FUNCTIONS OF SECURITY SERVICE (Hansard, 14 February 1996)

§ Mr. Cohen
I beg to move amendment No. 2. in page 1, line 9, at end insert ';except that the Service shall not so act with regard to any industrial relations dispute unless that dispute involves any offence for which a person who has attained the age of twenty-one and has no previous convictions could reasonably be expected to be sentenced to imprisonment for a term of three years or more.' I intend, through the amendment, to keep the Security Service out of industrial disputes, except, as in all walks of life, where serious crime has occurred. In the vast number of industrial disputes, there is no serious crime, so there is no case for Security Service involvement.
1049 Under the proposed legislation, warrants will be signed by Ministers to allow Security Service involvement in investigating serious crime, which is defined as an offence that carries a sentence of three years or more when committed by someone without a previous conviction. That approach should also be applied to the Security Service's role in industrial relations. Currently, it can just claim that it is countering subversion and thus can become involved in industrial disputes. That is wrong. There would be cases in which the Security Service could become involved. Serious personal assaults and serious Luddism would be covered by the three-year serious crime rule, although I see no reason why the police could not handle such cases, as they have in the past.
The Security Service should not be involved in industrial disputes, which it regards as subversion. MI5 has no justifiable role in mainstream industrial relations and disputes. It wastes a lot of time on industrial disputes. It defines subversion as action intended to overthrow or undermine parliamentary democracy by political, industrial, or violent means. It says that its role is to investigate infiltration within, for example, a legitimate protest group. That gives it carte blanche to infiltrate and act against any legitimate organisation, such as a trade union. Counter-subversion can include undermining, smearing and hounding what it perceives to be political opponents, and manipulating the media for that purpose.
I repeat that the Security Service should be kept out of industrial disputes. There are not many industrial disputes at the moment, but let us look at what could be considered an industrial dispute. The nurses are aggrieved over their rotten 2 per cent. pay award from the Government. Should the Security Service be involved in that dispute? I do not think that teachers will be involved in an industrial dispute, but they are concerned about their pay and the Government's cuts in education funding. The Security Service should not have a role there. The car workers at Ford have to settle a pay dispute at the moment which could break the Government's inflation policy, but, again, the Security Service should not be involved. Civil servants at the Department of Social Security are concerned about their conditions of employment, which the Government seek to worsen—

Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The amendment is fairly tightly drawn. It specifically says "industrial relations dispute". It is not about a catalogue of potential or past disputes.

§ Mr. Cohen
I take your point, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but if they became industrial disputes, under the clause in the proposed legislation that deals with subversion, MI5 could become involved, and that would be a great waste of time and money.
MI5 is also biased. It is always against the workers in industrial disputes, regardless of the merits or justice of the case. They are seen as upsetting the status quo, and the establishment's position, including that of the employer, is what MI5 thinks has to be fought for. It has a long record of being anti-labour.
During the cold war, the whole labour movement was seen as subversive. That was ridiculous. There were, of course, communist and Soviet sympathisers in the trade union movement, but they were always a minority in 1050 numbers and influence. Even they were not motivated to overthrow the state by revolution or general strike. Their motivation was to improve conditions for their fellow working men and women. That was and remains an acceptable and laudable motivation.
Many within the trade union movement opposed them and had different ideas about how best to help their fellow workers and trade union members. That certainly was not the motivation of MI5. If those few sympathisers, which were the justification for MI5's involvement, were so influential, why was there only one general strike in 1926, one of the leaders of which was the old right winger, Ernest Bevin? That strike was certainly not organised with the aim of overthrowing the state, and there were no subsequent general strikes.
I cannot think of a single strike that aimed to overthrow the state, and it is a deliberate lie peddled by the Government and MI5 to justify the latter's role. They pretend not to understand that industrial disputes are limited to the aims of the workers involved, that, invariably, they are about pay, jobs and conditions of work, and that a trade union cannot enforce a course of action that its members do not want and will not support.
Industrial action is unsustainable without the support of the members of the trade union. Workers who take industrial action do so for their own vested interests, and their motivations are limited to that. I do not believe that it is for the state to take sides against them in such a dispute. The cold war has now ended, so who do the Government think that trade unions are trying to subvert? That is an interesting question and the Minister should respond to it. I suspect that, if he does, he will be striking at the heart of the legitimate democratic process, but it will be hard to find a reasonable answer. I do not think that the state should interfere.
Conservatives continually tell us that they believe in free markets and the free play of forces in society and the economy. Those forces include capital and labour. Why do that philosophy and approach not apply in industrial relations? Why is MI5 authorised to intervene against the worker? Why is it on the side of the employer? That free play of forces is part of the democratic political process. Industrial action in support of pay and jobs is as legitimate as the role of the bosses in a democracy. MI5 should not interfere. It is a worker's fundamental right to withdraw his labour if he is unfairly treated or picked upon by an employer. Doing that in combination with workmates is the only economic clout that workers have. They do not engage in it lightly, because it also clouts them economically.
It could be argued that MI5 has a role on behalf of the state because the state is an employer, but I reject that argument. The state should have the same tools as any other employer, no more and no less. It should not have access to a secret army that could attack or undermine trade unionists in its employ. The state and its workers pursue different aims. Workers aim for wages, jobs and conditions of work, and the state pursues political policies. Employment laws can be used for the state's purposes and using a secret force to crush opposition by its workers would be over the edge for a decent democratic Government. It is the same tool as that used by a dictator who will not allow any opposition and will intimidate and go beyond the law to enforce his will. Using MI5 in industrial disputes strikes at the heart of democracy.

