Letter to Neil Kinnock MP (phone-tapping)

Dear Mr. Kinnock,

Thank you for your letter of 4 March.

As you say, in my letter of 1 March I said that Lord Bridge 's enquiry would be concerned with the propriety of authorised interception and would not address other recent allegations that interception had taken place without the authorisation of a Secretary of State, or with other allegations about the operations of the Security Service as a whole. This is what Leon Brittan said on 28 February. He referred to Lord Bridge 's task as monitor of keeping the conduct of authorised interception under continuing review. He went on to say that I had asked Lord Bridge “to examine the relevant papers to determine whether authorisations since May 1979 have named the individuals in question and, if so, whether those authorisations have been sought and given in accordance with the procedures and criteria in the Birkett Report of 1957 and the White Paper of April 1980.” He referred to covering the period before 1979 subject to the agreement of the Ministers then responsible.

Leon Brittan 's subsequent remarks about Lord Bridge 's enquiry were all naturally in this context. In the response to Gerald Kaufman which you quote he said “The enquiry is related to interception, which is the area covered by Lord Bridge as monitor” . He went on to explain that, within this compass, the question of false classification as subversive does fall within the enquiry since classification as [end p1] subversive is one of the issues before the Secretary of State in considering any application of this kind for an authorised interception. Similarly, the question whether Party political considerations had played an improper part in authorisations made by the Secretary of State would also fall within Lord Bridge 's enquiry. I believe that it is perfectly clear both from what Leon Brittan said and from the context that he was referring throughout to authorised interception.

It remains the Government's intention to move the Second Reading of the Interception of Communications Bill on 6 March. I expect to have been able to announce Lord Bridge 's findings by then and do not believe there is any reason to delay discussion of a measure which is confined to the question of interception.

Yours sincerely,

Margaret Thatcher