THE powerful boss of Parliament’s media committee has demanded the Met formally withdraws the chilling threat to prosecute journalists for reporting the contest of secret memos.
Speaking to The Sun, Damian Collins also called for Scotland Yard to issue a fresh statement to reassure newspapers that they are free to report leaked documents.
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And the chairman of the influential Commons Foreign Affairs committee Tom Tugendhat declared: “Police threats to media freedom have no place in the UK.”
It follows the furious backlash against the Met’s Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, who warned editors may face court if they failed to hand over official papers.
His extraordinary warning to the media came as he launched the Met’s hunt for the mole who leaked comments by Britain’s US ambassador Sir Kim Darroch about Donald Trump – and drafted in GCHQ spies to help find the leaker.
Calling for the Met to retract the statement Mr Collins, a Tory MP, told The Sun: “The Metropolitan Police should withdraw the statement and make it clear that there is no legal risk for newspapers freely reporting on the leaked documents.
It was clearly a threat aimed at newspaper editors
“Neil Basu’s statement was clearly a threat aimed at newspaper editors encouraging them not to report on a story, in which there is clear public interest.
“This was wrong. If an offence has been committed it is by the leaker and the police investigation should focus on that.”
Mr Tugenhadt’s committee has already launched an inquiry into the leaked documents.
He said he regretted Mr Basu’s comments because technically journalists can be prosecuted for publishing state secrets and they risk justifying attempts to crack down on media freedom.
Mr Tugendhat, also a senior Tory MP, told The Sun: “I wish he hadn’t said it but it’s not up to him to change the law. The Official
Secrets Act doesn’t give a media exemption so its not in his power to offer one. He shouldn’t have said it because it’s a power no CPS lawyer would accept but he can’t say the media are free to report leaks because they aren’t – not in all circumstances.”
Police threats to media have no place in UK
Even Labour joined the condemnation of Mr Basu’s chilling threat to media freedom.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry said the leaks of the withering verdicts of Mr Trump by Sir Kim were “newsworthy” and said “any journalist” who came by them should be free to publish.
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt signalled Britain’s next ambassador to the US should be a career diplomat from within the ranks of the Foreign Office.
Following Sir Kim’s departure there had been speculation Boris Johnson would seek to appoint a political figure who could get close to the Trump administration if he succeeds in becoming prime minister.
However Mr Hunt, his rival for the Tory crown, said there were some “outstanding candidates” from within the Diplomatic Service for the plum Washington posting.
By Mike Sullivan
SATELLITE technology is being used by Big Brother police to hunt the Ambassadorgate mole.
Phones belonging to journalists are being analysed to nail the source who leaked bombshell memos from Britain’s US envoy.
Scotland Yard counter-terror police are checking calls made by journalists who exposed Sir Kim Darroch’s messages criticising President Donald Trump.
Information supplied by phone companies includes a breakdown of reporters’ movements.
By tracing phone locations, police hope to find evidence placing journalists and sources together.
Media lawyer Mark Stephens, of law firm Howard Kennedy, said the tactics could have a “chilling effect” on press freedoms.
Retired Met chief inspector Mick Neville said: “We expect the media to be controlled and reporters to be arrested in dreadful regimes like North Korea and China. We do not want that here.”
“I think that one of the best things about our diplomatic service are the skills acquired over very many years by career diplomats and Sir Kim Darroch exemplified that,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Broadcasting House.
“We have some outstanding candidates who do have that experience, and we we’ll obviously look at them.”
Sir Kim resigned last week saying his position had become “impossible” following the leak of diplomatic cables in which he described Donald Trump’s White House as “inept” and “dysfunctional”.
Cop happy to act like official of a police state
By Mick Hume, Editor-at-Large of Spiked
AS Britain’s top counter-terrorism cop, Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu is said to have “the toughest job in UK policing”.
Yet somehow Asst Comm Basu has found time to take on an extra job — as the self-appointed editor of our national news, deciding what facts are fit for us to hear.
On Friday, he threatened to prosecute news media for publishing leaked cables written by then- ambassador Sir Kim Darroch. They revealed how Sir Kim called US president Donald Trump “inept”, “insecure” and “incompetent”.
If anybody looked inept and insecure on this side of the Atlantic, it was Asst Comm Basu of the Met, acting like the ban-happy functionary of a minor police state.
After protests over the weekend, Asst Comm Basu doubled down on his threat to the Press. Anybody publishing those leaked documents, he now said, would be committing a criminal offence “and one that carries no public interest defence”.
He added: “We have a duty to prevent as well as detect crime.”
So there it is. In Britain in 2019, our top cops consider it a potential crime for the media to report the truth about what those in power say and do. And they see it as their job to “prevent crime” by stopping the truth being published.
Yet his attack on press freedom isn’t out of the blue. In March he issued an “open letter” to the media instructing how not to report on terrorism — basically warning against “radicalising” Islamophobes by airing “far-right messages”.
And Basu is far from alone. Press freedom is also seriously out of fashion in liberal and left-wing circles. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn joined the weekend chorus of disapproval. Yet a police chief such as Basu is really on the same side as the Corbynista left. Labour dislikes the free press more than Trump and has plans for new laws and a Leveson II inquiry.
Maybe the idiotic Basu has done us a favour by reminding us potential threats to press freedom and editorial independence do not exist only in Turkey or Saudi Arabia. We do not need top cops trying to edit the news. They would surely be better employed catching the leaker than shooting the messenger.
Irony alert: in the week when Basu was waving his censor’s taser at the UK media, the British government hosted the first Global Conference for Media Freedom.
Foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt boasted his celebrity “special envoy”, Amal Clooney, has “convened a panel of experts to advise countries on how to strengthen the legal protection of journalists”.
Perhaps Ms Clooney could start by leading a designer-heeled demo to New Scotland Yard?
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