Police in Northern Ireland have agreed to release a secret special branch report on agent-handling during the Troubles that allegedly protected paramilitary informants from arrest.
The 1980 report, drawn up by the senior MI5 officer Sir Patrick Walker, is believed to have established agent-handling practices that have since been widely criticised as prioritising intelligence-gathering over other concerns. The document was commissioned by the then chief constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Sir John Hermon.
The decision to hand over the report to the Committee on the Administration of Justice (CAJ) follows an appeal to the information commissioner and a freedom of information tribunal hearing.
The agreement between the CAJ, a Belfast-based human rights organisation, and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) specifies that a redacted copy of the report may be published at a forthcoming inquest or, at the latest, within three months. It will be given to the CAJ next week.
Daniel Holder, CAJ’s deputy director, said: “The Walker report will assist in understanding just how the RUC special branch was tasked to operate in the 1980s at a time there were serious concerns regarding the use of informants outside the law. It is an historic policy document that should not have been withheld for so long.
“In terms of rights to access public documents, human rights law no longer permits absolute ‘national security’-type exemptions. We therefore contested the use of what is a blanket power under the current Freedom of Information Act to withhold information that ‘relates to’ MI5.
“The contention that a whole report into RUC special branch ‘related to’ MI5 also contradicted the official position of RUC primacy at the time. We welcome that agreement has been reached thus far and will assess our position on receipt of the document.”
The document is understood to be substantial. Some details have been redacted.
The Walker report was commissioned to improve intelligence penetration of paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland when IRA activity was high. Walker subsequently became director general of MI5 from 1988 to 1992.
The report is believed to recommend that RUC special branch give priority to informants over solving crimes.The report’s existence was revealed in 2001 by the UTV Insight programme.
An RUC force order following the report, which required detectives to seek approval before planned arrests to ensure no RUC or army agents were involved, has also been published. The CAJ and other civil liberties groups believe that the Walker report “may have institutionalised an approach of informant handling at a time where it is now well documented there were concerning practices of collusion”.
The 2012 De Silva report into the killing of the Belfast lawyer Patrick Finucane found that RUC officers had later in the 1980s sought clearer legal guidance from the government on the guidelines they should adopt for handling paramilitary informants; the advice was not given.