Whitsun Adjournment

Before I come to the main issues on which I want to detain the House, I want to associate myself with the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) about the late Tom Burlison, a Member of the other place, who has passed away. I want to couple that with a reference to the late Lord Billy Blease, who is worthy of mention in this House. He was one of only two people, as far as I can make out, who represented the voice of Labour from Northern Ireland in Parliament—and not just in one House. For a long time, the late Billy Blease headed up the Irish Congress of Trade Unions in Northern Ireland in the most difficult times and circumstances. He trod the fine line of trying to bring together people of different traditions in the trade union movement and he did that with great dexterity. For a long time, he served my party—the Labour party—in the House of Lords, despite the fact that the Labour party then foolishly had a policy of not allowing anybody from Northern Ireland to join it. He had to use enormous dexterity to get around that. I want to place on the record my appreciation for the political life and work and work for the trade union movement of Lord Billy Blease, who also passed away recently. The House and those people who worked hard for successful reconciliation in Northern Ireland should acknowledge his great contribution, albeit it was a discreet one. There is never a right time to bring up the matter about which I want to detain the House. I am somewhat nervous about doing so. All too often, Members from all parties acquiesce by their silence in a slow undoing of our human rights and civil liberties in this country. We are not sufficiently zealous in fulfilling our role of probing those areas that the establishment in this country would not like us to dwell on. I am referring particularly—as I did earlier, during business questions—to our security and intelligence services. I think that it is a thundering disgrace and an abdication of our responsibility in this House that there is no parliamentary oversight at all of the security and intelligence services. That is a severe deficiency and a flaw in our democratic institutions. Most of the great democracies have parliamentary committees charged with probing and overseeing their security and intelligence services, but that system does not exist here. I have challenged successive Ministers about the matter, including the current Prime Minister. They have dismissed my questions by referring to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is hand-picked by the Prime Minister of the day from parliamentarians with whom he or she—and, more importantly, the security and intelligence services—feels comfortable. One Minister told me, ““Mackinlay, this is a distinction without a difference,”” but I disagree. Who clerks the ISC? It is clerked by a spook, a member of the security and intelligence services, and not by the Clerk of the House of Commons. When does it meet? We do not know. We do not know the parameters of its jurisdiction, as the term ““security and intelligence services”” is a generic one: does it include the special branch of the Metropolitan police and other forces, or does it involve just MI5, MI6 and GCHQ? We do not know. That is a serious abdication on our part, and it is time that it was remedied—with some expedition, as Whips are already coming to me to talk about this business of the 42 days. I have told them—I shall paint it on their eyelids—that there is no way that I am going to support that proposal. There are many reasons for that, but a particular one is the fact that there is no parliamentary oversight of our security and intelligence services.