House of Commons Hansard Debates for 28 Feb 1992

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those Members guiding the judgment, such as the Leader of the House or the Chairman of the Select Committee, to encourage Members to dispel such critical and false assertions from their minds. Of particular note among others in this respect is the speech of the socialist Member, the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) in Hansard at column 961, in which he pointed out that the House would not be discussing my case if it had not been for the press references to my matrimonial problems and the fact that I had introduced the privacy Bill. I believe that he was quite right.

In addition, the press coverage of the Select Committee inquiry, its report and the judgment by the House, were also quite unprecedented. The right hon. Member for Shropshire, North, (Mr. Biffen), a former Leader of the House, was moved to say in the debate, as reported in Hansard :

"One of the least happy aspects of the whole case has been the trial by tabloids It has been done in a way that has made the Shropshire luminary Judge Jeffreys seem like a lilac social worker."--[ Official Report, 7 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 945.] Even before the House sat in judgment upon me, it had viewed major detrimental headlines which I believe affected judgment.

I now turn to the House debate itself on 7 March 1990, the day upon which this political show trial was staged for the world to see. As I said, it was first preceded by a secret inquiry where the prosecution case was made and established.

Most people considered the Select Committee inquiry to be the court and saw the House merely as a court of appeal. This was a grave error, because, as I have said, there was no appeal at any stage. No, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the House was used by the Government Whips as a public stamp of approval--the show itself.

Mr. Deputy Speaker, you and many other people will, when they realise what happened, be aghast. As I said at the beginning of this necessarily long speech, it is often important to remember that Parliament consists of two Houses, not one. They both have a crucial role to play, and no way more so than in judging any Member of Parliament--be they a peer of the realm or from the Commons House of Parliament.

Searching through "Erskine May" on the subject of trying Members, chapter 25 of the 12th edition and chapter 2 of the 14th edition, you will see that the court of Parliament involves both Houses, not just one. This is most important, because it allows a sense of justice to permeate the more immediate pressures of political expediency. It sounds more like justice.

When Parliament tries one of its Members, it is the Commons House which is seen as the natural inquisitor and prosecutor, and it is this House which conducts the inquiry and prosecutes the case, but it does so in front of the Lords, who act as a jury under the watchful and skilled eye of the man entrusted to run the whole judiciary of our land--the Lord Chancellor of England, who acts as the judge. The Lords are far less susceptible to Government Whips. So why were the late Lord Boothby and I tried against ancient precedent by only the Commons House or the prosecuting body standing alone? Does that sound like justice, Mr. Deputy Speaker?

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The high court is of Parliament, not the high court of the Commons House, and it is before Parliament that right hon. and hon. Members should be judged.

Furthermore, on such matters as contravention of House rules and privileges, surely Mr. Enoch Powell is right when he says that disputes should be tried by the Select Committee on Privileges which, unlike any other Committee, is equipped to take evidence on oath and adjudicate as a tribunal.

Why were the late Lord Boothby and I placed in the hands of a Select Committee which was not only ill-equipped to try hon. Members but itself had a vested interest--the sanctity and upholding of its own rules? Is that justice, Mr. Deputy Speaker?

Why were even the ancient mechanisms for justice within this Parliament so ruthlessly and cleverly short-circuited? Was it because the short circuit was the insider circuit of the Government Whips and, like all insider circuits, more easily fixed? Does that ring alarm bells, Mr. Deputy Speaker?

Even before the show trial started, it was wrongly based, not in the normal law of the land but by the customs of this high and sovereign court of Parliament, against which, and contrary to all major human rights conventions, there is no appeal. I believe that it is precisely because of the awesome power of Parliament and the lack of appeal that these somewhat cumbersome mechanisms were evolved over centuries. They were cumbersome, but they ensured greater justice. They acted against the manipulation of justice by Government. I now turn to the debate itself. In this show trial, I was paraded before the television cameras from this very seat to the world for some five and a half hours. The judge in the debate was the Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East. As I have said, he is a Queen's counsel, so he is well versed in the requirements of natural justice. He is no amateur at persuading a jury or a court. He was also to act as chief prosecutor. However, he protested that he was not the prosecutor, merely the judge. In Hansard, column 966, he said :

"I put the question before the House, not in any sense as a prosecutor--"

At this stage there was a large interruption, which you can see on the video. This interruption was most important, because it indicated the House's feelings that he was indeed acting as chief prosecutor, and it can be clearly seen on the video. The Leader went on : "I should like to have the attention of the House while I try to focus on exactly what that question is. [Official Report, 7 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 966.]

