Brown rejects US-style scrutiny of the intelligence services

Gordon Brown has quietly dumped his promises to make scrutiny of the intelligence services more independent. When he first moved into Number Ten, the Prime Minister made a big play of his plans to let Tony Blair's poodle - the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) - off the leash to check on our spy masters. He appeared to buy the argument that effective scrutiny, such as that which the Senate committee in the United States has over the CIA, would help to rebuild confidence in the intelligence services after the blow to their authority over the dodgy dossier on Saddam's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. But yesterday, in a badly attended end-of-term debate, where the acres of green benches were an embarrassment to those seeking a serious function for Parliament, Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, announced that the... [read full story]