§ Mr. Winnick
Does my hon. Friend agree that democracies, fortunately, have survived despite all the industrial disputes that have occurred, while dictatorships, such as that in the former Soviet Union for which I am not in mourning, and fascist, military, communist and other dictatorships have collapsed despite all their efforts to stop people demonstrating, engaging in industrial disputes and being denied the rights that my hon. Friend mentions?

§ Mr. Cohen
That is a good point, and it shows that the industrial relations process and industrial disputes are an organic part of a free and democratic society.
A major example of MI5's role in industrial relations was to be found in the miners' strike of 1984–85. The miners had purely industrial aims, which were to save their jobs, their mines and their communities. They were not out to overthrow the Government of the day. In hindsight, their aims are more clearly seen. The state attacked them out of revenge for previous industrial disputes that the miners had won. Defeating the miners was the great Tory obsession which led to that dispute. But the obsession was that of a political party and not that of the nation.
When Baroness Thatcher referred to the miners as the enemy within, she meant that they were the political enemy of the Conservative party, not of the state. The miners were part of the state, which the Government and all political parties are supposed to represent. But billions of pounds were spent on defeating them, and MI5 played a significant and active role in that.
That has been clearly catalogued in Seamus Milne's book "The Enemy Within—MI5, Maxwell and the Scargill Affair". I shall give some examples from that. The Daily Mirror and "The Cook Report" campaign of disinformation on Central Television said that the miners' leader used Libyan hardship donations to pay off his mortgage and that Soviet miners' donations were used by him for personal purposes. That was disinformation and downright lies by MI5.
Informers and agents provocateurs were planted. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) spoke in the House about the role of Richard Windsor, the NUM chief executive. The purpose was to destabilise and sabotage the union and Windsor was at the centre of a series of damaging controversies at the NUM. He was filmed with Libyans and made false accusations of corruption against the union leaders. According to Milne, the operations of the agents provocateurs against striking miners included action at the Polkemmet colliery in Scotland, which was flooded and lost during the dispute, raising local tension.
There was mass surveillance and phone tapping and bugging. The County hotel at Bloomsbury where Mick McGahey, the miners' leader stayed, was bugged and so was the North Sea fish restaurant, Leigh street, London near the NUM's headquarters where the left wingers on the executive met to discuss tactics.
Throughout the strike the security services leased the building opposite the NUM headquarters at St. James's house, Sheffield, and every NUM branch and lodge secretary had his phone monitored. Road blocks and restrictions on the freedom of movement were co-ordinated with the police. Miners' car number records were specifically made available from DVLC records and monitored on computer. Electronic surveillance networks were set up to track the movement of miners' funds and the activities of union officials. In addition, a breakaway miners union, was assisted.
1052 6.15 pm
According to Milne, in 1970 one man and one assistant were based in MI5 monitoring the trade unions—and that was during the cold war. By the early 1980s, MI5's industrial unit had 12 desk officers backed by a small army of handlers, agents, informers and technical and secretarial staff. Hundreds of trade union officials and activists were signed up in the 1970s. Labour correspondents and broadcasters were also targeted.
What is the point of continuing this subversive activity at great cost to interfere with the trade unions in pursuit of their legitimate activities? The cold war has ended. When they take industrial action, trade unions are limited in their aims and aspirations. Are the nurses to be regarded as subversive if they go on strike? Let us limit MI5's role to terrorism and serious crime, and get it out of industrial relations and industrial disputes.

