The police, and the state, are out of control

By Philip Stephens of the FT
Published: December 1 2008 19:21

The police are out of control. So is the government. We can only conjecture as to what possessed the senior officers who raided the homes and parliamentary office of Damian Green, the Conservative immigration spokesman. Yet their disdain for political process spoke eloquently to the authoritarian culture of our times.

In this respect, regardless of whether ministers played a direct role in Mr Green’s arrest, the blame rests squarely with the government. The police must be held to account for their heavy-handed intimidation, but ministers nurtured the climate in which such madness flourishes.

The absurdities of the incident are self-evident. A score of officers from the Metropolitan police’s “special operations directorate” barged into Mr Green’s London and constituency homes, hauled him off to the cells and stripped his office of computers and files. The alleged offence? To have put into the public domain leaked information that embarrassed Jacqui Smith, the home secretary.

There is not a hint here of any breach of national security. Mr Green exposed the incompetence that has long described the conduct of affairs at the home office. The official alleged to have leaked the information has already been arrested.

It is all but impossible to imagine a jury convicting Mr Green. Disseminating leaked information has been embedded in the custom of politics since time immemorial. Rightly so, given the stiflingly secretive British state. When he was in opposition, Gordon Brown used to boast of his skilful exploitation of such material. Can we expect the “special operations directorate” to be hammering next on the door of Number 10 to seize Mr Brown’s BlackBerry?

Mr Green was arrested under a part of the common law that proscribes “misconduct in a public office”. The police say (off the record, of course) that the MP was not a passive recipient of documents, but conspired with the official. They hint they have evidence enough to charge Mr Green.

We shall see. The purpose of this 18th-century law is to deal with corrupt public officials including, dare one say it, police officers. To deploy it in this fashion against elected members of parliament is to show, at very best, blithe ignorance of the democratic process. MPs are not above the law, but the police have no place in politics.

We have been here before. During the final year of Tony Blair’s premiership, a team of officers conducted a long, expensive and fruitless inquiry into allegations that the then prime minister had sold peerages in return for party donations. Once again the staged drama – dawn raids and off-the-record smearing of those under investigation – was in inverse proportion to the possibility of any prosecution.

Needless to say, no one was ever brought before a court. But it seems the police are still ready to trample over the line that separates legitimate investigation from the, albeit sometimes grubby, practice of politics.

You could say, though, that Mr Blair should not have been surprised. If the police think they can discard due process, they have been taking their cue from the government.

For more than a decade, first Mr Blair, and latterly Mr Brown, have rolled forward the boundaries of the state at the expense of civil liberties. The consistent opposition of the Liberal Democrats and, latterly, even of the Conservatives to this insouciant disregard for ancient freedoms has been brushed aside as the hand-wringing of feeble liberals.

Some measures have been explicable and justifiable in the face of the threat from violent Islamist extremists. The first duty of any government is to guard the security of its citizens. I have more sympathy than many with the view that the intelligence agencies and the police must be given sufficient means to thwart the terrorists.

But the powers of the state have advanced well beyond that. The present government sees no distinction between the rule of law and whatever piece of legislation it can force through parliament.

In the criminal justice system, the fragile balance between the rights of police, prosecutors and accused has been overturned. The presumption of innocence is scorned. Successive home secretaries, including Ms Smith, have mouthed the mantra that the police are always right.

Ministers have likewise greatly extended the state’s surveillance of law-abiding citizens. The pretence that it is all about al-Qaeda has been exploded by widespread use of anti-terrorism laws by local authorities and other public bodies. Parents suspected of “gaming” school admission systems have become the victims of elaborate surveillance operations by local councils. Almost anyone and everyone in public authority can now call up private telephone and e-mail records. We must suppose they will have equal access to the government’s Orwellian National Identity Register.

Little wonder the police seem to think they can abuse their power. The senior ranks of the Metropolitan police are overdue a serious clear-out. No one should be in any doubt, though, that the real culprit is the government.

More columns at www.ft.com/philipstephens
philip.stephens@ft.com