Future king sees up close the vital work of security agencies

They did heroic work here in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, penetrating paramilitary organisations and running agents.

If it had not been for this penetration, the republican and loyalist campaigns, and in particular the long years of IRA violence, would have been much more destructive than they in the end actually were.

Now the intelligence services are doing similarly important work against Islamic terrorist cells in Great Britain.

These painstaking, necessarily secret, and thus largely unsung, efforts sit at the very heart of national security.

Without the intelligence agencies, there would be many more terror attacks than there are.

It is of the utmost importance that those who would seek to undermine the work of these groups are thwarted.

People who work against the intelligence agencies do so out of professed concern for ‘human rights’ but in fact, either through naivete or design, they would neuter such undercover efforts, such as constraining the use of informers so much that their value becomes almost worthless.

The royal family has for centuries understood that it has a duty to the nation over which it presides, and this has most visibly taken the form of military service.

The Duke of Cambridge, who as part of that tradition spent several years in the armed forces, has now spent three weeks working with MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, in order to better understand how the UK’s security and intelligence agencies operate.

The quote on the opposite page shows how much the second in line to the throne valued that first-hand experience, and how he has plainly understood the immense value of the work that these organisations do.