The jury were the Members of the Commons House of Parliament. The jury foremen, were the members of the usual channels, most importantly, the Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East and the Chief Whip, the right hon. Member for Mid-Sussex. The jury were whipped, and voted strictly along party lines, with the only rebellion being among some 50 per cent. of Conservative Members who, disobeying their Whips, voted against my punishment. As an ex-Deputy Chief Whip yourself, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you will know the power of those Whips.

As judge, the Leader of the House briefed the jury of right hon. and hon. Members extremely carefully and cleverly. In his speech, great importance was attached to the fact that I had apologised. The Leader of the House referred to that apology repeatedly--this is in Hansard in

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columns 891, 896, 898, 899, 906, 926, 963 and 964--together with the Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Wealden, and the hon. Member for Workington. Indeed, the hon. Member for Workington even insisted in column 906 that, because I had conceded some errors, the Select Committee was correct in not allowing me to call any witnesses. In their speeches, they all alleged or insinuated that, as I had apologised, I had obviously agreed with the findings of the Select Committee and the procedures--

Mr. Campbell-Savours : May I ask the hon. Gentleman for a yes or no answer to a simple question? Has he, since he was elected to the House in 1979, ever recorded with a taping device a conversation with any Member of the House of Commons without their knowledge and approval? Will he give me a straight answer to that question?

Mr. Browne : Yes, I have, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I realised at the very outset, as I said, of this fixing operation that it was very important that I did so, just to make sure that the record was clear.

The insinuation was that, as I had apologised, I had obviously agreed with the findings of the Select Committee and the procedures upon which those findings were based. This was totally untrue and unsupported. Even in my statement, which I emphasise was not a speech in the debate on 7 March 1990, at the risk of being controversial in such a statement, I said that I was not happy with the investigation procedures. I utterly abhorred the methods used by the Select Committee. However, I had to accept their existence and the referee's whistle.

In the debate on 7 March 1990, I was not granted the right to defend myself. I was permitted only to make a personal statement which, according to the rules of the House, could not be controversial. I was specifically prevented from speaking, making interventions and from asking questions in the debate. Nor was I permitted to challenge any of the wrong or misleading statements of others. I was effectively prevented from making any defence whatsoever.

If the House had not been adversely steered by the Leader of the House and whipped by the Government Chief Whip, there is strong reason to believe that the Government motion for my punishment might have been defeated. The eminent past Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), said :

"My conclusion is that the House should accept that apology. In my experience, the House has always been magnanimous to Ministers or hon. Members who recognise their errors and come to the House to apologise. In this instance I believe that that is the right step".--[ Official Report, 7 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 926.]

The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, as a point of interest, voted against my punishment in the subsequent vote, as did the right hon. Members for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) and for Huntingdon (Mr. Major). As judge, the Leader of the House--I am sorry, I have got it wrong ; he voted against my punishment. The right hon. Members for Finchley and Huntingdon abstained, but they were here in person.

As judge, the Leader of the House never even attempted to show the House either why or how my errors were serious. On the other hand, he steered the jury of Members present strongly away from any detailed review of the Committee's findings. In Hansard, columns 894 and 895, he said :

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"the House will wish to proceed on the basis of the conclusions recorded by the Select Committee. I do not consider it any part of our function today to review those findings in detail."

I find that statement amazing. He also steered the House away from any feelings of allegiance or sympathy with the accused--column 895. He tried to convince the Committee that there should be no real concern over natural justice, due to my apology--columns 963 and 964. Finally, while he obviously knew that the vote would be whipped, he sought to convey to his fellow right hon. and hon. Members in the jury that the decision would be made by the House--column 966. He said :

"For my part, I stand by the terms of the motion, but I am content to leave the matter to the House."

