QUENTIN LETTS: Some custard pies for our shadow spook-watchers

Spies' Day. It does not happen often but the Commons had a brief chance to debate the supervision of MI5 and MI6 - the very intelligence world whose work was manipulated to take us into the Iraq War. 'Three and a half hours is our lot every one and a half years,' snorted Andrew MacKinlay (Lab, Thurrock). He was not impressed. The Westminster committee which is meant to oversee the spooks is called the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). It is not, strictly, a House of Commons committee. Its members are appointed by Downing Street. How handy. Peter Kilfoyle (Lab, Liverpool Walton) called the ISC 'a poodle of the Prime Minister of the day'. The ISC annual report, given to MPs before yesterday's discussions was, as ever, full of blanked-out passages. It's like reading a half-filled crossword puzzle. So paranoid is the... [read full story]