Police protection from beyond the grave

Police informants will get protection even after they die

Police informants will have their names protected from disclosure even after they have died, an Information Tribunal has ruled.

 

The decision (link) makes clear that police “grasses” need to be guaranteed anonymity beyond the grave or they would never come forward in the first place.

The Tribunal heard evidence from senior officers at the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) saying that disclosure of the names of informants from the 19^th century still created a knock-on risk to modern-day policing.

The MPS were against releasing the names of the individuals, which were held in old police ledgers, stating the information was exempt from disclosure under S.30 (investigations).

In the original case before the Information Commissioner the MPS had said: “Informants expect their identities to be protected indefinitely. If we are unable to reassure them of total anonymity because of possible release under the Freedom of Information Act, the MPS will not be able to recruit future or sustain current informants.  

“Agreeing to become an agent or informant is a major step of trust often involving the informant taking physical risk, in betrayal of his own country, family, colleagues and sometimes in feelings of shame or guilt.

 “It is difficult to persuade potential agents to take this step and they have to be reassured that no one will ever know what they have done. We believe it is important and that nothing should be done to undermine the confidence of current and potential agents around security and intelligence services keeping identities secret. It would be a major deterrent to some potential agents if they thought their role might be revealed even long after the event.“

The original request for information was made in July 2005 by Mr Alex Butterworth, a historian and author, who was researching European anarchists of the 1880s and 1890s. He knew of the existence of the informants’ ledgers because a Dr L Clutterbuck, a retired Special Branch Officer, had referred to them in his doctoral thesis, completed some years ago, on policing Fenian terrorism.

Roger Pearce, a former Commander of Special Branch, gave evidence to the Tribunal and stated the groups from which informants were drawn were generally subject to an atmosphere of “absolute paranoia”. This strengthened the need to ensure that the necessary element of trust and confidence existed between a handler and the informant.

The Tribunal overturned the Information Commissioner’s original decision that the material should be released stating there was a “overriding if not exceptional public interest” in maintaining the S.30 exemption. It ruled that Mr Butterworth should be able to see the information in the ledgers but that all the names in them should be redacted.

Editor’s note: A strange case here that has taken almost four years to resolve. Much of the MPS’s difficulties in this case were caused by the rather ad-hoc way they had allowed access to documents before the FoI Act came into place. Its arguments were rather undermined in the case before the Commissioner in that they had allowed its former employee access to the documents.