Time to build more jails - and fill them with politicians

By Jonathan Walker on Nov 28, 08 12:36 PM in Politics

If it's now an offence to leak information to journalists, half of Westminster is in trouble.

But this might be the situation we're in, after Conservative Immigration Minister Damian Green was rounded up by anti-terrorism officers on suspicion of "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office".

His crime, apparently, is to tell the public things the Government didn't want us to know about what it is doing and how it spends our money.

Nobody denies they were true. And nobody suggests they were official secrets likely to put the security of the nation at risk.

They were just embarrassing to the Government.

Information he gave to the press apparently included details of a letter from the home secretary, warning that a recession could lead to a rise in crime, and a list of Labour rebels threatening to vote against new terror laws.

Although its not clear exactly what he's meant to have done wrong, there's some suggestion that the supposed crime lay in encouraging a civil servant to give him the material.

Why was a civil servant involved in dealing with a rebellion by Labour backbenchers in the first place? Isn't that a party matter, rather than something for a tax-payer funded official?

And if it's a crime for the Tories, is it a crime for everyone?

"Special advisers" working for government ministers - the people we unkindly call spin doctors - frequently leak information to the press (not that we mind) which civil servants have had a hand in.

The Conservatives are furious at the Metropolitan Police, but Labour may be quietly fuming too.

There's a widespread assumption that the Government must have authorised this arrest, although Downing Street denies it.

And the public surely will sympathise with Mr Green rather than those who seek to have him put away.

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3 Comments

Ursula said:

Jonathan, interesting subject line you use.

If politicians are useless outside prison what's their purpose inside it? It's always baffled me why, say, debtors used to be shackled; thus rendering them helpless to work towards paying off what they owe.

December 2, 2008 9:05 AM

Jonathan Walker said:

Mmm, I don't really think we should lock them up - I mean that if we are going to start locking them up leaking or using leaked information, we're going to have to jail quite a few of them as it's not unusual.

There has to be an assumption that MPs are free to seek and use information to embarrass the government.

I know there's some suggestion (which itself seems to have leaked, as the police haven't said this officially) that the civil servant was encouraged to leak information, as opposed to doing it off his own back, which apparently would be a crime. But I doubt even this is that unusual.

I know I've encouraged press officers (who are civil servants) to tell me things they probably shouldn't - just by asking them nicely, mind.

December 2, 2008 7:32 PM

Ursula said:

Yes, I know what you mean, Jonathan.

Such are the powers of gossip. Most people will leak for - sometimes - good reasons too complex to explore here. A good journalist's job is to ask the who, when, where, why and how most cunningly, and to satisfaction of the reader.

Police? I thought they were supposed to keep people from stealing what's not theirs. One of these days one of my pieces of driftwood I bite on to stifle screaming at society will break - and then what? Silence, I suppose.

December 3, 2008 7:50 PM