without doubt working much better than they were when compared with the situation at the end of the 1980s, when I first did a lot of work with the agencies. That includes GCHQ. I am sure that the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, would agree. The linkages are quite amazing, and in the areas involving working abroad—for example, in Afghanistan or Pakistan—or in this country, the work of those teams together is quite incredible, as is the amount of interchange. It is very satisfactory and gratifying.

The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, touched specifically on the evolution of the ISC. I agree entirely with her that it is very healthy, that it has gone beyond the policy, admin and finance area to a much wider look at things, and that should be encouraged. We perhaps need to look at extending that remit even further. She is absolutely right to say that there is no such thing as complete security. We are under a threat level of “severe”. I am afraid that, although only a tiny number of the population who want to do us serious harm is involved, what some of them are trying to do is quite horrible. I am afraid that, as an IRA person said some years ago, they only have to be lucky once and we have to be lucky all the time. That is a daunting prospect. We could easily spend our entire national wealth on counterterrorism, and, without a doubt, we still would not be absolutely sure of stopping all terrorism. We would then, of course, be doing the job of the terrorists for them. We must be extremely careful about that.

On the noble Baroness’s point about recruiting agents, I believe that the British public would be appalled if they thought that we were not trying to do that. However, there is no pressure put on them in the way that the media have tried to suggest. People think that recruiting agents is exactly what we should be doing. I think that I have covered all of her points on that issue.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, talked about GCHQ’s recruitment problem, and he was right to raise that. An issue that affects the agencies across the board, the armed services and indeed industry is the fact that high-calibre linguists, expert analysts and IT specialists are really important assets. They are valuable to the nation and it is difficult to hang on to them. In the Royal Navy, we would train up our nuclear panel watch-keepers for the nuclear programme, but their pay goes nowhere near what they can step outside and get straightaway. That is a real problem with trained people. The average rate of drop-out at GCHQ is around 3 per cent, which is not bad, but it is something on which we have to focus. The noble Lord is right to raise the issue and it was commented on in the report. We will have to put a considerable amount of effort into it, but we cannot just go on increasing pay. Instead, we have to look at how it should be dealt with.

The noble Lord also touched on the post of Professional Head of Intelligence Analysis, while the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, referred to the DIS. As noble Lords can imagine, having been Chief of Defence Intelligence and before that Director of Naval Intelligence, each for three years, I believe in the importance of analysis. The DIS, after changes were made to the Foreign Office some 18 years ago, has the biggest pool of analysts. Raw intelligence without analysis, unless you are very lucky and get a crown jewel, does not help very much; it is the analysis that is so important. There is a problem in terms of the DIS, and no doubt the pressure on defence when looking at numbers at head office has meant that the DIS has had to take a cut. It has been a much smaller cut than those made in other areas of the MoD, and the DIS has tried to make cuts among administrative staff rather than the analysts themselves. We need to look at this carefully because we must look after such a scarce resource. That is what we are trying to do.

I touched on the importance of the Prevent strategy earlier. The cell within JTAC is not the whole picture. Within the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism in the Home Office, a chunk of Prevent work is going on, and we outsource certain research projects. We have the Research, Information and Communications Unit which focuses specifically on Prevent activities. If the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, and other noble Lords would like to have a briefing about this area, I would be happy to provide it. It is important, which is why we have taken it right down to the community level through community cohesion and community policing, and right up to the national and international level with outreaching to Pakistan. I can say that there is no doubt that our Prevent strategy is the best in the world. People come to look at what we are doing, while we take things from other nations. The Americans, who until recently were not interested in this area of endeavour, now see it as a very important effort. I am proud of where we have gone with it and I would be happy to give a briefing to noble Lords. I think that they will find it very interesting.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, also mentioned the Professional Head of Intelligence Analysis. It is interesting to note that after taking up his role as chairman of the JIC at the beginning of 2008, Alex Allan reviewed the future purpose, structure and leadership of the PHIA post in consultation with the analytical community and decided to take up the title of Professional Head of Intelligence Analysis in recognition of the importance of the role and the desirability of Permanent Secretary-level oversight of it. He is a Permanent Secretary, while Robert Hannigan, the security adviser to the Prime Minister, is just one grade below that. We do have senior civil servants locked into that area.

