The Home Office has just concluded a consultation on proposed reforms to the Official Secrets Act and is now considering how to proceed. The exercise is ostensibly intended to lead to an overhaul of legislation last updated in 1989 to account for changes brought about by the digital age.
Disturbingly, Whitehall is using this measure in a renewed attempt to muzzle the press by removing the defence that allows confidential or even secret information to be divulged in the public interest.
Governments would always like to prevent stories that they find embarrassing seeing the light of day. Doubtless, the current administration would have preferred to have suppressed CCTV shots of Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, in a clinch with a departmental aide in breach of the coronavirus restrictions. But it was important to expose the hypocrisy of one of the very people making the law.
The expenses scandal exposed by this newspaper relied upon the release of confidential information that might have been subject to the proposed new law, risking prosecution and jail for journalists as well as whistleblowers.
In a statement justifying its approach, the Home Office said including a public interest defence would “undermine our efforts to prevent damaging unauthorised disclosures, which would not be in the public interest”. This circular argument assumes it is for the Government to decide what is in the public interest despite all the evidence over the years that it is officialdom that tries to cover up information that people have a right to know.
The proposed measures essentially put journalists on a par with spies, whereas no responsible newspaper would jeopardise national security. Too many ministers are unable to see the distinction between what is in their own personal or party interest, and what the public should be told, to allow such a law onto the Statute Book.
The Home Office has just concluded a consultation on proposed reforms to the Official Secrets Act and is now considering how to proceed. The exercise is ostensibly intended to lead to an overhaul of legislation last updated in 1989 to account for changes brought about by the digital age.
Disturbingly, Whitehall is using this measure in a renewed attempt to muzzle the press by removing the defence that allows confidential or even secret information to be divulged in the public interest.
Governments would always like to prevent stories that they find embarrassing seeing the light of day. Doubtless, the current administration would have preferred to have suppressed CCTV shots of Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, in a clinch with a departmental aide in breach of the coronavirus restrictions. But it was important to expose the hypocrisy of one of the very people making the law.
The expenses scandal exposed by this newspaper relied upon the release of confidential information that might have been subject to the proposed new law, risking prosecution and jail for journalists as well as whistleblowers.
In a statement justifying its approach, the Home Office said including a public interest defence would “undermine our efforts to prevent damaging unauthorised disclosures, which would not be in the public interest”. This circular argument assumes it is for the Government to decide what is in the public interest despite all the evidence over the years that it is officialdom that tries to cover up information that people have a right to know.
The proposed measures essentially put journalists on a par with spies, whereas no responsible newspaper would jeopardise national security. Too many ministers are unable to see the distinction between what is in their own personal or party interest, and what the public should be told, to allow such a law onto the Statute Book.