In February of this year, the then-Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) – the body which oversees the UK’s three main intelligence agencies – was caught in a journalistic sting operation. Since then, the ISC seems to have been inactive. It is now two months since the General Election and the Government (who take the lead in ISC membership nominations) have also been inactive in beginning the nomination process. Andrew Defty argues that the delay threatens to undermine the important work of the ISC at a critical time before it has even begun

Defty, Andrew

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By Democratic Audit UK 2015-7-15The delay in appointing a new Intelligence and SecurityCommittee threatens to undermine its work before it haseven begundemocraticaudit.com /2015/07/15/the-governments-tardiness-in-seeking-to-appoint-a-new-intelligence-and-security-committee-threatens-to-undermine-the-new-intelligence-and-security-committee-before-its-work-has-begun/In February of this year, the then-Chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) – the body which overseesthe UK’s three main intelligence agencies – was caught in a journalistic sting operation. Since then, the ISC seemsto have been inactive. It is now two months since the General Election and the Government (who take the lead inISC membership nominations) have also been inactive in beginning the nomination process. Andrew Defty arguesthat the delay threatens to undermine the important work of the ISC at a critical time before it has even begun. Credit: Todd Lappin, CC BY NC 2.0It is more than two months since the general election and new Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) has yet tobe appointed. The delay in appointing the new committee is beginning to raise eyebrows, and questions, inParliament and beyond. Last week, Fiona Mactaggart, who served on the ISC in the last Parliament asked theLeader of the House, Chris Grayling, whether the membership might be finalised so that the committee could meetbefore the summer recess. His reply that it was his  ‘hope and expectation that that would happen as soon aspossible, and hopefully before the summer recess’, does not inspire confidence.It is not entirely clear why the appointment of a new committee is taking so long, but the process of appointing ISCmembers changed in the last Parliament, and it also appears to have become bound up with the appointment ofselect committees which has preoccupied Parliament in recent weeks. Since the election a short note on the ISCwebsite has noted that:1/4…following the 2015 General Election, Parliament has yet to appoint Members to the ISC.  It isexpected that this will occur in a similar time frame to, or shortly after, appointments have been madeto Departmental Select Committees in the House of Commons.During the last Parliament changes were made to the process for appointing members of the ISC. In the past, thecommittee and its Chair were appointed by the Prime Minister, after consultation with opposition leaders, shortlyafter each general election. Under changes introduced in the Justice and Security Act 2013 , members are nowappointed by Parliament. However, unlike select committee members who are elected from the whole House,members of the ISC must first be nominated by the Prime Minister, after which Parliament approves theirmembership. Although this process was followed for the appointment of two new members in the last Parliament,this will be the first time that Parliament has been asked to approve the whole committee, and the first time that theISC has selected its own Chair.The process to some extent mirrors that for appointing members of parliamentary select committees, which was alsomodified in the last Parliament, so that select committee Chairs are elected by a secret ballot of all MPs, whileindividual parties must now hold elections for their allocation of select committee members. Although both processesare part of a shift towards giving Parliament more say over the composition of its committees, the differentapproaches reflect the Government’s (and perhaps the agencies) desire to retain some control over appointments tothe ISC.The distinction between the ISC and the parliamentary select committees is also reflected in the timing ofappointments to the committee. While parliament has spent much of the last month finalizing the membership ofselect committees, it is clear that the Government has decided that appointments to the ISC should wait until thatprocess is over. There may be good reasons for this. The government would not want to be seen to deny selectcommittees access to some MPs by effectively having first choice of MPs for membership of the ISC. Somethingwhich might also lead to parliament vetoing ISC members if it was felt their talents would be better placedelsewhere. It also means that MPs who are unsuccessful in seeking appointment to a select committee can still finda role on the Intelligence and Security Committee.However, the situation is somewhat unsatisfactory, for a number of reasons. By delaying appointments to the ISCuntil after the appointment of select committees there is a risk that the ISC is viewed, in Parliament and beyond, asa second tier committee, less important than other parliamentary committees. As a result of the tendency to appointformer Ministers to the ISC, membership of the committee has in past, rightly or wrongly, acquired the reputation ofbeing a compensation for departing Ministers. It would be regrettable if as a result of the current arrangements, theISC were now viewed as comprising members who were unsuccessful in securing select committee membership.There may also be more pressing reasons why a new Intelligence and Security Committee should be in place soon.As the committee has itself observed, intelligence is an area in which few parliamentarians