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would develop its own wireless communications, it was thought that SIS could use it, and, moreover, that the costs of developing and maintaining secure communications could be transferred from the Secret Vote to the Foreign Office budget. As well as specialised wireless equipment, Bland noted that in wartime, ‘and to some extent in peace time’, secret organisations also required ‘secret inks and similar processes, microfilms, forged documents, seals, &c.’, and ‘sabotage and counter-sabotage equipment, including certain types of arms’. Obviously research in these matters ‘should not be abandoned when the war is over’, both to maintain British expertise and to keep up with ‘scientific developments in other countries’. Bland’s view was that this work, though itself highly secret, did not need to be borne on the Secret Vote, and that a new research department should be established for this purpose, which would have an analogous position to that of the GC&CS. The Chief of SIS would be its Director-General, and, since its work would be of most interest to the armed services, they, or the Ministry of Defence, could meet its costs.

Bland’s recommendations regarding the financing of future research reflected the committee’s general opinion that all possible expenditure should be accounted for openly: ‘We reach this conclusion partly on principle and partly because we see practical objections to the Secret Vote being larger than necessity dictates.’ The committee argued that the larger the Secret Vote, ‘the greater the risk of parliamentary comment and criticism at home’. On the other hand, too much economy could be very risky and the committee expressed ‘the strongest hope that it will be remembered how starved of funds the S.I.S. was from soon after the end of the last war until the Secret Vote began markedly to increase once more in 1936, and what increasingly great dividends the S.I.S. has paid since it has had ample funds at its disposal’. Thus they also wanted ‘to sound an earnest note of warning against again allowing the Secret Vote to be reduced too far’. The committee assumed that the wartime figure for the Secret Vote would be published. This had risen from £179,000 in 1936 to £15 million in 1943 (of which SIS’s share had been £117,000 and £4,170,000), and they worried about the impact this might have on public opinion. ‘We are concerned’, they wrote, that ‘there may be an idea among the British public that something like a Gestapo has been operating in our midst during the past few years, and lest a reaction against the employment of secret means to obtain information about the views and activities of British subjects may lead to an ill-informed revulsion against the S.I.S.’ They suggested that this possibility could be countered by the Prime Minister, or a senior military figure such as Field Marshal Montgomery, making public statements which confirmed the high importance of the intelligence provided by the secret service.

The last subject covered by Bland was the Government Code and Cypher School. The committee noted that GC&CS had ‘performed its task brilliantly’ during the war, though this success had been largely unexpected. Reflecting views expressed even at the time of the Hankey inquiry in 1940, they remarked that during the last war it was ‘generally thought’ that ‘never again could cryptography pay such a dividend as it was paying then. One is almost forced to make the same observation again to-day, for it seems unthinkable that we shall ever be able to read more traffic than we can read now. But it is highly rash to prophesy,’ and they agreed ‘that no time, labour or money should be spared to permit the G.C. & C.S. to read everything that is readable’. Nevertheless, ‘the probability that cryptography is a wasting asset strongly reinforces the need for a first-rate S.I.S.’. As for the relationship between SIS and GC&CS, the committee decided that they ‘should emphatically not recommend removing the G.C. & C.S. from the supreme control of C. since we are strong believers in the unified direction of all secret