Hi
Can I offer a defence of the doctrine – I know its not seemingly as big an issue as that of the liberty of individuals accused of terrorist activity – but the doctrine has good grounds.

Watergate

Who can authorise the tapping of a politicians? – what if the politician is an opponent? – how can tapped information be used by opponents? – and so on.

Tapping politicians is just too dangerous for democracy to survive it unscathed.

You’re correct is saying that there are sound democratic reasons for treating MPs communications as being privileged in law, but at the same time one has to ask whether, in its absence, MPs would be quite so keen on passing laws which allow surveillance of citizen’s to be conducted without judicial oversight.

I’m not saying that we should dispense with the Wilson Doctrine, what I am saying is what we should be concerned will, first and foremost, is addressing the lack of judicial oversight in the system – after that we can, then, get around to the question of whether specific groups (MPs, Lawyers, Doctors) should be privileged, in what circumstances and to what extent.

Unity

I think the exception with MPs is somewhat different to the exception of lawyers and doctors.

GPs and Lawyers would make the case for an exception on the grounds of the need for confidentiality to do their jobs. MPs would make the case for their exception on the grounds of keeping dictatorship from our doors.

however – I agree that surveillance of suspects in any case should be subject to judicial oversight.

I don’t know what permission the police need at present. For all I know they already need a court order to wiretap Mr Ahmed, and already had one. If not then that needs changing.

But what should be made clear is that when that permission is granted (by whoever grants it) there should be clear exceptions to all permission – so if Mr Ahmed talks to an MP, his lawyer, or a doctor, the recording must stop.

“2. It was authorised by the Home Secretary (Khan is her whip!)”

Not at the time, when the Home Secretary wasn’t a she, it was either Clarke or Reid depending on timing. The PM, therefore, would have been one T. Blair.

According to Private Eye’s Christmas edition there’s another bunch of bugging in a related case, the arrest of the journalist Sally Murrer. She was allegedly heavily bugged by the police who were investigating the Ahmad/Khan-bugger Mark Kearney for supplying her with stories. Working out how all this fits together is unfortunately difficult owing to the Daily Mail being the only newspaper doing any proper investigation, and you can’t trust them, really, but the enormous reaction to Murrer/Kearney’s alleged misdeeds contrasts rather strongly with other times when the Old Bill has put stuff in the papers, like the Koyair brothers or the Stockwell shooting. Can we say ‘scapegoat’?

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Noel

Why? He might do quite a good job and ban the bugging of politicians across the continent.

Let’s not forget that the Wilson Doctrine was implemented because Harold Wilson wanted to prevent himself from being the subject of any tapping investigation. Nixon was a different matter, as he tapped himself in an attempt to provide self-vindication to history.

There were several suggestions at the time that the Labour party and govt had been infiltrated by soviet sympathisers/double agents (identified suspects included Charles Clarke, as I recall, later to be installed, in a twist of irony, as Home Secretary – you’d think he would remember).
The case was made by the security services that they were justified in avoiding any exemptions in order to prevent a militant revolution (even from within government), whereas the office of the PM was justified in introducing the exemption in order to prevent a military coup (particularly from within military intelligence).

Stories abounded at the time regarding the possibility of either, depending on which wing of the press you read, but it was the nature of the power stuggles during the Cold War that everyone was second-guessing each other.

The irony of this matter today is that bugging is a direct consequence of the return to that Cold War mentality under this Labour regime, being the way Blair/Brown have bypassed and undermined solid procedures in their respective overbearing legislative programmes, which, in turn, opened the possibility that the application of legal powers could be undertaken inconsistently.

Thomas

I was with you up to your last paragraph – up to then you set out exactly the sorts of reasons why the doctrine should stand.

After that you make statements about the government as though the Troubles, the Cold War, and so on did not foster the same mentality in all governments, and that the same is not true of all governments everywhere.

#9 Huh?

On the one hand it’s good, but on the other it’s only natural to expect those with positions to influence application of this doctrine (or any other for that matter) to do so in a way that secures their interests or the interests of the office which they are working from… are you trying to defend the indefensible?

Too many laws and new powers have been put in place that we now have a situation of of legislative and operative conflict – this government has brought chaos where once there was order, and it did so because it panicked in the face of the threat of violence when it should have been steadfast in its resolution against it.