Security News > 2020 > July > MI6 tried to intervene in independent court by stopping judge seeing legal papers – but they said sorry, so it's OK
A classified report from IPCO was included in a bundle of court papers intended to be read by Lord Justice Singh in early 2019.
IPT secretary Susan Cobb wrote back to say: "It was inappropriate for your staff to seek to intervene in ongoing legal proceedings in the way that they sought to do," the Daily Mail and BBC reported.
When this was revealed in court yesterday, Lord Justice Singh told the room: "The tribunal's secretary acted entirely appropriately in responding the way she did and by drawing these matters to my attention. This tribunal is, in substance, a court which is completely independent of the Government, the intelligence agencies and everybody else. In March 2019, it was recognised that the direct communication was inappropriate."
Ilia Siatitsa, a legal officer with Privacy International, added: "Such an interference with judicial proceedings has absolutely no place in any mature democracy. In another PI case before the same tribunal in 2017, it was revealed that GCHQ had also made advances of similar nature to the Commissioner. It is troubling the [spy] agencies have not yet learned these basic principles."
Only barristers vetted by the government are allowed to present cases before it; most evidence shown to the tribunal is not shared with complainants, and large parts of legal hearings before the IPT take place in secret with complainants excluded from the courtroom.