Official Secrets Act 1989
Public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Official Secrets Act 1989 (c. 6) is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that repeals and replaces section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911, thereby removing the public interest defence created by that section.
Lord Bingham of Cornhill said that the white paper "Reform of Section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911" (Cm. 408) (June 1988) was the immediate precursor of this act and that its recommendations bear directly on the interpretation of this act.
General information
Capacity
The offences under sections 1(3), 2(1), 3(1) and 4(1) can be committed only by persons who are or have been, and the offence under section 8(1) can be committed only by persons who are, Crown servants or government contractors.
The offences under the act, that can be committed only by persons who, as the case may be, are or have been Crown servants, government contractors, or members of the security and intelligence services, can be committed only where the information, document or other article in question is or has been in the possession of the person in question by virtue of their position as such.
The offences under sections 5(2), 5(6), 6(2), 8(4), 8(5) and 8(6) can be committed by any person.
Requirement that the disclosure be "damaging"
Sections 1(3), 2(1), 3(1), 5(3)(a) and 6(2) provide that the disclosures to which they apply are not an offence unless they are "damaging". Section 4(2) is similar.
Extraterritorial jurisdiction
Offences under any provision of the act, other than sections 8(1) or 8(4) or 8(5), committed by any person in the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man, the Channel Islands, or in any colony, or committed by British citizens or Crown servants in any place, are cognisable as offences under the law of the United Kingdom.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Official Secrets Act 1989” as public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as public General Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 22, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7079572. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1989, 1911 and 1988.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Official Secrets Act 1989”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Official Secrets Act 1989 primary sources, Official Secrets Act 1989 archive and Official research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Official Secrets Act 1989”?
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- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Official Secrets Act 1989” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.