MP arrest: The 'mole' goes to ground as Tories sweep for wiretaps
By
Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:29 AM on 01st December 2008
Shadow Immigration minister Damian Green arriving at his home in West London
The civil servant accused of leaking sensitive Government information was in hiding last night as friends said they were baffled by his alleged role.
Christopher Galley, 26, who once ran for election as a Conservative councillor, was thought of as 'respected and clever' and a potential high-flyer at the Home Office, where he was involved in planning ministers' diaries.
The son of a college lecturer, he grew up in Hetton-le-Hole, County Durham.
He was always regarded as ambitious and at Hetton's comprehensive school, he was one of the brightest in his year.
A friend said: 'Chris was a very clever guy but also quiet. He was in the top five at the school, and I'm absolutely astonished that he has been caught up in all this.
You wouldn't think it's the sort of thing he would do at all.'
Mr Galley played the euphonium in the school's brass band.
An entry on the Friends Reunited website apparently reveals his interests as: 'Centre-Right politics, the stock market, political satire, the miners' strike.'
At 22, he stood as the sole Conservative candidate for the safe Labour ward of Hetton, during the Sunderland council elections. He polled 676 votes and came fifth.
Conservative officials say they barely remember him and have not seen him for years. His Labour rival Florence Anderson said: 'He didn't stand out.'
Mr Galley moved to London and earns about £25,000 a year in the Home Office, as an assistant private secretary.
Insiders said he was relatively junior, but moved around different departments to provide extra help wherever it was needed. This meant he had access to a wide range of databases, they added.
Jane Knight described her neighbour Christopher Galley as quiet
He was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in a public office after Damian Green revealed Home Office figures on illegal immigrants, but has been released on police bail.
Yesterday at his parents' £240,000 home in the village of East Rainton, his 56-year-old father Alan, 56, who works at Durham New College, said: 'We do not want to talk about this.'
Mr Galley is believed to be staying with a relative in the Midlands.
At his flat in Feltham, West London, a neighbour said he was 'quiet and unassuming' but played rock music loudly - and sang along.
Another neighbour. Jane Knight, 36, an accountant, described him as quiet.
She said he did not have any close friends who visited regularly or a girlfriend.
'Whenever I have seen him he has been alone, with his cap pulled down. He leaves the house at 7am, and doesn't get home until 7pm.'
Describing the morning when police raided his flat, she said: 'They rang my doorbell at 5am.
'They were all in plain clothes. There were about ten officers in total. I saw them taking blue boxes into the flat. It all seemed very well organised and very subtle.'
'Wiretaps'
Conservative MP: Ben Wallace wrote to the Prime Minister
Meanwhile Gordon Brown faces calls for a blanket ban on bugging MPs after it emerged that David Cameron ordered Conservative offices to be swept for wiretaps.
The Home Office denied that Damian Green's personal communications were tapped, amid angry claims of a culture of dirty tricks at Westminster.
Jacqui Smith refused to comment on claims that police investigating the Tory MP may have eavesdropped on him before arresting him last Thursday.
But her officials said privately that there had been no authorised interception of his emails or telephone calls as part of Scotland Yard's investigations.
Suspicions were fuelled when it emerged that the Conservative Party routinely has its premises swept for listening devices.
Tory sources said Mr Green's Commons office was one of several checked periodically for evidence of illicit surveillance. None was found, they said.
However senior figures in the party said the counter-espionage measures, using private contractors, had been used since before the last election to counter 'political espionage'. They claimed that Labour routinely used concealed recording devices to collect damaging information on members of the Shadow Cabinet.
MPs expressed fears that the Scotland Yard investigation might have breached the Wilson doctrine, put in place by the Labour Prime Minister in the 1960s, which stipulates that the police and intelligence services are barred from bugging MPs.
This is because it would breach the Parliamentary privilege which protects the confidentiality of an MP's communications with constituents. Tory MP Ben Wallace wrote yesterday to the Prime Minister to demand a review of the Wilson doctrine because it does not cover the technological developments since it was put in place.
He said it covered the interception of post and telephone calls, but was not worded to cover modern sophisticated techniques using digital technology and microwaves.
'The Wilson doctrine is 40 years out of date, and the executive have clearly exploited the advances in surveillance techniques to render it largely useless.
'If the Government cares about protecting democracy it will review it and reform it.'
Mr Green has told friends he believed his Commons phones and emails could have been under surveillance, although Conservative sources confirmed that their sweeps had not turned up any evidence.
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