The noble Baroness mentioned the National Security Strategy, and of course we did not have one before last year. There were a number of gaps and perhaps it was not as refined as it should have been. We will produce a revised version in, I hope, the next month or so. Reference was made to not specifically talking about the agencies. We have to be a little careful about this. They are of course fundamental to the national security strategy in so many areas, as are so many of these other forces.

On the outward face, this is the only national security strategy that does not have a classified chunk. We published it uncut, so that the British public could for the first time get a flavour of it, and we also published a national risk register. That was never done before: in the past there was the NRA, which was confidential and hidden away. Now we have a national risk register that goes out right down to local resilience forums, where local people can see what are the risks to their local area and population and what they can do about it. We have done a lot in that area and I am rather proud of what we have achieved.

On how it is monitored in Parliament, the Prime Minister has committed to establishing a new joint parliamentary committee, which will consider reports and updates to them. The people in it will be established shortly, as I understand it, and they will consider the next iteration of the national security strategy when it is produced this summer.

On the single intelligence account, as the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, said, only the SIA is made public; the specific agency budgets are not. There is a danger that if we do that, we may indicate the level and scale of the operational abilities of each agency. We must be wary of that. As the ISC sets out in its report, the CSR 2007 settlement will take funding of the agencies to more than £2.3 billion, which I think everyone accepts is good news, because we have to get to grips with this threat, which is very real. As I said, sadly, they only have to be lucky once.

The allegations of torture are very serious. Our position on that is absolutely clear: we condemn it wholeheartedly. It is a very difficult issue. The Prime Minister has come up with four things that he said he will do. However, if my opposite number from a country with whom we deal in trade, politically and every way, but we do not necessarily like what they do in their country—whether capital punishment or whatever—phoned me up and said, “Right, I have these two names and they are going to blow up Wembley tomorrow”, I do not think that I would say to him, “Hang on a minute, I just want to make sure that the way you got that information is absolutely clear-cut. I would like to send someone to find out. Can you promise me that that was not done?”. I just do not think that I would do that. That is where these things become quite difficult.

The Prime Minister has said quite clearly that we will publish guidance to intelligence officers and service personnel. It will be consolidated and reviewed by the ISC which, as I understand it, is working on that at the moment. As soon as that has been done—it is complex because there is guidance for the MoD as well, so there are different levels of guidance—it will be put in the public domain. We will invite the Intelligence Service Commissioner to monitor compliance with the guidance and report to the Prime Minister annually. We have asked the ISC to consider any new developments and relevant information since the report on detention in 2005 and rendition in 2007 and to report on that. We have made it clear that wherever allegations of any wrongdoing are made, they are taken extremely seriously. If further cases of criminal wrongdoing come to light, we will refer them to the Attorney-General, because it is only right and proper that we should do that.

I hope that I have answered most of the points raised. If not, I am very happy if people come to talk to me or get back to me in writing. Throughout our work to tackle this wide range of threats, the Government and the agencies have to take difficult judgments about priorities and proportionality. It is not easy, but I am confident that, generally, the right balance is being struck. Protecting the safety of people in Britain is a primary duty and a binding obligation on government. We must recognise that the threat we face is very different from what has gone before in terms of its scale and its aims. We know that there is the pervasive danger of radicalisation of our own people.

We must stand firm on our principles—the pre-eminence of human rights and shared values—but we must also up the level of our response. That is why we have increased funding dramatically to about £2.3 billion by 2011—£1 billion more than in the past. I believe—I suppose I would as Minister for counterterrorism—that this is the highest priority for the agencies. It is important to note that, as was raised by the ISC, because of additional commitments, actual spending in other areas, although it is a reduced percentage, has increased. The committee is absolutely right in raising its concern—we must keep a very close eye on that, but we must go for the wolf closest to the sledge.

