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

I know that we are fast running out of time and I wish to cover just two main points. I agree with a number of right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken. I thought that the right hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Frank Dobson) made a very thoughtful speech and I also agreed with the right hon. and learned Member for North-East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), whose amendment I hope to support in the Lobby tonight. When it comes to the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), I usually agree with him without having to think about it, but there is one area where I would disagree with him: if he is going to take this evidence in on rice paper, he will need to be more careful about which type of equipment the police will take in with them as they enter the House! I have to warn him there. [Laughter.] Let me focus quickly on two main points. First, it is absurd for the Government to insist on two points in their motion: that we have to give way to the process of what the police are doing, which means the Committee cannot carry out its inquiry; and that there must be Government superiority on the Committee. This is a House of Commons matter; it is not for the Executive. If we watch the guides going past that rather contrived picture in the Lobby with Speaker Lenthall on his knees in front of King Charles, we all pride ourselves on the idea that that was the moment when we broke from the Executive, who lost control of this place. The truth is that, in many senses, tonight has proved that the King actually won, because here we have the Executive deliberately misreading what Mr. Speaker wanted and tabling a motion that, as I warned the other day, is a debasement of Mr. Speaker's own idea of what should happen. We do not need any superiority of the Executive on that Committee; what we need is seven or whatever number of the so-called wise men and women to sit on that Committee and deliberate. They do not need any push from the Government about which direction they should move in. My second main point is about timing. As I said in an intervention, we are having a police inquiry into what went on and what was wrong, but why are the police allowed to carry on when they still might proceed against my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green)? The police can decide what was right and wrong, but this House cannot. Is there one rule for the police and another for us? We have said that we are not above the law, but neither are the police. The absurdity is in the idea that we in the House have no courage, yet the Government have no courage that this place can behave sensibly or that the men and women on this Committee can take a decision about the effects of a prosecution or a lack of one for my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford.