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Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con):
I want to echo several of the points that have been made, and make one or two further ones, if I may. I immediately pick up on what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Simon) has just said. It is obvious that different Members have different views on the signals sent out, and that there are genuinely different interpretations of the signal question. I do not think that the argument is conclusive either way, although I tend to agree with what the hon. Gentleman has just said.
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We could embark on rather pompous statements about our great democracy and the mother of Parliaments and so on, although we are rather over-prone to those in this place. There are other great democracies around the world. The great democracy in the United States does not, to my knowledge, involve having screens in Congress, even though the President of the United States makes a predicted state of the union address in Congress every year. The Australian Parliament—arguably the most vigorous of Parliaments, of which I wish I were a Member, because it is like this place used to be in the old days—has most of the Government there every day answering questions, but I am not aware that there is a screen in Canberra, either. The arguments about signals and comparisons with other Parliaments are very balanced, and are not conclusive one way or the other.
Another point concerns the two categories of visitor. Of course it is right to say that there have always been different categories of visitors—or, as we charmingly call them, strangers—to this House, but as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington said, the screen makes that obvious. It cries out that there will be at least two very different categories of people: the favoured, who are here courtesy of a Member of Parliament; and the others, who have yet to be able to persuade an MP that they have an intimate relationship with them and can be vouched for. That is the key difference between the fait accompli that we have been presented with, and which we are being asked to make permanent, and the previous situation. That is why having the screen is a significant step.
We should also consider a point that has been touched on only briefly, and which was raised in the now notorious meeting of the great, the good and the not so good; I, too, was there. Why do we assume that the Press Gallery is so secure that we need do nothing about it? I asked this question in that meeting and I ask it again: how certain can we be that nobody who could present a threat to this House will ever get into the Press Gallery? I remain to be convinced, to put it mildly.
Mr. Forth: The Leader of the House is about to attempt to convince me.
Mr. Hain: I am not sure that I can convince the right hon. Gentleman about anything, but I shall at least answer his question. As he knows, in order to be issued with a pass, members of the Press Gallery are subject to the normal required vetting procedures. A number of trainee journalists sometimes enter the Chamber. They will be subject to more rigorous checks, in line with the checks to which others are subjected in other Galleries.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to the Leader of the House and I wish that I were convinced, but unless things have changed radically since I last looked at the issue, sadly, I remain uncertain that the system for issuing passes in this place is remotely secure. I have never seen evidence—
Mr. Forth:
Let me finish making this point, since the Leader of the House has raised it. That said, I do not
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want to dwell on it, because it relates to the point, which the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Mr. Tyler) rightly dwelt on, about the overall comprehensive security review. I want reassurance in this regard: I want to be told that when passes are issued for free entry into this place, we are absolutely certain of the identity of the person concerned, and of the fact that they are not a security threat. I am not certain that that is so. In fact, I have reason to believe that, until fairly recently, the information given on the application form was scanty to say the least, that references were never taken up, and that proper security vetting was never done. So I am not happy about passes issued for the Press Gallery or more generally.
Mr. Challen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the press have become very adept at sneaking all sorts of impostors into places such as airport loading areas and perhaps even Buckingham palace? Does that not show that such actions could pose a very significant security threat to Members in this Chamber?
Mr. Forth: Yes, and in a sense I wish that we saw more people in the Press Gallery more frequently; looking at it now, it is no security threat whatever. [Laughter.] The point is a serious one. We have become obsessed with the temporary screen—and rightly so, as it is the only point at issue today—yet the rest of the Chamber's surroundings remain gapingly open.
David Burnside: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is much confusion, in that many Members misunderstand the difference in security terms between a general threat and a specific one? It would help the conduct of our debate if we explained the difference between a general threat—those of us who voted for the war received a visit from our local police, who pointed out that there was a general threat—and the specific threat that many of us experience in Northern Ireland. The latter is designated as coming from a defined source—a terrorist organisation—and is directed at the individual. It would help to inform this debate if the Leader of the House defined whether we are talking about a specific threat to the House, or a general one from worldwide terrorism. There is total confusion on the subject.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. It is because, tragically, of the experience that our Northern Ireland colleagues have had and continue to have of such difficulties, that they should be listened to carefully on this and related issues. It would be salutary if we heard more—I hope from my hon. Friend—about Northern Ireland's experience over the years of the different forms of parliamentary chambers there.
That brings me to the role of the Security Service. I know that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends would like to elaborate on that, if they can catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am not as convinced as I suppose I should be that, because someone even as eminent as the head of our Security Service comes here to give the House advice, that settles the matter. That is not how it should work. Under our governmental system, I thought that officers, officials and advisers
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advised and Ministers—in this case, Members—disposed. That is how it should work. Of course we should take full account of the advice given to us from the highest levels of our Security Service—indeed, we should take it very seriously. In the end, however, we are the ones who have to strike the balance between the demands of democracy, incorporating the symbolism of what we do, and the advice given by security people.
Sir Stuart Bell: The right hon. Gentleman is perfectly right that the decision is a matter for the House. The Leader of the House said in opening the debate—this might help the hon. Member for South Antrim (David Burnside)—that the Security Service made an "unequivocal" recommendation to raise the screen. That is the basis on which the screen was raised and it explains why we are having this debate. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree?
Mr. Forth: I am not disposed at this stage to go into the details of that argument, which I shall leave to others, but I take the hon. Gentleman's point and hope that it was helpful in the context in which it was raised.
I shall touch briefly on the extravagant claim—we have now effectively disposed of it—that the screen would protect, as someone said, "thousands" of our staff. We have established through our useful debate that the screen will provide protection only for Members of Parliament and those who work for us in the Chamber. There are a small number of such colleagues, as I shall call them. They are the only people for whom the screen will provide protection and, in a way, that diverts the attention of potential terrorists to the rest of the parliamentary estate. Let us not hear any more talk from those who have supported the proposal and set this thing up that the screen somehow gives protection to all parliamentary colleagues and staff. It does nothing of the kind, and it may even have a counter-effect.
Mr. Hain: To help the right hon. Gentleman, whose point of view I respect, I should say that the director general provided evidence, based on intelligence, that there was a threat to the House—
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