ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, if you could ask Britain’s top spy bosses anything, what would it be? Well I am about to speak to a man who has that very chance. This week a group of MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee will quiz the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ all together. The head of that committee is Sir Malcolm Rifkind and he joins me now, a very good morning to you Sir Malcolm. As I say, it is unprecedented to get them all together in public and …

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: It is the fact that it’s in public, I mean we regularly…

DM: But that’s my very question, it’s the point. Do you feel they have decided to do this in public, that the public need convincing that they are doing a good job for us?

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: This is part of a much wider package. Three years ago the Intelligence and Security Committee which I chair, we started a major reform of intelligence oversight, parliamentary oversight of the intelligence agencies. As a result of that we now have a very wide range of new powers which I won’t go into at the moment but they are very wide ranging, they are quite public, they are by an Act of Parliament but as part of that we decided it was also time, and we discussed it with the agencies, got their agreement, that the three heads of the agencies for the first time ever should appear not just before a committee in parliament but before the television cameras. The world will see…

DM: But is there stuff that is going to be off-limits though? Some stuff has got to be off-limits?

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: Yes, of course it is, absolutely, they are secret agencies and we’re not going to ask them questions which could only be answered by revealing secret information. If we do ask them that, that’s what we ask them in private, that’s our private sessions but what has become already evident is you can have an intelligent and mature debate on intelligence issues, including the intelligence chiefs themselves, without actually having to reveal specific secrets. There are a lot of issues, and I can mention one or two of the likely areas that we’ll be covering …

DM: Please do.

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: … which is what the public are interested in and are entitled to hear their views on.

DM: Well please mention those areas. I think we all know what they are don’t we and what are you doing about them?

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: Hold on, let’s start with the long-running issues of the threat to this country of terrorism, that is a fundamental issue because it’s not what the intelligence agencies used to prioritise. During the Cold War it was counter-espionage, stopping the Soviet Union, now it is counter-terrorism and we all know the implications of that so that has to be a significant thrust. It goes on Northern Ireland in a much more limited way, thank God, but it is still there so that will be part of our exchanges but you are right, there are the recent controversies and we have to put to them, for example, these are agencies that spent £2 billion of public funds, the public are entitled to know do we get value for that.

DM: But the question is, how deep are you mining? How many people are you listening to, how much data are you gathering?

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: We can’t ask them questions in a public session which they can only answer by going into secret material, I think the public understand that, the public knows that’s not possible. However we are entitled to say, look, in the work you do there are serious allegations that you are intruding on the privacy of the public, that you are reading all their emails, what is your response to that? Give them the opportunity to say in public their point of view. If we don’t like what they say we’ll quiz them, we’ll disagree with them because it’s not our job to defend the agencies. We will defend them if they are unfairly …

DM: Well it’s your job to oversee them.

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: Exactly right, so we’ll be listening to their answers and we’ll want to know, for example, do the public get value for money, is there any intrusion on privacy, is it dealt with under law or do you guys have the discretion just to act on your own initiative? I can anticipate some of their answers but this is not going to be a scripted exercise. I don't know what their answers are going to be.

DM: Indeed but would this all have been taking place if it hadn’t been for the Snowden revelations, have they been smoked out because of that, out of the shadows?

SIR MALCOLM RIFKIND: Oh no, we took the decision over a year ago to have the first ever – and it won’t be the only one, we took the decision over a year ago, we went to the agencies, I pay tribute to the fact that they said yes, okay, we will do that and these things are not going to be easy for them because they want to be able to give serious and mature answers but they know they can’t reveal classified information. They are the last people who can do that. So we are determined this will be a viable exercise and we have already said there is going to be more of the same because we have announced that as part of the wider debate about Prism, about the NSA and GCHQ and so forth, we are going to have inquiries, the committee will hold, into the whole question of whether the existing laws are appropriate because they were passed before the onset of much of the most modern technology and as part of that we will be inviting submissions not just from the intelligence agencies but from the public and other interested bodies and some of these sessions – not all of them but some of these sessions will be held in public. So this will not be a one-off.

DM: So eagerly anticipated. Sir Malcolm, thank you very much for coming in to tell us about it. That’s Sir Malcolm Rifkind there.