§ Mr. Dalyell
I strongly support the amendment that has been moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen). As far as I know, Seamus Milne's book has never been rebutted; nor has he, on anything that was in that book, been taken to a court of law. In those circumstances, the presumption must be that what he wrote was accurate. If it is, it is a disgrace to the British state.
My support for my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton is born of personal experience of the miners' strike. During that strike, I went to Polkemmet pit in my constituency every Monday morning at 4.30. My hon. Friend mentioned that pit, which at the time was the second biggest of the Scottish pits and the supplier of coking coal to Ravenscraig. At that time, it was deemed to have a regular market for the foreseeable future.
Doubtless, relationships were different in Yorkshire, where officers came in from the Metropolitan police, but relations between the Scottish police and the miners were generally good, partly because many of the police officers came from mining families. In those circumstances, those of us with public responsibilities were able to play our part in maintaining a civilised relationship with a view to protecting the pit.
I shall never forget the morning when it became clear that six picket breakers were operating. The late Superintendent Donald MacKinnon, an equable highlander, was incandescent with anger. He was not angry with me and he came up to me and said, "What on earth has Stella Whitehouse to do with this?" A lot of people knew Stella Rimington by her maiden name—she had been a student at Edinburgh university—which was Whitehouse. She worked for the security services, and I do not know to this day what on earth Stella Whitehouse or Rimington had to do with the miners' strike.
It was not her business to get involved and to create industrial mayhem, and that question has never been answered. I am quite convinced that the head of MI5, as she was to become, took a prominent part—

Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is not relating his remarks to the amendment. He must do so, rather than just make assertions across the Floor of the House.

§ Mr. Dalyell
It relates to the security services intervening in an industrial dispute.

Mr. Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman made one short reference to that, and proceeded to make 1053 extensive allegations about something that occurred years ago. In particular, he has made allegations in relation to an individual. While it is perfectly proper to make allusions to individuals, it is not appropriate to make such remarks across the Floor of the House.

§ Mr. Dalyell
I have said this before across the Floor of the House. The role of the security services in industrial situations is highly relevant. The incident to which I referred occurred back in 1984, and the lady in question is about to retire. But the problem is not over, and I will tell the Minister why. We read month after month in one form or another—I do not know with what truth—that David Hart is advising the Government. I do not know what a man like that is doing at the heart of the British Government. My hon. Friends should not be under any illusions—this problem goes on and on, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton is quite right to raise it.

§ Mr. Michael
I shall be brief, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Minister would be wise to accept the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) that these matters run deep not only among many people in industry, but among many people in the police, and that constitutes the root of the concerns that the police expressed to many Members as we approached the Bill.
The matter has been dealt with by recognising problems and ensuring that the House decides on the right way to deal with them. For that reason, it will help everyone if we learn from the past and if the Minister gives us confidence in the arrangements that he is seeking to establish in the Bill. It will be extremely helpful if, in response to the amendment, he tells the House that it is the strong intention of the Government that the resources of MI5 should be devoted to the fight against terrorism and, under the powers in the Bill, to helping the police in the fight again serious and organised crime. Those resources should not be used in the field of industrial relations. There is a widespread belief that power was misused during the 1980s, and the Minister will show wisdom if he provides clarity in the intentions of the Government in relation to the legislation. I invite him to do so.

