Police Searches on the Parliamentary Estate - Committee on the Issue of Privilege Contents


Memorandum from the Rt Hon the Lord Martin of Springburn

INTRODUCTION

  1. I wish to set out to the Committee the facts as I know them with regard to the search of the offices of the Hon. Member for Ashford on Thursday 27 November 2008.

2. The first part of this memorandum deals with the search and contains both my personal recollection of events where I was directly involved and also information related to me on 27 November and thereafter on matters which occurred before the day of the search and afterwards. The second part of the memorandum deals briefly with the establishment of your committee.

3. This is the first time that I have commented on these matters. This is because I regard it as my duty to account first to the House and its committees and not to the media.

EVENTS RELATING TO THE SEARCH

  4. A crucial meeting of each sitting day is the morning briefing, attended by the Speaker, Deputy Speakers, Clerk of the House and other senior officials. On Wednesday 26 November 2008, as I approached the Speaker's Study for the morning briefing meeting at 1027 (the meeting normally starts promptly at 1030), I was met by the Speaker's Secretary and the Serjeant at Arms. The Speaker's Secretary told me that the Serjeant wished to see me alone on an urgent matter. The Serjeant asked me into an adjoining room and closed the door so that we could speak privately. (The Speaker's Secretary told me later that he had suggested to the Serjeant that he should be present, but the Serjeant had declined.)

5. The Serjeant told me that counter terrorism officers from the Metropolitan Police were investigating a Member and might wish shortly to arrest that individual for conspiring to commit misconduct in public office. The Serjeant said that she did not know the Member's name. It was agreed that I would be contacted when the Serjeant knew more. No reference was made to a search of the Member's office within the precincts.

  6. I was extremely concerned that a Member was being investigated by anti-terrorist police. In my mind I had an idea of Islamist or Irish terrorism. I had no idea at the time of the very different type of offence of which Mr Green would be accused.

  7. The Serjeant explained that the matter was strictly confidential. It was not unusual for senior officers to approach me on confidential matters. It was my understanding that such matters would always be discussed with senior officers as necessary before I was informed.

  8. In the late afternoon of the same day (after 1600 but before 1700) the Serjeant telephoned me at my residence to inform me that she did not yet know the name of the Member concerned but she was likely to be informed very early next morning. The Serjeant agreed to call me at 0730 the following morning.

  9. At 0730 on Thursday 27 November the Serjeant telephoned me. The conversation was brief. She told me that she was calling from her residence. It was not until conversation was underway that she informed me that a Police Officer was with her. The Serjeant informed me that the Member was Damian Green and that an arrest would take place later that day. She stated that Mr Green's home, his constituency office and his office within the precincts would be searched.

  10. I believed, as I was entitled to, that the search of Mr Green's office within the precincts would be carried out under a proper warrant. The need for a warrant is clear from the guidance note issued by the then Clerk of the House in 2000. Although I was not aware of the terms of guidance until recently, the guidance should have been followed. The Serjeant did not inform me that the basis for the search would be a consent form to be signed by her as opposed to a warrant. I would not have expected consent to be given without the Speaker's explicit permission. I would not have given my permission.

  11. It is my clear view, and was at the time that Damian Green's office was searched, that without a search warrant the police should not be able to search the offices of a Member in the course of a criminal investigation. Had I become aware at any time before the search was completed that that there was no search warrant, I would have made it clear that either no search should take place, or, if it had started, that it had to stop immediately.

  12. The need for a search warrant was basic. It never occurred to me that the Serjeant would give consent to a police search of a Member's office in a police investigation without a warrant. Until I discovered the following day that there was no warrant, I had assumed the search was authorised by a search warrant. This seemed to me to be so basic that I did not ask the Serjeant about the warrant when I was first told of an impending search on the morning of 27 November. By the time I discovered there was no warrant, which was in the evening of 27 November, the search was over.

  13. I concluded my 0730 conversation on 27 November by asking the Serjeant to be kept informed. After the call I left for my constituency in Glasgow.

