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Speaker's Statement

This is not an application, Mr. Speaker, but can you assure us that, during the considerations of that Committee, as well as during the debate that is to surround these issues, which are grave issues and raise concerns on both sides of the House, four principles, not one principle, will be discussed? The first, of course, is the rights and privileges of Members of Parliament, but the second is the principle that, outside those particular rights and privileges, we are all, as citizens of this country, subject to the law as well. Thirdly, whether or not Ministers should have been consulted, the principle of the independent operation of the police should be reasserted, as indeed it was during the investigations into the previous Prime Minister and his staff. [Interruption.] Some of those points would carry a little more weight if they had been raised during that period. Finally, the principle of the political neutrality of the civil service will also be—[Interruption.]