MPs: Now call in police for probe into Williamson

MPS last night wrote to the head of the Metropolitan Police demanding a criminal investigation into Gavin Williamson’s conduct.

They demanded to know whether the sacked defence secretary’s actions breached the Official Secrets Act.

Government workers and others can be charged under the act if they are found to have made an unauthorised disclosure of information relating to security or intelligence.

The offence carries a maximum two-year jail term.

In her letter sacking Mr Williamson, Theresa May said she considered ‘the matter closed’ – suggesting she did not want a police investigation.

But last night there were calls for Cressida Dick, the Met Police commissioner, to launch a formal inquiry.

A letter signed by Lib Dem MPs Jo Swinson, Sir Vince Cable and Sir Ed Davey said a probe was needed ‘to ascertain whether the actions of Mr Williamson constitute a breach of the Official Secrets Act, given that the leak originated from the National Security Council and related to highly-sensitive information’.

Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson and defence spokesman Nia Griffiths also demanded police action. Mr Williamson was at last week’s National Security Council meeting but strenuously denies being behind the leak, which provoked fury in Whitehall.

NSC meetings, chaired weekly by the Prime Minister, are supposed to be held in strict confidence. It is a forum where secret intelligence can be shared by GCHQ, MI6 and MI5 with senior ministers, all of whom have signed the Official Secrets Act. Foreign intelligence is also often discussed, involving key allies.

Scotland Yard said in a statement: ‘We’re aware of the media reports in relation to the leak and that is a matter for the National Security Council and the Cabinet Office to look at.

‘At this time, we’re not carrying out an investigation.’

It is not necessary to have signed the Official Secrets Act in order to be bound by it and Government employees are usually informed they are subject to it in their contracts.

Many are still asked to sign the act as a way of reinforcing its content.

Prosecutions under the act are very rare. In 2002, former MI5 agent David Shayler was handed a six-month jail term for selling intelligence secrets to the Mail on Sunday.

He claimed MI5 tapped the then Labour MP Peter Mandelson’s telephone, had a file on foreign secretary Jack Straw’s involvement in Left-wing politics and that MI6 tried to bomb Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

In 1984, Ministry of Defence civil servant Clive Ponting passed details to Labour MP Tam Dalyell about the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War. He was charged under the Official Secrets Act but acquitted by a jury and he subsequently resigned from the Civil Service.

Earlier that year Sarah Tisdall, a clerk at the Foreign Office was prosecuted and jailed for leaking information to The Guardian about when US cruise missiles were due to arrive on British soil.

Mr Watson said last night: ‘It’s the most brutal sacking letter of any minister I’ve seen in my lifetime. The magnitude of the allegation against him is very serious.’ He said because Mr Williamson denied the allegations, the best way for him to have his voice heard would be through a criminal inquiry.

Sir Vince Cable, who leads the Lib Dems, said: ‘This story cannot begin and end with dismissal from office.’

‘Sharing secret intelligence’

NEARLY 60 years ago, John Profumo’s resignation as War Secretary was the final death knell not only for Tory Prime Minister Harold Macmillan but for 13 years of Conservative government.

To me, the sacking of Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson for allegedly leaking secret Cabinet discussions has a similar whiff of death about it.

We have a Prime Minister who has lost her way, a Cabinet that can’t keep secrets and widespread paralysis in Whitehall and Westminster.

And the timing couldn’t be worse. The Conservatives were facing a massacre in today’s local government elections even before this latest fiasco.

Despite an Opposition comprising Jeremy Corbyn and his Marxist coterie, some of whom face grave charges of anti-Semitism, the Tories are ten points behind Labour in the polls.

Shambles

This morning, voters will look at the Williamson shambles in horror. Crucially, the best Tory line of attack on Labour has long been national security. How could former Soviet and IRA sympathiser Corbyn ever be trusted with defence?

Now this. We are talking about the worst security leak by a Cabinet minister since the end of the Cold War.

Profumo had to go because he shared a lover with a Soviet military attaché, then lied about her to the Commons. But he was never responsible — as Theresa May believes Williamson was — for leaking secret discussions. And this wasn’t a mere

Cabinet leak, of which there have been far too many during the May premiership. It was a leak from the National Security Council, the body set up in 2010 to allow intelligence chiefs to brief Cabinet ministers on national security, nuclear deterrence and strategic defence in total confidence.

