ABSTRACT
Oversight of intelligence in the UK has developed considerably since the late 1980s. Indeed, the government did not even admit to the peacetime existence of its principal internal security and external intelligence organisations – the Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) – until 1989 and 1992 respectively, even though both could trace their origins back to 1909. While select committees of the House of Commons secured only very limited co-operation from the executive branch in attempting to oversee the intelligence and security agencies, in 1994 the government established the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC), a committee of parliamentarians but not of Parliament, specifically to undertake this task.
