Gentleman said about the importance of secrecy, there are some matters about which the public could know more. The agencies have recognised that by increasing disclosure. That could be carried further in, for example, the area of broad budgetary figures to give an indication of how money is spent. Given that many things cannot be revealed, it is vital that some parliamentarians, as members of the Committee, are within the ring of secrecy, so that others can rely on them to see all the information necessary to make a judgment that all is well on a particular matter. The degree of co-operation from the Home Secretary on the Mitrokhin case illustrates that if the Committee is given the information, it can make a judgment and provide reassurance in areas where general disclosure is impossible.
Gentleman touches on a central and unavoidable question.
It is not surprising that there will be different judgments on the bounds of secrecy between the intelligence community and the members of the Scrutiny Committee. I think that the frank dialogue between us has been helpful in trying to achieve the right balance, although we must recognise that we will never wholly agree on where that balance should be struck. On the specific issue of the agencies' separate budgets, the Committee made a recommendation that we should publish one year's set of budgets by agency, but that we should not produce annual sets of figures because the revealing trend could be compromising to the work of the agencies. I have considered that very carefully. The Government did not see it as politically feasible to produce one year's figures without impossible pressure in future years to produce the annual figures.