The attorney general,
Dominic Grieve, is facing growing pressure to block an attempt by the Metropolitan
police to use the Official Secrets Act to force journalists to reveal their sources.
As senior
Liberal Democrats indicated that Nick Clegg was "sympathetic" to journalists, police sources also expressed unease after Scotland Yard applied last week for an order under the 1989 act to require
the Guardian to identify its sources on phone hacking. One police source said the decision to invoke the act was "likely to end in tears" for the Met.
Lib Dem sources said that as deputy prime minister, Clegg was unable to express a view on what action the attorney general should take. But senior Lib Dems lined up at the party conference in Birmingham to call on the attorney general to use his powers to rule that the Yard's use of the act is not in the public interest.
Simon Hughes, the Lib Dem deputy leader, who is suing News International over alleged phone hacking at the News of the World, said: "Millions of people believe the Guardian has done a public service by exposing the series of scandals behind phone hacking carried out on a regular basis by individuals on behalf of other media organisations like the Murdoch empire. It is entirely inappropriate for the Officials Secret Act to be used to try to prosecute journalists who have taken these actions.
"I hope that the law officers, or the government more widely, will make it clear that such an intervention and such a prosecution would not be in the public interest. The police or the Crown Prosecution Service may be able to justify on technical grounds that this is the proper thing to do. But the wider interests should prevail and the sooner a decision is made to end plans to prosecute the better."
Don Foster, a veteran Lib Dem MP who advises the culture secretary, Jeremy Hunt, informally on media issues, called on the attorney general to block the "extremely bizarre" use of the act. "I understand the attorney general has the opportunity to use this power," Foster said after a fringe meeting, organised by the Hacked Off campaign, that was addressed by the actor Hugh Grant. "He should use it and say this is not in the public interest."
Foster, who praised the Guardian for "fantastic journalism" in exposing phone hacking, found unanimous support at the fringe meeting when he asked whether the Guardian's disclosure that Milly Dowler's phone had been hacked – the revelation that prompted the police use of the Official Secrets Act – was justified. The MP said: "If it was in the public interest for the Guardian to do what they did, it is extremely bizarre, it is almost unheard of, for the
Metropolitan police to have used the Official Secrets Act as the basis for seeking to get hold of the information they want.
"It is absolutely vital that we find out first of all who actually signed off agreement to use the Official Secrets Act and, secondly, we have to have a very, very clear explanation of why they are doing it. A final decision is made by the attorney general as to whether to allow it to happen. The one good bit of news is that, in making his decision, the attorney general can use public interest as one of the criteria that he considers. I hope he will very seriously indeed."
The Met's actions were also condemned by other
newspapers:
in a leader in the Times, the Met is accused of using the Official Secrets Act "not to protect the public interest but as a punitive measure to curb journalistic inquiry and pursue a sectarian and self-interested campaign". It goes on to say that the "principle and the method in the Met's action are wrong. They are not only a constraint on the Guardian's reporting, but an attack on the principles of free expression, the workings of a free press and the future of investigative journalism".
The Daily Telegraph described the situation as a "direct attack on the freedom of the press" and "an intolerable abuse of power". Its leader asks if the Met are "seriously contemplating that the first prosecutions arising from the phone-hacking scandal should involve the very people who exposed it?"
Tom Brake, chair of the Lib Dem home affairs committee, said: "The use of the Official Secrets Act in these circumstances is very unusual, and all the more worrying because it does not allow the defendant to argue that their actions were in the public interest. The Met need to explain why they think it is appropriate to use the Official Secrets Act in this case. While this is clearly a matter for the police and the attorney general, I do question whether this action is in the public interest given everything that has happened, or indeed in the interests of investigative journalism."
The political unease was echoed in police circles. One insider asked: "When was the last time the OSA [Official Secrets Act] was used successfully against the media?"
The source added that the Met had to be seen to be rigorous, but threatening to get a production order requiring the handing over of notes and the revealing of sources was a step too far: "No one was expecting us to use the OSA. Usually the use of the OSA ends in tears." With the new Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, not due to start his job as Britain's top police officer officially until later this month, the source added: "He is not even in office and he is facing his first crisis."
Grant said at the Hacked Off meeting: "A lot of us victims and campaigners had come to the view that the new police inquiry – [Operation] Weeting under Sue Akers – were good cops. It was a new investigation. They were embarrassed by the behaviour of their predecessors and colleagues. So for them to suddenly turn on their fellow goodies in this battle is worrying and deeply mysterious."
The Met said that the application for a production order was made under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and did not seek to use powers under the OSA. But the police said that the OSA was mentioned in the application because a possible offence under that act might have been committed.
Nicholas Watt and
Vikram Dodd @
'The Guardian'
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