The former Labour leader Neil Kinnock once described Eric Hobsbawm as "my favourite Marxist". But now the Labour government is being challenged to explain to parliament why one of Britain's most eminent leftwing historians has been barred from seeing a file kept on him by the Security Service, MI5.

Hobsbawm is 91 and a Companion of Honour, an award given to only 45 Britons for outstanding achievements and whose motto is "In Action Faithful and in Honour Clear". He has been told by MI5 he is not entitled to see the file, for which he applied under the Data Protection Act.

Ministers face the potentially embarrassing task of having to explain to parliament why Hobsbawm, who joined the now defunct British Communist party in 1936 and is widely regarded as one of the world's leading Marxist historians, is worthy of receiving such an exclusive distinction from the Queen but is not trusted to see his own security file.

"To the best of my knowledge I have never been involved in anything of security interest," Hobsbawm said yesterday. "I think the only reason can be that the security people don't want to give away who snitched on me to the authorities."

The Labour life peer Lord Lipsey tabled a question in the House of Lords last week asking ministers to lift the ban on Hobsbawm's access to his files.

Lipsey told the Guardian yesterday there was no good reason for withholding the files from the historian. "Professor Hobsbawm is arguably Britain's most distinguished historian," said Lipsey, who was a special adviser to Anthony Crosland and James Callaghan.

"In my years in government in the 1970s, I found the security services only too eager to collect information about Communists - by then a party which represented no threat to anyone - while they ignored Trotskyist sects who were a potential threat to national security," he added. "Perhaps they do not wish now to allow Professor Hobsbawm to see his file because to do so would expose their ineptitude."

Hobsbawm is the author of 23 history books, including a highly regarded trilogy on the 19th century, as well as a successful 2002 autobiography. He is a fellow of the British Academy and president of Birkbeck College, London.

Hobsbawm applied to the Security Service in June 2007 for access to his personal files under part II, section 7 of the Data Protection Act. He eventually received a reply from MI5 which said: "We have conducted a search of Security Service records and have determined that the service does not possess any personal data to which you are entitled to have access under section 7 of the act. You should not take this response to imply that the Security Service does or does not hold any personal data about you."

Under data protection laws, MI5 and MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, are required to consider requests for access to files but can refuse for several reasons, including national security.

The Freedom of Information Act does not apply to MI5, but the service regularly releases files to the National Archives. These have recently included files on dead Communists or one-time communist sympathisers of Hobsbawm's generation who came under MI5 scrutiny.

Those whose files have been released in this way include the writers George Orwell, WH Auden, Olivia Manning, Arthur Ransome and Sylvia Townsend Warner, as well as the theatre director Joan Littlewood and the folk singer Ewan MacColl. Hobsbawm is confident that there is also a file on him in the MI5 records.

As an undergraduate communist at Cambridge University before the second world war and a member of the Apostles secret society, Hobsbawm came into contact with several important players in the Cambridge spy ring. "I knew Anthony Blunt [the disgraced art historian and spy and so-called 'fourth man']," he said.

"I knew Guy Burgess [the spy who defected to the USSR in 1951]. I knew James Klugmann [the British communist widely supposed to have been involved in recruiting the Cambridge spies]. I knew others. But I had no dealings with their activities. They can't say there isn't a file," Hobsbawm said yesterday.

Security Service files already released to and about other Communists of that era have included references to him and letters by him, the historian said.

"Since I knew many people now dead whose files have been accessed, and some material by me or referring to me is therefore already available, I can see no reason why my own file should be withheld."

Asked why he wanted to see what MI5 had collected on him, Hobsbawm said: "Getting to see the files might help me to correct any errors in my autobiography."