Member

I have already commented in Committee on our engagement with the Intelligence and Security Committee. I served on that committee for five years, and I know the access to information it gets. I know that it can interrogate the security services, and it can hold Ministers to account. But it does so sometimes in private, with all its sessions private. Its reports are considered in private because the information to which it has access is the same confidential information that is put before Ministers of the Crown in making these decisions. I say to the noble Viscount with all due respect that requiring the committee to consider these matters and produce a report, potentially, before the Government can make a decision is, frankly, a bit too bureaucratic and potentially slow in its approach to the decisions the Government might have to take.