…on receipt of leaked confidential information, the MP sends it to the “proper authorities”. If he then uses the information so gained to “guide” questioning in the House – whether written or oral – and thereby puts that information into the public domain, then he is pretty much watertight, protected by Parliamentary privilege.
The place for opposition to hold the government to account is the House of Commons, not the pages of the press. If the media then publish the proceedings of the House, that is a matter for them and, generally, to be welcomed – that is democracy at work. MPs leaking confidential government information, passed to them illegally by civil servants, is not. In that context, it is not so much what you do, but how you do it.
…in the spirit of fairness that a leak is a leak is a leak whether it’s in the government’s favour or not. Does anybody think that, if the substance of the information leaked to Green had been ‘everything’s rosey at the Home Office’, he’d have had nine policemen standing around him yesterday?
We’re finally there – once the Government start arresting political opponents, that’s the death of Freedom as we’ve known it for centuries.
http://tinyurl.com/6z2eeh
Cheers
D