MPs call for inquiry into Tory terror arrest
Security risks over-egged for effect
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The Home Affairs Select Committee wants a fuller inquiry into the arrest of MP Damian Green, and believes politicians should be kept out of police investigations in future.
Damian Green and a junior Home Office official were arrested in November last year. Green's Parliamentary office and home were searched after Home Office officials complained of leaks. The Home Office, helped by the Cabinet Office, had already conducted its own unsuccessful mole hunts before calling in plod.
The Committee criticised officials from both the Home Office and the Cabinet Office for exaggerating the risks associated with the leaks.
A letter written by officials to police said: "We are in no doubt that there has been considerable damage to national security already as a result of some of these leaks and we are concerned that the potential for future damage is significant." The Committee blamed frustration among civil servants at their failure to find the source of the leaks for overstating the risks.
Sir David Normington, permanent secretary of the Home Office, told the Committee that there was one piece of information out of 20 leaks investigated that could have been damaging, but that it was known in other areas of government, not just the Home Office. The Committee said there was a "clear mismatch" between Normington's description of the leaks and that sent to police.
The Committee also noted that Met boss Sir Paul Stephenson refused to hand over the report prepared for him on the issue by British Transport Police boss Ian Johnson - MPs called for the report to be published as soon as was practicable.
The Committee noted that the case has been referred to a committee set up by Speaker Martin but that: "the Committee has still not met, and there are no signs it will do so in the immediate future."
Because of this failure, the Committee recommended that the House of Commons should debate whether or not to refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges.
The full report is available from here.
The Crown Prosecution Service is expected to make a decision on whether or not to prosecute Green later today. ®
COMMENTS
Oh great, so now they want to make MPs exempt from the police state they are building!
"The Home Affairs Select Committee wants a fuller inquiry into the arrest of MP Damian Green, and believes politicians should be kept out of police investigations in future."
What?! ... What so now the MPs want to be completely beyond the reach of law?! ... Don't even investigate them. That is totally the wrong response to this arrest. It opens up a huge range of problems.
Its the new laws they are creating which are the cause of the problems. They are building a police state with ever more powers to monitor and control and arrest people. Now they want to make the MPs exempt from the police state they are building!
If they make it even harder to investigate MPs they are going to open up more possibilities for even more abuses of their positions of power. We have enough examples of that now.
Almost every day we are now getting ever more moves towards a totalitarian police state. Now we have the "Home Affairs Select Committee" no less, talking about such a morally corrupt move, that it has huge implications. NuLabour just don't know when to stop. They are behaving like a machine without feedback going to ever more extremes because they refuse to listen to anyone who disagrees with them.
We all knew
We all knew the risks had been deliberately exaggerated from the start, we all knew what the real motivation behind the criminal investigation was, to prevent the humiliating truth about the way the Labour party are behaving from becomming known to the public.
We public have a right to know what useless and bad things the government is up to, this was nothng other than yet more spin, and manipulating the Police for their own political ends.
The Labour party are rotten to the core.
I'm pretty sure...
I'm pretty sure this would come under "wasting police time" and should result in the civil servant who reported the police being given a criminal record.
In addition Mr Green should be able to sue those who complained to the police for Liable and Defamation... they made him out to be a traitor or terrorist... he'll get MILLIONS.
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