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Post by charmbrights on Mar 18, 2015 11:14:17 GMT
17 March 2015 "News at Ten"
The BBC report of Theresa May's statement that she hoped and expected that whistle-blowers in the inquiry into paedophilia ihalf a century ago would not be prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act was based entirely on the opposition line that such people should be granted total immunity.
I signed the OSA in that era and handled information covered by it. Some of that information, such as the timesheet indicating how much was spent on which project was useless on its own, but the aggregation of all the relevant timsheets would have been useful to an enemy. Even today I would be liable to prosecution for releasing a copy of one of thoise timesheets. Why should other peoplebe given immunity?
Worse that that, if Theresa May had said, "I am granting immunity from prosecution to all witnesses to this inquiry," the Labour party and the BBC would have been all over her for breaking the rule of the British constitution as enshrined in Magna Carta that the Government does not interfere with the judiciary in the performance of its duties to uphold the law. Parliament can change the law, but only extremely rarely does it do so retrospectively, and there are a large number of people in the country today who have served jail sentences for acts which are not illegal today, and nobody suggests compensating them.
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Post by Teddy Bear on Mar 18, 2015 15:15:29 GMT
Moved it here Charm as it seems it's more related to May than the BBC.
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