| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate): Does the Home Secretary really think that it is defensible, when considering respect for Parliament, to make a distinction between what he describes as ordinary, run-of-the-mill statements, and reports of judicial inquiries under the Police Act? Are we really to expect the Government to come to Parliament first only once in every 18 years?
Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman is deliberately misinterpreting what I said, and he knows it. Parliamentary documents should, of course, be made available first to Parliament: I seek to do that and have always done so. If that is his proposition, I agree with him. However, I disagree with the proposition that there is no distinction between a White Paper and the report of a full judicial inquiry. The hon. Gentleman is wrong on that point. I repeat that it would be disproportionate and out of the question for Ministers to seek to use injunctive powers to prevent the prior publication of a White Paper, and it would be unlikely that any judge would grant such an application. The judge must consider whether publication is contrary to the public interest and, in this case, it was the judge--not me--who made that judgment, given all the circumstances surrounding the publication of this report by a judicial inquiry.
Mr. Keith Vaz (Leicester, East): My right hon. Friend was right to act in the way he did at the weekend, and he was right to want to come to Parliament first. I thank him for allowing the Lawrence family to see the report today, which was the correct and compassionate thing to do. Does he share my disgust at the attitude of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler) in seeking to play politics with the issues of race and racism, when he and the Conservative party did nothing to deal with those issues when they were in government?
Mr. Straw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his support for the action that I took. I would take such action again, if faced with similar circumstances. However, I do not share my hon. Friend's view of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield, because his record in Parliament is one of opposition to racism. It remains the fact that it was left to me to set up the inquiry into the circumstances of the death of Stephen Lawrence, because the request was
refused by my predecessor. However, that was not the responsibility of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield.
Mr. Edward Garnier (Harborough): Whether the Home Secretary likes it or not, I fear that he has been guilty of political ineptitude this weekend. Does he agree that he made a false point in defending his application for the injunction? He said that one of the reasons he applied for it was to protect Sir William Macpherson of Cluny because he might be liable for any unauthorised publication. However, that retired judge would not be liable for any unauthorised publication of the report because he was not responsible for the leaking of the document. The leaking of the document emanated from the Government.
Mr. Straw: The hon. and learned Gentleman makes a false assumption at the end of his question.
Mr. Martin Linton (Battersea): Does my right hon. Friend accept that no journalist can seriously maintain that any issue of freedom of the press was involved in enjoining newspapers not to publish the contents of the report until Wednesday--despite the false indignation of many leader writers--because newspapers are happy to withhold the entire contents of Government reports for two or three days when offered to them under embargo? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the only issue involved here is that of courtesy--to the Lawrence family, to the Metropolitan police Commissioner and to the House?
Mr. Straw: My hon. Friend speaks from great experience as a journalist--
Sir Norman Fowler: Ex-journalist.
Mr. Straw: The right hon. Gentleman says ex-journalist, but I do not think that he is correct. Many of the complaints in the press today are both predictable and synthetic, because my actions were not remotely an attack on the freedom of the press, given that the report will be published in full on Wednesday. That point was made eloquently by Mr. Roy Greenslade, the former editor of The Mirror, in The Guardian today.
Mr. Alan Clark (Kensington and Chelsea): The House would have listened to the Home Secretary with more sympathy if his statement had not come against a background of two and a half years of consistent, widespread, tendentious and selective briefing by almost every Department in Whitehall. Is he serious about trying to trace this leak? He has not answered the questions put to him by my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler), including how many copies of the document there were, to whom they were circulated and whether they were numbered.
Mr. Straw: To answer the right hon. Gentleman's point, I can tell him that we are very serious about tracing the leak, and that is why an inquiry by the permanent secretary at the Home Office has been established.
Mr. Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough): The House has heard on two occasions allegations about institutionalised
leaking by the Government. The last time that a judicial inquiry was held--the full judicial review by Lady Butler-Sloss of the Cleveland child abuse crisis--was under the previous Government, when the then Department of Health and Social Security leaked the entire summary of conclusions to the Press Association. Will my right hon. Friend confirm again that Parliament must assert its rights in the interests of the people to whom we are accountable, who include the Lawrence family and the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis?
Will my right hon. Friend also confirm that the injunction was not lifted, but that it was merely varied, on the grounds that the information published in the Scottish edition of The Sunday Telegraph was already in the public domain? Is not that judgment in accordance with a decision by the European Court of Human Rights?
Mr. Straw:
I share my hon. Friend's view of the importance of showing proper respect to Parliament, and his implication that the last people able to lecture us about that are members of the previous Government.
With regard to the injunction, anyone reading this morning's newspapers would think that it had been lifted. In fact, The Sunday Telegraph consented--indeed, it proposed--that the injunction should remain in force in respect of that part of the report that was not yet in the public domain. The injunction was lifted only in respect of that part of the report that had entered the public domain, even though the injunction had been granted on Saturday night.
Mr. Gerald Howarth (Aldershot):
Does the Home Secretary agree that his protestations on behalf of Parliament, welcome as they are, would ring a lot truer had he not been a member of an Opposition who sought every opportunity to exploit leaked documents--given to them by civil servants and others--to discredit the previous Government?
The Home Secretary did not answer the question about the number of documents that were in circulation posed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Kensington and Chelsea (Mr. Clark). He owes it to the House to give those figures. Were the documents numbered? Were any civil servants--in the Home Office or in other Whitehall Departments--authorised to give selective briefings to journalists? Were any briefings given, authorised or otherwise?
Mr. Straw:
I am not disclosing the security arrangements that we made in respect of the document, precisely because an inquiry into how the leak happened has been established and because any such disclosure would be prejudicial to that inquiry, for reasons that ought to be obvious to the hon. Gentleman.
Will the hon. Gentleman remind me of his other question?
Mr. Howarth:
I asked whether any of the Home Secretary's officials were authorised to give briefings of any description.
Mr. John Austin (Erith and Thamesmead):
Does my right hon. Friend share my regret that those who leaked
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |