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Mrs. Jacqui Lait (Beckenham): The Home Secretary referred to the positive vetting of Mrs. Norwood in the late 1940s when she worked for the British Non-Ferrous Metal Research Association. As someone who used to work for the Chemical Industries Association--whose initials are peculiarly appropriate in this context--I am confused, because I think he said that the security services positively vet only people whom they suspect. He seems to be shaking his head, which makes it even more interesting. Can he please assure me that nobody who works for a trade association now is routinely positively vetted? If such people are vetted, to which categories of trade associations and to which level of staff does that apply?
Mr. Straw: It has been a practice of long standing that people who have access to Government secrets, whether they work within Government or in the private sector, are subject to positive vetting. As someone with experience of positive vetting under the previous Government, I can tell the hon. Lady that it is not a process of which the subject is unaware. Quite rightly, the person concerned is interviewed thoroughly.
Mrs. Norwood was first vetted in 1945 because she was working for the British Non-Ferrous Metal Research Association which, despite its rather prosaic title and its cover as a trade association, was at the time undertaking secret work for the then Government's department of scientific and industrial research. For her to have any access to the secrets on which she would be working she had first to be positively vetted. Even in 1945, the Security Service, which had information relating to her that went back some years before that, raised doubts about her communist associations. It was very concerned about those associations, but further investigation by the service and the police together did not substantiate the doubts and she was given clearance for access to sensitive documents.
As I have already reminded the House, Mrs. Norwood did not in practice have further access from 1949--although it is accepted that a good deal of damage was done before that--and her clearance was withdrawn in 1951.
Motion made, and Question proposed,
Mr. Robert Sheldon (Ashton-under-Lyne):
The House is considering today a motion for the approval of the 10th and 11th reports of the Committee on Standards and Privileges, which were agreed in July.
Our inquiry resulted from a report by the Social Security Committee that my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig), who was then Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, had been given a photocopy of a draft report on child benefit. The Committee had been unable to discover how this leak had come about and asked that the matter be placed before the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges. The Liaison Committee, which I also chair, considered that the leak represented substantial interference with the work of the Social Security Committee. We have set out in our 10th report the circumstances surrounding the leak, and I shall summarise them for the benefit of the House.
The Social Security Committee met on 10 February to consider a draft report on child benefit. It was agreed during that meeting not to proceed to formal consideration, but to consider a revised draft at a future meeting. The Committee Chairman, the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood), invited Committee members to ask Ministers to send Treasury officials to give evidence, and the desirability of enlisting my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn as an intermediary was discussed.
My hon. Friend told the Committee on Standards and Privileges that he was approached by two, or possibly three, members of the Social Security Committee in the course of 9 and 10 February. He asked the first hon. Member who spoke to him for a copy of the draft report so that he could understand the problem better. He received the copy at about tea time on 9 February and read parts of it later the same day. He then had conversations with special advisers at the Treasury about the Treasury's refusal to give evidence before the Committee, but did not discuss the draft report with them or with anyone else. The Treasury contacted the Clerk of the Committee on 11 February to say that it had been agreed that officials should appear on 24 February.
My hon. Friend told us that, in retrospect, he bitterly regretted having asked for a copy of the draft report and apologised unreservedly. He took full responsibility for that action and did not feel that he could name the person who had given him the draft report unless that person gave permission, which he or she had declined to do. Therefore, we concluded that my hon. Friend had to accept the consequences of both initiating the leak by asking for a copy of the draft report and refusing to answer a question put to him by the Committee.
We recommended that my hon. Friend should apologise to the House by means of a personal statement--which he has done--and that he should be suspended from the service of the House for three sitting days. This recommendation took account of several mitigating circumstances that are outlined in our 10th report; we would otherwise have recommended a longer period of suspension. We had asked every member of the Social Security Committee whether he or she had given my hon. Friend a copy of the draft report: yes or no. All of them said no, so we did not know the identity of the leaker when we agreed the 10th report on 20 July. We noted that the leaker's failure to own up cast a cloud unfairly over the other members of the Social Security Committee and could only damage the Committee's standing in the House.
Before that report was published, my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) realised that the response that she had made to the Committee's inquiries had not been accurate. She wrote to me on 23 July, stating:
We welcome the decision of my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley to come forward, which has cleared the other members of the Social Security Committee of suspicion. The Committee on Standards and Privileges noted that my hon. Friend is not an experienced Member of Parliament and had been absent for much of the Session through illness. None the less, she aggravated her original serious offence by denying responsibility. The Committee recommended unanimously that she should apologise to the House by means of a personal statement--which she has done--and should be suspended from the service of the House for five sitting days.
It is, of course, of the greatest importance that the work of Select Committees investigating the operation of Government Departments is not obstructed by outside interference. The premature release of a draft report is a most serious matter because outside involvement with the report's conclusions might be attempted at that stage. If there were any suspicion that such practices existed, the standing of our whole Select Committee system could be questioned. We have made these recommendations with those considerations in mind.
Sir Patrick Cormack (South Staffordshire):
This is a sad occasion for the House--debates of this sort always are. I begin by underlining the fact that the Select
I do not want to speak at any length today--certainly not about the two hon. Members involved. I do not have the pleasure of knowing personally the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford). I do know the hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig), whom I consider to be an honourable Member of Parliament. He has acknowledged that he made a mistake, as has the hon. Lady, and they have made their apologies to the House. I believe that the House should approve the report and leave it at that as far as those two hon. Members are concerned.
That this House--
(i) approves the Tenth and Eleventh Reports of the Committee on Standards and Privileges (HC 747);
(ii) accordingly suspends Mr. Don Touhig, Member for Islwyn, from the service of the House for three sitting days; and
(iii) accordingly suspends Kali Mountford, Member for Colne Valley, from the service of the House for five sitting days.--[Mrs. Beckett.]
2.10 pm
"I regret to say that I did allow . . . sight of my copy of the draft child benefit report to Don Touhig MP and I offer my full apologies to you for having done so."
The full text of the letter appears in our 11th report.
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