§ Mr. Maclean
I shall attempt to rise to the hon. Gentleman's challenge to show wisdom, and I shall not rake over the coals of the other matters that have been mentioned in this short debate. The best and simplest way for me to respond would be to remind the House of my remarks in Committee. All the relevant parties, including the police and the Security Service, envisage the same role for the Security Service as the man on the Clapham omnibus would expect—that it should act against those crimes where its special skills and expertise can most effectively be employed, meaning organised crime.
Industrial disputes do not constitute organised crime—I do not think they do, and that is obviously the view of the Opposition. The man on the Clapham omnibus would not consider industrial disputes to be organised crime. There is no question of the security services becoming involved in cases that are not thought to involve serious crime. Nor can the Security Service be a political football. As I am sure the hon. Member for Leyton is aware, the Security Service Act 1989 places a specific duty on the 1054 Director-General of the Security Service to ensure that the service takes no action to further the interests of any political party.

§ Mr. Winnick
Do we understand from the Minister's remarks that, whatever happened in the past—my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow made an important reference to what occurred in the 1980s—the security services will under no circumstances be involved in industrial disputes in the future? That is an important question that relates to the amendment. I understand that the Minister gave that assurance. So that I do not misunderstand him, I would be glad if he would confirm that that is the position.

§ Mr. Maclean
I am not sure that I can put it any better than I have just done. We had a discussion in Committee on what was meant by "organised and serious crime". At one point, we had a discussion—I can assure the House that it was relevant—about large grey elephants. We agreed that although we would all know an elephant if we saw it, we might not be able to describe it. "Organised crime" is not a unique or specialist definition. Although the Bill talks about "serious crime", we meant "organised crime" to be the sort of concept that the man on the Clapham omnibus would understand.
Whatever organised crime may be—whether it involves drugs or gun-running, which is highly organised—it is my view that industrial disputes cannot and do not construe organised crime. I would not therefore envisage the Security Service working against the nurses or the other groups to which Opposition Members referred on the basis of "organised crime".

§ Mr. Winnick
The amendment states: the Service shall not so act with regard to any industrial relations dispute". Is the Minister assuring us that the Security Service will not intervene in industrial disputes? That is all I am asking.

§ Mr. Maclean
I am not sure whether I can go as wide as the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. The Bill deals with the Security Service's attempts to deal with organised crime. I have said to the House and in Committee that I cannot see circumstances in which the Security Service—bearing in mind that it would be tasked by the National Criminal Intelligence Service and the police—would become involved in an industrial dispute, as we commonly understand it, as that would not be regarded as organised crime, as we commonly understand it. On that basis, I can give the hon. Gentleman that assurance.

§ Mr. Cohen
I thought that the Minister was generous in taking account of my sentiments—and, I think, those of the House—in his statement. But when my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) questioned him, he became a little less clear. I appreciate his point that the security services would not be involved in industrial disputes in relation to organised crime, but they still have a massive opportunity for intervention in relation to subversion, which can be whatever they describe it as. They have interpreted that in the wrong way in the past.
The F2 section of the service was set up purely for industrial relations purposes. If the service was genuinely moving away from involvement in industrial disputes, the 1055 Minister should have commented on the reorganisation or, perhaps, abolition of that section. We did not hear that, however, and those points must be clarified.

§ Mr. Michael
There is a tendency in difficult discussions on legislation such as this to enter into philosophical discussions. We know that, in the past, there have been occasions when the service entered into areas that the Government or Parliament had not intended. Is not the most simple message that could come from the debate the one that my hon. Friend sought to put across in tabling the amendment—that it is not the intention of Parliament that the Security Service, as a result of the legislation, should enter into industrial relations disputes?

§ Mr. Cohen
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a relevant point. I hope that that message will go out clearly from this House to the Security Service—

§ Mr. Winnick
My hon. Friend mentioned, in relation to industrial disputes, F2 within MI5. Will he bear it in mind that among those who were targeted was our hon. Friend the Member for Peckham (Ms Harman) who, with Patricia Hewitt, took her case to the European Court and won? It is important to note that people who were hardly revolutionaries—indeed, anti-revolutionaries—were targeted.

