I never met Henry, Thorn tells privileges committee

GEOFF THORN, who resigned as the head of Parliamentary Service in the wake of the Henry inquiry, has revealed he never met the man who headed the probe.

Mr Thorn appeared yesterday before the privileges committee, which is meeting to establish whether the inquiry overstepped its powers in seeking to find out who leaked a report on the Government Communications Security Bureau to Dominion Post journalist Andrea Vance.

Mr Thorn resigned after it emerged that Parliamentary Service gave information to the inquiry, such as Vance’s phone record and email log

Mr Thorn said yesterday he had never met David Henry, the former commissioner of the IRD who was charged with finding out who leaked the sensitive report into state spying to Vance.

Mr Thorn had quit because he had provided information which turned out to be incorrect, to Spea- ker David Carter to answer written parliamentary questions.

He had not personally authorised the release of certain information to the inquiry, but he took responsibility for it. He continued to defend his decision to release Vance’s security access records, without asking either the journalist for her permission, or the Henry inquiry about why it wanted the information.

‘‘I believed that this was a security matter,’’ he said.

At the time he put weight on the requests of the Henry inquiry, even though he agreed that ‘‘with hindsight’’ he should have contacted Mr Henry about why he wanted the information.

ACT MP John Banks asked Mr Thorn whether he would have questioned the request from Mr Henry if he had been asked for the movements of the entire press gallery.

‘‘I don’t know the answer to that,’’ Mr Thorn said.

The committee is sitting again next week. Fairfax NZ