UK government admits monitoring privileged communications between lawyers and clients

The news follows the recent court ruling that the mass interception and sharing of personal intelligence data between America’s NSA and the UK’s GCHQ was unlawful for seven years.

A legal challenge is to be heard by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT) in London next month on the issue that intelligence agencies intercepted privileged conversations in order to give the government an advantage in court.

The IPT case is being brought on behalf of Libyans Abdel-Hakim Belhaj andSami al-Saadi who were abducted, along with their families, in an operation conducted by MI6 and the CIA and were sent to Tripoli where they were tortured under the Gaddafi regime in 2004.

A government spokesman said: “The concession the government has made… relates to the agencies’ policies and procedures governing the handling of legally privileged communications and whether they are compatible with the European convention on human rights.

“In view of recent IPT judgments, we acknowledge that the policies adopted since 2010 have not fully met the requirements of the ECHR, specifically article 8 (right to privacy). This includes a requirement that safeguards are made sufficiently public.

“It does not mean that there was any deliberate wrongdoing on their part of the security and intelligence agencies, which have always taken their obligations to protect legally privileged material extremely seriously.

“Nor does it mean that any of the agencies’ activities have prejudiced or in any way resulted in an abuse of process in any civil or criminal proceedings.”

The spokesperson added that the intelligence agencies would now liaise with the Interception of Communications Commissioner to make sure their policies abide by human rights legislation.

Cori Crider, a director at Reprieve and one of the Belhaj family’s lawyers (pictured) said: “By allowing the intelligence agencies free reign to spy on communications between lawyers and their clients, the government has endangered the fundamental British right to a fair trial.

“Reprieve has been warning for months that the security services’ policies on lawyer-client snooping have been shot through with loopholes big enough to drive a bus through.

“For too long, the security services have been allowed to snoop on those bringing cases against them when they speak to their lawyers. In doing so, they have violated a right that is centuries old in British common law. Today they have finally admitted they have been acting unlawfully for years.

“Worryingly, it looks very much like they have collected the private lawyer-client communications of two victims of rendition and torture, and possibly misused them.

“While the government says there was no ‘deliberate’ collection of material, it’s abundantly clear that private material was collected and may well have been passed on to lawyers or ministers involved in the civil case brought by Abdel hakim Belhaj and Fatima Boudchar, who were ‘rendered’ to Libya in 2004 by British intelligence.

“Only time will tell how badly their case was tainted.

“But right now, the government needs urgently to investigate how things went wrong and come clean about what it is doing to repair the damage.”

MI6 has been required to disclose internal guidance on how its staff are to deal with material safeguarded by legal professional privilege.

MI6’s papers stated: “Undertaking interception in such circumstances would be extremely rare and would require strong justification and robust safeguards.

“It is essential that such intercepted material is not acquired or used for the purpose of conferring an unfair or improper advantage on SIS or HMG in any such litigation, legal proceedings or criminal investigation.”

The documents also note a visit by the interception commissioner, Sir Anthony May, where he found regulations were not being followed.

The papers add: “The commissioner identified a number of concerns with regard to the handling of material”.

Amnesty UK’s legal programme director, Rachel Logan, said: “We are talking about nothing less than the violation of a fundamental principle of the rule of law – that communications between a lawyer and their client must be confidential.

“The government has been caught red-handed. The security agencies have been illegally intercepting privileged material and are continuing to do so – this could mean they’ve been spying on the very people challenging them in court.

“This is the second time in as many weeks that government spies have been rumbled breaking the law.”