The Intelligence and Security Committee

What is the ISC’s remit? 

Unlike select committees, the ISC was created by an Act of Parliament. The legislation gives the ISC’s members unparalleled access to highly sensitive information, but its analysis takes place behind closed doors, and it is reliant on the government for supplying information.

The ISC oversees and can hold inquiries into ‘the policies, expenditure, administration and operations of the Agencies and Departments which form the UK Intelligence Community (UKIC)'. ¹¹ https://isc.independent.gov.uk/how-the-committee-works/   This includes the intelligence agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ as well as intelligence assessment and analysis by the Joint Intelligence Organisation (JIO) and National Security Secretariat (NSS) in the Cabinet Office. 

The remit of the ISC has broadened since it was established. Its original purpose was to examine the ‘expenditure, administration and policy’ of the intelligence agencies, but in recent decades the committee’s focus has included security policy and the topics on which intelligence informs. Alongside special reports into the circumstances of terrorist attacks, it has conducted inquiries into rendition policy and Syrian drone strikes and looked into the 5G Huawei contract.

As well as overseeing intelligence it now also examines issues of national security including state threats and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (including the work of Defence Intelligence in the Ministry of Defence), cyber-attacks (including the work of the National Cyber Force), and terrorism and serious organised crime (including the work of the Homeland Security Group in the Home Office).

The ISC decides on its own inquiries and work programme. It can take evidence from ministers, officials, expert witnesses, but also the Heads of the Intelligence Agencies and intelligence officials. Its evidence sessions are held in private in order to protect classified information and intelligence. 

Who is on the ISC?

The Committee includes both MPs and members of the House of Lords. There are nine members: at the moment it consists of five Labour members (three MPs and two peers), two Conservative MPs, one Liberal Democrat MP, and one crossbench peer. Members are nominated by the prime minister, following consultation with the Leader of the Opposition, and then appointed by their respective Houses of Parliament. 

The chair is elected by the members of the committee. The current chair, Lord Beamish, is a Labour peer. The deputy chair, The Rt Hon. Sir Jeremy Wright KC MP is a Conservative MP who was previously Attorney General. 

The Members are subject to Section 1(1)(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1989 ¹² https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1989/6/section/1  to allow them to be routinely given access to highly classified material in carrying out their duties.

How does the ISC differ from other select committees?

While the ISC is not the only parliamentary committee to take an interest in intelligence and security matters – the defence, foreign and home affairs committees all play some role – it is given an unparalleled level of access to intelligence matters. Its members operate within the ‘ring of secrecy’ – they are cleared to see a highly sensitive information. This access is important. In order to do its job, the committee relies on briefings from members of the intelligence community. Through the course of the Iraq War, for example, it received regular updates from the head of MI6 and the head of the Joint Intelligence Committee.

How are ISC reports produced and published? 

What really differentiates the ISC from other parliamentary committees is both the statutory power the committee has to require government to provide information in its remit, and the implicit power that the prime minister has through the process of approving the finalised report. In the past this has led to stand-offs between the committee and the government. 

When the ISC has prepared a report, it goes through three stages before being sent to the PM to consider:

• Reports are circulated to the Intelligence Community to ensure they are factually correct.
• The report is then sent round again to allow the Intelligence Community to make requests for redactions if they consider any of the text would harm their capabilities, for example by revealing sources, methods or the targets of intelligence work. The committee then assesses whether they agree with the redaction. 
• If the ISC has rejected a redaction, a third stage allows the heads of any agencies to appear before the Committee to discuss any serious damage they think would be caused by the material not being redacted and attempt to agree a final version. 

The report is then sent to the prime minister and cannot be laid before parliament until he or she has approved the final report. The PM can approve the report or consult the committee and ask that material be redacted. This can then lead to negotiations between the committee and the PM about what the final report will include. While the committee asks that the prime minister provide confirmation  with any agreed redactions and that they are happy for the committee to publish the report within ten calendar days of the ISC sending it, this timing is a convention. 

Once the report has been confirmed with the ISC, it can still take some weeks for the committee to finalise the report before it is published, though the process can be expedited.  

The government will then provide a response to the ISC report, detailing what action it will take in response to the Committee’s findings. It is expected to provide that response within 60 days of the ISC publishing their report. 

What controversies have involved the ISC?

Previous governments have had rows with the committee over its operation and work. In July 2020, the surprise election of Julian Lewis as chair, rather than the government’s choice, Chris Grayling, caught the government by surprise. Lewis, a long-serving Conservative MP with previous experience on the committee, voted for himself and won the votes of Labour and SNP members. Boris Johnson’s government reacted forcefully and removed Lewis from the party, before restoring the whip in December of 2020. Lewis remained as chair until the dissolution of Parliament in 2024. 

In 2019, an ISC report into Russian influence in UK elections was delayed seemingly over the conclusions the committee had come to, rather than the need to protect national security secrets. The committee’s inquiry had begun in 2017, looking at potential Russian interference in the 2014 Scottish Independence referendum and the 2016 Brexit referendum, with the report due to be published in March 2019. The reported ended up being delayed until after the December 2019 general election and was published by the successor committee. ¹⁵ Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament publish predecessor’s Russia Report https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/20200721_Russia_Press_Notice.pdf   

In February 2026, after revelations about Peter Mandelson’s leaking of sensitive government information and links to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, the government agreed a compromise amendment to an Humble Address in the House of Commons. This made the ISC the arbiter of the release of those internal government communications and documents related to the vetting of the former ambassador to the US which the Government consider prejudicial to UK national security or international relations. ¹⁶ https://isc.independent.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/20260205-ISC-Letter-to-the-Prime-Minister.pdf  The Government are expected to release themselves any documents of relevance that they do not consider prejudicial to national security or international relations. 

This approach will put the ISC at the heart of questions about how government should balance parliament’s desire for transparency against the need to protect national security and sensitive information on foreign relations. There is likely to be significant focus on what information the government publishes itself and what the committee agrees can be published, particularly over sensitive information on vetting processes and in terms of any communication between Mandelson, the prime minister, ministers, special advisers and officials on potentially embarrassing discussion of Donald Trump or relations with the US.