Tory MP Damien Green will not face criminal charges for his alleged role in leaking confidential home office documents, the Crown Prosecutions Service has announced. Menawhile the home affairs parliamentary select committee has found that civil servants exaggerated the seriousness of the leaks, claiming they had caused ‘considerable damage to national security’.
Lib Dem shadow home secretary Chris Huhne has not minced his words:
This is a monumental shambles. It is astonishing that ministers were not consulted, if the Home Affairs Select Committee is right, as they should have realised the political consequences of being seen to harass an opposition MP for doing his job in holding the Government to account.
“Senior civil servants appear to have confused their own embarrassment with national security, and misled the police into believing that national security was involved. The Director of Public Prosecutions makes plain that it was not.
“This foolish complaint has wasted police time, tied up prosecutors unnecessarily and created a constitutional squall because of the searching of an MP’s office – and all for a matter that should have been handled as an internal civil service disciplinary case.”
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4 Comments
But the committee isn’t right, or at least Keith Vaz wasn’t right this morning to suggest ministers weren’t consulted. In fact, Jacqui Smith told his committee on January 30th that she was consulted and agreed with the referral to the police.
This claim that civil servants acted on their own is quite wrong.
Nick Clegg is an embarrassment to an already ridiculous party
Ouch, looks like you’ve got a really duff source if that’s what they are telling you Tory Bear. Mind you, had you looked at Stephen’s post and the balance of the comments on that, you might have suspected that your source was playing you for a patsy
This Home Secretary now with these `monumental scandals’ follow the episodes of the `Carnival of Errors’ Charles Clarke, with the release of 1000 foreign prisoners, some of which were convicted child molesters : but no one had bothered to check.
Then there was John Reid whom decried the Home Office as too big and `Unfit for Purpose’.
Now we have Jacqui Smith, whom has tried to squeeze liberty into a pint jar, with her 42 days for unconvicted innocent citizens.
Jacqui Smith`s ID Card personal code of individual freedom pledges have been roundly denounced, as a parody of a Orwellian `Big Brother’ world and not as a modern version of democracy understood in `Individual Liberty’ by J.S Mill.