Reid to gag Whitehall whistle-blowers

Melissa Kite
The Telegraph
Nov. 06, 2006

A new Official Secrets Act to stop whistle-blowers is to be included in the Queen's Speech.

John Reid, the Home Secretary, is to launch a Bill increasing the severity of gagging orders on Government insiders and employees who leak confidential information.

Plans for the clampdown were revealed by this newspaper in July. According to a leaked schedule of legislation planned for the next session of Parliament, there will be at least five major Home Office Bills in the Queen's Speech, expected later this month.

Ministers want to remove the common law defence of "duress of circumstances", which has been used by members of the intelligence and security agencies to leak information to the press.

This will make it impossible to argue that the seriousness of the information being disclosed, and the fact that it is in the public interest, justifies the actions of the whistleblowers. Such a defence was used by Katherine Gunn, a former translator at the Government Communications Headquarters, when she disclosed to a newspaper classified memos, including one from the United States National Security Agency requesting the help of British intelligence to bug the United Nations. Miss Gunn was arrested in March 2003 after the leak and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The charges were later dropped.

Other leaks said to have upset ministers include sensitive documents about the MI5 investigation into the July 7 London bombers.

Civil liberties campaigners said that the move, along with other attempts by Labour to clamp down on the release of information, would be "potentially disastrous".

Last month, Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, also proposed that the public's right to obtain information from Whitehall under the Freedom of Information Act should be curbed.