12. Memorandum submitted by Evan Price
1. I strongly believe that Parliament is
sovereign and that Members of Parliament are not delegates but
representatives of the people. The constitutional conventions
of Parliament have evolved to try to ensure that the servants
of the executive are impartial and have no part to play in the
adversarial nature of the political discourse. Time and again,
this Government has blatantly ignored those constitutional conventions,
especially where its arguments have been found wanting by the
press.
2. The latest example of this Government's
determination to ignore constitutional convention is in the apparent
encouragement by the Home Office that senior police officers contact
their local Members of Parliament to persuade them to vote in
a particular fashion on a controversial issue relating to the
proposed power that the Police be able, subject to unspecified
controls by the judiciary, to hold individuals for up to 90 days
in cases where those individuals are suspected of participating
in specified offences relating to terrorism.
3. In this submission, I will not deal with
the rights or wrongs on the proposed power. Although I have served
in Northern Ireland as a part of the security forces (a very minor
role at a very junior level), I do not profess to have any relevant
or current expertise in relation to the fight against terrorism
that would assist the Committee. My concern relates to the lobbying
of Parliament by elements within the Police and the encouragement
of that lobbying by Ministers. If my views are correct, then both
Ministers and senior police officers have acted wrongly and, I
suggest, unconstitutionally.
4. There is a constitutional convention
that when serving soldiers, naval or air force personnel wish
to involve themselves in politics, they are required to cease
to continue in the employ of the Crown. This constitutional convention
extends to requiring officers of the services to resign their
commissions. Over the years, many service personnel have disagreed
with Government policy and have had to fight their conscience
and decide whether to continue in the service of the Crown or
resign. What none have been permitted to do is to continue in
the service of the Crown and campaign against a particular Government
policy. This convention has resulted in the clear feeling that
service personnel are independent and will serve Governments of
different political persuasions "without fear or favour".
It has meant that we have never had a General or Admiral standing
for election whilst serving the Crown.
5. When at law school, I understood that
a convention in substantially the same terms extended to the Police
service. There are some differences that relate to the fact that
the Police are, so often, involved in activities that have a great
impact on the community they serve. Inevitably, they evolve and
develop a keen interest in issues relating to law and order and
want to express a view as to how their powers and duties can best
be enhanced. They have developed structures and bodies (such as
ACPO and the Police Federation) that have large publicity departments,
and on many occasions their interventions (whether individually
or collectively) have been both useful and beneficial.
6. The difficulty in relation to the Police
conduct in relation to the 90-day detention issue arose in the
context of individual Ministers and senior police officers asserting
that the Police view of the need for the power was more important
that the views of individual Members of Parliament who were not
persuaded by the arguments. In my view, the step at which a police
officer, whilst retaining his or her position, tells an MP to
vote in a particular fashion on a particular issue, is the step
at which the police officer ceases to be impartial. He or she
compromises the impartiality of his or her office and demeans
the service that he or she is a part of.
7. The Government's response to criticism
of this nature was for the Home Office Minister Hazel Blears to
say that it was "entirely appropriate" for police to
make the case for detaining terror suspects for up to 90 days
(as reported by the BBC and others). For the Minister not to see
the danger in the police acting in the manner troubles me. The
fact that Ministers appear to have encouraged this breach of impartiality
is especially concerning. Ministers are Members of Parliament
first and Ministers second. The fact that they had lost the argument
with the opposition parties and a significant number of the Labour
party was not a reason for them to encourage, or possible cajole,
police officers to breach the impartiality of their office and
demean their police service. In addition, by breaching the constitutional
convention, and by encouraging that breach, the individual police
officers and Ministers have acted unconstitutionally.
8. The benefits of the constitutional convention
are to be seen where the police are trusted as impartial servants
of the executive (please note that I do not use the word "servant"
in any prejudicial sense whatsoever). If the impartiality is compromised,
then elements of the community who believe that they are the target
of police action or police surveillance gain an excuse for not
accepting that the police are impartial. This risk in the context
of the 90-day detention power is that, if, after further consideration,
Parliament concludes that the powers are required, elements within
the Muslim community in Britain may decide that the Police cannot
be trusted; this is a price that must not be paid, and in my view
is not worth paying.
9. The contrast between the conduct of individual
police officers and ministers can be contrasted with that of the
director of public prosecutions. On the radio (I believe that
it was the Today programme on Radio 4 about 10 days ago), I heard
the Director asked for his views. The gist of his response was
to say that his advice was in the public domain and that he would
not tell Parliament how to weigh that advice against all of the
other evidence and advice that was before Parliament. He said
that he was sure that the Members of Parliament would make their
choices after considering all of the evidence and that the vote
was a matter for Parliament. If only all of the servants of the
executive were as aware of their constitutional obligations to
act impartially and to be seen so to act.
28 November 2005
| 
