This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Political pressure is building for the UK’s special forces to be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny for the first time – bringing them into line with rest of the military and the intelligence services.

The SAS and other elite units that make up the UK’s special forces are usually deployed on covert operations.

Any questions in parliament about them are met by the Ministry of Defence with “no comment”, even when their presence in conflict zones has been established by the media.

But MPs are now pushing for the special forces to be subjected to parliamentary oversight.

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At a Westminster meeting organised by the Oxford Research Group, a thinktank, the Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, former chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said: “It is my view there is a gaping hole in parliamentary oversight.”

Other countries with similar elite forces – such as Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Norway and the US – subject their forces to democratic scrutiny.

Also speaking at the meeting, the former defence and foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who chaired the parliamentary intelligence and security committee until 2015, said: “I think it is unanswerable that there should be some form of oversight of the special forces.”

He added that if MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, which in most cases were more secretive than the special forces, could face oversight, then so could the troops.

But, he said, parliamentarians with the oversight role should not be given the right, as in the US, to be told in advance of operations. Rather than that, any scrutiny should be after the event, he said.

He proposed oversight should be done by a sub-committee of the Commons defence committee, with members given high-level security clearance, rather than by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee.

A 44-page report by the Oxford Research Group – Britain’s Shadow Army: Policy Options for External Oversight of UK Special Forces – was published to coincide with the meeting.

The authors, Liam Walpole and Megan Karlshoej-Pedersen, say: “While there remain many good reasons for the tactical secrecy of UKSF [UK Special Forces] activities, there appear to be fewer good reasons for the complete opacity that currently surrounds them.

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“Our research shows that Britain is alone among its allies in not permitting any discussion of the staffing, funding and the strategy surrounding the use of its special forces.”

Special forces have been used increasingly in Iraq, Libya and Syria as well as in other conflicts around the world, often embedded with local forces.

Some MPs suspect the government’s preference for using special forces is a way of avoiding having to go to parliament, as would be likely if there was a large-scale deployment of conventional forces.

Rifkind took issue with this, saying there were lots of situations in which special forces were preferable to conventional forces.

Dominic Grieve, chair of the intelligence and security committee, is quoted in the Oxford Research Group report as being supportive of the scrutiny proposal, as is the defence committee chair, Julian Lewis, with some caveats.

Britain’s special forces were founded during the second world war and today comprise five units – the Special Air Service (SAS), Special Boat Service (SBS), Special Forces Support Group (SFSG), Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR) and 18 (UKSF) Signals Regiment.

The units are the subject of an exhibition – Special Forces: in the Shadows – at the National Army Museum in Chelsea which opened in March and runs until November.