Off target

However, as was noted today by both Dean Godson in the Times and the Telegraph leader, the outrage is more than a little synthetic. The suggestions that have been made that Sadiq Khan was singled out by the Metropolitan Police because a) he is a Muslim and b) as a former legal adviser to the Muslim Council of Britain has been a thorn in the side of the Met through taking a series of controversial malpractice cases against them, are demonstrably absurd for this reason: it was not Sadiq Khan who was being bugged, but Babar Ahmad. The police had been listening in to a number of his conversations with visitors at the prison, and he was seated at a table that had been specially adapted for this apparently routine purpose. Indeed, the Sunday Times tells us that

at least six of the tables have had their panels hollowed out to hide bugging equipment. They are known as ‘talking tables’. Inside each panel is a microphone, a battery, an antenna and a transmitter. Such is the secrecy surrounding these tables that even the prison officers are said to be unaware of them. They are operated and maintained by specialist detectives permanently based at the prison.

In other words, it was Ahmad’s conversation with Khan that was bugged. Khan was not specifically targeted; while it is true that the police decided not to suspend the bugging even though they knew an MP was visiting Ahmad, it is more accurate to say that Khan fell into the net that they had thrown around Ahmad. While MPs must in general be free to speak to their constituents, this surely should not mean that MPs should be given special rights which might impede a criminal investigation. This point was made by both the former Interception of Communications Commissioner, Sir Swinton Thomas, who said in his report of 2005/6 that

the interception of communications is the primary source of intelligence in relation to serious crime and terrorism

in a way that was unforseen at the time of the Wilson Doctrine which thus placed MPs ‘above the law’, and by his successor Sir Paul Kennedy, who as the Guardian reports called last year for the doctrine to be scrapped, saying:

It is fundamental to the constitution of this country that no-one is above the law or is seen to be above the law. But in this instance MPs and peers are anything but equal with the rest of the citizens of this country and are above the law.

The Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, who has led the running on this affair after disclosing that he had alerted the Prime Minister to this occurrence last November but had received no reply (No 10 denies ever receiving it), says he in turn had been told about it by a ‘source’. Davis has just told me that he does not argue that MPs should never be bugged; he can conceive of situations where they should be if the police have reason to think they are either ‘conduits or implicated’ in a crime. (There is no suggestion of illegality by Sadiq Khan). But in that case, he says, Parliament should be told that the Wilson Doctrine has been suspended, as it itself said would happen in circumstances where this was justified.

Hmmn. Davis is no pushover, for sure; and yet I can’t help thinking that this is a howling gale that has been whipped up inside a teacup. I suspect agendas are at work here which we cannot yet identify. This is by no means the first time the Met has been leaked against by exceedingly well-informed sources. The government is to make a statement about the affair this afternoon. I await developments with interest.