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


Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers 216-219)

DR MALCOLM JACK, MS JACQY SHARPE, MR MICHAEL CARPENTER AND MS VERONICA DALY

9 NOVEMBER 2009

  Q216 Chairman: Good afternoon Dr Jack, Mr Carpenter, Ms Sharpe and Ms Daly. Thank you very much for attending upon the Committee. I think you are aware of our terms of reference and the purpose of our meeting. There are two preliminary matters but first perhaps I might address you Dr Jack. You very helpfully provided a memorandum in your capacity as Clerk of the House and today we are more concerned about questions of fact surrounding the issues we are discussing. It may be that we shall ask you to come back on a later date to speak in more detail to the memorandum which raises issues of principle and matters affecting the whole doctrine of privilege. The second preliminary point is that I imagine you will be aware of the evidence given by Lord Martin of Springburn to the Committee last week and I hope you have had the opportunity of seeing the uncorrected transcript. I thought at this stage I should, in view of some of the contents of that evidence, give you the opportunity to say if there are any parts of it with which you particularly take issue. We have a number of questions to ask you and some of these matters will be raised in the course of that questioning but if at the outset there is any particular part of his evidence about which you wish to express a different view, then it might be appropriate to allow you that opportunity at the moment. In particular I should say that there was a passage of evidence in connection with the meeting on 2 December in which Lord Martin of Springburn gave us his recollection of an intervention which he attributed to you. That in particular is an issue about which the Committee would very much like to know what your response is.

  Dr Jack: Thank you very much first of all for inviting us here this afternoon. I am quite happy to take the questions first on this point you have just raised and then see where we are at the end of that. If I feel I want to add something, perhaps I could, with the Committee's permission. I wonder also whether I could just say one other thing as a preliminary. I do not have anything substantive to add to the memorandum which I have sent in and to which you have already referred but I would like to put something on the record because this is the first opportunity I have had to say anything in public. As head of the House service I would like to say that I am sorry that this matter was not better handled. I think I ought to put that on record. I hope the Committee will accept that apology. In accepting the apology, I hope the Committee will also accept from me, and I am sure that many Members here will recognise what I am going to say, that the staff here are very loyal; loyalty is one of the main characteristics of the House staff. They act, to the best of their abilities in good faith and impartially. I just thought I ought to put that on the record as the head of the service but I make the apology without reservation.

  Q217  Chairman: Some of our questions will touch upon the handling of this matter and perhaps at that stage you may be able to be a little more expansive.

  Dr Jack: Yes, of course.

  Q218  Chairman: What are your chief responsibilities as Clerk of the House?

  Dr Jack: They fall really into two broad bands, if I could put it that way. On the one hand I have a role as the chief procedural adviser to the House and of course particularly to the Speaker and the other incumbents of the Chair. That is very visible to Members because I am in the Chamber at the beginning of each day's business, so Members will be familiar with that. The part of the job which is now in fact probably the largest part is less visible to some Members, not to others, there are Members who are very familiar with the administration of the House, and that is the chief executive role. Over quite a long period the House has taken upon itself the management of its business; formerly this was done by government departments. As the business has grown—I am talking about the administration of course, not the Members' Estimates—just to give you an idea, we are now dealing with a resource requirement of something like £260 million a year and we are employing about 1,700 people here in the Palace, performing all sorts of functions of course, right across the House service. It has become a pretty big business and managing that is a big task. I have not really attempted to quantify this because, as you can imagine, it is very difficult to do that, but probably as much as 70% of my time is taken up on executive matters. Obviously I am supported by a board of management on that side and on the procedural side I am supported by Clerks at the table and other senior Clerks. That is really the background to the executive side of the job.

  Q219  Chairman: In that very helpful explanation you referred to your role and responsibility in giving advice to the Speaker. What proportion of your time is spent in that role?

  Dr Jack: That varies quite a lot. I have daily contact with the Speaker to discuss the business of the day and then I will see the Speaker as required during the day and I am sitting below him for points of order and so on in the House. Your question actually rather helpfully makes me able to make the point that the Speaker himself of course is responsible for the administration of the House through the House of Commons Commission, so the structure that I have described, I as Chief Executive with the Management Board, answer to the House of Commons Commission. The Speaker is the Chairman of that and of course I will see him on that matter. There is a Commission meeting today; I think I spent perhaps an hour with the Speaker discussing Commission issues.



 
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