GCHQ

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

What I have argued is that the idea of GCHQ setting out to circumvent UK law by co-operation with other countries is baseless. UK law is applied to the data it receives, even if it is received from the United States, because ministerial oversight and independent oversight is all there. Part of the purpose of that oversight is to ensure that the misuse of the powers and the role of GCHQ does not take place.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The term is always used that the intelligence services always operate within a “legal framework”. Is the Foreign Secretary certain that “legal framework” always means ethically and within the law, and that peaceful democratically elected political parties in the UK are not involved?

[Mr Hague]

Well, yes, it does mean those things. It means that the legal framework is properly applied and what the agencies do has to be targeted, necessary, proportionate and authorised. It also has to be for the purposes set out in the relevant Acts of Parliament in the interests of national security, the country’s economic well-being or the prevention of serious crime and the protection of the country from it. These are the purposes of our intelligence agencies—and they stick to them.