SECURITY AND INTELLIGENCE (Hansard, 2 May 1989)

§ The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten)
I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)
With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment No. 2.

§ Mr. Patten
The amendments provide that a notification shall expire after a period of five years from the date on which the notification is served unless it is renewed or previously revoked. The amendments follow closely the substance of amendments tabled by Opposition parties in another place and I note that the Opposition spokesman in another place, Lord Elwyn-Jones, said that he accepted these amendments with pleasure.

§ Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow)
Would this be the right moment to ask the Minister whether he has any sympathy at all, not with a five-year period, but with some kind of annual report back to the House on the actual mechanics of the operation of the Act that he hopes to put through?

§ Mr. Robin Corbett (Birmingham, Erdington)
If any of the amendments have any substance, which is open to doubt, perhaps it is these two. The Minister and I have had exchanges on this matter. The Bill creates a class of individuals or groups who can be notified that they are subject to the provisions of the Bill. In other words, they will be civil servants in other Government Departments who come into contact with the security and intelligence services or Government contractors. The Home Secretary, who regrettably has had to leave us, said at one stage that there was no intention of designating groups of people. I believe that that was an exercise in semantics. It is obvious that a class of people in a particular office and grade—for example, in the Home Office or the Ministry of Defence—who, by the nature of their work, would have regular contact with the intelligence and security services, would, although not named as a group for notification, make up such a group.
The Minister will remember that it was in paragraph 47 of the White Paper that the notion of the designation of individuals or groups was first postulated, although, as I said, the Home Secretary denied that later. I do not want to make heavy weather of this. We will not know how many people are told that they are notified persons or whether they are told that they are no longer notified persons. No distinction is made in the Bill about the weight or class of the information that those people would have come across in the course of their duties. If they have come across it, that is that.
I welcome the five-year renewal of the notification, but can the Minister assure the House that notification under 144 the Bill will be kept to the absolute sensible minimum, in line with the Government's ambitions for the Bill? Can he assure us that when it comes to deciding whether notification should be extended for a further five-year period, the power to prolong notification will be used even more sparingly than in the first instance? Clearly, time changes the relevance and importance of the information which perhaps led to the decision to notify in the first place. The Minister would help the House if he could give those assurances.

§ Mr. John Patten
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has taken a close interest in the proceedings of the whole of the Bill. Of course, it would be open to him or to any other hon. Member, or a Select Committee, at any stage during the parliamentary cycle to submit the workings of the Official Secrets Act, if such it is at that stage, to examination.
I remember the exchanges between the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett) and myself in Committee on the Floor of the House. I do not think that I can add anything to the explanation of the people who may be notified to that which he will find recorded in the Official Report of 25 January 1989 at columns 1128–29. I can certainly give the undertaking that only those people who need to be notified will be notified.

§ Mr. Dalyell
I appreciate the spirit in which the Minister has said that, but I think that he has forgotten what Back-Bench life is like. I do not know how he can say that it is up to me or anybody else to scrutinise the Bill. Week after week we apply for Adjournment debates, and we may or may not be lucky. I submit that that is not a satisfactory way of dealing with something which should be monitored by Parliament on a regular basis.
The other alternative was that it should be submitted to a Select Committee. Which Select Committee?

§ Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland)
Further to what the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has said, on a number of occasions the Lord President has made it plain that Ministers will not answer questions about security matters in the House. The Minister's statement tonight does not lie nicely with such previous statements.

§ Mr. John Patten
Both hon. Gentlemen are chasing after the wrong hare. The hon. Member for Linlithgow asked what were the opportunities for keeping the workings of the Act under review. The House provides many opportunities for the workings of Acts to be kept under review.

§ Mr. Dalyell
Which Select Committee?

§ Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order.

§ Mr. Dalyell
I am sorry, but I asked a question about which Select Committee.

§ Mr. Patten
The Defence Select Committee might wish to interest itself in the workings of some parts of the Official Secrets Act because of its interest in defence security. A range of Select Committees look at the workings of different Acts that concern the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Lords amendment No. 2 agreed to.