Plan to stop ID card leaks is ... leaked
Plan to stop ID card leaks is ... leaked
As the Home Office blusters over the arrest of a Tory MP, a new security scandal engulfs it
David Leppard
div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited { color:#06c; } JACQUI SMITH, the home secretary, has suffered fresh embarrassment from a new Whitehall leak disclosing that ministers are seeking new powers to search the homes of staff working on ID cards.
An 11-page confidential Home Office document – which was sent to a campaigner against ID cards – suggests that the employees’ homes could be entered without the need for a police warrant.
The latest disclosure comes amid the continuing political furore over the police raid on the House of Commons office of Damian Green, the Tory immigration spokesman accused of receiving leaked Home Office documents.
The measures outlined in the document appear to be designed to prevent the employees of five companies, all bidding for work on the ID cards scheme, from leaking damaging information about work on the national identity register.
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This register is expected to contain the names, addresses and private information about tens of millions of Britons if it comes into operation as Labour plans in four years’ time.
Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, condemned Smith for trying to take on more state powers. “It is bad enough that the government is wasting £19 billion on this expensive white elephant during a recession – but sinister that the home secretary is invoking even more powers to cover up what is a disaster waiting to happen,” he said.
The Home Office said the proposals in the document aimed to keep the identity card scheme secure and did not introduce new legal powers.
However, Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, the civil rights group, said: “This reveals the extent of Home Office arrogance and contempt for individual privacy.
“It’s not enough constantly to legislate our liberty away - now it seems they want companies and employees to contract out of legal rights not to have private security guards trampling through their premises without a warrant.”
The leak was sent to Phil Booth of NO2ID, which campaigns against the ID cards. “This is quite extraordinary. Has every employee of these five companies and all their subcontractors working on the ID scheme been made aware of the fact that their homes could be entered and searched without a warrant at any time in the next 25 years?” he said.
There are five companies in the running for contracts to create the national ID card. They are IBM, Fujitsu, Computer Sciences Corporation, EDS and Thales.
Meanwhile, ministers continue to face questions about Green’s arrest. A private security company admitted this weekend that it had been employed by the government to conduct politically sensitive Whitehall leak inquiries.
David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, has written to Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary and head of the civil service, demanding details of how many private eyes the government had employed to investigate embarrassing leaks by civil servants.
He asked O’Donnell to explain how the government ensured “that any work carried out by such companies always adhered exactly to UK legal requirements, including adherence to such conventions as parliamentary privilege and the Wilson doctrine”. Under the Wilson doctrine the government has said that it does not sanction the bugging of any MPs.
The fresh challenge to the government came after it emerged that Green, MP for Ashford, had had his parliamentary offices and homes in London and Kent swept for bugs.
Tory sources said Green had “reasonable suspicion” to believe that his parliamentary office computer had been bugged, although no evidence of this has yet emerged.
The Home Office said this weekend that it had not employed any private detectives during its internal inquiry into the leak of documents from Smith’s private office.
The Cabinet Office declined to say whether or not its own security officials had retained private detectives to investigate the leaks after the Home Office asked it to continue the investigation earlier this year.
The inquiry led last month to the arrest of Christopher Galley, a 26-year-old civil servant who had worked as Smith’s assistant private secretary. This implicated Green, who was arrested 10 days ago.
The raid by counter-terrorist police on Green’s Commons office sparked a constitutional row, with claims that ministers had wrongly used the police to stem a tide of leaks that were politically embarrassing but did no damage to national security.
The row has cast doubt over the future prospects of Michael Martin, the Commons Speaker, and Sir Paul Stephenson, the acting Metropolitan police commissioner.
Davis’s letter came after it emerged that the same team of Cabinet Office officials who prompted the arrest of Green had previously employed a private security firm to conduct a similar investigation.
Risk Analysis, based in Mayfair, London, which conducts security inquiries, confirmed this weekend that it had been employed by the Cabinet Office to carry out an inquiry into the systematic leak of highly sensitive material from the government in 2004. However, Martin Flint, a director of the firm, said it was not involved in the circumstances that led to the arrest of Green and Galley.
Martin last week accused Scotland Yard of conducting an improper search of Green’s parliamentary office on the day of the MP’s arrest. He revealed that police did not have a search warrant and had failed to fulfil their legal duty to inform Jill Pay, the serjeant at arms, that she could have refused to consent to the raid.
Bob Quick, Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, sought to defend the raid in a letter to Smith. But Geoffrey Robertson QC said: “This letter is full of inaccurate statements about the law. It is obvious that the police approached the Houses of Parliament as they would approach the den of a drug dealer. Their claim that they did not need a warrant to search Green’s parliamentary office is entirely mistaken.
“The serjeant at arms was not the person who occupied the office - that was Green and they needed his consent.”
According to one insider, Quick wrote to the Cabinet Office soon after the police took over the inquiry two months ago, assuring officials it would have his “personal oversight”.
However, the detailed running of the inquiry was left toa junior officer who may not have been as alert to the political sensitivities of the case. “Bob said he would give it his personal oversight and it doesn’t appear that he did. He’s got a problem,” the insider said.
Jeremy Summers, a lawyer with Russell Jones & Walker, said: “The police appear to be attempting to get round [legal] safeguards, but have merely raised more questions.”
MPs are expected to conduct an emergency debate on the affair tomorrow.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle5299278.ece
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