As I said, thanks to the dedication of the men and women in the security and intelligence agencies—we have two here who have worked there in the past—we have, although I am always very wary of saying this, had considerable success in stopping terrorists in their tracks and bringing those responsible to justice. However, the threat has not gone away and that is why we need to keep ahead. It is why we have updated CONTEST. It draws on our considerable experience, as I think people around the world realise. In recent years, the number of police dedicated to this area has grown to about 3,000 and the Security Service has doubled in size. These things are crucial and they need to be done to counter the threat. More than that, we need the steadfast support, help and vigilance of all our communities without frightening them about the threat. I have great belief in the British public and I think that that can happen. It is because they all pull together that they are able to keep us safe and they are crucial to our success.

I was absolutely spot on at the start when I predicted that we would have a very well informed and comprehensive debate. I am pleased to say that I can be very brief in my reply, mainly because the Minister has answered all the awkward questions, for which I am grateful.

I want to mention just one or two points in relation to intercept as evidence. It is very interesting that we had the two sides of the argument in our debate today. As the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, rightly said, it is a question of two public goods and, as the noble Lord, Lord Thomas, said, of putting prisoners in jail but not in any way jeopardising our national security. I think that everyone here recognises that there is a debate to be had there. They will also recognise that the role of the Intelligence and Security Committee is to look at protecting national security and that other people can put the other argument.

We also had a fascinating debate about whether the committee might meet in public. The committee does have the ability to meet in public but, because of the nature of the information that we get, so far we have not done so. However, we are looking at that and, if a suitable subject presented itself, we would consider doing it.

On a number of occasions, the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, urged the committee to do various things. I do not want to give away any secrets—that would be entirely inappropriate—but the people on the committee whom she has to urge are those from her own party, as I think she probably recognises.

When we went to the Home Office, we were very impressed by what is now being done in relation to the Prevent strategy. A step-change has taken place compared with what we saw originally, and I think that noble Lords will see that reflected in our next report.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, perceptively picked up one of the key points concerning the Professional Head of Intelligence Analysis being a separate job. Again, I think that noble Lords will find that that matter is raised in our next report. The committee may not be surprised to hear that a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee who is also a member of the Butler committee ensures that that matter is discussed regularly.

We looked at the issue of the Defence Intelligence Staff very carefully before commenting, and we received assurances from the chief of defence intelligence and from the Secretary of State that the cuts would not impact on analytical capacity. However, I assure the Committee that we will be monitoring this very matter carefully and, again, it will be covered in our next report.

I am building up excitement about the next report because, again, SCOPE will be covered in more detail in our next annual report. As the Minister said, there is currently a dispute between the Government and the supplier. It would be entirely wrong to go into more detail, as the Minister was right to say.

Although I never like to do this, perhaps I may correct the Minister slightly on one point. We have not started to look at the protocol for questioning but are about to do so. We have the existing arrangements for all the services; very shortly we will get the consolidated arrangements and we will look at those in full detail.

I said in my introduction—I see that the noble Lord, Lord King, a former chairman of the committee, is now here—that one of the encouraging things is that we now have extra resources. We will be getting not one but three investigators to carry out work on our behalf, although they will not all be full-time. I see the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, worrying about her successor being questioned.

The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Jones, said that the Government are not taking the committee and its reports seriously. With the greatest respect, that is not the case, and every member of the committee, of whatever party, would say that. Just because the Government do not agree with everything the committee says does not mean that it is not being taken seriously. They take it seriously—the reply from the Minister has indicated that today.

I look forward—and I shall still be here because an election will not affect Members of this House—to participating, in whatever capacity, in the next debate. I hope that my noble friend Lord Brett, the Whip, will not give me a row for saying it, but I hope that next time we will manage to have the debate on the Floor of the House to allow more people to participate fully in it.