---

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

I agree with the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) on two things. The way in which this debate has become wholly partisan has done us all a huge disservice. It should not have mattered at all which party the Member of Parliament belonged to. The issue is more important than that. The second thing on which I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman is that the criminal law, as I understand it, should never have gone anywhere near the matter. Without going into the history, we thought that we had banished the criminal law from that area—indeed, I suspect that that is the conclusion that will be arrived at. However, if we say, ““Let's not do the partisan thing; let's accept that we think that something on the face of it wholly disproportionate and wrong happened in this case,”” we also have to go a little further and accept that that does not mean, as some hon. Members in the past few days have thought, that the immunities granted to Members under the name of privilege are larger than they really are. Those immunities are not general; they are very precious, but also very defined. However, there is clearly a general misunderstanding about what they are, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) said. Whatever else comes out of this debate, we ought to try to be a bit clearer about what this thing called privilege is, which would be a good thing. On that point, my constituents have not been wholly persuaded over the years that self-regulation has quite met the case when Members of Parliament have done things that they thought should occasion the attention of the criminal law. When my constituents have seen Members of Parliament doing things that looked to them like improper conduct, fraud and embezzlement of public money, they have wanted something to happen. They have not been entirely persuaded that the word ““privilege”” means that nothing should happen to Members of Parliament, so I want us to be clear about what that privilege is. If we concede, rightly, some things, we should concede the other things, too. There has been much talk of the public interest in this case. However, I had to stop when I heard Mr. Galley's lawyer, who was also Lord Levy's lawyer and with whom I had some dealings at the time, talking about the public interest in respect of Mr. Galley, who had been systematically leaking information from the Home Office for political reasons. As someone who first tried to introduce whistleblower legislation in the House, which my friend the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) took up with the aid of the Government, and as someone who spent a good deal of time when we passed the Freedom of Information Act 2000 trying to ensure that there was a public interest reason for disclosing official information, even in areas where the Government did not want a public interest test to apply, I can confirm that in all those cases we were concerned about getting the balance right. As we are talking about public interest, I have to say that there is no public interest in having routine leaking for political reasons. That offends against two principles, one of which is the normal law of confidence. It also offends against the principle of civil service impartiality. We might even get round to passing a civil service Act this Session, after 150 years. If we do, we will enshrine in law the principle of civil service impartiality, which is what has been offended against in this instance, too. Offending against that principle has consequences that are detrimental to the public interest. That is why I am anxious about some of the things that have been said, because if we go down that route, Ministers, fearful that such leaking will occur, will collect around themselves political trusties, thus excluding the civil service from things in which it should be included. That will be extremely damaging to the public interest. There are a number of principles at work.