• Home /
• Statewatch Database /
• Public interest immunity (2)

Public interest immunity (2)

01 January 1991

Public interest immunity
artdoc July=1994

`The courts should be less awestruck by the mantra of national
security and readier to scrutinise the legitimacy and weight of
these claims (on public interest immunity)' said Lord Justice
Simon Brown at a civil service lawyers' conference on 25 March.
On 28 March, the House of Lords rejected an attempt to force the
disclosure of MI5 and MI6 documents to help ex-foreign office
civil servant Andrew Balfour in his unfair dismissal claim. Pii
certificates were signed by Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd and
ex-Home Secretary Kenneth Baker to prevent Balfour having access
to the documents. Hurd said in an affidavit that disclosure would
put at risk the effective discharge by the security and
intelligence services of current and future operations. Balfour
claims that he was ordered to become friendly with a man in
Dubai, but was then dismissed in 1990 for accepting £5,000 from
the man for issuing a visa. He was arrested under the Prevention
of Terrorism Act, questioned by Special Branch and accused of
assisting a terrorist (the man he had been told to get friendly
with). He is suing the Foreign Office and the Met police for
unlawful arrest following his PTA detention, and may go to the
European Court of Human Rights. Meanwhile, the `terrorist' friend
Ansari was granted a new visa to enter UK, and still comes here
freely. Guardian 11.4.94, Independent on Sunday 10.4.94.

Statewatch, vol 4 no 3, May-June 1994