Police face further pressure over covert monitoring of MPs
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Version 0 of 1. Police chiefs are set to come under further pressure after the general election to answer revelations that they covertly monitored MPs after they were elected to Parliament. John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons, said the revelations were “extremely serious”, and warned : “This matter will not go away.” MPs were in full cry last Thursday after whistleblower Peter Francis revealed that he had read secret files on 10 MPs during his 11 years working for the Metropolitan police’s special branch. He identified the politicians, all Labour, as Harriet Harman, Peter Hain, Diane Abbott, Jeremy Corbyn, Joan Ruddock, Dennis Skinner, Jack Straw, Ken Livingstone, and the late Bernie Grant and Tony Benn. Reports of his disclosures can be read here in the Guardian and here from the BBC. A day after the disclosures, Hain (who has criticised the monitoring) initiated a debate, lasting more than 40 minutes, in the House of Commons. (The transcript is here). Related: Why were special branch watching me even when I was an MP? | Peter Hain All the serving MPs named by Francis, along with other politicians, attended the debate and demanded that the police be called to account over the surveillance. For a flavour of their anger, see this story about the debate. In the main, they wanted to see the files held on them by the police and for the monitoring of MPs to be included in the public inquiry into undercover policing that is to be headed by Lord Justice Pitchford. Bercow, the Speaker, said he shared the concerns expressed by the MPs. He added that he had “no doubt” that the senior officials running the Commons - the Clerk and the Speaker’s Counsel - would “proactively” communicate the MPs’ concerns to Pitchford and his team. In a further sign that Bercow is not going to let the matter drop, he also said that inquiries would be made to see if anyone in Parliament had known about the surveillance at the time. There was another striking feature of the debate - Mike Penning, the policing minister, made it clear that he was dismayed at undercover officers whose misconduct has been exposed in recent years. At one point, he told MPs :”This is probably the only time since becoming Police Minister that I have not stood at the Dispatch Box and said how proud I am to be the Police Minister and what a fantastic job they do to protect us. There are some who have let us down over the years and we must find out what went wrong.” Related: The Guardian view on surveillance of MPs: don’t confuse dissent with crime | Editorial At another, he said :”In my last answer at the Dispatch Box as Policing Minister in this Parliament, I will say at the outset that there are members of the police, from top to bottom, who have fundamentally let down the people of this country. They are a tiny minority, however, and we should have confidence in our police.” His criticism echoes that of other ministers. Theresa May, the home secretary, has pointedly said that serious “failings” by undercover officers had persuaded her to set up the public inquiry that is to be led by Pitchford. Damian Green, a previous policing minister, said last year that the Special Demonstration Squad, the undercover unit that infiltrated political groups for 40 years, had been “out of control”. Such criticism from ministers is surely uncomfortable for police. How much police chiefs are willing to come clean about the bad behaviour of their undercover officers is unclear at this moment. But here’s something that happened this week that does not inspire confidence. Last Wednesday, Ruddock was told that the police had kept a file on her. She immediately submitted a request to the Metropolitan Police for a copy. This Tuesday - within less than a week - the Met had decided to refuse to hand anything over, claiming that it could never confirm nor deny whether there was a file. |