February 06, 2008	Wednesday	Muharram 27, 1429

LONDON, Feb 5: A former detective who said he bugged a conversation between a Labour MP and a terrorist suspect has claimed that he did it under pressure by the Metropolitan police.

Mark Kearney, 49, said he did not think he was justified in recording a discussion between MP Sadiq Khan and Babar Ahmad, his constituent and childhood friend.

The officer retired last year after 30 years of service, having been charged with several counts of misconduct in public office relating to a separate matter.

New fears about the scale of police bugging of supposedly confidential conversations between prisoners and their solicitors emerged on Tuesday after a solicitor reportedly received a transcript of a bugged conversation he had had with a client.

According to a report in The Guardian on Tuesday, Simon Creighton said he had been inadvertently given the details of his discussions with murderer Harry Roberts.

A Daily Mail report suggests conversations between MP Sadiq and Ahmad had been recorded in 2004, before Sadiq Khan became MP for Tooting, south London, in the 2005 general election.

Even if the facts of the surveillance operation are established, the government and police could argue that no rules or laws have been broken.

MP Sadiq would have had to submit a visiting order before the bugged visits in May 2005 and June 2006. Sources say it was not clearly stated that Sadiq Khan was an MP and officers involved may not have realised the doctrine banning the bugging of MPs should have applied.

Gordon Brown’s spokesman said on Monday night that there may still be implications for the Wilson doctrine. “The government thinks it’s important there is a full and thorough inquiry,” he said.

Meanwhile, Roy Hattersley in a commentary in the Guardian on Tuesday said members of parliament are not above the law. So they should be careful not to argue -- or seem to argue -- that they must be exempt from the operation of laws that intrude into the lives of other citizens. There can be no blanket prohibition of bugging.

MPs have been at least suspected of all the crimes and misdemeanours which, in normal circumstances, would justify the interception of their telephone calls or other surveillance -- including jeopardising national security.

He said: “A Tory defence minister once shared a mistress with a Soviet agent. A Liberal leader was accused of conspiring to murder his gay lover. A Labour backbencher tried to abandon his debts and his family by faking his own death.

The police were certainly entitled to investigate all those cases by all the authorised means at their disposal. But wire intercepts -- whether the bugging device eavesdrops on a secretary of state or a destitute gangster -- are rightly subject to precise legal constraints.

The police and security services cannot, or should not, listen in without justifying the need for the intrusion.”