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


Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers 360-379)

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

9 NOVEMBER 2009

  Q360  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: We know that the Speaker has said that he was never asked to give his consent, indeed always assumed that a warrant had been issued. It came as a matter of total surprise and shock to him to discover. If the Serjeant at Arms suggested to you that she had the Speaker's consent, that would not be accurate if the Speaker's evidence is correct.

  Dr Jack: You will have to ask the Serjeant that but I was not privy to the conversation between the Speaker and the Serjeant that morning.

  Q361  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: What I am trying to understand though is whether the language which was used might have caused confusion rather than clarity. Assuming that nobody was deliberately trying to misinform anybody else—

  Dr Jack: No; of course not.

  Q362  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: — if you had asked the Serjeant whether she consulted the Speaker, we know from the Speaker's evidence that he had been informed that a Member was likely to be arrested and in that sense he was consulted. We have no reason at the moment to believe that either the Speaker or the Serjeant takes the view that the Speaker was asked for or gave his consent to the search without a warrant. Therefore if the Serjeant at Arms gave you that impression, that would have to have been presumably based on a very serious misunderstanding as to what you were asking her.

  Dr Jack: I think you have heard evidence from Lord Martin of Springburn that he did not understand that a consent form—

  Q363  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Forgive me; that is not what he said. The question of consent forms was never raised with him, he told us.

  Dr Jack: Yes, that is what I am saying, that he had no knowledge.

  Q364  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Nor did he ask about it; he simply assumed that if someone's office was being searched the police must have a warrant and it was with a sense of shock that he was subsequently informed that they had no warrant and had never asked for a warrant.

  Dr Jack: I was talking to the Serjeant on the basis of a consent form which was in front of me which she had signed and she had consulted the Speaker about.

  Q365  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: So far as you can recollect, did you expressly ask whether the Speaker consented to her signing a consent form?

  Dr Jack: No, not to her signing a consent form; no, not in those words.

  Q366  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Not in those words.

  Dr Jack: No.

  Q367  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: So she may have misunderstood what you meant by "consult".

  Dr Jack: Possibly.

  Q368  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: There is no other explanation unless she was deliberately misleading you. Would that be a fair comment?

  Dr Jack: I really do not think I can go into the mind of the Serjeant. You will have to ask her.

  Q369  Ann Coffey: I just want to disentangle something. The consent to search had been given by the Serjeant and then in an attempt to mitigate that did you instruct something to be put into that which limited the extent of the search. Did you instruct the Serjeant?

  Dr Jack: No, it did not limit the search. The consent had already been given and that was the end of it. What it did do was to define the offence on which the search was being made because the consent form has no offence written on it, so there was no record.

  Q370  Ann Coffey: I am just trying to establish who made what decision and the extent of the decision. If you were able to influence in that way or instruct in that way, why could you not just ask the Serjeant to withdraw the consent?

  Dr Jack: Because she had given the consent on behalf of the Speaker. She just signs the consent form. This is what I mean by delegated authority. The authority is delegated in her. She has no authority that does not derive from the Speaker.

  Q371  Ann Coffey: But she signed the consent form. It must have been quite clear at some point that there was a lot of confusion in this area and it must have been quite clear that in fact the Speaker had not given permission for the consent and that must have become clear.

  Dr Jack: No, that was not clear at all; it certainly was not clear to me. In fact the opposite was the case.

  Q372  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: When did you first understand that the Speaker had never given consent to a consent form being signed by the Serjeant?

  Dr Jack: Probably on the Saturday following these events.

  Q373  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: How did you become aware of that?

  Dr Jack: I think I spoke to the Speaker.

  Q374  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: He was clearly shocked that this had all happened without a warrant.

  Dr Jack: Yes, he said that he had never understood that this had happened without a warrant.

  Q375  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: At that time, did you appreciate that you had been labouring under a misunderstanding?

  Dr Jack: Yes, I did.

  Q376  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: So you are saying to us that the reason why, even when you found that there was no warrant, you did not feel able to tell the police that consent was withdrawn was because you assumed that the Speaker had given authority for that consent and you could not overrule the Speaker.

  Dr Jack: Yes, that is correct. I have no executive role whatsoever in giving consent. I am merely the adviser to the Speaker on privilege matters.

  Q377  Ann Coffey: It appears that this place not only operates on Chinese whispers, it operates on Chinese walls. The system of managerial accountability is absolutely incredible in its tangential nature.

  Dr Jack: I am not sure what you are asking me.

  Q378  Ann Coffey: It seems to me incredible that you as the chief executive of the House, the man in charge of the administration of this place ... in any other walk of life the chief executive is the man and he takes management responsibility for everything. We have come to this situation because the Serjeant believed she was having private confidential conversations with the police with whom she needed a good working relationship, that her line manager was in fact the Clerk Assistant. The Speaker at the end of the day ultimately gives consent but he did not know anything about it because people did not actually tell him about it. The end result was the search of the office of a Member of Parliament based on a complete and utter misunderstanding and a management system where it appears that nobody takes overall responsibility at the end of the day. That is how it would be perceived and it seems to me that if anything comes out of this at all, some clarification has to be given as to how the management structure in this place works.

  Dr Jack: The Speaker's protocol certainly clarifies the matter on a number of issues. My answer to you is that there is no other corporation which incorporates privilege. That is what I said at the very beginning when I described my job.

  Q379  Ann Coffey: No, we are not discussing privilege. This is about how an organisation is managed. This is completely separate from privileges. It is just about how decisions are made, who makes them and to whom they are accountable and having clarity about that.

  Dr Jack: Yes, but it is not in this case separated from privilege because this is the whole matter that we are discussing.



 
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