HC Deb 31 January 1973 vol 849 cc1571-82

2.31 a.m.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield (Nuneaton)

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this subject, although I am not particularly grateful for having to do so at this hour. I feel rather sorry for the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, because he is a constituency neighbour of mine, and also because, with the greatest respect to him, he is the wrong Minister. The points I shall raise are essentially Home Office points, and I am afraid that I shall get a "transport" answer. I am not saying that it will not be relevant, but I hope that the Minister will do me the courtesy of communicating some of my remarks to his hon. and right hon. Friends in the Home Office.

When I first tried to raise the matter of the leak of confidential information from the Department of the Environment, the publication of an article in the Sunday Times of 8th October and the raid on the Railway Gazette on 29th November, I had incredible difficulty in getting any information at all from the Government Front Bench.

By 11th December, almost two full weeks after the raid, although I had tabled four Private Notice Questions and a Written Question to the Attorney-General, and written a lengthy letter to the Prime Minister asking what was his Government's policy on the Official Secrets Act and whether he intended to use against the Railway Gazette either the Theft Act or the Copyright Act, and despite correspondence between the Leader of the House and the Leader of the Opposition, no real information had been given a fortnight after the raid took place.

All we have been told—and I suppose that this is what the hon. Gentleman will tell the House tonight—is that the Department of the Environment passed the matter to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who then, properly, passed it to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

On 12th December the Prime Minister made his first statement. He said that if the Department of the Environment had not done that it could possibly have been accused of being negligent. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition tried to be helpful on that occasion, but even by 20th December, two days before the House adjourned for the Christmas Recess, no information had been forthcoming.

By that time I had tabled further parliamentary Questions to the Secretary of State for the Home Department, the Attorney-General and the Leader of the House. I had received no information, even in reply to a letter which I wrote to the Home Secretary on 18th December asking him about my suspicions on telephone tapping and blackmail in connection with police inquiries.

By the time the House was due to adjourn for Christmas, three weeks after the raid took place, the House was none the wiser because the Government kept very tight-lipped. This happened amidst growing newspaper speculation about telephone tapping and the whole philosophy of the present Government towards the Press.

Thus it was that on 22nd December, the day the House adjourned for Christmas, a Written Reply was given by the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary to the hon. and learned Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke)—a Member who, up until that time, had taken not the slightest interest in the matter. I can only conclude that he did not table that Written Question of his own accord.

When the Home Secretary said that no threats had been used by the police and that telephone tapping was in accordance with the recommendations of the Birkett Committee in 1957, I must emphasise that that was the first information this House had received in detail about these investigations. In other words, we had a situation where, getting on for four weeks after the raid took place, this House had still not been told why the raid had taken place and what method was used.

I also wish to point out that precisely the same Question as asked by the hon. and learned Member for Darwen just before Christmas was debarred to me several times by the Table Office. I was told that such a question was not a matter for the Home Secretary. I should like to know—and I shall be pursuing this matter later—why the hon. and learned Member, who had not up to that point taken the slightest interest in the case, was allowed to ask that Question and to be given a reply.

On the same day Scotland Yard announced that a complaint had been made about police conduct. We still do not know who made that complaint. I can only conclude that the Government saw the light and thought that they could not hope to win a case on those grounds. Therefore, an investigation was undertaken into the conduct of the Metropolitan Police. That inquiry is still taking place because the solicitors representing Richard Hope, the editor of the Railway Gazette, have advised him, now that the charges have been dropped, to go ahead if he wants to co-operate.

On 30th December, a full month after the raid took place, the Prime Minister, in reply to a letter which I had written to him three weeks earlier, was still denying responsibility and simply passing the buck to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Metropolitan Police. I can only conclude that this incredible secrecy and withholding of information from this House was simply because the Railway Gazette and the Sunday Times had stumbled on the truth. I hope the hon. Gentleman will take note of the fact that it was in May 1970 that Chapman Pincher in the Daily Express was saying almost the same thing as the Sunday Times said on 8th October last—and indeed the Chairman of the British Railways Board was saying more or less the same thing in August last year.

Could it be that, instead of having unearthed one of a number of alternatives in the Department of the Environment, the Railway Gazette and the Sunday Times had unearthed and brought to light the mainstream of departmental thought about British Railways' future? I hope the hon. Gentleman will say something about that aspect of the matter when he replies to the debate.

