Shayler goes to Lords in plea bid

Lawyers for Shayler said he acted for "the greater good" when disclosing security service "iniquities" to the press.

On Thursday, a committee of three Law Lords granted Shayler permission to appeal to the House of Lords against earlier court decisions barring his public interest defence.

This overturned a Court of Appeal decision in September that he had no right to mount a public interest defence to charges of revealing state secrets.

Mr Shayler is facing trial at the Old Bailey accused of breaching the Official Secrets Act by leaking documents to a Sunday newspaper three years ago.

Mr Shayler said: "I am very glad that we are going to have our case heard by the highest court in the land."

He said that the decision would delay his trial.

And he claimed that a government investigation into his revelations that the British security services had allegedly been involved with a plot to assassinate Libyan leader Colonel Gaddafi vindicated him.

He said: "This will also put back the date of my trial once again.

"In the meantime I hope the details of the Gaddafi plot will emerge.

"The government has been sitting on this for a number of months now and know that any disclosure of the investigation will vindicate me at the expense of government ministers.

"I am confident that will be disclosed before any trial."

Human rights

His lawyers have maintained that he would effectively be denied a fair trial and that his human rights would be infringed.

In May this year, Mr Justice Moses decided it was not open to him to assert that disclosure of documents or information without lawful authority "was or may have been necessary in the public interest".

Mr Shayler, 35, who was born in Middlesbrough and now lives in London, has always maintained the disclosures and a series of later revelations were made to expose illegal activities and incompetence in the security services.

He claimed in the Mail on Sunday that agents in the 1970s tapped the telephone of Peter Mandelson, later to serve as Northern Ireland Secretary, and kept a file on Jack Straw, who is now foreign secretary.