Offences against Children

(asked on 4th November 2014) - View Source

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, which person in her Department issued the D-notice imposed on the journalist Don Hale in 1984 in relation to a list of hon. Members allegedly named as being involved in child abuse.


Answered by
Baroness Featherstone Portrait
Baroness Featherstone
This question was answered on 17th November 2014

No such notice was ever issued. A ‘D Notice’ - or Defence Advisory (DA) Notice) can only be authorised by the Secretary of the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee (DPBAC).

The Defence Advisory (DA) Notice System is a purely voluntary compact between Government and the national media and is designed solely to avoid the inadvertent public disclosure of core national security information. It offers advice only, and that advice can be accepted or rejected, in whole or in part by the media, and is not supported by any form of sanction, legal or otherwise. No ‘D Notice’ advice aimed at shielding senior figures involved in criminal activities was, or could ever have been issued, let alone complied with.

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