Public distrust of elites makes legitimate access to “official data” ever __more vital (Whistleblowers ‘face full-frontal legal onslaught’, 13 February).
The Law Commission’s report states that “criminalisation is limited to the unauthorised disclosure of those categories of information that have implications for the national interest” (page 1). But scope for flexibility in defining the term’s meaning is illustrated in a later comment, “mindful of the need to ensure that the legislation only encompasses information the disclosure of which could damage the national interest, we invite consultees’ views on whether information that relates to the economy ought to be brought within the scope of the legislation” (page 92).
The report later rejects a “public interest defence” for disclosure, claiming “it is difficult to distinguish the public interest from similar concepts, such as the national interest”. The meaning of “public interest” is described as “elusive”, creating an “impossible task” for juries (page 172). Apparently such bafflement would not apply to the term “national interest”.
Moreover, the report claims: “The lack of clarity surrounding the concept of public interest would open the floodgates: virtually anyone who wishes to raise the defence in relation to a charge of unauthorised disclosure could do so … If public interest was a defence to unauthorised disclosure, it seems that no information could necessarily ever be guaranteed to be safe” (page 174).
A beguiling premise that the interests of state, government and citizens are always synonymous is followed by an absurd but dangerous conclusion.
Mike Sheaff
Plymouth
• Your article – which in my early edition of the paper was headlined “Whistleblowers ‘face full-frontal attack by No 10’” and included a reference to “the government” in the first paragraph that was changed to “the government’s legal advisers” in later editions – does not make clear the relationship between the Law Commission and the government. The government, broadly, controls the Law Commission’s agenda. But the commission is wholly independent in how it conducts a law reform project once it starts. The identification of the commission with the government risks being self-fulfilling. If the government gets this sort of stick when the Law Commission independently proposes something, the government will have a motive to lean on the commission in an attempt to undermine its (currently genuine) independence. The fuss about how to characterise pre-consultation discussions is, furthermore, ludicrous when the published paper is now the subject of an open public consultation.
Richard Percival
Senior research fellow, Cardiff Law School
• “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”, as George Orwell put it in his original preface to Animal Farm, itself a warning against wasteful totalitarianism.
It is very easy to believe what one would like to be true, as pointed out by Julius Caesar. Luckily for governments defending our liberty today, they can have the press, whistleblowers and others to help them question such all too easy assumptions.
Adrian Betham
London
• Those who oppose government threats to whistleblowers could turn for ammunition to Richard Norton-Taylor’s letter reflecting on Tam Dalyell, on your obituaries page (13 February).
Tam said Mrs Thatcher lied about the Westland affair, and he was suspended from the Commons for doing so. Last year, Charles Moore’s Thatcher biography confirmed that Tam’s accusation was correct. We need our whistleblowers, both inside and outside parliament.
Alison Leonard
Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire
• The public and civil servants are being fed yet another lie. The proposed lengthened prison terms are targeted at whistleblowers, not espionage. The real threat is from internal corruption and mistakes, which will be __more easily concealed by these measures. The British state has a severe problem with ownership of mistakes and errors – this is a serious security risk. Who needs a Russian threat?
John Fynaut
London
• Given that the government’s legal advisers have proposed draconian punishments that would prevent officials coming forward in the public interest, it is now clear that our Brexit one-party state seeks to gag all opposition to taking us out of the single market, although this was never on the referendum ballot paper. Surely this means the Lords must fulfill their constitutional role by rejecting the bill to trigger article 50 and sending it back to the Commons for further debate in which all MPs should be free to vote in what they believe is the national interest.
Margaret Phelps
Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan
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