Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Prescott: Spooks tapped Paisley
SPOOKS tapped the phone of the late former First Minister Rev Ian Paisley – despite orders notto spy on MPs.
Former Deputy PM John Prescott lifts the lidon the extraordinary breach in his Sunday Mirror column today.
He reveals how Tony Blair told him in 2005 that security services had eavesdropped on an MP.
He pressed the then PM for a name and learned it was the DUP leader and MP for North Antrim, who died in 2014.
Lord Prescott writes: “Downing Street had been told by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who wanted to name Paisley. Parliament was not informed and Paisley went onto become First Minister of Northern Ireland .”
Lord Prescott has decided to break his silence over fears that electronic snooping to catch terrorists will lead toan erosion of privacy.
Tapping an MP’s phone was a breach of the Wilson Doctrine, laid down by Labour PM Harold Wilson in 1966.
He ordered that no eaves dropping on MPs should take place and if that position changed, Parliament must be informed.
Theresa May said in October 2015, when she was still Home Secretary, that the Wilson Doctrine still applied. Lord Prescott does not know when Pailsey’s phone was tapped or whether MI5, MI6, police or the Army were responsible.He approached then Commons Speaker Michael Martin to discuss how the Wilson Doctrine was applied but did not mention it was prompted by wha the had learned about Paisley.
Lord Prescott was concerned thata constituent’s private matters would be over heard if spies were listening to MPs’ calls.
Paisley was an MP for 40 years from 1970 until 2010 when his son, Ian Paisley Jr, took over his seat. He led the DUP from 1971 to 2008 and was First Minister in 2007-8.
Four people lost their lives and dozens were injured at the hands of a home-grown terrorist. But after an atrocity we often see two other possible casualties – freedom and privacy.
Khalid Masood used the encrypted message system WhatsApp on his phone before the attack.
Home Secretary Amber Rudd then demanded WhatsApp end its encryption, a crazy move that would allow criminals and foreign governments to hack the messages.
The security services didn’t join her call. Probably because they know how to do it anyway.
Over in the US, it was claimed our spies were involved in tapping Trump’s team in the run-up to the election. GCHQ’s chief described the claim as “ridiculous”.
But tapping politicians isn’t new. When I was a striking seaman, I was tapped by the intelligence agencies. People suspected they were also tapping MPs’ phones. So PM Harold Wilson introduced the Wilson Doctrine in 1966.
It ruled that MPs’ communications must not be intercepted by the police and security services. If an MP was tapped, the PM would have to tell Parliament. But in 2005, when I was Deputy PM, I was told by Tony Blair an MP had been tapped in the past without Parliament being told.
I asked him who it was and he told me the MP was the Rev Ian Paisley.
Downing Street had been told by the Interception of Communications Commissioner, who wanted to name Paisley.
Tony asked me to discuss the Wilson Doctrine with the Speaker of the House of Commons. I never told him that an MP had been tapped or that it was Paisley.
Parliament was not informed and Paisley went on to become First Minister of Northern Ireland.
I can only think that as the peace process was still a concern, mentioning the fact a leading loyalist politician had been tapped by Britain’s security services in the past would not have helped.
Any tap must be approved in writing by a minister, usually the Home Secretary. Some are vital. After the Omagh bomb that killed 29 people in 1998, I was asked to sign warrants giving permission to tap the phones of the suspects.
I agreed but later discovered the spies had already been doing it and had not even told the police.
It’s illegal to secure information about American citizens without proper authority. But there’s nothing to stop our security services doing it for the US.
We now know there has been close co-operation between GCHQ and its US counterpart, the National Security Agency for years. In Cabinet I was concerned about this relationship, especially when it became clear the Public Accounts Committee failed to agree GCHQ’s accounts. The Thatcher Government had cut its financial support of GCHQ by £100million. But we later discovered the US paid at least that amount to GCHQ to influence our intelligence gathering.
It doesn’t stop there. This government introduced a “Snooper’s Charter” – the Investigatory Powers Act, which was the idea of Theresa May when she was Home Secretary.
It requires web and phone firms to store everyone’s browsing history for a year and give the police, security services and official agencies access to the data.
Now May is threatening the EU that if it doesn’t give her the best Brexit deal, it will lose access to our security information.
The challenge as a minister is to balance national security against the freedoms we enjoy. But this government seems determined to ensure Big Brother is not only watching you, he’s monitoring your calls, emails and texts.