have much experienceand membership of the ISC comes with a steep learning curve. For this reason, following each election the newlyappointed ISC has usually comprised a combination of new and existing members. With the departure fromParliament of three members of the previous committee including its Chair, and the resignation of a fourth shortlybefore the general election, at least four of the nine members of the ISC will be new appointees. There will be muchto learn not least about the way in which the committee operates, before the serious business of intelligenceoversight can begin in earnest.The relative inexperience of the new committee may be compounded by the need to hit the ground running. As isclear from the reported cases of UK citizens travelling to Syria to fight with ISIS and the recent terrorist attack inTunisia, the UK is facing an ongoing terrorist threat with significant implications for the work of the intelligence andsecurity agencies. Yet there is, at present, no parliamentary oversight committee in place to assess the agencies’capacity to meet that threat. This is not the first time that this has been the case. Delays in making appointments to2/4the ISC have, in the past, left the committee struggling to keep up with events. Most notably following the 2005general election when a new committee was not appointed until the 12th July, several days after the 7/7 terroristattacks in London.The situation has been made worse this year because it appears that the previous ISC effectively stopped workingin February. On 24th February, Sir Malcolm Rifkind resigned as Chair of the ISC, following ‘cash for access’allegations arising from an investigation conducted by The Daily Telegraph and Channel 4. On the same day, inwhat might be viewed as a fit of pique, the ISC issued a statement that as there were ‘no further formal meetingsscheduled before the prorogation of Parliament’, it would not be appointing a new Chair. Although the ISC publishedtwo reports after this date, both of these were completed before Sir Malcolm’s resignation, and it is far from clearthat the committee has met at all since that date.  The committee’s press releases certainly suggested it was notintending to.This in itself is somewhat unsatisfactory. ISC members frequently claim that the committee is one of the hardestworking parliamentary committees. It meets on a weekly basis when Parliament is sitting. In addition to its set-pieceinquiries such as those published towards the end of the last Parliament, it also oversees the administration,expenditure and policy, and since reforms introduced in 2013, the operations, of the three intelligence and securityagencies and the wider intelligence community. While the publication of its ‘Privacy and Security’ report marked theend of a significant and to some extent ground-breaking inquiry for the ISC, it seems odd that the committee woulddecide that it had no further work to do for the remainder of the Parliament. While the ISC does not comment onevery intelligence issue which comes to public attention, ISC members claim that it keeps a watching brief on what isgoing on and any significant intelligence issue which attracts the attention of the public and the media, and manywhich do not, are subject to scrutiny by the committee.More significantly, the ISC does have unfinished business. In December 2013 the Prime Minister asked the ISC topick up the work of the so-called ‘Detainee Inquiry’, chaired by the retired judge, Sir Peter Gibson, into whetherBritain was implicated in the ill-treatment of detainees by other countries.  In response to this additional work-loadthe committee requested, and received, additional resources to enable it to continue the work of the detainee inquiryalongside its other inquiries into the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby and the Privacy and Security inquiry. While thelatter two inquiries were completed in the last Parliament the detainee inquiry remains in the ISC in-tray. Therefore,far from reaching the end of its work in February 2015 the ISC had at least one on-going inquiry. It is disappointingthat this was not scheduled for consideration in the remaining weeks at the end of the last Parliament, and that thetime taken to appoint the new committee has delayed it further.There may, of course, be a number of reasonable explanations as to why the ISC has not yet been appointed and itmay also be the case that the committee was not in a position to make progress with the detainee inquiry at thistime. Nevertheless, the very existence of a parliamentary intelligence oversight committee which meets on a regularbasis and which may at any point seek explanation or clarification about the conduct of the intelligence and securityagencies is central to providing democratic legitimacy to the agencies and the government’s use of covert powers.The government’s tardiness in seeking to appoint a new Intelligence and Security Committee threatens toundermine the capacity and credibility of the new ISC before it has even begun its work. Insofar as the role of thecommittee is to monitor the effectiveness of Britain’s intelligence and security agencies it may even be damaging tonational security.—This post represents the views of the author only, and not those of Democratic Audit UK, the LSE Public PolicyGroup, or the LSE. Please read our comments policy before posting. —3/4Dr Andrew Defty  is Reader at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University ofLincoln. He runs the Watching the Watchersblog at Lincoln University. His book, written with HughBochel and Jane Kirkpatrick, on parliament and the intelligence services is also entitled “Watchingthe Watchers”.4/4

The delay in appointing a new Intelligence and Security Committee threatens to undermine its work before it has even begun

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