Abuse of power part 2
Although the factual issue has not yet been resolved whether the police on the Damian Green arrest and searches actually received some sort of permission to enter Parliament without warrant or did so regardless, it is the fact that they chose to do so in support of such obscure and minor charges which is mind-boggling.
This inevitably involved sifting through a huge amount of personal and confidential material at various addresses raided. Apparently this even went down to reading old letters between Mr Green and his wife. It inevitably involved consideration of much material (both written and on computers etc) which would have been confidential as between the MP and others including his constituents, and involved effectively closing down the e-mail addresses constituents used to contact their MP. All this in support of leaks which did not involve national security. All this in support of potential charges of ""conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office" and "aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office" ", when if this were correct it would actually mean that every politician across the years who had used leaked materials would be guilty of the charge, and would be a green light to the machinery of government to prevent by fear of prosecution use of leaked material however important that material was. There were plainly implications under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which states as follows:
Whilst there may be issues concerning confidential information within government, it is obvious that a balance would have to be struck between enforcing those and allowing democratically elected representatives to pursue matters of legitimate public concern. Certainly there would be an issue as to how far it was appropriate to use the criminal law to restrain such leaks, when that could have the effect of preventing action by those leaking or those receiving, however compelling the case, because they could not be certain whether they were committing a criminal offence or not. At the very least one would have expected that there would have had to have been the most careful consideration imaginable before arresting a member of Parliament and searching Parliamentary offices. One might have thought that this case cried out for advise from the Attorney General or the Director of Public Prosecutions and/or from the Leader of the House, the Home Secretary or indeed the Prime Minister. It is stated that none of these people were consulted. That must mean that the police acted on the assumption, given the initial reference from civil servants, that the government would be supportive of action. This would be the modern equivalent of those knights who arrogated to themselves the responsibility to kill Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas a Becket on the grounds that once the King had said "who will rid me of this turbulent priest?" that that was a green light for action which it would have been difficult to explicitly ask for.
If that were the position, then it is difficult to see how this does not amount to the police being used as an instrument of state power and pressure rather than for the ordinary detection of crime. That of course has severe implications for what powers it is safe to give the police and how it might be anticipated they will use them.