Does that sound, Mr. Deputy Speaker, like an honest judge? In short, the Leader of the House acted as both judge and prosecutor in a clever but totally biased and hostile manner. Of course, he was a member of the jury. Worse still, he held that coveted legal title and privilege of assumed integrity of Queen's counsel. From him, there was no sympathy for the accused, even though he knew that the jury had been fixed--no sympathy, in fact the reverse, for the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East, in column 895, urges the House away from any temptation of sympathy. I quote what he said :

"We must not, for example, be swayed by some feeling that we are all, as it were, members of the same club and owe some kind of primary allegiance to each other"--[ Official Report 7 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 894-967.]

"Of course we must seek to act justly--"

justly, Mr. Deputy Speaker--

"when dealing with our colleages in such matters".

Again, I find that an amazing statement in view of the fact that he knew that this vote would be fixed.

He went on :

"but as we form our judgment in this case I suggest that we should also be mindful of the advice offered to the House, again in 1977, by Lord Strauss- -better known to us in the House as George Strauss, former right hon. Member for Vauxhall and Chairman of the Select Committee which reported on the earlier case. He said :

This is a national affair and the national aspect of it is that there must remain in the mind of the whole public a high esteem for this body, because it is the emblem of democracy in this country'." What emblem of democracy is deliberate injustice?

The Leader went on :

"We can all say, Hear, hear,' to that. The strength and authority of the House of Commons rests upon the respect of the people. If that respect is endangered, much greater damage may follow. That is the fundamental background against which we must remind ourselves why we are so deeply concerned by the topic of today's debate."

What hypocrisy! Here is a right hon. and learned Member, a Queen's counsel, who knows that the charges were very sketchy, who knows that the motion put down was purely political and that if I had accepted his threat to stand down, he would have changed it for a motion completely different, one involving no punishment. Who knows he knew that the House or jury was fixed? What sort of judge, what sort of colleague, was that?

It is somewhat hard for me to reconcile the leading association of any right hon. and learned Gentleman with the totally unjust and most unconstitutional pressures to force me to stand down at the next general election in return for a take note motion and no punishment with the

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words of the Leader of the House. The Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East, as Lord President of the Privy Council and a Queen's counsel--in my view, it is amazing that, as an honourable man, he felt able to say, knowing what he did :

"The House has increasingly, and in my judgment rightly, taken the view that the composition of the House, in personal as well as political terms, is not a matter for the House itself, but for the electorate. A Member's election to, and continued membership of, this House is a matter between him and his constituents."

That was said by the Leader of the House who had just asked me to stand down in return for no punishmenmt, who had bargained my place in this House, who had bargained the rights of my constituents either to elect or not elect me at the next election.

The Leader went on for more, this time for blood, my blood. He said in regard to punishment :

"Finally I come to consider what is probably the most difficult question-- that of penalty or reproach. Should the House proceed to impose a penalty upon my hon. Friend or require him in some way to be reprimanded or rebuked? If so, in what form or at what level should that be set? Some hon. Members, I know, believe--and will, I dare say, argue today--that talk of penalty is, in such circumstances, inappropriate. I do not share that view ; nor do I believe that it accords with precedent."--[ Official Report, 7 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 895-97.]

What does he mean by precedent? The late Lord Boothby was saved in his trial debate by the Prime Minister, Mr. Winston Churchill, and the Government Whips then immediately changed tack and supported him. That was the precedent which my researches have shown. There is no other precedent-- the case of Mr. John Cordle is not appropriate in this respect, because he resigned. There was no vote to be fixed. To what precedent did my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East refer? Was it really the precedent of justice, or the precedent of quite deliberate injustice to another hon. Member of the House? You have seen much in your time, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I will warrant that you have seen nothing like this. I hope that nothing like this ever happens again.

In my show trial, the Leader produced no motion for clemency according to his threat. Unlike the broad spectrum of motions that the Government made available for the last abortion debate, the Government sponsored only one motion in my show trial, and that was guilty as charged, with a call for draconian punishment, a punishment so severe that even a member of the Select Committee itself, the hon. Member for Streatham, was moved to say in the debate :

"I believe the retribution is far greater than the offence." The hon. Member for Bolsover intervened earlier in the debate to say that he considered that even that retribution was mild and virtually nothing. However, the hon. Member for Streatham said that it was greater than the offence.

