M.P's AND OFFICIAL 'SECRETS
IN introducing, little more than a month ago, a Bill to amend the Official Secrets Act of 192o Mr. Dingle Foot, in words to which events have lent an unlooked- for pertinence, observed (to a chorus of interjections indicative of mingled incredulity and derision) that " if 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 next day be approached by a police superintendent holding a copy of Hansard, and be required to disclose the source of his information. If he refused he would be liable to two years' imprison- ment. No plea of Parliamentary privilege would avail him in any way, because the offence would consist not in any words spoken in the House, but simply in the refusal to give the source of the information."
That was in the fourth week of May. In the fourth week of June a remarkable story is told to the House of Commons by a Conservative M.P., Mr. Duncan Sandys, who alleges that he has been threatened with precisely this penalty for precisely this offence—refusal to disclose the source of certain information in his possession. The story demands to be summarised in some detail, for it raises at least two questions of capital importance, the right of Members of Parliament to possess information which a Government Department desires to keep from them, and the propriety of invoking the Official Secrets Act, which was enacted originally to deal with cases of deliberate spying, against persons whose complete loyalty is beyond suspicion. It is comparatively simple. Mr. Sandys, it appears, came by some means into possession of figures which led him to think that the provision of anti-aircraft guns so far was inadequate and unsatisfactory. He had already discussed the position as he saw it with the Secretary of State for War, and when Mr. Hore-Belisha suggested that he was misinformed he incorporated in a draft Parliamentary question certain definite figures and sent the draft question to the Secre- tary of State, with the purpose, as he states, of calling that Minister's personal attention to the figures and giving him the opportunity of asking, if he thought fit, that the question should not be put—obviously an entirely proper procedure.
But propriety of procedure, if Mr. Sandys' story is to be credited, ended here. We become conscious hence- forward of a Napoleonic touch. Mr. Hore-Belisha, after acknowledging Mr. Sandys' communication through his secretary, " sends for " (the phrase is Sir Donald Somer- vell's own) the Attorney-General. Sir Donald attends, and is told that Mr. Sandys is in possession of information which he could not have obtained except from an unauthorised source, and asked " to put the legal position before " Mr. Sandys and invite him to say where his facts came from. In the course of his inter- view with Sir Donald Mr. Sandys naturally inquired further regarding this legal position, and was told that he might be liable to two years' imprisonment. The Attorney-General conceded (according to Mr. Sandys) that " there was at present no intention to use these powers " against the honourable member. Mr. Sandys demurred to the qualifibation " at present," and the Attorney-General agreed to drop it. Mr. Sandys further pointed out that an " intention " was not immutable, in reply to which the Attorney-General (still according to Mr. Sandys) said he could not go further " without the consent of the Secretary for War.". Thereupon Mr. Sandys decided to put the whole matter in Mr. Speaker's hands, and it was no doubt with the Speaker's full approval that he unfolded his story after questions on Monday.
A remarkable enough story it is on the face of it and a story whose end is not yet. The appointment of a Select Committee has been moved ; the motion will be debated and the case of one actor in the 'singular performance, Mr. Hore-Belisha, has yet to be heard ; his version may not coincide in all particulars with either Mr. Sandys' or the Attorney-General's. But the facts so far disclosed provoke profound misgiving. Members of Parliament are well able to look after their own privi- leges, and the bare suggestion that anti-spy legislation may be invoked against an M.P. who claims to know what the state of a part of our armament is, will arouse a resentment unaffected by any party distinctions. Of that good may come. When the Official Secrets Act of 192o was first passed it was explicitly stated by the then Attorney-General, Sir Gordon Hewart, that it was concerned solely with espionage—" we are dealing with spying or attempts at spying "—and so it was univer- sally interpreted till April of this year, when a Divisional Court laid it down that a Stockport journalist was rightly convicted under this very Act for refusing to disclose the source of information alleged to have been derived froth a private police circular. The alarm occasioned by the discovery that the Official Secrets Act could be given this wide and utterly unexpected scope was such as to lead the Home Secretary to give assurances that the powers conferred under the Act would be invoked only where the information said to have been disclosed was " of serious public importance."
Whether the information Mr. Sandys possesses comes into that category remains to be discovered. Very probably it does ; Members of Parliament have need to concern themselves with questions of serious public importance. But it is clear equally that it was information which, in Mr. Sandys' view, reflected un- favourably on the War Office, and on which he proposed to base criticism of the War Office—either publicly or privately as the Secretary for War might decide.; and it is no less clear that it was on the short view convenient, though on a long view extremely foolish, to remind a member guilty of such temerity that he could be im- prisoned for two years for refusing to disclose the source of his information. If Mr. Dingle Foot's Bill restricting the Official Secrets Act to what was avowedly its original function needed any justification, Mr. Hore-Belisha and the Attorney-General have justified it up to the hilt. But even the passage of the Bill will not dispel the sus; picion that to certain members of this Government arbitrary and authoritarian methods in favour elsewhere are secretly--or undisguisedly—congenial. If that sus- picion gains ground it will be more swiftly and certainly fatal to the Government than the bombing of a thousand British ships.
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