Until last week, there had never been a leak from it. The confidentiality demanded was observed and respected by every member of the Council.

But details of the discussion on contracts for Britain’s 5G network and a claim that Mrs May had given the green light to the involvement of Chinese tech giant Huawei — against the advice of five senior ministers and our U.S. allies — were leaked to the Daily Telegraph. It set in motion the mother of all leak inquiries.

In all fairness, the wretched Gavin Williamson, whose political career is now surely over, denies ‘on his children’s life’ being the source of the leak.

But Mrs May — who will have been advised by Whitehall security chiefs — appears to think otherwise.

In the devastating letter in which she sacked her Defence Secretary, she refers to ‘compelling evidence suggesting your responsibility for the unauthorised disclosure’.

Of course, it should be soberly noted that Williamson had a strong disincentive to own up to being the leaker, as disclosing sensitive conversations from the National Security Council is an offence under the Official Secrets Act. Had he owned up, it would have been tantamount to admitting an offence punishable by jail.

That is why I believe there must be a criminal inquiry, followed by a court case. As I argued here on Saturday, there is no more serious offence than leaking secrets. If Williamson were found guilty, he should face a long stretch inside.

But criminal proceedings would also give him an opportunity to clear his name if his protestations proved true and he was not the source.

In the past, civil servants caught passing secret information to newspapers and others have been obliged to face the full weight of the law.

In 1984, for example, Foreign Office clerk Sarah Tisdall was prosecuted and jailed under the Official Secrets Act for leaking information to The Guardian newspaper about the arrival of U. S. cruise missiles on British soil.

Later that year, Ministry of Defence civil servant Clive Ponting passed details to the Labour MP Tam Dalyell about the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano, in which 323 sailors died, during the Falklands War.

Ponting was charged under the Official Secrets Act but acquitted by a jury and subsequently resigned.

It would smack of gross double standards if a Cabinet minister were allowed to escape a similar fate.

Indeed, for a Cabinet minister to divulge secrets is especially serious. He or she not only runs the risk of handing over vital information to an enemy, but makes orderly government impossible.

Our nation’s safety depends on our top spies and military leaders being able to share secret information, which they cannot do if there is a risk that any of those party to the discussions or documents will tip off contacts or the media.

Provocative

It is especially ironic that last week’s grotesque breach of security took place under Theresa May, who made her reputation as a tough Home Secretary who cultivated close links to the security services.

But the PM cannot escape her share of responsibility for this debacle. It was her choice to make Williamson her Secretary of State for Defence, even though it was clear from the start that he was hopelessly unsuited to the job.

Just months into his new post, he gave advance notice that he had ordered a Royal Navy frigate to sail through the South China Sea. Such a unwise and provocative disclosure put our Forces at risk of a response from China in a highly sensitive part of the globe.

At times, Williamson has conducted himself like a buffoon, particularly with his juvenile call for Russia to ‘ go away and shut up’ in response to the Novichok poisoning in Salisbury last year.

Previously, he had taken it upon himself to suddenly announce that Russia could kill countless thousands of Britons in a cyber attack — a remark that appalled security chiefs because it blatantly breached confidence.

I warned last June that Mr Williamson’s ‘disloyalty, his incompetence and indiscretion means that dispensing with him has become a matter of national security’.

Contemptible

I urged Mrs May to sack Williamson then. She would have saved a great deal of trouble — as well as sending a strong message to the rest of her treacherous Cabinet — had she done so.

Now she has done the right thing, following the advice of her admirable Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill.

There was a great deal of foolish criticism of Sir Mark floating about Westminster last night.

Some accused him of waging a personal vendetta against Williamson. Others said he had undermined the PM by setting up the inquiry without consulting her.

That is utter rubbish. Sir Mark, the most powerful civil servant in Whitehall, who doubles his role as Cabinet Secretary with that of National Security Adviser, understands the importance of keeping secrets. So, for all her faults, does Mrs May.

Unfortunately, too many ministers do not. They try to boost their political careers by sharing confidences. Such behaviour is contemptible.

Mrs May’s Government has inevitably been weakened by the Williamson scandal. But our public life is stronger.

The PM and Sir Mark Sedwill have sent the message around Westminster, loud and clear, that discretion is a non-negotiable political virtue, especially in these febrile times.

Several other ministers, if they have any sense, should be taking careful note.