MR JUSTICE BURTON
Approved Judgment
Caroline Lucas MP & Ors v Security Service & Ors
Mr Justice Burton (President) :
1.
This is the judgment of the Tribunal.
2.
This has been the hearing of a preliminary issue relating to the status, meaning and
effect of what has been called the Harold Wilson Doctrine, or the Wilson Doctrine,
originating in the statement in the House of Commons on 17 November 1966 by the
Rt Hon Harold Wilson, the then Prime Minister (Hansard HC Deb 17 November 1966
Vol 736, columns 634-641).
3.
The Claimants are an MP and a Peeress, Caroline Lucas MP and Baroness Jones of
Moulsecoomb, who have been represented by Mr Ben Jaffey and Mr Jude Bunting of
Counsel, and an ex-MP, who was still an MP at the time of the issue of these
proceedings, Mr George Galloway, represented by Mr Rupert Bowers QC and Abigail
Bright. The Respondents are the three Security Intelligence Agencies (SS, SIS and
GCHQ), and the Secretaries of State for the Home Department and for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, responsible for the Security and Intelligence Agencies and
for the grant of warrants under s.8(1) and 8(4) of the Regulation of Investigatory
Powers Act 2000 (“RIPA”), all of whom have been represented by Mr James Eadie
QC, with Ms Kate Grange and Mr Richard O’Brien of counsel. We have been very
grateful for the very thorough preparation and the very lucid presentation of this case.
4.
The statement by Mr (as he then was) Harold Wilson was some nine years after a
report of a Committee of Privy Councillors appointed to enquire into the Interception
of Communications (Cmd 283 October 1957), the Birkett Report, which had
concluded that the power to intercept communications had been recognised as a
lawful power by a succession of statutes over the previous 200 years or so, and that its
use had been effective in detecting major criminals and preventing injury to national
security: it stated at paragraph 124 that:
“A Member of Parliament is not to be distinguished from an
ordinary member of the public, so far as the interception of
communications is concerned, unless the communications were
held to be in connection with a Parliamentary proceeding.”
5.
Mr Wilson’s statement appears to have arisen in the context of a discussion about the
existence of a “tightly knit group of politically motivated men” (HC Deb 20 June 1966
Vol 730, Cols 42-33), which was said to have led to the suggestion that telephones of
some members of the House of Commons could have been tapped. The Prime
Minister said as follows:
“On the issue of the belief of certain hon. Members that their
telephones are being tapped, I would point out that my postbag
and those of many other right hon. and hon. Members suggest
that a very high proportion of the electorate generally are
under the delusion that their telephones are being tapped. This
delusion spreads to hon. Members and I should say that I used
to suffer from it myself at one time.
As for the general position, I hope that my statement will be an
answer to some of the scurrilous comment in the Press during