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CHINA The Members of the Committee are subject to section 1(1)(b) of the Official Secrets Act 1989 and are routinely given access to highly classified material in carrying out their duties. The Committee sets its own agenda and work programme, taking evidence from Government Ministers, the Heads of the intelligence and security Agencies, senior officials, experts and academics as required. Its Inquiries tend to concentrate on current events and issues of concern, and therefore focus on operational and policy matters, while its Annual Reports address administration and finance.

The Reports can contain highly classified material, which would damage the operational capabilities of the intelligence Agencies if it were published. There is therefore a well-established and lengthy process to prepare the Committee’s Reports ready for publication. The Report is checked to ensure that it is factually correct (i.e. that the facts and figures are up to date in what can be a fast-changing environment). The Intelligence Community may then, on behalf of the Prime Minister, request redaction of material in the Report if they consider that its publication would damage their work—for example, by revealing their targets, methods, sources or operational capabilities. The Committee requires the Intelligence Community to demonstrate clearly how publication of the material in question would be damaging, since the Committee aims to ensure that only the minimum of text is redacted from a Report. Where the Committee rejects a request for material to be redacted, if the organisation considers that the material would cause serious damage to national security if published, then the Head of that organisation must appear before the Committee to argue the case. Once these stages have been completed, the Report is sent to the Prime Minister to consider. Under the Justice and Security Act 2013, the Committee can only lay its Reports before Parliament once the Prime Minister has confirmed that there is no material in them which would prejudice the discharge of the functions of the Agencies or—where the Prime Minister considers that there is such material in the Report—once the Prime Minister has consulted the Committee and it has then excluded the relevant material from the Report.

The Committee believes that it is important that Parliament and the public should be able to see where information had to be redacted: redactions are clearly indicated in the Report by ***. This means that the published Report is the same as the classified version sent to the Prime Minister (albeit with redactions).