Apprehension about secrets paper

Press, 29 August 1977, Page 7

Apprehension about secrets paper

NZPA staff correspondent London.

British members of Parliament might return from their long summer recess next month to be confronted with the prospect of a White Pajjer on official secrets instead of the long-promised new legislation.

Reformation of Britain's much-criticised Official Secrets Act — which NewZealand’s closely follows — is one of the conditions attached to the minority Liberal Party’s propping up of the Labour Government.

The Home Secretary (Mr Merly n Rees) said last November that the Government intended to introduce an official information bill to replace the act, but none has yet appeared. and according to "The Times” the Government may opt for a White Paper first. Ministers are said to be apprehensive about the bill’s reception in Parliment and not too con-

fident that it would get majority support. “The Times" said a White Paper on official secrets and a House of Commons debate, on it would be a means of testing Parliamentary- opin-

It said that Ministers think it possible a Government bill introduced —

without a White Paper in advance — would emerge altered beyond recognition. and would include amendments obliging ministers to disclose more information than they wanted. The Cabinet Committee on Official Secrecy, chaired by Prime Minister (Mr Callaghan), is expected to meet late next month or early in October to decide whether a XXTiite Paper should be published. The main target of any reformation of the 66-year-old act is its second section, w-hich forbids unauthorised disclosure of Government information of any kind. Seven years ago a journalist, Jonathon

Aitken (now a conservative M.P.), was acquitted after being tried under that section. He had written about a previously-unpublished report on the Biafran War. and at the end of the trial the judge suggested that the act should be pensioned off.

But “The Times” said that the Cabinet committee had had great difficulty in drawing a line for a new “defence and international” confidential classification, beyond which unauthorised leaks would involve the sanction of criminal law. It also said that Ministers had been bedevilled by a wider philosophical uncertainty once they had moved past general principles.

“Official secrecy is likened to industrial democracy in Whitehall as an issue on which no Government can win, whatever it decides to do, in terms of public response and Parliamentary reception," the paper said.