The Independent on Sunday reports today that:

Tony Blair is preparing to scrap a 40-year ban on tapping MPs' telephones...Until now, successive administrations have pledged that there should be no tapping "whatsoever" of MPs' phones, and that they would be told if it was necessary to breach the ban.

But that convention - known as the Wilson Doctrine, after Harold Wilson, the prime minister who introduced it - is to be abandoned in an expansion of MI5 powers following the London bombings.

Years ago - in the early 1990s I used to work in the Commons for Peter Shore, about as patriotic an MP as has ever been born, a robust anti-communist and an upright defender against of Western values and freedom. It would be difficult to imagine a man whose phones would be less in need of tapping - nor less of a 'conspiracy theorist' - than Peter.

One afternoon, I was having a phone conversation with a friend about what film we would see that night. We ended our conversation and said goodbye. As I was putting the phome down I remembered something I wanted to tell my friend and put it it back to my ear, just in case he had not yet hung up.

I was, to say the least, surprised by what I heard - a recording being played back of the conversation I had just had.

When Peter came back into the office, I mentioned what had just happened. He looked at me as if I was being rather naive. "They record everything here", he said "You should always work on the principle that you should never a convesation on the phone that you don't want overheard."

Maybe there is an altogether different explanation, and the playback of my conversation was nothing to do with phone tapping. But in the 15 years since it happened to me, I've yet to have anyone come up with one.