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

Absolutely. I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman, and I will make that same point towards the end of my remarks. On the three points that I mentioned and the motion that the Government have put forward—[Interruption.] It sounds as though a lot of hurried reading of the amendment is taking place. Far from looking into the police's seizure of material belonging to my hon. Friend, the Committee proposed by the Government is merely to review the narrow issue of the internal processes of House administration for granting permission for such action. I ask the House to note that the Government's motion makes the immediate assumption that they were right to grant permission for an hon. Member's office to be searched and for material to be seized. What the Government want to discuss is merely the internal processes for granting that permission. The Government propose that the Committee's membership should reflect the composition of the House—in other words, that the Committee should have a Government majority. Can the Leader of the House not understand that, for the Government's own sake, there should be nothing that could suggest that they were trying in any way to rig the Committee's outcomes? The Leader of the House should be in no doubt: if the Committee were set up with a Government majority, it would not have the support of the Opposition. Perhaps most serious of all is the Government's attempt to delay the work of the Committee and effectively kick the issue into the long grass. The Committee is to be allowed to meet only to elect a chairman; then it must immediately adjourn, not just until the police inquiry is over, but until any proceedings—that is, criminal proceedings—are over. That could mean that the Committee would not start its work for many months, and possibly not until autumn next year.