We have still had no specific denial from the Government that the telephone conversation which I had with the editor of the Railway Gazette on the morning of 1st December was tapped. I hope that when Detective Chief Inspector Edwards completes his investigation into police conduct we shall receive a specific denial that that telephone conversation was tapped. I also hope that we shall get a denial that the telephones of Richard Hope, Christopher Bushell and Ian Yearsley were tapped. Despite the assurance by the Home Office, the House has still heard of no authorisation for this. It has not been discussed; it has not been put forward. We still have not been told that these telephones were definitely not tapped. I hope that when the police report is available this will be so.

We see from paragraph 141 of the Birkett Committee's Report in 1957 that telephone tapping might be necessary for the security service to assist in protection from espionage, from sabotage, and indeed from every kind of action that threatens the security of the State. Paragraphs 142 and 143 of the Birkett Committee's Report talk about telephone tapping perhaps being necessary in the context of serious crime organised and carried out by professional criminals who want to make a great deal of money and would not think of making it in any other way than by crime, at the expense of their fellow citizens. Whatever happened in connection with that leak, whatever happened in connection with the Sunday Times and the Railway Gazette, I do not think that anybody who was possibly involved in that could be accused of falling within the context of paragraphs 141, 142 or 143 of the Birkett Committee's Report. I can only conclude that if telephone tapping was used—I hope that we shall have a specific denial—it will be brought to light, because to my mind this whole incident falls very much outside the Birkett Committee's recommendations.

I will not mention tonight, because of time, the techniques of the police in questioning Christopher Bushell. They said to him, when they called at his house on 4th December, that it would be a pity if some of his friends to whom he had spoken recently were to be implicated. That may be part of normal police questioning techniques—I am not arguing about that at this moment, although I might question it later—but it certainly seems to me an indication of the pressure put on the officers to reach a speedy conclusion. So, even if the hon. Gentleman cannot answer my points on the conduct of the inquiry, I hope he will pass them on to the Home Secretary.

Above all, I want to raise the possibility, which has still not been denied, of the Government trying to use either the Theft Act or the Copyright Act in place of the Official Secrets Act. The Official Secrets Act is a blunderbuss weapon; it is a sledge-hammer weapon. It causes long court cases and lots of embarrassment.

Were the Government tempted to use the Theft Act or the Copyright Act? Were they taking note of the obiter dicta in the case of Norah Beloff v. Private Eye where the late Mr. Justice UngoedThomas said that publication of leaked documents was not "fair dealing" and no defence against a copyright action? Did the Government take notice of the fact that he said that the public interest had a narrow meaning in being restricted to misdeeds of a serious nature relating to the country and clearly recognisable as such"? If the Government had taken note of the obiter dicta in that case they may have come to the conclusion that using the Copyright Act instead of the Official Secrets Act against the Railway Gazette or possibly the Sunday Times was a more convenient and subtle weapon because they could have sued for civil damages and, apart from that, applied criminal penalties. If the Government were considering using the Theft Act or the Copyright Act in this way, that would involve some notion that knowledge about the Government is Government property. That is a very dangerous notion indeed. It certainly threatens the mechanics of journalism and the way that journalists work. I hope that the hon. Gentleman, even if he cannot say anything about this matter tonight, will pass it on to the Home Secretary, because to my mind we had a serious threat to the freedom of the Press and the way that the Press works in this country. I am still not satisfied with the answers or the information that I have received.

In many instances this has been called "Britain's mini-'Pentagon papers' scandal. It has even been called "Britain's Der Spiegel scandal". We are not talking about the location of "Regional Seats of Government", about Britain's pre-emptive nuclear strike capacity or about Britain's critically secret defence plans; we are talking about the future railway network, and that involves the livelihood, the careers and the travelling patterns of millions of people throughout the country.

If we are going to have any decisions taken about the future of the railway network, they should not be taken by the railway hawks in the hon. Gentleman's Department, which I suspect had pretty well made up its mind before the leak took place. Such decisions should not be taken because of the commercial exigencies of the board of British Rail. Above all, these decisions should be taken by the people of this country.

Instead of clobbering people like Richard Hope, who was writing about the future fates of the railway long before the leak took place in his articles in the Railway Gazette, and who for many years has done sterling service in bringing to light the difficult financial circumstances of the railway, and instead of clobbering Harold Evans, the editor of the Sunday Times, this House and, indeed, the country, should give all praise where it is due. Without publication in the Sunday Times the country would not have known the truth. There could easily have been a situation where the country would have had foisted upon it a castrated railway map. Because of the leak interest has once against been stimulated in the future of the railway system. The interest of the people has been stimulated. After all, it is their railway system, and only they should have the right to decide its future.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Keith Speed)

The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Leslie Huckfield), who has raised this important matter, is a constituency neighbour of mine, and, apart from our political differences, a personal friend. Nevertheless, I am bound to tell him that although he has raised some fundamental and important matters, the essence of which I will communicate to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment, he strayed a long way, during the latter part of his speech about the railways, from his usual standards of common sense.

