Members of parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee have gone public with a plea for ministers to supply more funding for their work – and stinging criticism of “continued interference” on the part of the Cabinet Office.
The committee, which is made up of nine MPs and peers, is tasked with oversight of the government’s intelligence and security activities – including MI5, the Secret Intelligence Service and Government Communications Headquarters.
A remarkable statement issued last week by current chair Lord Beamish – the former MP Kevan Jones – says the committee has not seen its funding increased for more than a decade and is in danger of being unable to function.
The peer is also highly critical of the committee’s dependence on the Cabinet Office, where it is based – and openly seeks prime minister Keir Starmer’s support to move onto an independent footing.
In his statement, Beamish said that in the last parliament, ISC members had become “greatly concerned” that the vital security they provided was “being undermined by continued interference by the Cabinet Office in the committee’s office”.
He said the issue went “to the very heart” of parliament’s ability to hold the government to account for actions being taken in secret but funded by the public purse.
“The root of the problem lies in the control exerted over the committee’s staff and resourcing by the Cabinet Office – despite the committee overseeing substantive parts of the Cabinet Office,” he said. “That, self-evidently, should not be the case. An oversight body should not sit within, and be beholden to, an organisation which it oversees.”
Beamish said that in 2013, ministers had agreed that the committee should move out of the Cabinet Office, with “appropriate safeguards” being put in place to ensure that those the ISC oversees could not influence the committee’s staff serving as a stop-gap measure.
“It is clear to the committee that these safeguards have now been comprehensively dismantled,”he said last week.
The peer added that the committee had determined before last year’s general election that it would relocate from the Cabinet Office and informed the then-chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster of “the changes required”. However, his statement suggested no further action had been taken.
On funding, Beamish said the committee’s resources had not been increased since 2013.
“The UK intelligence community has grown at an extraordinary rate,” he said. “The committee is overseeing something that is of a fundamentally different order to that which existed in 2013: in simple terms, there is now around £3bn of public money being spent for which there is no oversight capability.
“This long-term, systemic issue has been compounded by recent practical issues to the point that if the committee does not receive an increase in resourcing then it will not be able to keep its doors open.”
Beamish said the Sunak government had agreed to an “emergency uplift” sought by the committee in the weeks before last year’s general election was called – but that officials had subsequently “declined to implement it”.
Beamish said the current incarnation of the committee, which was confirmed in December, had written to chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Pat McFadden to alert him to the unresolved resourcing concerns.
“We understand that he has recognised the potential implications for what are statutory obligations, and we now await the implementation of the uplift by the Cabinet Office,” Beamish said.
The chair added that the committee had “been reassured” that the PM recognised the importance of its work and that Starmer had pledged to meet with him and ministers responsible for the organisations the ISC oversees.
Beamish added: “I and the other members trust that the prime minister will understand the gravity of the situation and will assist the committee to move out of the executive and onto an independent footing.”
As well as Beamish, the ISC includes MPs Sir Jeremy Wright, Peter Dowd, Richard Foord, John Hayes, Jessica Morden and Derek Twigg. Its other House of Lords members are Baroness Brown of Cambridge and Admiral Lord West of Spithead.
The ISC is a statutory committee of parliament and was originally established by the Intelligence Services Act 1994. It is not a select committee; its members are routinely given access to highly-classified material and in return are subject to the Official Secrets Act.
The committee sets its own work agenda and takes evidence from ministers, heads of intelligence and security agencies and other witnesses.
Recent work has included a report on Iran that was submitted to No.10 in March. A 2023 report on China produced by the committee contained a damning assessment of the resourcing being provided to counter the threat to UK national security posed by the nation.
Ministers subsequently admitted that civil servants were among those being targeted by Chinese intelligence-gathering and acknowledged that more resources were required to deal with with the new reality of Beijing-backed activity.
CSW asked the Cabinet Office for a response to the statement from Beamish. It had not provided one at the time of publication.