The Secret History of MI6 - Keith Jeffery [96]
The bleak prospect presented by Cumming’s £65,000 scheme (as well as Churchill’s powerful support) had the desired effect. Cumming kept his budget of £125,000 and on 24 March Hardinge told him that he could withdraw the notices closing down stations. But it was just a stay of execution. The following spring, Otto Niemeyer of the Treasury thought a total Secret Service vote for 1921-2 (of which Cumming’s organisation formed just a part) ‘of £475,000 against this year’s £400,000 . . . and a pre-war £50,000 does not look at all pretty’. Believing that this ‘would arouse determined opposition’ in the House of Commons ‘and a demand for details which it would be most undesirable to grant’, the Treasury again wanted significant reductions. A high-level official committee, chaired by Sir Warren Fisher (Permanent Secretary to the Treasury and Head of the Home Civil Service) and comprising Sir Eyre Crowe (Foreign Office) and Sir Maurice Hankey (Cabinet Secretary), was appointed by the Cabinet to make recommendations ‘for reducing expenditure and avoiding overlapping’. Nevile Bland was appointed secretary. ‘He is’, wrote Crowe, ‘the only person besides myself who is acquainted with each of the three main subheads of “Foreign Secret Service”’ (‘Foreign Intelligence’, ‘Contre-Espionage’ and ‘Miscellaneous’).14
During May and June 1921 this powerful triumvirate painstakingly investigated the whole range of British Secret Service and its cost. The total Secret Service Vote was divided between different departments, of which the largest allocations went to the Foreign Office (£185,000), the Irish government (£160,000) and the War Office (£90,000). Crowe told the committee that £126,000 of the Foreign Office’s £185,000 ‘was needed for C’, £31,000 ‘for the requirements of M.I.5’ and £28,000 for ‘Foreign Office purposes’. Illustrating the rather miscellaneous nature of Secret Service spending, this £28,000 included £5,000 ‘for propaganda’, £10,000 ‘for contingencies’ and ‘a considerable [though unspecified] allocation to His Majesty’s Legation at Tehran’. Crowe told the committee that Cumming’s ‘espionage service’ provided information ‘for the naval, military and air authorities, as well as the Foreign Office, India Office and Sir Basil Thomson’. After he explained that the Foreign Office ‘would be content with a considerable [sic] smaller volume of Foreign secret intelligence than that received at present, provided that certain features such as Asia Minor and the Caucasus, Bolshevism, and the activities of the German Socialist Party were still adequately covered’, the committee wondered if some contraction in the War Office demands for information might provide a basis for ‘a reduction of the £126,000 allocated to C’. By the time the committee subsequently interviewed Cumming, the War Office had said that while they particularly needed military information on Germany, Russia, Japan, the USA and Turkey, they were prepared to do without it from other countries. Cumming himself thought that with these reductions he could ‘effect savings’ bringing down his estimate to some £87,500.15
The 1921 Secret Service Committee reported favourably on the work of Cumming’s organisation, finding little or no overlap between it and other branches. They noted the importance of the Passport Control system for its funding and that ‘by prevailing upon the military authorities to moderate their demands’ the estimate could be reduced to ‘£100,000, with hope of a further substantial drop next year’. Across the board, however, they could find little scope for ‘the actual saving of money’, but by transferring as many charges as possible from the Secret Vote to ‘public accounts’, they were able to propose a reduction of over £100,000 in the overall Secret Vote. For