Is everything an MP sees on his office computer a matter of public interest? That phrase in law does not mean public prurience or gossip or fascination, but what impinges on his or her public duties. Nine years ago police were sent, on the initiative of the then Labour government, to raid the office of a Tory MP, Damian Green, now deputy prime minister.
They wanted evidence of a leak of a Home Office document, which he never denied receiving. It came from a dissident civil servant. In the course of the raid, which involved 20 officers and extended to Green’s home and car, Green’s computers were seized and opened.
No further action was taken and the incident caused outrage on both sides at Westminster. This led some of the police officers to resent the criticism. One of them, though he had been ordered to destroy the seized computer archive, copied it and has since revealed its pornographic contents to the media.
When challenged as to why no action was taken on the pornography, former Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson correctly pointed out that it had nothing to do with the case. It involved “no criminality, no victims, no vulnerability”. There was nothing extreme, illegal or involving children or abuse, and therefore no public interest, no matter how improper one may consider viewing pornography at work. Nonetheless Green, who denies all the accusations, is now at risk of losing his job and his career under a general hue and cry.
The idea that the police, on the orders of an opposing political party, can invade an MP’s office and seize and disclose to the public any material it hopes might blacken his name is worthy of a totalitarian regime. Even if there was cause to suspect document theft, the purloining of unrelated material against a rainy day is hardly ethical policing. As Stephenson says, there is nothing in the Green case to suggest any harm to anyone, beyond the possible misuse of a parliamentary computer in office time.
In Dave Eggers’ dystopian novel of the digital future The Circle, all politicians are required to wear microphones and cameras during all their waking hours. Everything they do is to be “clear”, or they are assumed “to have something to hide”. It eventually destroys them. There can be few people in any walk of life who would be happy to open their entire computer archive to public view. Such intrusive surveillance should anyway be unthinkable in a free society. We should be innocent until proved guilty.
Green is treated as guilty, and has not even a court in which to prove his innocence. I recently asked a group of sixth formers if they wanted to go into politics. No, was the reply. They wanted some privacy in their lives. Fat chance.