---

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

This debate is about an important matter for the House, as everybody acknowledges, hence the large turnout. That is not because we are precious about our rights and liberties for ourselves, but because we hold them on trust for our constituents, as we have all agreed. Today, the Leader of the House has come—I have to say this to her—arrogantly and disrespectfully to seek to change what you, Mr. Speaker, asked the House to do in the interests of Parliament, to what she wants the House to do in the interests of the Government. That is not the job of the Leader of the House. She could have tabled the motion without realising the implications and how much it deviated from your wish, but that is unlikely. If it was not unlikely when she tabled the motion last Thursday and then re-tabled it, it must be unlikely today. You have indicated, Mr. Speaker, that you have selected all the amendments tabled, including the amendment that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell) has tabled, which is not on today's Order Paper and which is available outside. I wonder whether, perhaps at the end of my speech, you might arrange for that amendment to be passed round, as statements are, so that everybody has it before them.