Parliament Defeats Effort to Ease British Secrecy Law

LONDON —  Parliament decided on Friday that Britain will continue to be one of the most secretive of all Western democracies, rejecting a bill aimed at liberalizing the law that restricts the flow of government information.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative Party, which has a 101-seat majority in the House of Commons, defeated the bill by a narrow margin, 271 to 234.

The vote came after Home Secretary Douglas Hurd promised to present government proposals for reform by June. The small margin was seen as the most serious rebellion of Conservative members since Thatcher’s reelection last June.

Adding to Thatcher’s embarrassment was the fact that the bill had been introduced by a Conservative member, Richard Shepherd, against her personal objection. She ordered her parliamentary whips to put maximum pressure on party members to vote against the bill.

“It is a wholly misconceived, authoritarian and a sorry display of executive arrogance,” said Ian Gilmour, a former member of Thatcher’s Cabinet. He was one of three former members of her Cabinet who voted against the government on the measure.

Job for the Government

However, Hurd argued that reform of the secrecy act is a job for the government, not an individual member of Parliament. He promised “a thorough and deep review” of secrecy legislation before presenting the government’s proposed reforms.

The defeated legislation called for replacing controversial parts of the 1911 Official Secrets Act that make it a criminal offense for any public servant to divulge any official information, however innocuous, to anyone without express authorization.

It advocated the grading of information into six levels of sensitivity, each with an appropriate degree of restriction.

Over the years, Britain’s political parties have often pledged to abolish the Official Secrets Act, which Parliament enacted in a single afternoon against a backdrop of Pre-World War I hysteria about German spies. But once in power, the parties have invariably found the act a useful tool for controlling information.

In a nation that gave the world so many of its libertarian values, the Official Secrets Act stands as a paradox. Often, its sweeping powers bring ludicrous results, as when the police several years ago raided a trade magazine’s offices after the magazine published a proposed timetable for the state-owned railroad.

Comment Triggers Laughter

Amid laughter from fellow members of Parliament, former Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath commented Friday, “I’m beginning to realize that there is a period of history in which I ruled about which I will never know the truth.”

But for many civil libertarians, the extensive and sometimes harsh use of the act by the Thatcher government has been no laughing matter.

For example, the British press is still forbidden to discuss allegations made in the book “Spycatcher,” by former intelligence officer Peter Wright, which has not appeared in Britain but is sold freely in the United States.

A recent court injunction has blocked the British Broadcasting Corp. from airing a series on official secrecy, and last year the police raided a BBC studio in Scotland to seize reams of editorial material in connection with a planned program on defense satellites.