North files kept from RUC, civil service, report says

THE Northern Ireland Office and the RUC have declined to comment on a report that Northern civil servants and the police have been denied access to confidential Whitehall files relating to the North.

The deputy leader of the DUP, Mr Peter Robinson, said if certain files were shielded from Northern civil servants and the RUC, it indicated that the British government was pursuing a secret agenda on the North.

He was reacting to a report in the London Independent which said that after direct rule was introduced in 1972, the British government replaced the classification, "UK Eyes Only" with a further restriction limiting certain files to British eyes only.

The "UK Eyes Only" classification meant the withholding of secret information from allies like the US, but the added refinement applied to Northern civil servants and senior RUC personnel, the newspaper reported. Whitehall files on the North now draw a distinction between "UK eyes B" or "UK Eyes A".

The "UK Eyes A" category contains "information not to be released to any other country and which, with UK government service, is confined to UK-based members of the UK armed forces (serving at home or overseas), home civil service (excluding the NI Civil Service), the diplomatic service, the police forces (excluding the RUC)..."

The "UK Eyes B" category is the same information "except that the information may be imparted also, on a discretionary basis, to members of the NI Civil Service and the RUC..."

The Whitehall document cited in the newspaper also revealed a further restriction within the North. Under the "perimeter" classification, certain officials can be denied information about certain sensitive policy issues. Mr Robinson is to raise the matter of the files restrictions with the British government.

"It indicates a lack of trust or indicates that there is a secret agenda being pursued by the British government which they don't want to alert the indigenous population to through their civil servants," he said.

The NIO and the RUC would make no comment on the issue. A spokeswoman for the British Cabinet Office said: "This policy was introduced quite a long time ago in the light of the prevailing circumstances at the time and is now under review."