Many thanks for your letter of 15 April which I have received on my return. I hope the following helps clarify the points raised.

THE "RING OF SECRECY"

Q  At Q83 of the oral evidence you state that "One of the problems is that it is within the ring of secrecy. Oversight that is within the ring of secrecy must always be considered suspect". Could you elaborate on this? Presumably, it is desirable for a scrutiny committee to have access to secret information, and to this extent being within the "ring of secrecy" must be beneficial. Is the problem as you see it that the ISC is not free to decide what information it gathers should or should not be released to the public or Parliament? If so, are there other restraints you would place on a scrutiny committee's freedom to decide these issues for itself, or should it be left entirely to the good judgment of the scrutiny committee?

  A  I agree with your analysis. The issue should be left to the scrutiny committee's good judgment. The agencies and others will have indicated to the committee areas of sensitiviy which they would advise against publishing. The committee would balance the relevant interests before publishing.

  Added to this, a committee with restricted access to information in the agencies is unable to make such a balanced judgment. Moreover, a committee that is confined solely to reviewing the intelligence agencies' work is also more hampered in such a balancing test compared to a committee dealing with a broad range of relevant matters.

THE ISC'S REMIT AND ITS INTERPRETATION

Q  The ISC's remit under the Intelligence Services Act 1994 is to examine the "expenditure, administration and policy" of the security services, though its freedom to investigate "sensitive" matters, which are defined in paragraph 4 of Schedule 3 to the Act and include operations, is restrained by its powers of access to information. You make clear in your evidence that the limits this places on the ISC's "freedom to roam" significantly reduces its effectiveness. At Q94 (and surrounding questions) you suggest that the sorts of matters which the ISC has looked at are not the main issues. In saying this, do you mean that it is barred by its remit/powers from looking at the key issues, or that it is not making the best use of its remit/powers, or both?

  A.  The ISC is barred by its remit and powers to have unfettered review and investigation of operational and technical matters. It is essential for it to have automatic access to these key issues.

  For instance, at paragraph 72 of the ISC Report 1997-98, work is to include inquiries into the agencies' work in information warfare and counter proliferation. That work will involve complex and extremely secret technical work by GCHQ and the use of highly sensitive human sources by MI5 and MI6. Unless the agencies volunteer all their activities and operations in these areas, the ISC cannot conduct proper inquiries or reach a balanced conclusion. Even if the agencies do so volunteer, the ISC has no way of knowing whether anything is being hidden or is being glossed to advantage. They have no direct access to the facts.

  The other problem is that the ISC has an information base limited to intelligence matters. The Home Affairs Committee has a broad information base convering for instance police, law enforcement and immigration. These matters are extremely relevant to the work of the agencies today. The ISC Report indicates that this lack of a broad information base is blinkering its approach to the key issues which I indicated in my evidence.

David Bickford CB

21 April 1999