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

After a chance conversation last week with a respected Conservative Member of the House, I have followed this issue with special care. After studying what I believe to be all relevant material, I have concluded that both the motion and the controversy are unnecessary, and that the motion is a waste of the House's time. The situation is as follows. A civil servant, Christopher Galley, has been arrested for persistent leaking of information from the Home Office. He has admitted that on television, and says that what he did was the right thing to do. The shadow Home Secretary has accepted what Mr. Galley says, and says that he should be dismissed from his post. But part of what Mr. Galley did was to communicate information to the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), and it was on that basis that the police arrested him. As far as I can tell, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs. May) said—I quote her words this afternoon—that, within that situation, the hon. Member for Ashford was ““doing his job””. Therefore, many of the allegations that have been made about the situation seem to have been accepted on all sides. It is a question of what is done as a result of them.