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Privilege

I am a recently appointed member of the Committee that has referred this matter to the House for referral to the Committee on Standards and Privileges. As the subject of one of the telephone calls referred to by the Chairman of the Committee and—as far as I am aware—the only Member of this House who received such a telephone call, I felt that I should make my view on this matter clear. It is right that I tell the House that I do not believe that Mr. Phillips has acted in contempt. He wanted to discuss whether the proposed report would be fair because he believed—rightly, as it turned out—that parts of the evidence that the Committee received would be redacted in the final report. I do not know how he knew this, and I did not ask him how he knew this. The point of privilege is to ensure that Members of Parliament are free to say what they wish, and I wish to assure the House that there was nothing improper in the call or any attempt to interfere with my ability to say what I wished. Trevor raised two other issues—