The importance of this single Government motion should not be underestimated, because it was obvious that very few Members had read the vast Select Committee report. In all innocence, they relied upon the Leader of the House, who was also a Queen's counsel, to lead them towards a just decision. They believed that the Select Committee report was the hearing and that the Government judged in all honesty that I should be punished. This, together with the Whips, was the decisive influence on the voting of most Members. This motion was the party political deal, which was reflected in it.

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On this crucial issue, a past Prime Minister, and ex-Chief Whip, voted against my punishment. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup made some most interesting points. He said :

"In my experience, the House has always been magnanimous to Ministers or hon. Members who recognise their errors and come to the House to apologise. In this instance I believe that that is the right step to take.

I am not trying to rebuke my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, but I think that he has tried to produce a solution which would meet disparate views in the House."

This again, I emphasise, was the party political motion. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup went on :

"This is a personal matter for each one of us to decide and I think that it has been settled because the apology has been made ; the whole House knows it and my hon. Friend's constituents know it."--[ Official Report, 7 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 897-926.]

Without any inside knowledge whatsoever, this ex-Prime Minister and ex- Chief Whip had hit upon one of the key elements of this clandestine injustice. He earned my total respect.

As I have said, as the accused in the debate I was permitted to make only a short statement, which according to custom Mr. Speaker announced would be heard in silence and without interruption. That is in Hansard at column 889. The custom of the House is that such statements should be apologetic and not controversial, and I was carefully briefed as to that. I was specifically forbidden to speak, to ask questions or even to intervene in the debate. I was therefore denied any opportunity whatsoever either to defend myself or to challenge the report or the speeches or interventions of any Member of the House who spoke in the debate.

You can now see, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that from start to finish--throughout the Committee hearings, when I was not allowed to make any verbal presentations of my case but merely to answer questions--I was given no opportunity of a defence case either to the Select Committee or to the House--or, incidentally, to the media. It appeared that the whole case was cut and dried from the beginning. Surely in such a condition, the right of appeal should be considered fundamental.

It is also of interest that the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Finchley, whose Ministers organised and whipped the vote, abstained in person. A fine lawyer and Whip, the hon. Member for Dorset, North (Mr. Baker) also abstained. The ex-Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup and the ex-Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North voted against the motion, as did many free, non-payroll vote Ministers who were barristers, such as my hon. and learned Friends the Members for Burton and for Perth and Kinross and my hon. Friends the Members for Corby (Mr. Powell) and for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton). My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Colchester, North (Sir A. Buck), and the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee voted against my punishment, as did a member of the Select Committee on Members' Interests, the hon. Member for Streatham. That was a great credit to their integrity, and I thank them now formally.

I wish to place it on the record that I attach no blame whatever to the vast bulk of hon. Members who voted for my draconian punishment. I believe that they voted in all

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innocence of the injustice of the Select Committee and of the deliberate perversion of justice by some of the most senior officers of state, including a Queen's counsel.

The judicial vote should have been a free vote of the House, but in effect it was along party lines. At 10pm on 7 March 1990, the House voted, but it did so along strictly party lines. The ultimate injustice was that the decision of the House on a judicial vote was done by means of a whipped vote.

Mr. Fraser : It was a free vote on this side of the House. Hon. Members voted in different ways. There were different motions from different Opposition Members. Any idea of it being a party political issue on this side of the House is utter rubbish.

Mr. Browne : I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, because he would know much more about that than me. Nevertheless, it is clear from the voting record on the first crucial vote, on the motion that I was guilty and to be punished--I am not talking about the subsequent votes--that, with one exception, the members of his party voted one way.

Two facts stand out clearly even from a cursory observation of the voting list. The first is that the House divided along party lines, perhaps not whipped in the Labour party's case. The same political bias that had been so consistently and heavily denied by the Chairman of the Select Committee in column 937 of Hansard was made clear for all to see. Secondly, Conservative Members were subjected to a payroll Whip. What is not clear, but nevertheless true, is that they were subjected to an informal Whip.

Again it is interesting to note what the Chairman of the Select Committee said in an intervention in the speech of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton. He said :

"I must ask my hon. and learned Friend to bear in mind that there is no question of our punishing or convicting my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Mr. Browne). We did no such thing and it is for the House to decide."

The hon. Member for Wealden knew that the Whips were armed. He continued :

"My hon. Friend the Member for Winchester had every chance to produce any documents he darned well wanted to."

