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Christmas Adjournment

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that. We will all follow his inquiry very closely. On the involvement of senior police officers in the Met, I hope I am not being too cruel, but what keep coming back to me are the words of Alan Clark when he was referring to the generals in the first world war and the wonderful soldiers in the trenches, because our ordinary police officers risking their lives and well-being on the streets of London daily are ““lions led by donkeys””. I very much hope that there will be major changes at the top of the Metropolitan police force. We must address the issue of how the House authorities dealt with this matter. It is clearly highly unsatisfactory that the police were allowed to raid the office of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford without a warrant and that insufficient questions were asked. I passionately believe that not only must Members of Parliament not be above the law, but we must be treated exactly the same as all our constituents. However, it is important that, in such cases, the House authorities—the Speaker, the Serjeant at Arms, the Clerk and others—satisfy themselves first that there is a case to answer and that any action is not in breach of the long-standing tradition that protects our constituents' confidentiality in this House. Clearly, that did not happen in this case and an investigation needs to take place. In his original statement on the day of the state opening, the Speaker rightly agreed with me and tried to set in motion a process to enable such an inquiry. It is shameful and deeply regrettable—I do not believe this was anything to do with the Leader of the House or her deputy, because I think they were leant on by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary—that the motion that was tabled did not set up a Committee in the way that the Speaker wanted and the rest of the House expected. We all know that, these days, the Standards and Privileges Committee does not have a Government majority, and nor should it. It is equally plain that although a Standing Committee of the House or, for that matter, a departmental Select Committee should reflect the balance of the parties in the House, that should not be the case on something as important as this. That is why when it came to vote for the Committee as set out in the motion, those on the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and nationalist Benches rightly voted against, why so many Labour Members either joined us or abstained and why the majority was so minute. The second reason for the minute majority was simply that the Committee was not going to meet, except to adjourn immediately after it had appointed a Chair, and that was quite wrong. The Committee should be carrying out this investigation. Where do we go from here? Clearly, the Speaker's Committee is dead and buried, unless the Government change their mind—I am not holding my breath, and I do not expect the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) to say in his winding-up speech that they are going to change their mind. So the only way forward is to refer this matter to the Standards and Privileges Committee. I hope that that will happen as soon as the House returns, so that the Committee can look into all these matters. The third aspect to the arrest of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford is, of course, ministerial involvement and responsibility. It is abundantly clear that what was leaked to him embarrassed the Government but was not a matter of national security. It is deeply regrettable that the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, noisily abetted by the Under-Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington, among others, led a slur, a smear and what, outside this place, would clearly be a potential slander against my hon. Friend, suggesting that something much more serious was involved and that a major security breach had taken place. If that were the case, is it not a little odd that the so-called whistleblower was arrested on one day, but it was not until 13 days later that police actually turned up here and raided my hon. Friend's office, and arrested him in his constituency? I notice that it has now all been quietly dropped and forgotten, but what a minority of Ministers did was nasty, unpleasant and wrong and I am sure that it embarrassed Labour Members as much as it annoyed us. On the subject of the whistleblower, let me make it clear that except in the most exceptional circumstances public servants should not leak information to politicians, journalists or anyone else. When it is not a matter of national security, a full internal inquiry should be carried out in the Department and, in a serious case, if the culprit is found, he or she should be dismissed without any compensation. That should have happened in this case. For some reason, it did not, and we ended up with this heavy-handed police action. I am confused about the Home Secretary's role in this matter. We have taken advice from the last two Conservative Home Secretaries, my right hon. and learned Friends the Members for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) and for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), who are very distinguished. They both said unequivocally that if they had been Home Secretary, they would have expected to be told if a Member of Parliament was to be arrested and his office raided. If by any chance they were not told, they said that heads would have rolled. They have been somewhat backed up by the right hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (John Reid), who intervened on the Home Secretary a couple of weeks ago to say that he would not have been so placid if he had been told after the event. Well, all of us who know the right hon. Gentleman know that he is many things, but placid is not one of them. We can just imagine what would have happened if he had been Home Secretary and had learnt about what happened only afterwards. The Home Secretary's role is unfortunate. We have to accept, because she is a right hon. Member, that she has told the truth and she did not know. That puts her in a difficult position, because the question is why she did not know. Furthermore, why did she not do anything about it afterwards? Strangely, it appears that the Cabinet Office knew rather more, and the Minister for the Cabinet Office was rather more involved. That raises many interesting questions for the inquiry and, possibly, the Select Committee. Indeed, there will be more than one Select Committee looking at this matter, because the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) has suggested that the Public Administration Committee will also inquire into the events. My second point again involves the Home Secretary who, of all Ministers, has had the worst war in the last few months. She is clearly in great difficulties. Here I link in with the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mr. Hall), who was right to apologise. If Gwyneth Dunwoody had been sitting in her customary seat in the corner, she would have enjoyed and appreciated the apology. Why could not the Home Secretary bring herself to apologise, when being cross-examined earlier this week about why Sir Michael Scholar had been so critical of the release of statistics on knife crime that were incomplete and immature? If she had done so, she would have gained huge respect on both sides of the House, because we all make mistakes. I have always found that if people apologise, they are forgiven by every reasonable person. It is an immensely serious issue. Sir Michael Scholar was appointed by the Government—it was a good appointment and it is right that we should have such a position—as the watchdog on statistics. I am sure that I do not need to remind you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that he is also an ex-Permanent Secretary at the Home Office. He knows what is going on from back to front. We saw that gentle, rather academic, scholarly face on our television news absolutely furious at how the statistics had been manipulated. We cannot help but feel that again it was not the placid Home Secretary's direct fault, and so we go back to Downing street and the Cabinet Office. One can imagine some bright young thing who hopes one day to sit on the Government or Opposition Benches thinking, ““Now, the Prime Minister has had this knife crime summit in his diary for a few days. Wouldn't it be good to give him some really good statistics to show that it has all been sorted out?”” That was wrong. It should not have happened and people such as the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary should apologise and ensure that that bright young thing spends a little more time learning the way the world works. What happened was deeply regrettable. Thirdly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for West Derbyshire (Mr. McLoughlin) rightly pointed out, it is a disgrace that we have not had a statement on Equitable Life. I made that point to the Chancellor earlier today, so I shall not dwell on it. It is desperately important that we continue to have more debates on the economy, particularly when the Minister for the Olympics has made it clear—I think that she is right—that this is the worst recession we have ever known. We need to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer just why it is not the Government's fault. If the markets have decided, due to the reduction of the pound against the dollar and the euro, they have clearly got it right. I end by wishing you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and all staff here a very happy Christmas—