§ Mr. Cohen
That point is well made by my hon. Friend. As hon. Members have said, there will continue to be an issue if MI5 is perceived to be involved in industrial disputes, as it was in the 1980s.
I am prepared to withdraw the amendment so that the House can move on to consider other important parts of the Bill. I hope that we will not have to return to this issue. If we do, I assure the House that I will take it up—I hope with my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael) at the Government Dispatch Box. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

§ Mr. Michael
I beg to move amendment No. 4, in page 1, line 17, at end insert— '(2A) After subsection (3) of section 2 of that Act there shall be added— (3ZA) The arrangements referred to in subsection (2)(c) above shall specify that any request for support made by a law enforcement agency or a police force shall be subject to the approval of the person designated in accordance with subsection (3B) below who shall be responsible for agreeing to the specific arrangements of any operation or operators resulting from each individual request, which shall include arrangements as to the accountability of the persons and, bodies involved.".'. This is a straightforward amendment, which would ensure that any request for support from MI5 made by a law enforcement agency—whether a police force or other agency—will be subject to the approval of the chief constable designate.
For those hon. Members who did not take part in our discussions in Committee, I need to highlight some progress that we made, that is, making clear the responsibility of an individual, to be designated by the 1056 Home Secretary, for agreeing arrangements with the head of the Security Service. That is an important arrangement because it makes explicit the responsibility of an individual, involved in the police side of the exercise and on behalf of law enforcement agencies, to agree arrangements to bring in the Security Service in support of the fight against organised and serious crime.

§ Mr. Ted Rowlands (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)
I am following my hon. Friend's remarks with interest. He will have received, as I have, a letter from the much-respected chief constable of Gwent, who seeks an assurance that the principles described by my hon. Friend are laid down in the Bill. Is my hon. Friend satisfied that the Bill meets the points raised by the chief constable?

§ Mr. Michael
That is precisely what we have been drawing out in Committee. It is difficult to get all the principles we want written into the Bill. It is important that, wherever possible, the important elements should be in the Bill. Where there is any doubt, there should be absolute clarity about what the House intends. That is why it is right to raise the important issues to which my hon. Friend referred and which were raised also by the Intelligence and Security Committee and a variety of chief constables and others. These matters must be absolutely clear. It has been an important search for agreement on the principles that underlie the involvement of MI5 in supporting the police and other law enforcement agencies in the fight against organised crime.
I use those phrases carefully because that is what we are seeking to do, although some of those words do not actually appear in the Bill. The reason for that is that we agreed with the Government's objective to have a simple piece of legislation that would not constantly be chewed over in the courts, with lawyers dancing on the point of a pinhead. I am pleased to see the Home Secretary nodding his agreement with that description of the profession to which he belongs.
We want clarity so that we can ensure that the public are protected, that the police are clear about their responsibilities and that there is no interference from the Security Service in the role of the police.

§ Mr. Rowlands
The point made to us is that there needs to be transparency. I ask my hon. Friend—and perhaps the Minister will also answer—whether the Bill is transparent about responsibilities and about the role of MI5 and its relationship with the police.

§ Mr. Michael
Yes, I believe that it is now. The mechanism that we put forward, which was debated in Committee and then agreed in a slightly different form, means that the chief constable designated by the Home Secretary will be the guardian at the gate. That is an important change.
It was also clear in our debates that we were considering Security Service involvement in the fight against organised and serious crime. Although only the phrase "serious crime" appears in the Bill, the Government's and Parliament's intention for how that power should be used was made absolutely clear.
There was also agreement on the five principles set out during proceedings of the Intelligence and Security Committee: that the primacy of responsibility for 1057 countering organised crime should lie and remain with the law enforcement agencies; that in respect of intelligence work the Security Service should work through the NCIS and the existing co-ordinating groups—and in relation to that the Home Secretary has agreed that the chief constable who acts as Director-General of the NCIS should be the chief constable designate; that the work of the Security Service should be in support of the law enforcement agencies, not self-tasking—that horrible word that the police tend to use; that the skills and the full range of abilities of the Security Service should be drawn on, but only in support of the police; and finally—an important point that I mention in passing—that the Security Service should bear the cost of its own contribution. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) would not want me to leave that out, and neither would the chief constable of Gwent.
The amendment takes the agreement and understanding which we reached in Committee, and which we put clearly on the record, a little further. It is that, in making arrangements, the chief constable shall be responsible for agreeing to the specific arrangements of any operation or operators resulting from each individual request, which shall include arrangements as to the accountability of the persons and, bodies involved. It is the search for transparency and accountability, on which there is no difference across the Floor, on which we understandably want to push Ministers a little further, to gain greater clarity than there was at earlier stages of the Bill.
I ask the Minister to agree to the amendment or at least to confirm that the way that I described the relationship is the Government's intention—and therefore that of the House—of how it should work.

