Downing Street Says » Intercept Evidence

» Thursday, September 21, 2006

Intercept Evidence

Asked if the Prime Minister supported the Attorney General’s view on intercept evidence, the PMOS said there had been a misunderstanding. We had always been of the view that if it was possible to use intercept evidence in court in a way that it did not put at risk or jeopardize security service personnel and sources then that was something that should be very seriously looked at. The problem however, was in ensuring that it did not put security service sources at risk. Therefore we continued to examine that tension because the Prime Minister was absolutely clear we would not jeopardise the work of our security services.

Asked if he was saying there was no government change on this policy, the PMOS said it remained a subject of ongoing and active work, and it was therefore right and proper that we allowed it to continue as such. The concerns were clearly real and therefore any method that tried to resolve them had to be looked at. Lord Goldsmith quite rightly was taking lessons from elsewhere to see if it could meet concerns, but we should wait and see where we got to.

Asked if he was suggesting that a water tight way had not yet been found to allow the use of intercept evidence, the PMOS repeated that this was a matter for ongoing investigation and discussion and what we had to take into account were the very real concerns of the security service. Questioned further, the PMOS said the position was as we had set out in the past. It was perfectly legitimate and right that we actively sought a way of using intercept evidence, but we did have to address the genuine concerns that the security service had. Put that "nothing had changed", the PMOS said that was the simplistic way of putting it. The important point was that different countries had different ways of doing it and we had to look at whether using such evidence in court would help us or not.

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