The committee monitoring the security services has been taken in by the “glamour” of spying and is failing to do its job, its founder has said.
Conservative MP David Davis said the Intelligence and Security Committee had been “captured by the agencies they are supposed to be overseeing”.
And ex-chairman Sir Malcolm Rifkind acted as a “spokesman” for MI5, MI6 and GCHQ rather than a watchdog.
Sir Malcolm said the criticisms were “ludicrous” and had no basis in fact. He said Mrs Davis had been “captured” by the civil liberties lobby.
Excited By It
Sir Malcolm was this week forced to step down as chairman of the committee after five years over “cash-for-access” claims.
He will carry on as a committee member until the election in May, when he will step down as an MP.
The Tory MP and Labour MP Jack Straw were secretly filmed apparently offering their services to a private firm for cash. Both deny wrongdoing.
In an interview for BBC Radio 4’s Yesterday in Parliament, to be aired at 2330 on Friday, Mr Davis said members of the security services had told him privately that they “have never taken the ISC seriously, saying ‘well they only know what we tell them'”.
He said security committees around the world were prone to fall into the same trap as the ISC.
“What sort of people join an Intelligence and Security Committee? They approve of what the agencies are trying to do, as do most of us.
“But they are excited by it and they get taken in. It is a very glamorous world and they feel privileged to be inside it so there is a tendency to capture.”