Commons committee to debate letting private investigators probe leak of Saudi arms sales report

Andrew Tyrie, the Liaison Committee’s Tory chairman, believes the leak is among the most serious and disruptive Westminster has seen

Crispin Blunt believes investigators should have the power to ‘interrogate the electronic records, including deleted emails’ of MPs and staff (Getty)

MPs and parliamentary staff face the prospect of an extraordinary trawl of their emails by private investigators, as anger grows over a leak of a report into Britain’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

The Independent has learnt that a Commons committee is poised to debate taking the unprecedented step and that its chairman believes a demand for a probe must be taken seriously.The move would be a backlash against the BBC’s Newsnight being handed extensive details about a forthcoming report into whether weapons sales to the Saudis should be banned.

The leak revealed a draft report by the parliamentary committee charged with scrutinising arms exports, and found it was likely that British weapons had been used to commit war crimes in Yemen.

The Saudis stand accused of bombing international hospitals run by the charity Médecins Sans Frontières, as well as schools, wedding parties and food factories, in a military blitz against rebels.

However, it then became clear that an effort was underway to dilute the call to halt arms sales – suggesting a battle between rivals on the committee.

Crispin Blunt, the Conservative chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, condemned the initial leak as a “deliberate campaign to influence a select committee” on “life and death issues”, and he urged the Commons Speaker John Bercow to call in private investigators to find the culprit responsible for “in-confidence information provided by a member of this House or their staff”.

That decision would have to be taken by the Liaison Committee, the body comprising the heads of every parliamentary select committee. The Independent has now learnt that Andrew Tyrie, the Liaison Committee’s Tory chairman, believes the leak is among the most serious and disruptive Westminster has seen.

The investigators should, Mr Blunt argued, have the power to “interrogate the electronic records, including deleted emails” of MPs and staff.

Last week, the Speaker also agreed it was a “serious matter” that threatened the effective working of the committee system.

Mr Bercow told MPs: “If the committees of this House are to work effectively, we cannot have a situation in which individual members of a committee leak information, in advance, to advance a particular point of view or to retard the progress of another.”

Mr Tyrie told The Independent: “I will discuss this in the first instance with the deputy chairman of the Liaison Committee and then, if appropriate, with the whole committee.”

A police investigation into the affair is not possible, because the leaks would not be a criminal offence.

The draft report by the cross-party Committees on Arms Export Controls, made up of 16 MPs from four select committees, said it was “inevitable” that arms supplied by the UK had been used in breaches of international law.

On Newsnight, Mr Blunt refused to say whether he had deliberately walked out of a meeting of committee members, to make the meeting inquorate and impossible for the report to be approved.