Court says United Kingdom politicians don’t get protection from snooping

The tribunal, which hears complaints about surveillance, ruled Wednesday that the doctrine applies only to targeted, not incidental, interception of Parliamentary communications — and that it has no legal force.

However, Ms Lucas, Baroness Jones and former MP George Galloway argued that GCHQ was acting outside the long-standing doctrine by bulk collecting communications data from the internet, which would inevitably include correspondence between parliamentarians and their constituents.

Three politicians complained to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal that their communications were being intercepted by spy agency GCHQ as part of its mass harvesting of emails, Web traffic and other communications data.

The so-called “Wilson Doctrine” doctrine is based on former Prime Minister Harold Wilson’s statement in 1966 that there should be “no tapping of the telephones of Members of Parliament”.

This was formally extended to peers in November that year, and successive governments have reassured parliamentarians the ruling was still in force – most recently, Theresa May, who during this week’s Home Office Questions assured Conservative MP Peter Bone that “the Wilson Doctrine applies”.

“The Prime Minister has been deliberately ambiguous on this issue – showing utter disregard for the privacy of those wanting to contact parliamentarians”, she said.

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb said: “Our job is to hold the executive to account, and to do that effectively it’s crucial people feel they can contact us without their communications being monitored”.

Yesterday the IPT, the only judicial body with the power to investigate the security services, made clear MI5, MI6 and GCHQ had always had power to monitor Westminster communications in “exceptional” circumstances.

“As parliamentarians who often speak to whistleblowers – from campaigners whose groups have been infiltrated by the police to those exposing corruption in government departments – this judgment is deeply worrying”.

“In a democracy there is absolute no excuse for people who contact parliamentarians to be subject to blanket surveillance by the security services”. “[Today’s] judgment shows they were wrong to place any reliance on these”.

The IPT’s ruling today goes on to note that specific interception of parliamentary comms is governed by existing legislation: “The regime for the interception of parliamentarians’ communications is in accordance with the law under Article 8(2) and prescribed by law under Article 10(2), in particular by reference to s.5(3) of RIPA”.

“We are satisfied that the Wilson Doctrine is not enforceable in English law by the claimants or other MPs or peers by way of legitimate expectation”, said the IPT.

“The Wilson Doctrine has no legal effect”, the tribunal ruled.

It remains to be seen how well this view will play with United Kingdom politicians when they come to debate changes to domestic surveillance powers this autumn, however. “That doesn’t mean they have been targeting the MP”.

The government is in the process of redrafting surveillance legislation, with a forthcoming Investigatory Powers Bill due to be debated in Parliament this autumn.