However, all that is irrelevant here. This is simply an issue of whether an MP broke the law. I hardly think Damian Green was deliberately taking direct action to expose flaws in the Official Secrets Act – if he did what some have accused him of then he probably just hoped he wouldn’t be caught.

The law should be the same for MPs as members of the public. You can’t say the police shouldn’t have arrested him because the law’s stupid. If we make it up to the police which laws they think are stupid and where lawbreakers shouldn’t be arrested then we’re giving them more power than any piece of legislation Labour has enacted. What if they decided a wifebeater shouldn’t be arrested because he was acting in the privacy of his home and the officer on duty thought it was a stupid law?

Of course, it may be that Green is entirely innocent of what he’s accused of – although if so then the Tory defence that he was “just doing his job” seems a little odd.

I’m not sure what else they would charge the source under, unless that is Misconduct in Public Office, too.

One thing I haven’t seen noted (sorry if it has been) is that two of the tests for a successful prosecution under the OSA are (note quoting Wikipedia):

* the disclosure must cause harm to the UK or its interests, or it could reasonably be believed that harm could occur; and
* the person making the disclosure must know, or should know, that such harm could occur.

It looks debatable whether any of the leaks meets that first test (and therefore the second), in which case they’ll have a job getting a conviction under the OSA – especially given the history of recent cases.

Thoughts?

Consider this possibility: When the police interview the mole he alleges that he was acting as an agent for Damian Green. The police then have a difficult decision to make. It is not at all clear where the line should be drawn between proper and improper action by MPs in attempting to obtain information — there’s little legal precedent and in any case it is a matter for Parliament not the courts. Since there is no public interest defence for the mole we have the unhappy situation where the police are obliged to conclude that he committed an offence, but the person who is alleged to have directed his actions *might* be immune. If the police fail to investigate the allegations against Damian Green then that would scupper any potential prosecution of the mole. On the other hand they don’t want to make the decision whether Damian Green’s alleged actions have crossed the line. So the police have to find a course of action that allows them to investigate the allegations against Damian Green whilst unloading the political decision on someone else. This is exactly what they did by asking the Speaker for permission to search Damien Green’s parliamentary office. Michael Martin had the power to put a stop to things right there. It was he who made the judgement that the allegations against Damien Green crossed the line, and it is he who is answerable to Parliament for that decision.

David Cameron’s response to this situation has been interesting. He has not offered unequivocal support to Damian Green — he has criticised police tactics and insinuated there was a government conspiracy, but has not asserted that Green acted entirely properly at all times, nor has he claimed that the police had no right to investigate the allegations. He’s smart enough not to bet the party on the integrity of Damian Green. Perhaps someone should leak the details of the allegations against Green to an MP “in the national interest” so we can make our own judgement as to whether the police action was justified.

As for the HOC cleaner, this was leaked not long after the SIA debacle, and it goes right to the credibility of a government, if your thinking is so inclined, to know that they say one thing but allow another to happen. I take it the information about data losses aren’t of the public good either, Darrell, given how the Tories and Lib Dems only use that to attack the competency of Labour in security and of the ID database?

As I have said many times I dont think an individual employment mistake in the HOC does come under that catergory. It means somebody screwed up which happens every hour in every day in every company. Or maybe we should start publishing the lists of all companies who have ever done that so the BNP can start a boycott campaign?? How people *intended* to vote is also not necessarily in the public interest either…I know for a fact Liberal Democrat Voice has an internal forum for members only…should that be thrown open in the interests of freedom of information??

Freedom of information does not equate to the right to know everything all the time….if it did then we should have supported the leak of the BNP member list on those grounds….and the public interest does not equate to needing to know that one HOC cleaner was mistakenly employed; that is tittle tattle with its own agenda

Or should we only be ok with inane information being leaked “for the public good” if it’s for the good of OUR partisan arguments?

Let’s face it, the only reason you don’t think it’s in the public interest is because you think it runs contrary to a cohesive community, others think that not releasing it (and acting on it) runs contrary to a cohesive community.

I see hardly any of this information as being relevant to the public good; it is as has been pointed out relevant to people with the relevant political agenda (which you cannot seperate arbitarialy from it’s uses).

Whether it is about that or not is irrelevant…the intentions of use of information are not mutually exclusive from the relevance of the information

How shameless can party politics get?

Come on. Its not about that; if you want to play it like that then I am going to say is I dont like Tory politicians who dont use ‘information’ but start witchunts around the issue of immigration to please their Daily Mail wing and score a few popularist points in the polls.

There is no way this information can be deemed to be in the public interest beyond mischief making over the issue of immigration. It’s in Green’s interest to publish this if he wants to push for tighter controls on immigration…incidentally, Andrew Lilico is now saying on Conservative Home that the ‘public interest’ defence should be dropped presumably because he sees it as problomatic too….

But the fact that it wasn’t anything to do with that doesn’t actually contradict that at the time it was also something that at the time could be deemed to be in the public interest. Hell, most of the time anything is ever done there is a hidden agenda with it….

And the status of ‘illegal immigrant’ has nothing to do with the leakers status of shadow *immigration minister* who leaks the information in the full knowledge that there are plenty of bored Daily Mail headline writers out there desperate for copy which can lead to a forthing at the mouth call for tighter immigration controls?? Maybe i’m just cynical….

In reality this leak had nothing to do with wanting to highlight lax recruitment practises and you know it…a mistake happened and I am sure none of our prescious MP’s are any less safer for it,….

Indulge me. Tell me how that information has any bearing on public policy or the governance of this country??

But there was still a legitimate public interest in the information being released. I don’t think that is nullified just because some people might use it to further an unpleasant agenda. The Mail and Express will tell lies about immigration anyway, regardless of what genuine information is in the public domain.

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