In the US, a storm is brewing over Dick Cheney’s alleged role in concealing an intelligence programme from Congress.
Whatever the details of the alleged offence, it raises an interesting question: should oversight of the intelligence community intrinsically be different from other kinds of parliamentary oversight?
Over in the States, Legislators were content to delegate the management of intelligence agencies to the executive until a series of abuses was revealed in the early 1970s, and the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence were set up in 1977. In Britain, however, Parliament has only had scant role in overseeing the intelligence community.
Only nine parliamentarians have the legal authority to pry into the activities of MI6, MI5 and GCHQ and they were only given this right in 1994. They are, however, appointed by, and report to, the Prime Minister on how well the security agencies are performing.
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