What about the stolen documents that were not returned? They were not mentioned. He continued :

"My hon. and learned Friend will spoil the debate".

I do not know what he meant by that, but as he is present he may tell us in his speech. He continued :

"I can speak with my hand on my heart when I say that the hon. Members for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer), whose reputations he tried to traduce a moment ago, and who were honourable members of that Committee, were totally bipartisan. No sign of political passion crept into the Committee to prejudice the case against my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester."--[ Official Report, 7 March 1990 ; Vol. 168, c. 937.] I should like to have conducted the House through further parts of that debate, but--

Mr. Campbell-Savours : Could the hon. Gentleman answer me another question, again : yes or no? He referred previously to divorce proceedings. Has he ever changed, modified or removed from a transcript of any legal proceedings in this country any words? Has he ever used such a transcript in any meeting anywhere in the United Kingdom?

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Mr. Browne : Not that I can think of. There was however a document that was produced in my constituency on the advice of a lawyer who said that I should answer questions that had been raised in my constituency executive by not going outside the judgment of the learned High Court judge in my case, Mr. Justice Wood. So I prepared a document and took from his published judgment those items that affected just the answers to the questions that had been raised at my executive.

Mr. Campbell-Savours : Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he quoted selectively? Is he saying that he admits in the House of Commons to quoting selectively from a legal document?

Mr. Browne : No, that is not quite what I am saying at all, and the hon. Gentleman does himself no credit whatever in trying to put those words into my mouth. Various questions were raised by my executive that pertained to my divorce. I merely quoted the judge in order to answer those questions that were raised at my executive meeting. So there was selection, just as there is when any Member quotes from Hansard.

We cannot produce the whole of Hansard for every quote. It is common practice to quote. It is a matter of getting the quotes correct, which I made every attempt to do. There was one typographical error where a secretary missed out a bracket that was not all that vital. I was also criticised severely for putting round brackets instead of square brackets. My typewriter did not have square brackets, and in those days I was unaware of the huge legal significance of the difference between a round bracket and a square bracket. Otherwise, I have nothing further to say in answer to that question.

Immediately after my sentencing by the House, it was asked to vote for a motion clarifying the vague rule on foreign payments, under which I had been sentenced. The goalposts were immediately moved. The result of the vote of the House was portrayed in the media internationally as if there were something very serious and I had got a hugely serious punishment, almost like a criminal. As the hon. Member for Bolsover said, in this House a 20-day suspension is not considered vastly serious, but in the outside world it is. The problem is that judgments by the House are seen by the outside world very differently from the way in which they may be considered by hon. Members.

On the question of precedents, I should like to say that the inquiry report and my subsequent punishment by the House, with the exception of the case of the late Lord Boothby, were virtually unprecedented. The perversion of justice it involved in fixing the House vote was absolutely unprecedented. Following my punishment, all Opposition barracking over the "party of sleaze" stopped immediately. Cases were brought against other hon. Members, but, although they were found guilty, none of them was brought to the House. Most interestingly, a case was brought against a member of the Select Committee itself--the hon. Member for Workington--and it showed the hon. Member to have deliberately and repeatedly broken a specific rule regarding the declaration of Members' interests. Surprisingly, his case was not referred to the House. Obviously, the precedent set by my punishment was not to be followed.

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Mr. Campbell-Savours : Is the hon. Gentleman aware what the report to which he refers says? I do not receive and have never received moneys from the Confederation of Health Service Employees, the trade union, either for expenses or directly to me. That is accepted by the Committee. Is the hon. Gentleman aware what the report said in its conclusion? It said :

"We recognise that Mr. Campbell-Savours has never sought to conceal his sponsorship by COHSE, and that this sponsorship has always been properly registered in the Register of Members' Interests. As we have noted above, it is by no means clear that the House necessarily expects trade union sponsorship, when there is no direct payment whatever to the Member, to be declared."

That is the case in my case. How can the hon. Gentleman link that case, in which no payments were made to me, to his own case, in which he received $88,000 from the authorities in Saudi Arabia?

Mr. Browne : I have the report on the hon. Member's case in my hand. I do not have time to quote it all. However, the last lines of the recommendation of the Select Committee are :

"Since it is a specific rule that sponsorship should be registered, we believe that Mr. Campbell-Savours is technically in breach of the rule on declaration."

