Lord West in court martial for lost government papers

A former minister for security and counter-terrorism in the Gordon Brown government admitted he faced a court marital 30 years ago for "losing something that was classified".

Lord West joked that meant he now paid particular attention to classification issues as he spoke about how to rank government private papers.

The discussion followed a Daily Politics film on changing rules over government secrets.

The former First Sea Lord explained a few tricks from his working life on getting ministers to read paperwork, and discussed levels of security in the UK, the US and Russia.

And he told Andrew Neil it was "absolutely appalling the Guardian are arrogant enough to decide what can be seen and what should not", and he thought Edward Snowden was a traitor.

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