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

I will certainly give way to the hon. and learned Gentleman in a moment. The hon. Gentleman's party and sections of the press seem to be seeking to create a new privilege for Members of Parliament, which has never existed before and ought not to exist now—namely that it is in some way a breach of parliamentary privilege for the police to search the office of a Member of Parliament without a warrant, and that a Member of Parliament's correspondence with his or her constituents has some special privilege which the police have violated. All that is nonsense.