“Unlike France, where secret service has always remained a less than respectable activity, consigned to the fringes of government, in post-war Britain it was at the very centre.” Paul Todd and Jonathan Bloch in their detailed analysis of global intelligence conclude that “Britain remains the most secretive state in the Western hemisphere.” (...) Significantly, from the 1980s onwards, a raft of legislation has both reinforced the secret state’s growing powers and protected it from probing media.
The 1989 Security Services Act (actually drafted by MI5 lawyers) placed the service on a statutory basis for the first time and provided it with legal powers to tap phones, bug and burgle houses and intercept mail.
The UK Press Gazette commented (6 September 1993): “The greatest invasion of privacy is carried out every day by the security services, with no control, no democratic authorisation and the most horrifying consequences for people’s employment and lives. By comparison with them the press is a poodle.”
The 1989 Official Secrets Act (OSA) replaced the 1911 OSA, which had proved notoriously cumbersome, particularly after civil servant Sarah Tisdall was jailed in 1983 for leaking to the Guardian government plans for the timing of the arrival of cruise missiles in England.
Then followed the acquittal of top civil servant Clive Ponting charged under Section 2 (1) of the OSA after he leaked information showing the government had misled the House of Commons over the sinking of the Argentinean ship, the Belgrano, during the Falklands conflict of 1982.
The 1989 Act covered five main areas: law enforcement, information supplied in confidence by foreign governments, international relations, defence,and security and intelligence.
The publishing of Ponting-style leaks on any of these subjects was banned. Journalists were also denied a public interest defence.
Nor could they claim in defence that no harm had resulted to national security through their disclosures.
The Intelligence Services Act of 1993 created the Intelligence and Security Committee which meets in secret to overview services’ activities, reporting to the prime minister and not parliament. Following the 1996 Security Service Act, MI5’s functions were extended to “act in support of the prevention and detection of crime.”
The incoming Labour government then moved to extend the powers allowing the intelligence services and other government agencies to conduct covert surveillance.
