The Metropolitan Police has said it supports press freedom while warning the media there was no public interest defence for publishing leaked diplomatic documents.
Neil Basu, the Met’s assistant commissioner, made his latest comments after he was criticised for warning that journalists could face prosecution for publishing official secrets on Friday when he announced the launch of a criminal investigation into the leaking of diplomatic cables that forced the resignation of Kim Darroch, the UK ambassador to the US.
“The Metropolitan Police respect the rights of the media and has no intention of seeking to prevent editors from publishing stories in the public interest in a liberal democracy,” Mr Basu said on Saturday.
The law has generally treated only the procuring of secrets by state officials and others with a duty to keep them confidential as a breach of the Official Secrets Act. Journalists who publish the material have generally not been affected.
On Friday Mr Basu said publication of leaked documents could also be a crime.
On Saturday he said the police respected the rights of the media and had no intention of seeking to prevent editors from publishing stories that were in the public interest.
“The media hold an important role in scrutinising the actions of the state,” he said.
However he said the force had “received legal advice that had caused us to start a criminal enquiry into the leak of the documents as a potential breach of the Official Secrets Act.”
“The focus of the investigation is clearly on identifying who was responsible for the leak,” Mr Basu said. “However, we have also been told the publication of these specific documents, now knowing they may be a breach of the OSA, could also constitute a criminal offence and one that carries no public interest defence.”
The Mail on Sunday on July 7 published excerpts from diplomatic cables written by Sir Kim criticising the Trump administration as “inept” and “dysfunctional”. Sir Kim resigned as ambassador on Wednesday after Boris Johnson, frontrunner to be the next prime minister, repeatedly refused to back him in a TV debate on Tuesday.
There has been speculation that the leaker might have obtained further documents and that more embarrassing and damaging revelations might follow.
Mr Basu said the force knew that the original documents and “potentially others” remained in circulation.
“We have a duty to prevent as well as detect crime and the previous statement was intended to alert to the risk of breaching the OSA,” he said.
Both Mr Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, the other contender for the leadership of the Conservative party, on Saturday criticised the implied threat to journalists. Mr Johnson said any prosecution would have a “chilling effect” on public debate.
“It cannot conceivably be right that newspapers or any other media organisation publishing such material face prosecution,” he said at a Conservative party hustings event.
