Events | 2010.03.29
MI5 must face scrutiny | Henry Porter
An open letter to Jonathan Evans, the director-general of MI5
Dear Mr Evans ,
Few doubt the service to Britain\'s security rendered by MI5, or the rapid reforms undertaken in your organisation and the expertise you have acquired to deal with the threat launched by al-Qaida on western democracies in 2001. MI5 has saved many lives, and it should take credit for that.
However, I want to raise the reference to you in the final report of this parliament of the joint committee on human rights , which as you know is made up of peers and MPs and is charged with considering matters under the terms of the Human Rights Act. The report, entitled Counter-Terrorism Police and Human Rights (Seventeenth Report): Bringing Rights Back In , includes a criticism of you as director-general for failing to give evidence to the committee, which among many subjects, was investigating what it called "normalising the exceptional" – "the corrosive effect of open-ended departures from ordinary procedure".
It notes that although you are prepared to give interviews to the press and speak at public lectures, such as the one at Bristol University in October 2009, you did not make yourself available to be interviewed publicly by the committee. When the home secretary was asked by the chairman if this was acceptable, he replied that the security services were scrutinised by MPs on the intelligence and security committee. After some discussion you offered "an off-the-record confidential briefing on the current terrorist threat".
The committee declined a confidential briefing and in its report explains why. "The purpose of the director general appearing before us to give evidence would enable us to question him publicly, in order to enhance democratic accountability of the intelligence security services, making parliamentary assessment of the necessity and proportionality of counter-terrorism measures more transparent, and so increase public confidence. These things cannot be achieved by off-the-record, secret briefings."
As I am sure you and the home secretary appreciate, it seems inconsistent, not to say disrespectful, to parliament that while you were happy to speak publicly to an audience in Bristol about the terror threat, you would only accept a closed interview with a parliamentary committee. The decision seems to betray a disdain for democratic scrutiny as well as conveying a message that the security service\'s business is somehow above the pay level of members of both houses on the committee.
There can be no doubt that the committee\'s motives are consistent with its duties under the Human Rights Act, and it certainly seems to be complying with Gordon Brown\'s wishes too. "Making the intelligence and security services more accountable to parliament was one of the themes of the prime minister\'s speech to the House of Commons on constitutional renewal in July 2007," says the report.
While everyone concedes the triumphs of your service since 2001, there is a growing suspicion that MI5, together with other government agencies, has sought to make the temporary powers granted in an emergency part of the status quo – in other words, a permanent addition to your arsenal of responses despite their impact on the general stock of freedom. There is also a concern that your service may think of itself as both apart and above democratic scrutiny.
It\'s compelling that two of your predecessors have spoken publicly about the dangers that terror laws represent to a free society. Baroness Manningham-Buller talked of the counter-productive effects of lengthening detention without charge, while Dame Stella Rimington gave an interview last year in which she said: "It would be better that the government recognised that there are risks, rather than frightening people in order to be able to pass laws which restrict civil liberties, [which is] precisely one of the objects of terrorism: that we live in fear and under a police state." She went on to criticise laws, which "interfered with people\'s privacy."
So two former directors-general have usefully engaged with the issues around the committee\'s inquiry because they presumably understand they are bigger than and do not threaten MI5\'s immediate operational needs.
I end with three questions.
Do you agree in retrospect that it is, as the committee stated, "unacceptable for the director-general of the security services" to refuse to give evidence in public to a parliamentary committee on matters which do not conceivably compromise your need for operational secrecy?
Will you undertake to give evidence on these matters to the JCHR in public during the next parliament?
Failing this, will you explain here why you did not contribute publicly to the JCHR\'s inquiries about the threat we face and the gradual process of "normalising the exceptional", which the committee has identified?
Yours etc
Henry Porter
CC Andrew Dismore, chair, joint committee on human rights
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]mi5-open-letter-jonathan-evans