The first issue, and the main part of the hon. Gentleman's speech, is the conduct of the investigation into the loss of the document and the subsequent publicity about which the hon. Gentleman has expressed such concern.

It is, of course, a common feature of Government practice that certain documents are given a security classification in order to safeguard their contents from premature disclosure which could be harmful to the interests of the State. The document which was the subject of the Sunday Times article on 8th October last year was classified in this way, and as a first step an internal inquiry was very properly instituted into how it had been taken from the Department's offices. This showed that one particular copy was missing, and, as a criminal offence might therefore have been committed, the results of the Department's own inquiry were submitted to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who then instructed the Commissioner of Police for the Metropolis to make inquiries.

Neither I and my ministerial colleagues nor members of my Department took any part in, or in any way interfered with, these inquiries; indeed, it would have been most improper for us to have done so. The inquiries were entirely a matter for the Commissioner of Police to conduct as he thought fit. There was no question of passing the buck. The hon. Gentleman will now doubtless be aware that the Director of Public Prosecutions has advised that there is insufficient evidence to prefer charges, although there is some evidence of theft.

I take up the story of the Official Secrets Act. No prosecution is being undertaken under that Act in respect of any incident arising from the loss of the document and the subsequent publicity, and that particular matter can now be regarded as closed. As regards the future, I cannot say more than that, as already announced, the Government are considering the recommendations of the Franks Committee.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned telephone tapping, and this is, as he indicated, properly a matter for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. The hon. Gentleman knows from the reply that was given to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Darwen (Mr. Fletcher-Cooke) on 22nd December, and I am assured by my right hon. Friend, that there is no tapping of the telephones of Members of Parliament.

I now turn, because it is germane to what we are debating, to the underlying question of the work which the Department and the Railways Board have been doing about the finances of the railways, their prospects for the future and the very real problems which make it so difficult for the railways to compete with other forms of transport in all industrialised countries today.

There is a long history to the problem of the railways. It is not just financial. There are the underlying difficulties of competition for the road users, bearing in mind that there are more than 200,000 miles of road in this country compared with about 11,500 route miles of railways. This gives the road user a much better chance of completing his journey in one stage.

The first major attempt to treat the problem of the railways on a national scale was in 1962. Legislation gave them complete commercial freedom, wrote off £487 million of their debts and suspended their liability to pay interest on a further £1,262 million. In addition, powers were taken to pay revenue deficit grants, which eventually came to over £800 million. A further attempt was made in the 1968 Transport Act of the previous administration which distinguished the social services provided by the railways. The Government were enabled to pay grants for unremunerative passenger services, capital grants for infrastructure in urban areas, research and grants for costs associated with work on track and signalling. These grants have now reached about £88 million a year. The Government also wrote off £1,262 million more debt.

Unfortunately, even this considerable support was not enough, and, as my right hon. Friend informed the House on 27th July last year, there was a further deterioration in the railways' finances which led the Railways Board to forecast a deficit of about £40 million in 1972, even after taking into its accounts the substantial assistance that I have just mentioned.

I have given this brief rundown of the very serious policy and financial problems of the railways in order that the House should fully appreciate the need for studies and investigations to be made of existing policies to see whether there is any hope of improvement through changes in organisation, business plans or retrenchment. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries asked the board for its part to review its long-term problems and prospects and to report to him, while the Department made parallel studies aimed at identifying the areas where the Government could take action which might assist in the establishment of a stable, long-term railway network.

The report which was leaked to the Sunday Times was, in fact, one of these interim internal studies prepared by officials as a contribution towards the development of policy. It was no more and no less than that. It was certainly not a study by Ministers or by their senior advisers, but a study by middle management of one of a series of options. I should point out that its contents were grossly distorted in the course of selecting parts of it for publicity. It did not, in fact, make specific proposals for reduction of the railway network, and the map which the Sunday Times published was pure speculative artistry. The hon. Gentleman spoke about policy being determined by hawks in my Department. I think that I shall be able to say a few things that will reassure him on that.

