Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee - GCHQ's Sir Iain Lobban, MI5's Andrew Parker and MI6's Sir John Sawers talk about their secret work....and how terrorists are "rubbing their hands in glee"! They are the men who traditionally live in the shadows, but the heads of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ were subjected to a public inquisition for the first time as MPs sought to demystify the work of Britain's intelligence agencies. Sir John Sawers, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service MI6, appeared alongside Andrew Parker, Director-General of the Security Service, MI5, and Sir Iain Lobban. The 34 foiled plots The most striking new fact to be divulged was that the intelligence agencies and police have foiled 34 terrorist plots against the UK since the July 7 suicide bombings of 2005. Mr Parker, however, warned that there are still "thousands" of violent extremists living in the UK who are known to MI5. He said: "The vast majority of plots come from people who live here." He added that some plots aimed to be at least as big as 7/7, and: "Spectaculars are still in the minds of terrorists." One or two plots discovered each year were "aimed at mass casualties", he said, the majority of which were thwarted by the actions of the intelligence and security agencies. It's not like James Bond Sir John Sawers, who is known by the codename of C within MI6, used the hearing to dispel the myth of his organisation employing 007-style operatives. He said intelligence-gathering was painstaking and lengthy and: "The idea of sending an agent off into the field, like James Bond, who comes back after a couple of months, it doesn't work like that." He added: "It's not like it was in the Cold War. There aren't states out there trying to destroy our Government and our way of life. But there are a very wide range of diverse threats that we face. "The biggest is terrorism - the threat from al Qaeda and its many, many branches. There are also states out there that are trying to do us harm, through cyber-attacks, by acquiring nuclear weapons or involved in generating instability in parts of the world important to us." He said his agents were never left without support, and if necessary "we will wake the Foreign Secretary up in the middle of the night" to get a decision on a difficult issue. Mr Parker said 10 per cent of MI5's work involved old-style counter-espionage work against the threat from foreign states, with most of the Security Service's workload taken up with terrorism. He said the terrorism threat in Northern Ireland was "diminishing year on year" and "won't last forever" because Ulster had "moved on" and over time terrorists will either be "jailed or give up". We are not complicit in torture Sir John denied outright that British intelligence officers had been complicit in torture of terrorism suspects overseas. He said: "I don't accept the allegations that have been made against us...we're absolutely clear we only operate within the framework of the law. "There are some countries we can't work with at all, Syria for example." "There are some countries which have mixed human rights records and we seek clear assurances that when we provide intelligence it will be used lawfully and if anyone is detained or questioned as a consequence of our intelligence, it is done to our standards." Mr Parker said: "Would we pursue a situation that we knew would lead to mistreatment or torture of an individual to get terrorist threat intelligence? The answer is absolutely not." The 'terrorism tourists' The civil war in Syria has been a magnet for British extremists looking for the opportunity for "jihadi" activity, Mr Parker said. "Syria has become a very attractive place for people to go for that reason - those who support or sympathise with the al Qaeda ideological message," he said. "We've seen low hundreds of people from this country go to Syria for periods and come back - some large numbers are still there - and get involved in fighting. "This is partly because of the proximity of Syria and the ease of travel there, but also because it is attractive as what they would see as a jihadi cause." Asked by Lord Ancram why the agencies had not predicted the Arab Spring, Sir John said: "We are not crystal ball gazers; we are intelligence agencies. We could all see the fault lines in Arab societies but no-one predicted when the earthquake would hit." We are not cyber-snoopers Sir Malcolm Rifkind suggested many people believe the "real cyber threat" in the UK comes from GCHQ seeking to collect personal data. Sir Iain replied: "We do not spend our time listening to the telephone calls or reading the e-mails of the majority...it would not be legal. We do not do it. "It would be very nice if terrorists or serious criminals used a particular method of communication and everybody else used something else. That is not the case."

• published: 09 Nov 2013
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