Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)

First, I thank my noble friend for the work that he and his committee are undertaking that is not normally in the scope of the ISC. We as a Parliament have asked it to undertake a huge amount of work and we are grateful for the work it is doing. As I have set out, the Government will return to Parliament when they publish the second tranche of material. We will set out the methodology that has been followed and the reasons for it. More generally, there are obvious reasons why the Government treat vetting material with exceptional sensitivity. Many Members of your Lordships’ House have held roles where they have been exposed to the importance of vetting and know how the process works and that the number of people who have access to this material remains tightly controlled for a reason. We will be publishing a full methodology alongside the materials. With regard to the other points raised by the noble Lord and his committee in their correspondence of recent days, I have already answered the point on the inappropriate use of NCCCs. On their other points, including the lack of proper records and inappropriate use of lower-level IT systems, I have more than some sympathy with the comments made by the noble Lord and his committee. We will be taking every measure to make sure both that the culture changes and that appropriate record-keeping is done.