Sir Julian Lewis

I am flattered and extremely grateful. Coming from someone of the calibre of my right hon. and learned Friend, that means a great deal to me. It reminds me of one last point that I perhaps would have overlooked: one can achieve an awful lot with these secret organisations. I remember going with the excellent director of the ISC to meet a senior figure, shall we say, in the secret world, and we were discussing some of the reports we were going to produce. One of them was, as I mentioned in my list earlier, a report on the international partnerships that our intelligence agencies have. The senior figure was saying, “Well, it’s going to be very difficult. You’re not going to be able to publish just about anything. Are you sure you really want to do this examination?” To which the obvious answer was, “Well, we will certainly be able to produce a very interesting report, even if it is classified in its entirety and published only as a single sheet with the title page on it.” I know I am not allowed to produce props, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just happen to have with me a copy of that report, which it proved possible to publish in the end. It was not a single page; it was about 100 pages. That is what a clever, dedicated staff can manage to produce, irrespective of the fact that it rightly has to exclude anything that might harm the interests of the nation. It is possible both for the secret agencies to do their work and for the scrutineers of the secret agencies to do their work, provided that the independence of the people who do all the heavy lifting, namely the director and the secretariat, are not compromised.