HC Deb 24 May 1938 vol 336 cc1047-50
Mr. Dingle Foot

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend Section Six of the Official Secrets Act, 1920. As many hon. Members already know, there is a widespread anxiety both among the Press and the public at the use recently made of the powers contained in the Official Secrets Acts. Some day I hope that the whole of the provisions of these Acts will again come under the review of this House, but at the moment I am concerned only with Section 6 of the Act of 1920. That Section provides inter alia that It shall be the duty of every person to give on demand to a chief officer of police, or to a superintendent or other officer of police not below the rank of inspector …any information in his power relating to an offence or suspected offence under either of the Official Secrets Acts. There are a number of offences under these Acts, but the only one to which I need now refer is under the Act of 1911, and that is the unauthorised disclosure by a person holding office under His Majesty of information to which he has had access by reason of his official position. The phrase "person holding office under His Majesty" includes not only civil servants, but has recently been held to include every member of the police. The provisions of Section 6 provides, as the Home Secretary himself admitted a few days ago, "exceptional and drastic powers of interrogation." Nothing quite like them exists anywhere else in the whole range of our criminal law.

I would remind hon. Members of the circumstances in which these powers were first conferred. When the Act of 1920 was passed, great alarm was expressed, in particular, by the newspaper Press. It was thought that there might be same interference with the normal activities of journalists, and that, in fact, has proved to be the case. When Section 6 was under consideration in this House the Attorney-General of the day, who was conducting the Bill through the House, said: We are dealing only with offences or suspected offences under the principal Act or this Act. In other words, to put it shortly, we are dealing with spying and attempts at spying. I do not say that those words constituted an undertaking that the powers conferred would not be used to their fullest extent, but I do say that it is abundantly clear that the House of Commons passed this Section in the belief that they were striking only at espionage. Everyone knows now that Section 6 has, in fact, been invoked in cases which, by no stretch of the imagination, could be connected with spies or spying, or could be said to involve in any way the safety of the State. In particular these powers have been used on several occasions to demand from journalists the sources of their information. I do not underrate the assurances that were given to this House 12 days ago by the Home Secretary. We were told that in future these powers were to be used only in cases where the information which was believed to have been disclosed was of serious public importance. These very words make it clear that the use of the Section will not be limited to the original purposes envisaged by this House. In 1920, when this Act was under discussion, the "Times" published a very striking leading article, attacking the Measure and concluding with these words: If we are to have legislation on the Press, let it not be mixed up with penal provisions aimed at spies and revolutionaries. There has been, as we know, a great deal of alarm in the Press, but it is not only the Press that is threatened by powers of this kind. They might even affect Members of this House. Suppose a Member of this House, in the course of debate, made certain assertions from which it was suspected, reasonably or unreasonably, that he had been the recipient of an unauthorised disclosure by a person holding office under His Majesty, he might the next day be approached by a superintendent of police holding a copy of the OFFICIAL REPORT and be required to state the source from which he obtained his information. If he refused, he would have committed an offence and would be liable to imprisonment for a maximum of two years. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."] It is perfectly clear under the terms of the Act, and no plea of Parliamentary Privilege would avail him in any way, because the offence would consist not in any words spoken in this House, but simply in the refusal to give the source of his information.

There are three Amendments that I am now proposing to Section 6 of the Act of 1920. First of all I am proposing that these powers of interrogation shall not be exercised without the express permission of one of the Law Officers or of the Home Secretary. Secondly, I am proposing that persons interrogated shall not be bound to answer questions the answers to which might have a tendency to expose them to a criminal charge; and, thirdly, the Bill provides that it shall not be an offence to fail to give information unless there are reasonable grounds for believing that the information relates to matters affecting the safety of the State or that there has been an unauthorised disclosure of information, by persons holding office under His Majesty, for purposes prejudicial to the safety of the State. The first Amendment would simply give statutory form to the assurances given to us by the Home Secretary 12 days ago. The second Amendment is essentially a reasonable one, because it would give the same protection to the person interrogated that we already give to a witness who is giving evidence in any court of law. Moreover, it is a similar provision to that which already appears in the Indian Criminal Procedure Code, where also there are certain statutory obligations to give information. Surely it is reasonable to ask that His Majesty's subjects in the United Kingdom should at any rate have the same safeguards as His Majesty's subjects in British India.

My third Amendment is designed to restrict the operation of this particular Section to the purposes originally intended by this House. If the Bill becomes law this method of inquiry, which is made possible by Section 6 of the 1920 Act, will remain unimpaired in all cases where the safety of the State is in any way involved; we are not concerned with that at all; but the Bill would have the effect of preventing these quite exceptional powers of inquisition from being used for entirely different purposes which neither the authors of the Official Secrets Acts nor either House of Parliament ever contemplated or desired.

Mr. Thorne

I would ask you Mr. Speaker, whether you can give us guidance on what I think is a legal question? The hon. Member for Dundee (Mr. Foot) has just made a statement to the effect that in accordance with the Official Secrets Acts, 1920, if a member makes a statement in this House he is not privileged at all.

Mr. Foot

I did not say that.

Mr. Thorne

I was led to understand long ago that every Member of this House is privileged, whatever statement he makes.

Mr. Speaker

I have not even seen the Bill yet.

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Foot, Mr. Davidson, Mr. Baxter, Mr. Pritt, Mr. Kingsley Griffith, Mr. Harvey, Mr. Kirkwood, Mr. Acland, and Mr. Cary.