§ Mr. Maclean
I certainly agree with the description given by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), which largely encompasses the way we expect the arrangements to work. In fact, the way in which the hon. Gentleman answered the hon. Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) means that I can scrap a couple of pages of my notes, as the hon. Gentleman made some of my speech for me.
There has been general agreement in the House about the principles underlying the Bill. Such disagreement and debate as there has been, both on Second Reading and in Committee, has been on how best to give effect to the principles. We must produce legislation that will strike a proper balance between the right amount of control and accountability over the work of the Security Service in pursuit of its new function and ensuring that it is able to operate effectively, with the risk of spurious legal challenge minimised.
The way that the Government have sought to strike that balance is by the provision in the Bill placing a new duty on the director-general to ensure that there are arrangements for co-ordinating the activities of the Security Service with those of the law enforcement agencies that it will be supporting. As a result of an amendment that the Government introduced in Committee, those co-ordination arrangements have to be agreed with a designated person. It has been made clear by my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary that he intends to designate the Director-General of the 1058 NCIS. That requirement for agreed arrangements will ensure that the Security Service will not be able to act independently. However, it is important that we should understand what those arrangements are designed to do and, therefore, how we envisage the role of the Director-General of the NCIS.
In moving the amendment to which I have just referred, I paraphrased a part of the report to the Home Secretary that was prepared by the interdepartmental and interagency working group, which was set up to consider a role for the Security Service in supporting the law enforcement agencies in their work against organised crime. I should like to repeat some of what I said on that occasion.
The Security Service's contribution will be delivered through existing structures. That means co-ordination through the NCIS and membership of the relevant groups. The Security Service will accept tasking on organised crime from the NCIS and relevant co-ordinating groups. Those arrangements should not replace or prejudice existing bilateral arrangements between the security services and other agencies, such as Her Majesty's Customs and Excise, the Secret Intelligence Service and Government communications headquarters, Cheltenham.
The point is that although the NCIS clearly has a pivotal role, it is possible that the overarching arrangements will allow for sub-arrangements between the Security Service and other law enforcement agencies. A good example of that may be Customs and Excise, with which the Security Service will want to work closely on international drug trafficking. The Director-General of the NCIS will clearly want and need to be aware of the broad spheres in which the service is supporting Customs and Excise. The scheme for tasking, to which I referred, will ensure that.
However, the Director-General of the NCIS may not need to be aware of every operational detail that flows from the arrangement with Customs and Excise. Indeed, I suggest that the role that the amendment envisages for the Director-General of the NCIS would be very time-consuming and would take him and his staff into spheres where the Security Service already enjoys effective bilateral arrangements with other bodies.

§ Mr. Beith
When we discussed in Committee whether it would always be possible for individual chief constables to be told that an operation was taking place, the Minister argued that that would be difficult—especially when people were moving quickly around the country—when reliance was placed on the head of the NCIS to be the route by which chief constables would, in some cases, be made aware that something was happening in their area. If the Director-General of the NCIS does not know what is happening, because it has all been delegated to Customs and Excise and the Security Service, he will not be in a position to alert chief constables.

§ Mr. Maclean
The right hon. Gentleman is reading too much into my remarks, and he is perhaps inadvertently exaggerating the position. I said that I expected the NCIS to be the funnel—the route of communication—between the chief constables and individual forces, at the bottom end, which would pass tasking requests up through the NCIS, to be agreed with the Security Service. The NCIS would then, of course, be the funnel of communication back to the chief constables. I picked on the odd case. We 1059 suggested that it would be in rare circumstances, such as the surveillance of a vehicle that was passing through different police areas, that it might not be appropriate instantly to inform the chief constable.
While the amendment of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth seeks to put more clarity into the situation, I am afraid that it would be unnecessarily prescriptive to expect the Director-General of the NCIS to have the sort of detail that the amendment envisages when, for example, Customs and Excise is operating perfectly correctly with the Security Service under the overarching arrangements of the Director-General of the NCIS. In those cases, the director-general may not want to have the control that the amendment envisages.

