Structure
The ISC is unique inasmuch as it is not a committee of Parliament, but consists of nine parliamentarians appointed by, and reporting directly to, the Prime Minister. In this capacity, it has greater powers than a select committee of Parliament, being able to demand papers from former governments and official advice to ministers, both of which are forbidden to select committees.
The committee has an independent secretariat which was previously provided by the Cabinet Office. In its 2009–10 annual report, the ISC said there was a conflict of interest in being hosted by a department which came under its scrutiny and it has since moved to government offices at 35 Great Smith Street, with an independent web page. It also, from 2009, had a panel of three investigators: a general investigator to undertake specific investigations covering the administration and policy of the agencies, a financial investigator covering expenditure issues, and a legal advisor to provide the committee with independent legal advice. It is not known whether the current committee has continued with these three investigators. From 1999 to 2004, the committee's only investigator was John Morrison, who is a co-author of the only in-depth study of the ISC to date.
Read more about this topic: Intelligence And Security Committee
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“One theme links together these new proposals for family policy—the idea that the family is exceedingly durable. Changes in structure and function and individual roles are not to be confused with the collapse of the family. Families remain more important in the lives of children than other institutions. Family ties are stronger and more vital than many of us imagine in the perennial atmosphere of crisis surrounding the subject.”
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“A committee is organic rather than mechanical in its nature: it is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, wilts, and dies, scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in their turn.”
—C. Northcote Parkinson (1909–1993)