UK: Straw to make statement on 'bugging' of Muslim MP

British justice secretary Jack Straw will make a Commons statement today on claims that a senior Muslim MP was bugged by police while meeting a constituent in prison, Downing Street confirmed.

The Prime Minister’s spokesman also confirmed that Gordon Brown supported the so-called Wilson Doctrine, which covers the surveillance of MPs.

According to weekend press reports, police listened in to private conversations between Labour whip Sadiq Khan and a man awaiting deportation to the US for trial over allegedly running a website to raise funds for Chechen separatists and Afghanistan’s Taliban.

The Sunday Times said Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist squad eavesdropped on conversations between Mr Khan and Babar Ahmad at Woodhill Prison, Milton Keynes, in 2005 and 2006 using a microphone hidden in a table.

Mr Brown’s spokesman could not clarify whether the Wilson Doctrine applied only to phone tapping or, as widely believed, to virtually all covert surveillance of MPs and peers and the interception of any communications involving them.

However, the spokesman said Mr Brown backed the doctrine, adding: “It has been a long-standing convention, and one he has always supported.”