Lord Mandelson: Government Response to Humble Address Motion

Lord West of Spithead Excerpts

Thursday 12th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

Time is indeed ticking, but the noble Baroness will be aware we still have two more debates in front of your Lordships’ House before the House rises. The Written Ministerial Statement will be published today, as I said.

On the independence of the ISC, we are incredibly lucky to have Members of your Lordships’ House on the committee, led by my noble friend Lord Beamish. I would never question either his integrity or his ability to do the job. As we laid out, and its correspondence from yesterday makes clear, engagement has already happened. There were meetings between very senior members of the Cabinet Office and of government with members of the ISC on Tuesday, and the process has started. On the timing, as the Minister for the Cabinet Office made clear in the other place, we expect the process on the documentation to continue at pace—and I do not mean at Civil Service pace, I mean at pace—after the Recess.

[Lord West of Spithead (Lab)]

My Lords, as a member of the ISC, I note that my noble friend the Minister did not say anything about my integrity, which is a bit worrying. I make it absolutely clear that deciding what is in scope to be released is totally for the Cabinet Office. The ISC will have nothing to do with that whatever; it will see only the material that the Cabinet Office says that it cannot release because it includes intelligence or foreign affairs. Those will be the only things we look at.

On independence, we have already said that we will not be working in conjunction with the Cabinet Office. We are completely independent. We can be quite bolshie about things, which is good. We will look at it totally separately and work through at pace, as soon as this comes from the Government, where there are difficulties about the Met Police and things such as that. As soon as it starts coming our way, we will work on it.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend—the idea he could be bolshie would be completely beyond my appreciation of him. He should take it as a given that I consider him to be a man of great integrity. After all, he is a senior officer in our senior service. I will always appreciate and accept him in that way.

What my noble friend said about the role of the ISC is absolutely correct and aligns with my understanding. Obviously, the ISC met with the Cabinet Office Permanent Secretary, the FCDO Permanent Secretary, the Deputy National Security Adviser and the acting director-general of propriety and ethics this week to set out how this will work. That meeting was considered fruitful and constructive, and I hope that, in the coming weeks, the relationship will continue in that vein.