The Official Secrets Act 1939 (2 & 3 Geo. 6 c. 121) is an Act of the

Parliament of the United Kingdom The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative suprema ...

. It substitutes a new section 6 into the

Official Secrets Act 1920 The Official Secrets Act 1920 (10 & 11 Geo 5 c 75) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Section 1 – Unauthorised use of uniforms; falsification of reports, forgery, personation, and false documents Sections 1(1) and (2) provide ...

, which limits the scope of that offence to offences under section 1 of the

Official Secrets Act 1911 The Official Secrets Act 1911 (1 & 2 Geo 5 c 28) is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It replaces the Official Secrets Act 1889. The Act was introduced in response to public alarm at reports of wide-scale espionage, some of them f ...

(it had formerly applied to all offences under the

and to all offences under that Act). It was enacted in reaction to the " Sandys affair" in 1938, when

Duncan Sandys Edwin Duncan Sandys, Baron Duncan-Sandys (; 24 January 1908 – 26 November 1987), was a British politician and minister in successive Conservative governments in the 1950s and 1960s. He was a son-in-law of Winston Churchill and played a key r ...

MP was threatened with prosecution under section 6 in an attempt to get him to disclose who had given him information about the inadequate state of the air defences around London.

References

* Halsbury's Statutes, United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1939 Classified information in the United Kingdom {{UK-statute-stub

See also

References