  14. On the afternoon of the Thursday 27 November I travelled to visit my eldest brother who is chronically ill. My brother and his wife live a distance of 60 miles away from Glasgow. At approximately 1700 the Speaker's Secretary telephoned me at my brother's house to inform me that the police had come into the House and were searching Mr Green's office and that he understood that Mr Green had been arrested in his constituency. The Speaker's Secretary told me that the Clerk of the House had wanted to convey to me that the search was underway and was being conducted properly. He also told me that the Conservative Chief Whip, the Rt. Hon. Patrick McLoughlin MP, wanted to speak to me. I requested details of the paperwork relating to the search, and told the Speaker's Secretary to keep me informed of events and to pass further details to me when I returned home. I also arranged for Mr McLoughlin to call me later when I was back in Glasgow. I did not think it was appropriate to use my brother's house for communications in view of his illness.

  15. During my journey back to Glasgow, the Speaker's Assistant Secretary called me to explain that copies of the paperwork approving the search were now in his possession and could be faxed to me. I explained that I would not have access to a fax machine before I spoke to Mr McLoughlin at 2030 that night. I therefore asked the Assistant Secretary to tell me the name of the Magistrate who had signed what I still presumed to be a proper search warrant. He explained that there were only two names on the document, those of a police officer and the Serjeant. He described the document as a Consent Form. I was seriously concerned that there was no Magistrate's warrant.

  16. I expressed deep surprise and deep concern that no warrant had been insisted upon when I spoke to Mr McLoughlin at 2100 that evening. The lack of a warrant and the conduct of the search were the main topics of our conversation.

  17. On Friday 28 and Saturday 29 November I had a number of conversations with the Speaker's Secretary. These confirmed my unease at House officials' management of the police's entry into the House and their search of Mr Green's office. The difficulties of establishing detail were compounded by the absence of the Clerk of the House who had left for private travel abroad. I am disappointed that the Clerk of the House, who also holds the Office of Chief Executive, was out of the country when there was so serious a situation in the House.

  18. I was also shocked when I was told that, when the Clerk had discovered that the search was based on consent as opposed to a warrant, he had instructed the Serjeant to write a letter to the police officer in charge of the search to limit the search to matters relating to the charge, but that he had not prevented the search from continuing. I have no legal qualifications, but I now understand that the Consent to Search by the Serjeant could have been withdrawn at any stage. I would have expected it to be withdrawn when the Clerk had found out that a warrant had not been obtained.

  19. I was further disappointed to be told that Speaker's Counsel was not informed of the search on Thursday 27 November, the day of the search.

  20. On 29 November, the Speaker's Secretary arranged for me to speak at around 1000, for the first time since the search, to Speaker's Counsel (who had just returned from overseas). I learnt then of what I regarded as serious failings: the failure to insist on a warrant for search and the lack of co-ordination for the proper handling of such a sensitive matter.

  21. At around 1600 on Saturday 29 November, the Clerk of the House telephoned me briefly to say that he was briefing the Leader of the House. He agreed to my proposal that we should meet me on Monday evening. This was the first conversation that I had held with the Clerk since the issue arose. Since I was in a public place when he telephoned, the conversation was necessarily restricted. It would have been very helpful to me to have the assistance of the Clerk over the weekend and I regret that I did not.

  22. Damian Green telephoned me at home at my suggestion sometime after 1700 on 29 November. I told him that I had not authorised the search but I pointed out that I could not have stopped a search if there had been a warrant. I asked if I could be of any help to him. Mr Green explained the police had taken away the hard disc from his office in the precincts and that on Monday his staff would be unable to do any office work at all. I telephoned the Serjeant at her residence to ask her to tell the police to return the hard disc to Mr Green's office. This was done.

  23. In view of the long-standing convention that the House should be informed first, I decided not to speak to the media but to make a statement to the House when it reconvened on 3 December. The media caused considerable difficulty to my wife and me at our home in Glasgow where they camped outside our home all day and night. One photographer was so intrusive that the police had to warn him about his conduct on our private property and he agreed to leave the locality.

  24. On Monday 1 December, when I had returned to London, I met with the Speaker's Secretary and the Clerk of the House at around 2100 to discuss the details known to them.

  25. On 2 December I again met with the Clerk, Speaker's Counsel, the Serjeant at Arms and Speaker's Secretary. The purpose of this meeting was for me to establish the facts in order to make my Statement to the House the next day.

  26. At this meeting officials agreed with me that there had been serious failings in communication and in management. The Clerk told me that he had not known of the search until he saw it happening on television. It was clear also that the Serjeant had known of the nature of the Police operation for close to a week before 26 November. I was disappointed when I learned that there had been several meetings between the Police and the Serjeant and when I asked for the names of the Police Officers with whom she had met, she told me she could not recall them. I also asked if minutes or notes of the meetings had been kept because I wanted to know precisely what had happened. I was told by the Serjeant that there were no minutes or notes.

