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Yet another good reason for Britain to leave the EU.


The European Parliament has accidentally voted through a draft law that could bankrupt the Ordnance Survey and expose secret sea-mapping data that foreign powers could use to track Royal Navy ships.

British officials are scrambling to unpick the damage wrought by Euro-MPs this week, when they voted through a series of amendments attacked by senior Tories as dangerous and naive.

Fearful that details of Britain's nuclear deterrent could emerge, officials pledged to throw out the amendments when the draft legislation returns to national ministers for final approval in the autumn.

Diplomats said they had strong backing from Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Holland and France.

Euro-MPs thought they were establishing a helpful principle that data collected by national mapping agencies should be made available free on the internet. But the Ordnance Survey has been entirely self-supporting since 1999 - last year collecting £105 million in revenues - earned by licensing its mapping data to government agencies, commercial publishers, and companies including utility firms.

The amendments approved by the European Parliament at its Strasbourg plenary session this week appear to oblige the Ordnance Survey to make much of its data available free of charge - wrecking the business model.

The Government was happy with an earlier version of the law - known as "Inspire", an acronym for "Infrastructure for Spatial Information in Europe" - when it left the Council of Ministers.

When it was realised how Strasbourg was proposing to change the law, Whitehall chiefs sent a team to lobby British Euro-MPs to vote down the planned amendments.

Geoffrey van Orden, the Tories' European spokesman on defence, said he and other British members voted against them but were outnumbered by other nations.

He said: "It would be possible to identify trends in sea areas that are being surveyed and the timescales involved. Analysis of such information could lead to conclusions about naval patrol routes. This has clear implications for the safety of Royal Navy vessels, including the nuclear deterrent force."

A British official said: "Unintentionally, these amendments have potentially negative security and defence implications. The UK among other governments will ensure these issues are resolved before this package becomes law."

A Labour Euro-MP, Mary Honeyball, said: "These proposals will mean less money for information gathering and could undermine the excellent service that has made the Ordnance Survey a nationally loved institution."

Scott Sinclair, the Ordnance Survey press officer, said revenue from licensing mapping data was essential to maintain its high standards, which involve mapping more than 5,000 changes to Britain's landscape every day, via satellite imagery and 350 field surveyors."

www.telegraph.co.uk . . .