7. Since the issue is one of principle and the arguments are well rehearsed this has not been a lengthy inquiry. We have taken written and oral evidence from Mr David Bickford CB, former legal adviser to the intelligence and security services. Additionally, we raised a number of issues with the Home Secretary both formally and informally.[10] We have also had informal meetings with the Director-General of the Security Service (Dr Stephen Lander),[11] and with the Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Committee (Rt Hon Tom King MP).[12] We are very grateful for their help. In passing, we note that the point was made to us on more than one occasion that in the past resistance to greater openness came not from the security and intelligence agencies themselves, but from Whitehall and Government.

8. In addition to his comments on the effectiveness and structures of the arrangements for accountability, Mr Bickford made a number of points of wider interest about the agencies and the work in which they are engaged. These included observations on the way in which their activities and methods would have to change to reflect the enormous development of electronic information, and the growing importance of serious international and organised crime as a priority. Of particular interest to this Committee are his observations on the degree to which intelligence operations need to be conducted in such a way as to maximise the extent to which the product of their work can be used in court in criminal proceedings. These issues do not however fall to be considered as part of this Report, though they would be possible topics for study by any oversight committee.

9. It must be noted that it is as the select committee responsible for monitoring the Home Office that we have been interested in the work of the Security Service. We have no locus to investigate the work of the Secret Intelligence Service and GCHQ, which come within the field of responsibility of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and thus the Foreign Affairs Committee. However, we cannot examine the relative merits of oversight of the Security Service by a select committee and by the statutory Intelligence and Security Committee without looking at the work of the ISC as a whole which, as already noted, covers the SIS and GCHQ also. Our analysis and conclusions would therefore have implications for the Foreign Affairs Committee, but it must obviously be free to speak for itself.[13]

11  14 January 1999 (this meeting took place at the Security Service headquarters at Millbank, London SW1). Back

12  29 April 1999. Back

13  In its Second Report of Session 1998-99 (HC 116), on Sierra Leone, the Foreign Affairs Committee drew attention to the unfavourable response it had received from the Government to its requests for access to the Secret Intelligence Service to discuss the Service's role, if any, in the recent events in that country (see paras 102-109 of the Report). Back