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Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Michael Lord): Order. I am sorry to interrupt the Leader of the House, but these are matters that will perhaps have to be dealt with in the wind-up. I understand his need to explain these points, but it is becoming a speech rather than an intervention.

Mr. Tyler: It was a helpful intervention, if I may say so. I wish that the Leader of the House had made those points at the outset. What I find extraordinary is that the argument for a permanent screen has not been developed. A sort of argument has been developed for taking rapid action and producing a temporary screen, but let me come to a much more important point—[Interruption.] I will give way to the Leader of the House. How can I resist?

Mr. Hain: I apologise, but the reason that I moved the motion in the way that I did was that I relied on the
 
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common sense of Members to understand the position. If they wanted me to spell out every detail, I could have done that and answered all these points. It was not in the interests of the security of the House or the Chamber to have done that, but as the hon. Gentleman has required me to do it, I have responded.

Mr. Tyler: Let me take up the point made by the Leader of the House that there was no parliamentary approval for the concrete blocks and armed guards. I regret that, and I think that he agrees, because the Modernisation Committee, which he chairs, has taken a lot of evidence about the fact that our constituents are now greeted in their Parliament with a fortress-like response. There must be some way in which we can mitigate that. Nowhere else in the United Kingdom are our free citizens greeted not by someone who says, "Can I help you? What do you want to see or hear?" but by somebody armed with a weapon.

Let me return to the substantive point. It is time that people in the House understood the significance of the comprehensive analysis of all the security issues. I understand what the Leader of the House says about that. What I object to is the piecemeal approach. There is no evidence that the screen will assist in the security of all those who work in this building. That is extremely important. For example, I asked the Leader of the House just a few weeks ago what steps are being taken to deal with the large number of lost identity passes for entry into Departments of State, and whether there was a similar situation in this building. I received no answer. In my view, as others Members have said, that is a far more serious security risk to us, our staff, our visitors and all the people who work in this building. I hope that a serious attempt is being made to deal with that issue, because it is much more serious than anything that is happening in the Gallery. We are told that there are 12,500 passes, excluding those of Members of the two Houses. I hope that there is some more effective scrutiny, not just of the way in which they are brought in and out of the House, but of their issue and of what happens when they are lost.

We must also think carefully about other parts of the parliamentary estate. Let me give one example. Twice yearly, the Prime Minister appears in the Boothroyd Room in Portcullis House in front of the Liaison Committee of senior Members of the House, with the public a few feet away. What security is there—I do not want the Leader of the House to tell me, as it would be much better if he did not. That illustrates, however, that it is extremely important to take a holistic view about the way in which our democracy works. Of course, there must be a balance between access, transparency, visibility and security. To pretend that the most sensitive area is in this Chamber suggests to me that we are more worried about people shouting than about weapons, which would be an extremely unfortunate signal to give.

As a footnote—this is not the most important issue—we should consider value for money. As we have already heard, £600,000 has been spent on the temporary screen. Why not just see whether it is sufficient? There is no rush, despite what we have been told. The cost will be £1.5 million if the motion is passed this afternoon, for a screen still on that alignment, and still with many of the difficulties that I have mentioned.
 
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If the amendments, which link together, are accepted, we would for the moment decline to give an okay to an expensive, elaborate scheme, which has not been worked through or considered in terms of alternatives, until we had considered holistically the security situation and thought a bit more about what we, as the representatives of the public and our constituents, should do to make sure that Parliament is still as accessible and visible as we can make it.

Mr. David Kidney (Stafford) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Tyler: I am about to finish.

My concern is the security of all who work in and visit these buildings, not just this Chamber. By prioritising a permanent screen, we are going in the wrong direction.

3.7 pm

Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West) (Lab): If I start by mentioning that I am in my 40th year in the House, it is not in order to suggest that my value judgments are any better than anyone else's, but, I hope, to state that my love of the values and traditions of this House are no less than anyone else's here today. That is the position from which I start. There is no way in which I would have contemplated such a change as has been suggested if I thought that it could be avoided.

One simple fact must be addressed. At Prime Minister's questions, the Government, the alternative Government, and two thirds of the House of Commons, could be eliminated, all in one attack. What a target that is for a terrorist. What a temptation. We must face up to that. I was here at the time of the CS riot gas attack, and was sitting just opposite the letter stand. Barbara Castle was speaking, the gas canister arrived at her left foot, and within seconds—such was the dissemination, as was mentioned earlier—we were all coughing, spluttering and having to dive out of the Chamber. Twice, to my recollection, possibly three times, we tried unsuccessfully to get back into the Chamber, and it took hours to clear the Chamber and make it habitable for Members of Parliament.

Let me make this simple point. A very small quantity of one of the toxic biochemical agents available today, if released into the air conditioning circulating system of this Chamber, would be less immediate but far more devastating in its effect on Parliament.

An erroneous point was made, namely that when the Chamber was destroyed by a bomb during the war, that did not destroy democracy. No, it did not, because it did not destroy Members of Parliament. It did not destroy the Government, and it did not destroy the Opposition. It merely destroyed the place where we met—so Parliament met somewhere else.

We constitute a sitting invitation to a terrorist, and for that reason alone I have changed my mind completely. When screens were first suggested, at the time of the CS gas attack—the hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) will remember this—we decided against them, but the circumstances are vastly different now.

Mr. Gerald Howarth: Apart from the fact that the screen does nothing whatever to protect the ventilation
 
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system—[Interruption.] Perhaps, rather than sitting there and threatening us with the security services, the Leader of the House should have told us all this. The canister episode pre-dated the extensive screening facilities that we now have. I put it to the right hon. Gentleman—the Leader of the House may be able to respond if he cannot—that a metal canister containing CS gas or some more toxic material would in all probability be caught by the current security arrangements, which did not exist in the days of Barbara Castle.

Mr. Williams: The point about the ventilation system is legitimate. The presentation by the intelligence services made it clear that it would be possible to separate the system.

Mr. Heald: As part of the arrangements for the temporary screen, the ventilation system for the Chamber and for the Gallery behind the screen is already separate.

Mr. Williams: As for the other point made by the hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Howarth), screening arrangements were introduced because they would detect something the size of a CS gas canister; but, as the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Mrs. Browning) pointed out, we do not necessarily comprehend the sheer toxicity of the substances now available. Only minute quantities need to circulate. They might not kill us there and then, unless we were lucky, but they might well do so within the next couple of days, which would have the same effect: the Government would be gone, the Opposition would be gone, and two thirds of the House of Commons would be gone.

Mr. Challen: Obviously we should not stray into the technical details of how an attack might take place. So far, however, Members have spoken only about the air conditioning as a way of disseminating whatever might be introduced into the Chamber. I should like to know how fast the contents of a container that landed on the floor and opened in the middle of the Chamber could be absorbed into the air conditioning and so on. It seems to me that a device would be necessary to expel the contents of a phial, and that would be picked up by the security arrangements unless there was a lapse in security. It would have to be large enough to be picked up in order to be effective in a Chamber this size, which is not a small room. We are not talking about a substance that would be introduced into the water or air conditioning systems; we are talking about something that would be thrown down from the Gallery, and would not be picked up by security. I hope someone will tell me whether I am being a bit of a fantasist.

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