British spies 'exact opposite' of James Bond

Daniel Craig as 007 in Skyfall. Apparently this sort of caper doesn't happen to UK spies in real life. Photo / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures / Columbia Pictures

Britain's spies are the "exact opposite" of the James Bond films and take an "extremely cautious" and "very far from gung ho" approach, the UK's Foreign Secretary has said.

Philip Hammond said that the security agencies follow "robust" legal safeguards which limit the level of surveillance they can carry out and retain a "culture of proportionality" in everything that they do.

He told peers and MPs on the Intelligence and Security Committee: "There's also a very important safeguard provided by the culture within the agencies, which is the exact opposite of what some movies might like to suggest.

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"The agencies are extremely cautious, extremely focused on their responsibility to maintain the culture of proportionality and necessity in everything they do. And there is an atmosphere in the agencies which is very far from a gung-ho approach. It is very cautious, very measured."

He defended the right of ministers, rather than judges, to sign surveillance warrants arguing that there is a "very strong political incentive" to authorise surveillance only when justified.

He said: "Perhaps it is a feature of the times that we live in, but I'm sure I can speak for all of my colleague who sign warrants that we all have, in the back of our minds, that at some point in the future we will - not might be, but will - be appearing before some inquiry or tribunal or court accounting for the decisions that we've made and essentially accounting for the way we've applied the proportionality and necessity tests.

"There is a very strong political incentive in the system to apply these tests narrowly and in a way that minimises the scope of the agencies to interpret warrants that are issues."

He denied that bulk collection of data by GCHQ amounted to mass surveillance. He said: "Mass surveillance is illegal. There are strict rules in place to make sure data collected is not used in any way. I think the immediate discarding of 99.9 per cent of the data does not give rise to intrusion."