This Government's record as regards railway closures, looked at from the point of view of those who wish to continue to support a large railway system, is extremely good. As recently as 23rd January, only a few days ago——

Mr. Huckfield

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the issue of the Sunday Times, will he confirm that there was a remarkable degree of similarity between the kind of report that Chapman Pincher produced about the future of the railway system in May 1970 in the Daily Express, which again emanated perhaps from certain reports in the Department, and the kind of forecast that was made by the Chairman of the British Railways Board last August?

Mr. Speed

No. I have explained to the hon. Gentleman that that was one of a whole series of papers covering an extremely wide range of options. It would be wrong of me to comment on papers that may or may not have come from the Department under a previous administration. We do not even see them. I can only tell the hon. Gentleman the situation as I see it now. With my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries, I am jointly responsible to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for rail policy.

As my right hon. Friend told the House, he renewed all the grant undertakings for loss-making passenger services which fell due for renewal at the end of 1972. These amounted in all to 122 specific services as well as the London commuter network as a whole. There are currently only five services proposed for the closure machinery, none of them intensively used.

In all, during the 2½ years this Government have been in office we have consented to the closure of well under 300 miles of railway line, a total which compares very favourably with the 2,680 miles closed by the last Government.

In the circumstances, I think the House will agree that it is a matter for great regret that the publication of a confidential working document, completely out of context, should have given rise to so much widespread and unnecessary anxiety. Having received many letters from hon. Members and members of the public and railwaymen, I know that it has caused great and unnecessary distress.

I now turn to the issue of whether the work which the Railways Board and the Department are undertaking should be conducted in public, coupled with the point of whether the Department was right to classify the leaked document as confidential. Of course, there must be full public discussion of the kind of railway system we want for the future, of how this is to be achieved and what it will cost. I know that my right hon. Friend is anxious that the options should be put before Parliament as soon as the work has progressed sufficiently to enable him to do so in a sensible way. But it is in no one's interest that public discussion should take place before the very complex analysis and forecasts which are needed are carried out and the consequences—social, economic and environmental, as well as financial—of the various possible courses of action of future railway policy are properly assessed.

There is the not unimportant point that the railways are a business which need to protect their commercial interests against their competitors. There is therefore a limit on the extent to which they can reveal their business calculations if their financial prospects are not to be unnecessarily jeopardised.

As for whether the Department was right to classify the leaked document as confidential, the widespread anxiety which its publication has caused to the travelling public, to the industry and railway staff themselves, leads me to believe that it was.

In our constituency files we all have information that certainly for a period we regard as confidential. I have, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has, information and letters which at a certain point in time we would not wish to reveal to the Press, because it might he completely out of context.

It is too early to say when the great deal of work that is progressing will be completed and the results put before Parliament. I can certainly repeat the assurance my right hon. Friend has already given that a full statement will be made to Parliament as soon as possible and that there will be ample opportunity for public discussion before any new legislation which may be desirable in the Government's view is enacted.

Finally, I remind the House of the positive support the Government have given to public transport projects in specific fields. The broad measure of the grants to British Rail, amounting to about £100 million, together with the extra money to meet the cash shortfall, mean that last year a total of £140 million was given to British Rail. In addition, we are allowing British Rail to invest at the rate of £100 million a year in the replacement and development of its system. In any comparison with the much larger total of investment on the road system it needs to be borne in mind that the highway network is some 20 times larger than the rail network, as I have described. In the light of that £140 million plus £100 million, I do not think that we can be accused of starving the railways.

We believe that the railways have a continuing rôle for the future, especially through their ability to carry people rapidly over long distances and to move large numbers of people in urban areas. We recently agreed to the provision of a rapid transit system on Tyneside, costing in all some £65 million, of which the Government would provide £50 million.

The railways will continue to constitute an important element in any new transport policy which may be adopted. I hope that I have brought out the various factors which need to be kept in perspective. There is no simple answer to this problem. All the various factors in relation to the future of our railways system must be properly considered and analysed. Superficial solutions, however apparently attractive, are not the answer. We are determined to get the right solution, and to put our proposals to Parliament and the public to solve a problem which has not been solved by any Government since the war.

I give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that no firm decisions are yet taken. We shall come to Parliament and the public when we have finished our consideration and reached conclusions. We cannot be rushed in this matter. I regard this whole episode as extremely unfortunate, certainly not in the interests of the railways, and not in the interests of all those who, like myself, and, I am sure, the hon. Gentleman, wish to reach the right solution.

The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock on Wednesday evening and the debate having continued for half an hour, Mr. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.

Adjourned at one minute past Three o'clock a.m.