Abstract
The state's ability to protect defence and national security interests is rightly thought to require that intelligence and security activities be conducted under a certain degree of secrecy. Historically, the UK legislature has shielded state-held information by enacting wide-ranging offences to punish the disclosure of official information. Indeed, the loose and sometimes hurried drafting of official secrets legislation has typically provoked fears that the reach of the criminal law staunched the flow of information whose disclosure would have been justified in the public interest. Today, the struggle to bring security and intelligence services under public scrutiny and, thereby, informed democratic control by the electorate has never seemed so vital. Public distrust concerning the accuracy of security services' intelligence material and the UK Government's assessment of such intelligence pre-dates events connected with the Iraq War in 2003
Published Version
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