Britain‘s intelligence services seek the foreign secretary‘s approval for hundreds of secret operations each year, some of which are turned down due to the risks involved, William Hague is to reveal.

In a speech at the Foreign Office, Hague is due to give the most comprehensive account by a foreign secretary to date of the office‘s oversight of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6, and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the state‘s electronic listening centre