MI5 will get new powers to bug MPs - Furious cabinet revolt [View All]

[dutchdemocrat]

MI5 will get new powers to bug MPs

Furious cabinet revolt as Blair gives green light for security services to spy on elected representatives By Francis Elliott, Whitehall Editor Published: 15 January 2006

Tony Blair is preparing to scrap a 40-year ban on tapping MPs' telephones, despite fierce Cabinet opposition, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

He is expected to formally announce to the Commons within weeks that MPs can no longer be sure that the security services and others will not intercept their communications.

Until now, successive administrations have pledged that there should be no tapping "whatsoever" of MPs' phones, and that they would be told if it was necessary to breach the ban. But that convention - known as the Wilson Doctrine, after Harold Wilson, the prime minister who introduced it - is to be abandoned in an expansion of MI5 powers following the London bombings.

MPs should be treated in the same way as other citizens and will be given the same safeguards against wrongful tapping, the Prime Minister will say. The decision provoked a furious row in the Cabinet just before Christmas, when the Secretary of State for Defence, John Reid, voiced his opposition.

His outburst surprised other ministers, since he is seen as one of Mr Blair's closest allies and not known for his support for civil liberties. "Reid demanded to know why on earth we were going down this route," said one government colleague. "It was all the more surprising since you would have thought the MoD is one of the departments most in favour of increased surveillance powers."

SNIP

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article338691.ece



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