The arrest in March of a parliamentary researcher and a second man accused of spying for China is a last gasp of the 1911 Official Secrets Act, an archaic and poorly drafted piece of legislation that has nevertheless been the cornerstone of the criminalisation of espionage for more than a century.
Drafted at a time of rising public concern about a possible German seaborne invasion of Britain, section one of the 1911 act refers to sketches, plans and “any secret official code word” and talks only of enemies – the language of war – to whom potentially useful information should not be passed.
