Row escalating over police access to MPs' emails

Government avoids giving assurances that Commons raid did not expose email communications

Smith: Rules were not broken

Senior government ministers have sidestepped demands by MPs for assurances that the anti-terrorist police who raided the Commons did not access computer servers containing email communications data on virtually every politician at Westminster.

Labour deputy leader and Commons business manager Harriet Harman and home secretary Jacqui Smith both avoided direct responses to questions from Tory and Labour MPs as the row raged on over the search carried out in the Commons offices of shadow immigration minister Damian Green, which involved examination of the parliamentary email system and the seizure and removal of his computer equipment.

The issue of Green's computers was first raised by Speaker Michael Martin who instructed the Sergeant at Arms to ensure that the police returned Green's hardware by Monday.

Tory shadow business manager Theresa May said that to access Green's electronic files and emails "the police would have gone into the parliamentary server and on to the shared drive, and will therefore have been able to access all MPs' emails and files".

She challenged Harman to give her an assurance that "no other MPs' files or emails were accessed by the police".

Harman said only that "the security of Honourable Members' emails is a security matter and therefore a matter for the House authorities", and was equally unresponsive to demands from former Tory minister David Heathcote Amory for the return of all data concerning other MPs which police may have extracted from Green's computer and from Tory MP Mark Harper, who said that MPs wanted to be sure that their data is secure.

Labour MP Andrew Mackinlay claimed that police examining Green's emails was itself a breach of the so-called Wilson Doctrine, reaffirmed by prime minister Gordon Brown, that the security services would not bug MPs.

Smith simply responded that the doctrine "has not been abrogated".