Why Cabinet mole MUST be charged under the Official Secrets Act
THE extent to which Chinese companies should be allowed to invest into Britain’s infrastructure — and in particular in our technology networks — is a deeply sensitive subject.
For there are a host of reasons for believing that as it emerges from centuries of international isolation, China could become a hostile threat, just as the Soviet Union was during the Cold War.
And like those Communist leaders in the Kremlin, the Beijing regime espouses values which are inimical to the freedoms we cherish in Britain.
So can China be trusted with such a significant role in our national infrastructure?
This is the background to a very important meeting of the top- secret National Security Council that took place in Whitehall last Tuesday.
The Council was created in 2010 to allow intelligence chiefs and military leaders to discuss, in total confidence, issues of national security, defence worries, nuclear deterrence and strategic defence matters.
Until this week, that confidence has always been respected. There had never been a leak.
However, within hours of Tuesday’s meeting of the National Security Council, details of the discussion were leaked to the Daily Telegraph.
The newspaper duly reported that Theresa May had agreed that the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei can supply technology for Britain’s new 5G mobile data network. This was despite warnings from the U.S. and some of the Prime Minister’s most senior ministers that it poses a risk to Britain’s safety.
This was the most serious breach of national security since the end of the Cold War in 1990.
ADMITTEDLY, there have been precedents — but much less serious — such as isolated cases of relatively junior civil servants leaking sensitive intelligence material.
The two most well- known cases occurred in the Eighties.
In 1984, Ministry of Defence civil servant Clive Ponting passed details to the Labour MP Tam Dalyell about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser the General Belgrano during the Falklands War, in which 323 sailors were killed.
Ponting was charged under the Official Secrets Act but acquitted by a jury and subsequently resigned from the Civil Service.
Earlier that year Sarah Tisdall, a clerk at the Foreign Office had been prosecuted and jailed under the same Act for leaking information to the Guardian about when U.S. cruise missiles were due to arrive on British soil.
Why shouldn’t the person who leaked the information on Tuesday concerning Huawei — presumably because they disagreed with the decision to grant so much access in Britain to the Chinese — face a similar fate?
For, like Ponting and Tisdall, everyone at that National Security Council meeting had signed the Official Secrets Act.
Under terms of the Act, giving away sensitive information is punishable by up to 14 years in jail. This time, the suspects are not civil servants but ministers of the Crown.
It has been reported that five ministers were present alongside senior security officials. They were Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson; Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt; Home Secretary Sajid Javid; International Trade Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Penny Mordaunt. We can be 99 per cent certain that one of these was the leaker who betrayed the country’s secrets.
There are several reasons why this betrayal is so heinous that it merits prosecution under the Official Secrets Act.
First, of course, there is national security. The country’s safety depends on our intelligence and military chiefs being able to talk candidly with ministers and share top-secret information.
This cannot happen if someone present is happy to communicate those details to the media.
Second, as well as having signed the Official Secrets Act, every minister present at Tuesday’s meeting had signed the Privy Council oath and solemnly pledged, as well as loyalty to the Queen, to ‘keep secret all matters committed and revealed unto you, or that shall be treated of secretly in Council’.
Besides the sacrament of marriage, I can think of no more solemn oath that a Briton could pledge.
What’s more, there is the nature of the issue that was discussed: national security and the role of a Chinese firm with close links to the Beijing government. Many other countries fear that Huawei could be a Trojan horse for Chinese government spies who could proceed to infiltrate or spy on public and private communications systems in Britain.
Already, the Chinese government has made its intention clear by making inroads into this country’s infrastructure.
Our plans for nuclear energy, another highly sensitive area, already feature the involvement of the Chinese. Hinkley Point C in Somerset is being built by French firm EDF with Chinese backing and there are similar proposals for plants in Bradwell, Essex, and at Sizewell, in Suffolk.
Indeed, Gavin Williamson, one of those present at Tuesday’s meeting, is well aware of the threat from China. In February, he said he would send the UK’s new aircraft carrier, the Queen Elizabeth, to frighten the Chinese into mending their ways. He said a global Britain must deploy ‘hard power’ against those who ‘flout international law’.
Another factor, of course, behind the leak is that we have a weak Prime Minister who has served notice that she will soon stand down, and a cluster of uber-ambitious ministers are jostling to prove themselves to be her worthy successor.
No wonder Cabinet Secretary Sir Mark Sedwill is said to be ‘deeply unhappy’ and has launched an investigation into the leak — demanding the co- operation of ministers, civil servants and special advisers.
No wonder, either, that one of his predecessors, Sir Gus O’Donnell, said the breach was a ‘complete outrage’ and that ministers could face having their mobile phone records trawled in order to help identify the culprit.
At any other time, there would be Cabinet unity and discipline. But now, ministers feel free to exploit the political paralysis over Brexit and pursue their own agendas, preen themselves in public and betray colleagues.
SADLY, this is not the first time Mrs May’s ministers have stepped out of line on controversial issues such as national security.
Just over a year ago, Gavin Williamson provoked surprise by claiming that Russia could kill thousands of Britons in a cyberattack. His remarks appalled security chiefs because they felt they breached confidences.
Mr Williamson’s initial reaction to news of the latest leak was to blame Cabinet Office staff.
Regardless of the Cabinet Secretary’s leak inquiry, I believe this matter is so serious that we should have a full-scale criminal investigation, involving the security and intelligence services.
Hopefully, it would not take long to identify the guilty party and get him or her out of the Government, and in due course to see them face criminal charges.
There is one further, very important consideration that this shocking story raises.
The central Tory charge against the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is that if he ever became prime minister, be would be a danger to national security. This is because of his past links with countries unfriendly to Britain, his alleged support of terrorists and some caustic comments he’s made about our Armed Forces.
yet Mrs May runs a government in which one of the most senior members is suspected of leaking top- secret information about a country that could become a hostile threat to Britain.
Not surprisingly, Labour’s Cabinet Office spokesman Jon Trickett warned yesterday that ‘criticial issues of national security should be handled with utmost care, not used as political information in a Tory Party civil war’.
I couldn’t agree with him more.