§ Mr. Bill Walkerasked the Solicitor-General for Scotland why it was necessary to seek a warrant covering all six programmes in the British Broadcasting Corporation series, "The Secret Society"; and if he will make a statement.
§ The Solicitor-General for ScotlandThe petition and crave for the warrant are linked back to highly classified information in the possession of the BBC referred to in the article in theNew Statesman magazine of 23 January 1987. If the material sought had been readily and immediately available, the necessity for taking possession of material relating to all six programmes in the series, "The Secret Society", and for a sifting out operation which has had to be carried out since 1 February and which has already resulted in the return of material relating to five of the six programmes to the BBC, would have been avoided. However, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary explained in the debate on 3 February 1987, the material on which the programmes were based was so interwoven that it was not possible immediately to disentangle one kind of material from another. That accurately reflected the advice given by the BBC to the police and reported to the procurator fiscal.