By Joshua Rozenberg5 July 2021
Joshua Rozenberg
The government has firmly rejected a recommendation by the Law Commission that there should be a public interest defence for anyone charged under the Official Secrets Act 1989 with making an unauthorised disclosure of information. That is bad news for officials who accidentally leave sensitive defence briefings at bus stops and even worse for broadcasters who report what those documents say.
As I explained in a column published here a couple of months ago, the government’s law reform advisers could not be sure that the 1989 act was compatible with the right to freedom of expression guaranteed by article 10 of the human rights convention. They therefore proposed the creation of an independent statutory commissioner to whom anyone covered by the 1989 act could lawfully report allegations of wrongdoing or criminality. As a last resort, they recommended that it should be a defence for those charged under the act to prove that their disclosure – and the way it was made – were in the public interest. I am a non-executive board member at the commission.