House of Commons - Policing Process of Home Office Leaks Inquiry

Policing Process of Home Office Leaks Inquiry - Home Affairs Committee Contents

2 Home Office

6. Our starting point was the reasons why the police were requested to investigate the suspected disclosure of government information. We wished to discover the number of disclosures, the type of information that had been leaked—in particular, whether any of it was relevant to national security or was otherwise classified—and the efforts that had been made to discover the source of the leaks before the police were called in. We also wished to disentangle the roles of the Home Office and the Cabinet Office in the investigation process.

Reaction of the Home Office

7. We asked Sir David Normington, Permanent Secretary of the Home Office, to explain the background to the police investigation. He said that he and Ministers had become increasingly concerned by a succession of unauthorised disclosures to the press of sensitive government information held in the Home Office over a period of about two years. The frequency of such disclosures caused him to suspect that a Home Office official might be "deliberately and maliciously leaking material for political purposes".[5] He emphasised that even now he does not know for sure what has been leaked, only what has appeared in the press, but his department had identified "just over 20 leaks of documents, e-mails or information over 2007-8".[6] These leaks were damaging trust within and confidence in the Home Office, and particularly harming the relationship between Ministers and officials.[7] Moreover, there were concerns that "since it was clear that the leaker or leakers was close to the heart of the Home Office there was a potential risk to national security".[8]

8. The Cabinet Secretary set out the procedures for dealing with leaks by officials and other breaches of the Civil Service Code in a Memorandum to our sister committee, the Public Administration Committee.[9] Responsibility for pursuing investigations into leaks normally lies with the relevant Permanent Secretary, to whom the official investigators will report. However,

"Occasionally it may be appropriate to involve the police in an investigation. Departmental Permanent Secretaries are responsible for taking the decision to do so. Normally, before any decision is made to involve the police, Departments will discuss the matter with the Cabinet Office. By definition such cases will always involve a serious and damaging impact on the functioning of a Department and will involve suspicion of leaking sensitive information. Given this, it is not unusual for the Cabinet Office to take the lead in such investigations."[10]

9. The Department's inquiries into the individual leaks (and Sir David confirmed that almost all of them had been subject to an internal inquiry) had failed to identify the perpetrator(s). In the summer of 2008, the Home Office conducted a review to try to discover whether there was a pattern to the disclosures; this, too, failed to give a clear lead. Therefore, Sir David met the Cabinet Secretary to discuss bringing in "more expert help". We asked whether any particular disclosure had triggered the decision to seek help from outside the department but Sir David emphasised that no single document had caused this: it was the cumulative nature of the leaking, and the fear that something more damaging to the national interest might be disclosed.[11]

Cabinet Office

10. The leaks continued in September 2008. The Home Office continued to hold inquiries into them, in parallel with the discussions between Sir David and the Cabinet Office.[12] These discussions highlighted the fact that, in addition to the damage to confidence and a potential threat to national security from the 20 or so leaks about which the Home Office was concerned, the Cabinet Office was worried about other leaks "not of Home Office documents, but of a series of other material across Government, which did have a national security classification", copies of which had been held by the Home Office.[13] As a result of all these considerations, the Cabinet Office advised that the matter should be referred to the police.[14] Sir David agreed, and on 8 October 2008 the Director of Security and Intelligence at the Cabinet Office wrote to the Assistant Commissioner Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police, asking whether the police would consider agreeing to an investigation into a series of leaks "probably originating in the Home Office", which were causing considerable concern to the Cabinet Secretary.[15]

11. The letter to the police said:

"A number of recent leak investigations, including some conducted by your officers, have raised questions about the security of sensitive information in the Home Office. Whilst not all the leaks that concern us merit, taken individually, investigation by the police, we are concerned that there is an individual or individuals in the Home Office with access to sensitive material who is (are) prepared to leak that information. We are in no doubt that there has been considerable damage to national security already as a result of some of these leaks and we are concerned that the potential for future damage is significant [our italics]. The risk of leaking is having an impact on the efficient and effective conduct of Government business, affecting the ability of Ministers and senior officials to have full and frank discussions on sensitive matters and undermining necessary trust. You will not be surprised to hear that we are also concerned that there must be risk to information about sensitive operations which, if leaked, could give rise to grave damage."

