George Kerevan: Quick, here comes another conspiracy theory

Published on Wednesday 3 December 2008 21:47

I WAS once threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act. In 1986, the journalist Duncan Campbell discovered the existence of Project Zircon, a secret plan to launch a British spy satellite that would allow GCHQ to eavesdrop on Russian (and friendly European) telecoms.

Duncan made a TV documentary which would have revealed all, except that the Thatcher government banned the BBC from showing the programme, while the Special Branch raided Duncan's home. I was an Edinburgh councillor and we saw it as our civic duty to arrange free public showings of a pirated copy of Duncan's documentary in our libraries. Hence the threats to lock me up.

You can't actually hide a satellite once it is in orbit, so the only people being kept in the dark about Zircon were MPs – the government was anxious not to tell parliament about the 100 million price tag – and the electorate. As a result of our actions, Zircon became a laughing stock and Nigel Lawson cancelled the project the following year.

All governments want to hide things. They may pretend it is in the public interest but it is rarely so. One of the jobs of elected representatives is to ensure that the state's predilection for secrecy is challenged at every possible opportunity.

Which brings me to the arrest of the Tory spokesman on immigration, Damian Green, and of the civil servant who leaked him confidential Home Office papers, Christopher Galley. Mr Galley, a former Tory candidate, has admitted revealing that licences had been granted to security guards who were illegal immigrants, and that an illegal immigrant was working as a cleaner in the Commons.

Mr Galley is undoubtedly in breach of the Civil Service code of conduct and can expect to be dismissed. However, the information he has leaked hardly counts as a threat to national security. Had that been the case, both Mr Galley and Mr Green could have been arrested – rightly – under the Official Secrets Act.

The fact that such procedures have not been followed in this case is a tell-tale sign we are dealing with a classic political vendetta – another attempt by the government to erode civil liberties for petty, partisan reasons.

I have no knowledge of the motives of Mr Galley in leaking and am prepared to accept that he could be furthering his political career, or (even more dubious) trying to whip up a storm over immigration. On the other hand, I can see no reason why immigration figures should be a state secret, even if it embarrasses the government – which has made a fetish of being "tough" on immigrants to placate the dark side of public opinion.

The Home Office has seen a run of embarrassing leaks. In 2004, James Cameron, a British diplomat in Romania, leaked information to the Conservatives about how the Home Office was admitting immigrants from Eastern Europe despite having been alerted that their applications were supported by bogus documents. This led to the resignation of Beverley Hughes, the Home Office minister in charge of immigration. Mr Cameron was disciplined, not arrested.

Then there was the case of Steve Moxon, a Home Office official who wrote an article for the Sunday papers exposing failures in the vetting procedures for immigrants. Mr Moxon's motives were dubious but that is no excuse for protecting Home Office incompetence. He was dismissed, but no police were involved because he had committed no crime.

So why has a Tory shadow minister been arrested, questioned for nine hours and had his home raided by no fewer than 20 policemen, for being involved in a similar series of leaks?

The Metropolitan Police were acting on a complaint from the Home Office, which wants to frighten off any more potential whistleblowers. But without an obvious crime having being committed the plods decided to fall back on that dangerous and vague legal contrivance, the conspiracy laws.

Basically, if you merely conspire to commit a crime they can nab you, though the law requires you understand what law it was you were planning to break.

As I can't see what law Damian Green could break by standing up in the House of Commons and saying the Home Office is incompetent, he is plainly not guilty of conspiracy. But it was a good legal excuse to enter the House of Commons and seize the correspondence of Mr Green's constituents.

The constitutional implications of this affair are serious. Can a police inspector who is a member of the BNP now raid the constituency offices of any Labour MP he is annoyed with, using the portmanteau conspiracy laws? Am I, as a journalist, open to conspiracy charges if I try and persuade a civil servant to leak me information? And what remains of Parliamentary Privilege – the right of elected members to speak out in parliament. True, Parliamentary Privilege does not extend to protecting MPs' offices – even within the precincts of the Houses of Parliament – from police search, if a bona fide crime is suspected. But a line has been crossed in terms of democratic freedoms when the police go on a fishing expedition – without a warrant – in an MP's office in the Palace of Westminster.

Like Zircon, this ludicrously heavy-handed police action has caused everyone to retreat. The Speaker has expressed regret at the raid on Mr Green's office. An embarrassed Met is holding an investigation of its investigation. Typically, only the government is still pretending that the arrests were a normal "operational" police matter in which politicians should not interfere.

But it was the Home Office that prompted the Met to get involved – a force that became heavily politicised under its former head, Sir Iain Blair. It was the Home Office that told the Met about a "conspiracy". The man leading the police operation is Bob Quick, the head of the Met's anti-terrorism unit. Mr Quick has applied to become the next head of the Met. That post will be chosen by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.