TELEP HONE-TAPPING SIR,—Since you have hinted at a possible lack of
'candour on my part, because in my letter about tapping' of telephones I made no reference to the Part played by the General Medical Council in the recent case, self-explanation?
may I say a word in self-defence, or I think you would not have made the charge if you
had understood my letter, which was concerned with one point only, viz., that in a leading article on the case you had (either deliberately or through a re- grettable oversight) suppressed all mention of the following facts, viz„ that the message was received by the. police (1) at the receiver's end, (2) on the re- ceiver s instrument, and (3) with the receiver's full consent. You must have led readers who trusted you for knowledge of the facts to suppose that the case was on all fours with the Marrinan case, where none of these factors was present.
This concealment (or non-disclosure) on your part 1 thought regrettable, and my letter was explicitly confined to that point. The fact that the contents of the message in question were passed on to the GMC Was a totally different point. I hold views on that Point also, and should be delighted to take you up on it, if opportunity were provided. But surely you
must see that it was not fair to charge me with 'lack 0. f candour' because I confined my criticism of you to one aspect of the case? I write in the hope of making this clear to
— your readers, if not to yourself.
JOHN SPARROW
u PS..—May I add a warning to your readers against nw`trilY accepting your confident and unsupported aassertion that the Birkett Committee's `rulings' cover case where the three factors mentioned above are Present? I have re-read their Report carefully, and in 11:1Y °Pinion this is not so. I should be glad to give any ys grounds for this opinion, but for reasons of space t for
myself with this brief warning.
if iltite point of interception on the line is immaterial; withouatstahnywhere between the two parties, and done ul eh e knowledge of one, it is still tapping. What lb°1dulY asserted that the Birkett Committee had dis- more important, Mr. Spa r-ow's original letter
tinguished between different kinds of tapping; we pointed out that this was untrue, and Mr. Sparrow now changes his ground (without saying so) to the very different statement contained in his PS.
The Birkett Committee did not rule on the Marri- nan case; it was set up after the outcry following that affair, but ruled on 'the interception of communica- tions.' :There was no need for the Fox case to be on all foas with the Marrinan case for our claim to be true that in the Fox case all three rules laid down by the Birkett Committee for telephone-tapping were flagrantly violated, which they were. The tapping was not authorised by the Secretary of State's warrant, it was not in a case of serious crime, and it was com- municated to a domestic tribunal.—Editor, Spectator.I
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