Sir, The point is not that citizens ought to have confidential access to their MPs, but that, according to the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), the security of the State takes precedent over all rights to confidentiality. RIPA does not exempt or even mention MPs.
Seven or so years ago Parliament passed RIPA and no one can now deny that the bugging of MPs is, where correctly authorised, legal. We voted for the parties that introduced this law and we did not object when it was passed and have not protested since. No category of professions and occupations is exempt; priests, doctors, lawyers can all be bugged.
Perhaps the message is that logic, freedom and justice fail where our representatives attempt, and often succeed, in exempting themselves from the very laws that they create and enact.
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G. Mason
St Albans
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Sir, You write that Harold Wilson told MPs 40 years ago that he had given instructions that there was to be “no tapping of the telephones of the Members of the House of Commons” (report and comment, Feb 4).
However, Wilson’s actual statement on November 17, 1966 (which was about phone interception, not about eavesdropping or bugging), contained an important qualification. He said that “if there were a development that required a change of policy, he would at such moment as seemed compatible with the security of the country, on his own initiative, make a statement to the House about it.”
Wilson, of course, did not say when he would make such a statement, were it required, making it plain that national security concerns would dictate its timing. It is, of course, not clear whether the target of the security services was Sadiq Khan, MP, or Babar Ahmad. In either case, it is unfortunate that David Davis should have intervened at this particularly dangerous time; even more unfortunate, but rather less surprising, that 10 Downing Street should apparently have lost his private letter.
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Anthony Glees
Director, Brunel University Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies
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Sir, If it is true that the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorist division has been bugging MPs talking to their terrorist suspect constituents in prison then good — at last normal people are having their security and safety taken seriously.
M. J. Rowe
London SE13