  27. I also learnt that the Serjeant had not informed me that, at approximately 1500 on Wednesday 26 November, she had had a meeting with three senior police officers concerned in the operation and with Chief Superintendent Bateman (the senior officer in charge of the Metropolitan Police at the Palace) and that, during the course of that meeting, she had left them in her room and had gone to the Clerk Assistant to put to him what she described as a "what if" scenario as to whether she had the authority to consent to bring the police into a Member's office. The Clerk Assistant, to whom the Serjeant at Arms reports, had referred her to the Clerk of the House. The Serjeant had put the same questions to the Clerk of the House and the Clerk had informed her that she had that authority.

  28. I would have expected the Clerk of the House and the Clerk Assistant to have questioned the Serjeant further as to why she was posing questions of this type at this particular time. I am also disappointed that the Serjeant did not inform me about her meeting with police officers and her discussion of the issue of giving of consent when she telephoned me later that afternoon of 26 November.

  29. During the course of the meeting on 2 December, I asked the Serjeant why she had conducted herself in this manner. The Clerk of the House intervened to say that Chief Superintendent Bateman had bamboozled the Serjeant and tricked her into keeping the matter from her immediate superiors. The Clerk went on to say that, while Chief Superintendent Bateman was a Metropolitan Police officer, he also had a duty towards the House.

  30. There were other worrying facts. For example, it was only on the afternoon of 2 December that a letter was received from Assistant Commissioner Quick informing me, as Speaker, of his investigation concerning the hon Member for Ashford; it had been written some days before.

ESTABLISHMENT OF YOUR COMMITTEE

  31. In discussion with the Leader of the House, I made it known that I wanted the House to consider setting up a Speaker's Committee on the search of Offices on the Parliamentary Estate. There was an agreement when I made my Statement on 3 December that the Committee of Enquiry would be set up immediately. That agreement was between me and the Leader.

32. After I had made my statement to the House, the Leader later informed me that a Motion was going to be put down that the enquiry would not sit until criminal proceedings were dealt with. She told me that she had sought, and was acting on, the Attorney General's advice. I appealed to the Prime Minister that evening that such a restriction was unnecessary and that the Committee should meet as a matter of urgency, but my request was declined.

  33. The motion put to the House on 8 December 2008 provided that the work of the Committee be adjourned until the completion of any relevant police inquiry or resulting criminal proceedings. (An amendment to remove this provision was narrowly defeated.)

  34. From then until the end of the police investigation and the statement by the DPP, no action could be taken by the House to allow the Committee to proceed to investigate matters related to this case.

  35. As a result of the House's decision to agree the Motion in the form the Government proposed, I was unable to agree to the requests I received on an almost daily basis to allow the matter to be debated on the floor of the House. This caused resentment between me and many Members of the House and was a matter of great regret to me.

  36. I was always concerned by this and, when I left the House in June, I advocated, in my valedictory address, that the Committee be established in order to investigate the detail and make recommendations that would help to avoid something similar occurring again. The Protocol which I announced on 3 December was one means of preventing a similar incident.

  37. I have read Mr Green's evidence about his concerns about the way in which parliamentary privilege was determined in respect to the documents seized from him by the police. I, like the whole House, always relied on the advice of the Clerk of the House and his colleagues, who are the experts on parliamentary privilege. I am sure that the Clerks considered the issue in this case in the interests of the House as a whole.

  38. I certainly do not think it would have been practical or appropriate for the House as a whole to decide which documents in this case might or might not have been privileged. There may have been merits in the Committee on Standards and Privileges meeting to consider relevant issues. As I have said earlier, I wanted the special committee to be established as soon as possible. However, once the House agreed the more restrictive motion tabled by the Leader with its provision that the issue could not be considered until any criminal case was resolved, I felt that I was inhibited from allowing a motion which would have been debatable, and very possibly prejudicial to any criminal proceedings, to refer the matter to the Committee on Standards and Privileges.

CONCLUSION

  39. I do not believe that the correct decision was made by the Serjeant in consenting to the search taking place. I also believe that the House through its Speaker was not served as well as it ought to have been. Finally, I regret the delay in commencing your committee's work.

40. I look forward to amplifying these points, and answering other questions, when I give oral evidence.

27 October 2009





 
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