Prime Minister reassures MPs that their telephones are not tapped

Prime Minister reassures MPs that their telephones are not tapped; d)ENGLAND: London: ITN Studio: INTCS Mr Barry Quartermain (who runs a private detective agency) SOF(Lead in Q: Is it easy to bug a telephone?) Very simple indeed providing that you've got the knowhow and equipment. (Q: Can you show us?) This is an ordinary standard telephone (TILT telephone removes outer cover and shows how it's done) it's a case of removing the outer cover, probably removing this - this is one method, shorting these points across here in a certain way - a bug on the coil which is on this side of the telephone over here, or a bug in the dial, but this has to be wired away to the coil or to the other plugs on here. This is a bug in a telephone instrument, but there are other methods of bugging a phone, for instance from the junction box, from behind the junction box, leading away to a microphone from the junction box, transmitting or taping. All monitoring. There's so many ways of doing it, it isn't true. (Q: And you can be sitting miles away as an investigator listening to the conversation?) This is possible certainly. (Q: Aren't you afraid of doing this. Don't you have to break into someone's house to bug a telephone?) Oh Yes. But the laws as they stand are all in our favour. The only law which we can be 'done under' as the saying goes, is the law of trespass, unless we actually interfere with Her Majesty's telephone in which case we might get a frown from the GPO, but more than that I don't think much more could happen.