The Committee recommended no action. The point is that it was a technicality. Sure. My contention is that so was my case, as I said before. The payment--

Mr. Campbell-Savours : A payment of $88,000.

Mr. Browne : Right from the very beginning, when he was allegedly out for my blood before the Committee even sat, the hon. Gentleman has been quoting vast figures. These monetary amounts are not required by the Select Committee on Members' Interests in the Register. I think that they should be. I think that it should be total--either no declarations or total declarations. However, because we steer this rather grey area in the middle where, as I said at the beginning of my speech, there is this farcical situation of a financial declaration with no monetary allowance needing to be disclosed, we now have this situation.

It was said that the fee was for one little bit of work, and there has been some downgrading and attempts to make it look like a huge fee for almost nothing--which was totally false. The fact is that the hon. Member for Workington keeps mentioning this figure. Why? Because it creates more jealousy? People say, "How does this man get a huge fee for almost nothing?" Even hon. Members have said to me, "My gosh, that seems an awful lot of money, John." Jealousy was aroused among the jury sitting in this House by statements such as the hon. Gentleman has made.

As I said earlier in my speech, the technicality was that I asked the Registrar whether that payment should be registered, and he said no, because it was a payment to my company which had already been declared. It was because of the manipulation--the bending--of this rule that the Select Committee said, "Oh, but as you own 50 per cent. of the stock, you should have declared it." What did the Committee do immediately I had been sentenced? It changed the rule.

It is now clear for Members' interests that, if one owns over a certain percentage of stock in a company, all payments to those companies, declared or not, have to be declared. Now, I understand it is very clear. It was a technicality. I am not trying to insult the hon. Member for Workington : all I am saying is that he was on a technical

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charge as well. Why was the precedent of my case not followed? Why was a member of the Select Committee not brought back to the House, as happened in my case?

Some people have asked me why I have waited until now to raise the matter. The truth is that I have been trying to raise the matter for well over a year. My hope in explaining the case, which involved not just a great injustice but, much more importantly, a deliberate injustice, was that some right hon. Member would not only see the outrage, but be prepared to do something about it or even to speak out. I therefore tried to appeal.

I soon discovered that there was no right of appeal anywhere. This was in direct contravention of article 14 of the United Nations convention on civil and political rights of 1966. One of the most fundamental of all human rights, as I have said, is the right of natural justice to appeal. I have tried for over a year to appeal this on the grounds that I was systematically denied almost every basic human right to natural justice and that the procedures of the Select Committee itself stood in the way of justice. I do not blame the members of the Select Committee. These are the procedures. My aim with the Leader of the House today is, by showing what happened in my case, to get the procedures changed.

If an hon. Member is arraigned before a Select Committee, particularly on a matter of such seriousness affecting his whole career--so that he is virtually sitting in a court on an issue affecting his life--evidence should be taken on oath and the Committee should be equipped to take evidence on oath and to adjudicate. Those are the procedures which I am trying to get at. I am not trying to criticise the members of the Select Committee. They do not decide whether or not certain things can be done. They are part of the system. So I believe that great matters need to be corrected. To give an example, the Select Committee denied me some of the rights that are given to all murderers and even to thieves, such as the right to call witnesses in one's defence and to have them heard and cross- examined. I do not know whether it was the wish of the Chairman of the Select Committee or whether it is the system, but the fact remains that those rights were not granted, even though they are essential to proving one's case. The defendant should be able to call witnesses and have them cross-examined by himself and by the Committee--

Mr. Deputy Speaker : Order. I have heard the hon. Member refer to those particular points on many occasions. He is now getting very close to tedious repetition.

Mr. Browne : I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was trying to drum them home. I will get on.

I have also tried to appeal against the findings of the House on 7 March 1990 on the grounds that the decision was made as a result of a quite deliberate perversion of justice by some of the most senior and powerful officers of the Government. I tried in vain. I realise that there is no established appeal mechanism in the House of Commons, but the Government certainly have the power to bring the matter back before the House.

Surely any Government who are a signatory to the United Nations convention and are made up of men of honour would move decisively to expose wrong and to punish any deliberate abuse of justice in the treatment of an hon. Member. As I said, I believe that the House was

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