Accountability and Oversight
To maintain their effectiveness the intelligence and security Agencies must
be able to operate in secret. However it is also important in a democratic
society that there are effective safeguards and means of overseeing their
work, with clearly defined political accountability for their activities.
Effective accountability and oversight is provided in three different ways:
-
through Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament for the activities
of the Agencies;
-
through Parliament itself, to provide politically independent oversight
of Agency activities; and
-
through independent Commissioners, who provide judicial expertise on the
Agencies' performance of their statutory duties, and an Investigatory
Powers Tribunal, which investigates complaints by individuals about the
Agencies' conduct towards them or about interception of their
communications.
The oversight mechanisms are founded in three key pieces of legislation:
-
the Security
Service Act 1989 (amended 1996)[External website],
which placed the Service under the authority of the Home Secretary and
which set out the functions of the Service and the responsibilities of
the Director General;
-
the Intelligence
Services Act 1994[External website], which
established a framework for Parliament to exercise oversight of
expenditure, administration and policy of the three Agencies; and
-
the Regulation of
Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA)[External
website] which established a Commissioner for the Interception of
Communications, a Commissioner for the Intelligence Services and a
Tribunal to examine complaints and hear proceedings under section 7 of
the Human Rights Act 1998. (see
Commissioners and Tribunal for more information on these bodies)
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