Scotland Yard has been found to have twice bugged an MP without his knowledge during confidential talks with a constituent, an official report released today will find.
The report is by Sir Christopher Rose, the surveillance commissioner, and examines allegations that the Labour MP for Tooting, Sadiq Khan, was bugged while meeting Babar Ahmad, a terrorism suspect, in prison.
Rose's report will find that police "monitored" Khan's discussions with Ahmad in Woodhill prison on two occasions, guardian.co.uk has learned. Both times were after had become an MP, and occurred on May 21 2005 and in June 2006.
Senior officers signed off on the operation; some junior police officers were also aware that an MP had been bugged, the report will find.
But a welcome finding for Scotland Yard is that all relevant procedures were followed and the report does not accuse police of wrongdoing or breaking the law.
A former policeman turned whistleblower confirmed earlier this month that he had been asked to carry out the recording.
It raised the prospect that the Wilson doctrine, forbidding the bugging of MPs by the security services, had been broken.
However, the report finds that the Wilson doctrine did not apply to the covert recording of Khan. Rose will call for a further review of the law covering bugging and covert eavesdropping by the authorities.
The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, later confirmed the bugging, but said the inquiry had concluded that the correct procedures had been followed
Police bugged conversations between Khan and Ahmad during which the pair discussed a civil action the inmate was bringing against the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, Sir Ian Blair, for an alleged assault by Scotland Yard officers.
Khan and Ahmad are childhood friends and the MP is now a whip in the Ministry of Justice, and part of his brief includes prisons.
Police sources have claimed that the conversations between Ahmad and those visiting him in jail were bugged between 2004 and 2006, and that the conversations with Khan had not been a specific target of the police.
The bugging, using a device secreted under a table over which the two men talked, was by Thames Valley police but was requested by Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch, which in December 2003 originally made the arrest Ahmad was suing over; he was released after six days without charge.
He then made an official complaint about the alleged assault, claiming he was kicked and punched, and taunted by an officer who said: "Where is your God now?" A medical report showed he had had 50 separate injuries.
In August 2004 he was arrested after the US requested his extradition, alleging he ran a support network for terrorists in Chechnya and Afghanistan.
Announcing the Rose inquiry over a fortnight ago, the justice secretary, Jack Straw, told the Commons that no minister was involved in the decision to bug Khan. He appointed Rose, a former appeal court judge, to inquire and report within two weeks if possible, a deadline he missed by a few days.
Straw told the Commons that any bugging of "phone calls and other public telecommunications" required a warrant signed by the home secretary or foreign secretary. But rules for other surveillance operations were different, requiring only authorisation from a chief police officer.
Rose's report did not examine allegations from human rights lawyers that their legally privileged discussions with clients accused of terrorism offences were bugged.