§ Mr. Dalyell
The combination of the Minister's mention of rare circumstances and his mention of Customs and Excise requires me to ask him to forgive my curiosity. On Saturday night, there was a detailed description of Sir Brian Unwin's astonishment when he was called by the Cabinet Secretary to a meeting, with other permanent secretaries, on the unmentionable subject—I should be ruled out of order if I went into Scott. However, that combination raises the question of the relationship between Customs and Excise and the security services, because, when asked, the Cabinet Secretary is reported to have said, "It is perfectly normal for Customs and Excise to be consulted." When Sir Brian Unwin was asked, he said, "It is the first time that I have ever been summoned to a meeting by a Cabinet Secretary." Could some light be shed on the fascinating subject of what that relationship is?

§ Mr. Maclean
Certainly not by me, but no doubt someone will write a book about it one day. It may be an interesting subject, but it is irrelevant to the point that has been made in the debate. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth has moved a reasonable amendment, which seeks to provide greater detail. I have pointed out that it would be slightly dangerous to go into that detail.

§ Mr. Rowlands
In Committee, the Minister made the key statement that the NCIS will inform the chief constables that NCIS has been tasked".—[Official Report, Standing Committee A, 1 February 1996; c. 67.] and that it would act as a gateway. That could be a formal procedure, or it could be a process by which chief constables were not only informed but involved. Does the Minister mean that the NCIS will inform in the real sense or that that will be only a matter of courtesy?

§ Mr. Maclean
I mean, in the real sense. The hon. Gentleman should bear it in mind that the requests come from the police service in the first place. It is going to the NCIS. If the NCIS should determine through its machinery that there is a tasking requirement that involves the Security Service, in general it is inconceivable that the chief constables who made the request for assistance in the first place will not be properly informed that the service is operating. However, I built in the caveat that there might be some circumstances in which it would be logistically impossible or not sensible to inform chief constables that the Security Service was, for example, passing through their area.
1060 I respect the intentions of the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth. It seeks more clarity. The only danger is that it is slightly more detailed and would allow lawyers to dance on a pinhead. The hon. Gentleman said that that was also his fear. For those reasons, I cannot accept the amendment.

§ Mr. Michael
I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. He has helped the House by expressing the Government's level of clarity in relation to what is intended by the Bill.
The point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr. Rowlands) is very important. The discussion about what information should be available to chief constables was assisted by the Minister saying that, when there was a surveillance operation that went up a motorway through several police areas, one would obviously not expect information to be provided to each chief constable whose area was involved in the operation. However, one would expect that in the normal course of events chief constables would be aware of the operations in their areas. The intention is that the chief constable designate would agree such an arrangement with the head of the intelligence service. Therefore, I think that the House's intentions are clear.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) put his finger on an issue to which the House needs to return, because it goes outside the scope of the Bill. The issue is the expanding role of officers of Customs and Excise, which has recently expanded without the scrutiny of the House.

§ Mr. Dalyell
I must be extremely scrupulous about the facts on that issue. I was referring to a reconstruction that may or may not be factual, as put forward by Channel 4 on Saturday night. I do not know that Sir Brian Unwin said any such thing. The point is that he is purported and reported to have said it. If he did say it, it raises extremely interesting questions—does it not, Home Secretary?

§ Mr. Michael
I was not referring to reconstructions on television or anywhere else. I was referring to the accountability, intentions and expansion of Customs and Excise, which is an issue that came out of our discussions in Committee. At an appropriate time, I believe that the House should pay attention to that issue.
As for the amendment, it is clear, as I understand it—I am certain that the Minister will tell me if I am wrong—that our intentions in moving it are shared by him and that they reflect the intentions of the House. In the light of that, my intention is not to seek to write it into the Bill, but that the debate should have helped to clarify the House's intentions. In the light of the Minister's encouraging and helpful response to the points that we raised, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.