‘No Longer Scared to Ask…’: Parliamentarians and the Intelligence Services

Abstract

As has been highlighted in the preceding chapters, the role of Parliament in relation to the intelligence agencies has evolved considerably in recent decades, particularly with the legislation of the late 1980s and early 1990s that placed the agencies on a statutory footing (see Chapter 3). While the establishment of the ISC has sometimes been seen, particularly by governments, as providing the mechanism for parliamentary oversight of the agencies and intelligence issues, as Chapters 4, 5 and 6 have shown, this has not deterred other parliamentarians, and particularly some select committees, from seeking some degree of additional involvement with and oversight of intelligence, a position which has perhaps been increased by the greater awareness of the use of intelligence in relation to areas such as military intervention and terrorist threats.