A High Court judge has said that disclosure of evidence in a claim against ministers by a man suspected of leaking official secrets “would unquestionably cause damage to the UK’s national security”.
Mr Justice Chamberlain was giving his reasons yesterday for ordering that a closed material application, as it’s called, may be made in a case brought by Andrew Hale-Byrne, a former civil servant, against the trade secretary and the foreign secretary.
In October 2020, when Hale-Byrne was recovering from cancer surgery, armed police broke into his home and arrested him on on suspicion of making a damaging disclosure of information relating to international relations, an offence under the Official Secrets Act 1989 that carries a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment.
Hale-Byrne was questioned but never charged. No reason has been given but he claims that officials had falsely identified him to police as the source of internal diplomatic messages that had been leaked to Steven Edginton, a 19-year-old freelance journalist who passed them to the Mail on Sunday in July 2019.
One of these communications had been sent in June 2017 by Sir Kim Darroch — at that time UK ambassador to the US — to Sir Mark Sedwill, Britain's national security adviser. In it, Darroch reportedly said: “We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction-riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.”
Darroch had to resign as ambassador and was later given a life peerage.
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