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Speaker's Committee on the Search of Offices on the Parliamentary Estate

I shall give way later, when I have developed my argument. The motion before the House establishes a Committee to start its work as soon as the police investigation is concluded. Mr. Speaker, in your statement on Wednesday, you said that you had decided to refer the matter to a Committee that would report for debate by the House as soon as possible. But let me explain to the House why that must mean not before the police have completed their investigation. If the Committee were to be responsible for looking at the process for any search in the immediate future, or at the current protection of data of hon. Members, they could and would need to do that now, but—as I have said—you, Mr. Speaker, have already acted on that. So what remains for the Committee are questions which fall four-square on the same territory as the current police investigation, and the issue for the House is whether the Committee should be conducting an investigation into police action at the same time as the police inquiry of which that action formed a part.