Leaks were `crime with no victims'

TONY BLAIR stepped in to support his Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, yesterday after the revelation of three leaks from a Commons committee led to calls for his resignation.

Mr Cook admitted on Wednesday that he had been sent not only a draft of a sensitive Foreign Affairs Committee report on arms shipments to Sierra Leone, but also human rights and EU enlargement reports.

The Conservatives were questioning every other cabinet minister yesterday to find out whether a "culture of leaking" had grown up at Westminster.

The Prime Minister suggested in a BBC interview that the crime had been a victimless one. "The allegation is that Mr Cook's department received reports, not that he's acted on them in any shape or form at all. The Speaker has already said that in a general sense she wants to look into it, and I think that's the right way to proceed."

In a separate radio interview, Mr Cook said he had nothing to apologise for. The Foreign Secretary, in Russia meeting the Prime Minister, Yevgeny Primakov, at his Black Sea dacha, said that as an MP he had the right to sit in on committees' meetings. It would be "rather curious" for one MP to be banned from knowing what other MPs were thinking.

However, other Labour MPs expressed concern. Former Labour minister Derek Foster, chairman of the Employment Select Committee, said the new leaks were "very disturbing news because this kind of thing can only serve to undermine the select committee system".

Donald Anderson, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said any minister who received such a leaked report should send it back. "Any government which is forewarned that there are recommendations which are critical of the government may be tempted to lean on backbench members to get rid of those recommendations or tone them down."

Robert Sheldon, Labour chairman of the anti-sleaze Standards and Privileges Committee, said he would launch an investigation into the new leaks.

The former Conservative Home Office minister, David Maclean, claimed the Government had a "leaker" on every committee. "In view of the way the Government, through No 10, try to control all aspects of Parliament, we must assume they have set up an institutionalised system of narks," he said.

The leaked report on EU enlargement was seen by the Foreign Office minister Joyce Quin and not by her colleague Derek Fatchett, as stated in yesterday's Independent.