Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong takes on questions after making his ministerial speech this afternoon in Parliament.

PM Lee answers three questions from NCMP Sylvia Lim. Here are some excerpts from his replies:

Could MHA have done more to prevent the oversight of the ISD?

ISD's role is primarily not to be a jailer. that is Changi Prison's, the Prison Department's role. ISD's role is national security, that means, to identify threats, prevent them and neutralise them. It also is to hold detainees when people are detained under the Internal Security Act. That is done in the WRDC (Whitley Road detention centre), under the supervision of a superintendent. MHA monitors ISD by tracking whether Singapore stays safe.

"Do threats get caught in time? Do we know what's going on? Are we able to react? There's no 100 per cent guarantee that we'll be there all the time. ... We have to be lucky every time, the enemy has to be lucky only once."

Would a Presidential inquiry be more objective than an inquiry by the Ministry of Home Affairs?

"Whatever level I put, I think the one question can be asked: Why not raise it higher?

I think in this case, one person has escaped, he's an important detainee no doubt, a Commission of Inquiry, commissioned by the Minister, I think, is adequate. It has to be conducted in private, not in public because of the contents of the hearings, of what is being investigated but finally the substance as to be reported and the Minister's here to explain what happened and to answer questions. ...

"I think that we've got it at the right level and the committee did a good job."

On the Prime Minister's and the Government's view that the people, not the government, is to be blamed:

"I do not remember the specific quote from the Minister Mentor that the Government is not to be blamed, that it's a matter a complacency. Anything which happened on the Government's watch, the Government is responsible.

"What the Government does about this and what the Cabinet and the Prime Minister do about this depends on what happened and what we assess after investigating the facts .... I have explained my philosophy, the buck has to stop somewhere. If you take this to the logical conclusion, it has to go all the way to the Prime Minister and every time something happens in the government and change prime ministers."

"Instead of getting the problem solved, the ceremonial change of guard is seen as the solution to the problem. the fundamentals do not get altered. AFter some time, the problem pops up again. ... We want to get to the root of the problem, to solve it properly. The person who did what he shouldn't have done, or didn't do what he should have done, well, if he was negligent, complacent, didn't measure up, he would have to move. But the people who run the system, who have done a good job, I think we need to depend on them and we need to back them."

For fuller details, watch the video.

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