Lots in the media (see eg here) about the Prosecution decision not to proceed with charges against FCO official Derek Pasquill on leak charges.  

Disclaimer:  I do not know Derek Pasquill. I do not not know what prompted his leaking of the papers concerned, nor how he did it and what he did thereafter at work. Nor do I know about the chain of events which led to the decision to prosecute Derek Pasquill then abruptly to drop the case.

Update, 13 January: To judge by further media reports all this does not look like a successful achievement of an FCO Strategic Priority.

Nevertheless, as someone who once, back in the mists of time, was referred to the DPP on a possible Official Secrets Act charge over an FCO document I shared with a journalist, and who much later endured some significant pain when a personal email I sent to London was leaked by another colleague in a spectacular fashion, I have given some close thought over the years to the morality of leaks.

There are many different sorts of leaks and leakers and complex motivations in play. The Pasquill case looks like a ‘hard core’ leak, namely an attempt by a civil servant to push internally Confidential and sensitive official documents out into the public sphere with a view to influencing Policy, knowing that if he asked permission to do this it would be refused. An echo of the Clive Ponting case back in 1985, although no doubt distinctions between these two cases could and should be drawn.

Naturally the media noisily proclaim such episodes as ‘spectacular victories for press freedom‘ with the leaker propelled to instant stardom if not beatification.

I wonder. Leakers in this category appear to want to have their cake and eat it: to stay on the team while disregarding the team rules they themselves accepted.

These days civil servants are not exactly Slaves to Policy. The Civil Service in fact has some good procedures for giving an official unhappy with a policy the chance to get his/her concerns heard at a high level. If those procedures were not being respected the official could tip off someone to ask some penetrating FOI questions. Or such an official could decide that enough was enough and resign in a high-profile way: see eg the honourable and not exactly unimpactful resignation of senior FCO Legal Adviser Elizabeth Wilmshurst over the legal justification for the Iraq intervention.

Or some sort of synthesis could be imagined: the leaker posts off the pile of documents to his/her favourite journalist and then walks into the office of a senior FCO colleague with a copy of the documents just despatched, describes fully and frankly what he/she has done and explains why, and requests that the necessary disciplinary or other procedures be launched forthwith. 

So there are lots of different ways of dealing with the sharp pangs of professional conscience (which we all have had) in ways which complement good standards of public life and ethics. But let’s at least all agree on the simple principle that to sneak out some papers but stay in place on the public payroll hoping that no-one finds you out is scarcely principled. In fact, it is obnoxious. If not creepy.

In this case, The Observer described Pasquill as "an honourable civil servant who stood up for the best liberal values of his country".

A weighty part of the liberal values of this country is a respect for process and professional trust. Many thousands of civil servants honestly accept that discipline every day, even when they have some doubts about what is proposed, and Ministers (and the public) rely on them to do just that. Their self-restraint is what makes practical democracy tick.

So come, o media outlets, tell us. Are they all any less honourable?