Of all the comments to have come out of the cash-for access allegations, one of the most interesting remarks attributed to Sir Malcolm Rifkind is the observation to two undercover reporters - “You’d be surprised how much free time I have”.



As I suggested on Monday, Rifkind’s most important role as an MP was chairing the parliamentary Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC). It is overwhelmed with work.



Rifkind has now resigned from that post though he has chosen to remain a member of the committee.



He insisted on Tuesday: “None of the current controversy with which I am associated is relevant to my work as chairman of the intelligence and security committee of parliament”.

The committee’s main task now is to complete its report on the competing demands of personal privacy and state security - its view of the revelations of the US whistleblower, Ed Snowden, about the activities of America’s National Security Agency (NSA) and its British partner, GCHQ.



Rifkind recognised full well when he was appointed chair of the ISC in 2010 that the committee’s powers were inadequate and that it lacked credibility. He pressed for changes and the committee can now require the security and intelligence agencies to provide it with information, instead of merely request it.



But the reforms were not as dramatic as Rifkind suggested.



In a successful attempt to persuade the majority of MPs that a new generation of secret courts were needed to fight terrorism, the government fiddled around with ISC procedures in the 2013 Justice and Security Act.

The chair is now chosen by the ISC members who are in turn appointed by the Commons and Lords. But the members of the committee, including the chair, must be “nominated for membership by the prime minister”



Its members are within what Whitehall calls “the ring of secrecy” - in return for the privilege of receiving classified information, they sign a declaration agreeing to be bound by the Official Secrets Act.



ISC members are indoctrinated in official secrecy by a Whitehall security establishment nervous about sharing information with anyone. It still clings to its mantra of “neither confirming nor denying” reports about their operations.



The ISC meets in private - making a single exception last year to hear evidence in public from the heads of MI5, MI6, and GCHQ, following the Snowden revelations.



The ISC has never suggested that MI5, MI6, or GCHQ, have acted unlawfully. In its first report on Snowden’s disclosures, in July 2013, it noted that GCHQ had introduced measures “in order to ensure compliance with their statutory obligations under the Human Rights Act”.

Yet the regime governing the way GCHQ shared information with the NSA was unlawful and did not comply with Britain’s human rights obligations until December last year, the Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled recently.



David Cameron has reneged on past promises by handing to the ISC the task of investigating allegations and evidence of MI5 and MI6 collusion in the abduction and torture of terrors suspects, a task he previously agreed should be undertaken by a judge. The ISC had previously cleared the security and intelligence agencies of any wrongdoing in the treatment of detainees terror suspects.



It is difficult to imagine the ISC, in its present form, imbued with its present culture, drawing up a 500 page detailed report of the kind the US senate intelligence committee published last year - in the face of intense opposition from the CIA - on the abuse and torture of terror suspects.



Rifkind’s resignation should not distract from the ISC’s central problem - that it has been hopelessly inadequate when it comes to holding our security services to account, Clare Algar, executive director of legal charity Reprieve, said on Tuesday.



“From UK complicity in CIA torture to mass surveillance, the ISC has missed every major security-related scandal of the past 15 years”, she said.



A new ISC will be appointed after the election. Its urgent task will be to establish much-needed credibility.