As a result of this letter and a subsequent meeting with Cabinet Office officials to discuss the potential for a police inquiry, Assistant Commissioner Quick agreed that a senior officer from the Metropolitan Police Special Operations unit should conduct a scoping exercise to determine whether a criminal investigation was appropriate.[16]

12. We asked Sir David for clarification about the sensitivity of the information known to have been leaked from the Home Office. Sir David told us that "at least one" of the 20 or so leaks had raised issues of national security, though most had not.[17] On further inquiry, Sir David stated that, in his view, the one item relating to national security "falls in a different category from the rest. It was, for example, information known not just in the Home Office, but elsewhere in Government; and because it related to national security it was investigated in a different way from the other investigated leaks."[18] He added: "I hope it was also clear from my evidence that this particular leak was not the significant factor in seeking the Cabinet Office (and police's) help."[19]

13. We do not condone the unauthorised disclosure of departmental information; this is an abuse by officials of their positions of trust, and we support the use of disciplinary action in such instances. We also understand the corrosive effect that persistent leaking of information has on the efficient working of departments, not least as it sows mistrust between Ministers and officials. The Home Secretary made plain to us her anger at the leaks.[20] In this case the Home Office appears to have followed best practice for investigating leaks, as set out in the Cabinet Office's Memorandum to our sister Committee. Nevertheless, we are concerned that growing frustration in both the Home Office and the Cabinet Office may have led officials to give an exaggerated impression of the damage done by the leaks that could reasonably be presumed to have emanated from the Home Office.

14. There is a clear mismatch between Sir David's description of the sort of material that he suspected had been leaked from the Home Office and the Cabinet Office's letter to the police stating "there has been considerable damage to national security already as a result of some of these leaks". Sir David suggested that this phrase reflected the concerns not about the 20-plus items he had identified but about the other material that had been leaked from somewhere in Government.[21] However, the Cabinet Office letter did not refer to other departments: only to the Home Office.

15. We recognise that the Metropolitan Police might still have decided to pursue an investigation on the basis of the damage done to confidence between Ministers and officials and the fear that the leaker(s) might have access to more sensitive information that had not yet been disclosed. We also do not know whether the oral briefing given to the police was less hyperbolic than the letter. However, we think it was unhelpful to give the police the impression that the Home Office leaker(s) had already caused considerable damage to national security.

16. When Parliament revised the Official Secrets Act in 1989, it narrowed the scope of the section on unauthorised disclosure of government information, focusing on specific types of damaging information—relating to security and intelligence, defence, international relations and crime and special investigation powers.[22] Unauthorised disclosure of these types of information remained subject to criminal proceedings. This was in line with what the then Home Secretary told the House in December 1988 when introducing second reading of the bill, namely that it would "remove the protection of the criminal law from the great bulk of sensitive and important information", none of which would "any longer have the protection of the criminal law".[23]

17. The Cabinet Office's guidance to departments says that it is appropriate to involve the police in leak investigations when they involve "a serious and damaging impact on the functioning of a Department and … suspicion of leaking sensitive information". However, it is easy to imagine circumstances in which a leak of sensitive information could lead to a damaging impact on the functioning of a Department without falling within the categories laid down in statute. The Cabinet Office's guidance therefore seems to leave open the possibility of involving the police in an investigation without any suspicion—let alone evidence—that a criminal offence under the Act has taken place. We recommend that the Cabinet Office revise its guidance to preclude this possibility.

18. We note that the only person arrested for leaking information from the Home Office, Mr Galley, was in fact a junior official providing administrative support, who had security clearance up to the level of 'secret'.[24] At this stage of the police investigation, it is impossible to say exactly what information Mr Galley did disclose: he has, by a statement through his solicitor, admitted to disclosing some information. He may not have been responsible for all the 20-plus leaks identified by Sir David—and, indeed, Sir David suggested to us "it would be wrong to conclude … that all the leaks emanated from the Home Office—that is not proven."[25]This, together with the fact that there has been no indication so far that Mr Galley is linked to the "other" national security-related leaks that have caused such concern to the Cabinet Office over the last few years, leaves the possibility (to put it no higher) that there are other officials within government leaking more sensitive information. We are unable to judge whether the controversy over the investigation into Mr Galley and Mr Green makes it less likely that those who have disclosed information damaging to national security will ever be discovered.