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


Examination of Witness (Question Numbers 760-779)

MS JILL PAY

7 DECEMBER 2009

  Q760  Ann Coffey: I think my question was how come you never had a conversation with him in which the Speaker was aware that there was not a warrant.

  Ms Pay: I think, because I talked about the search and searching the premises in the first conversation, in the face to face conversation, and then when I spoke to him on the telephone later on the Wednesday afternoon again it was about searches. It was not about a warrant. At that stage when I spoke to him on Wednesday afternoon I believed I had the authority to give the consent to search instead of there being a warrant. Having a warrant, in my mind, was the alternative route.

  Q761  Ann Coffey: I understand the process. My question is about how could the Speaker of the House of Commons be left in such a situation as he was left in, in which he believed that, even if there was a warrant for the search of a Member of Parliament's offices, there was not. He is the person with whom the buck stops, the person who is elected by the Members of the House. How could he be left in such a situation?

  Ms Pay: I think only on the assumption that when you say "search" people assume there is a warrant.

  Q762  Ann Coffey: Do you not think it was part of your responsibility to make sure that the Speaker did know that there was not a warrant and that he has that information? Do you not think he should have known that and you should have made sure that he understood exactly the position, that there was not a warrant?

  Ms Pay: I think, with the wisdom of hindsight, yes, I do wish I had said that but we are talking about facts and I did not say it. I did not say it for the reason I gave, that I believed I had the authority to give the consent to search. With hindsight, yes, I should have made it clearer.

  Q763  Ann Coffey: Do you think that the difficulties are caused by the changes in how the administration of the House is managed and the changes in your role, or do you think that part of the problem was the nature of the personal relationships?

  Ms Pay: I do not think the organisational changes impacted on this because the previous Serjeant still had security access and ceremonial, but other things as well. I feel that actually it is much easier for me to focus on my responsibilities than it was for the previous Serjeant because it was such a wide portfolio. I do not think that impacted on this. I think the difficulty was because I accepted this duty of confidentiality. My working relationship with the Speaker had been very effective, and my working relationship with the Clerk of the House and the Clerk Assistant. I think the Clerk of the House said that my natural style is to be consultative and to communicate, but because I accepted this duty of confidentiality my behaviour was not in my normal pattern. I am not using it as an excuse, but you ask me how I think it happened and I think that is how it happened.

  Q764  Ann Coffey: You are clearly taking your share of the responsibility on that. That is very welcome but I do not believe it is totally down to the fact that you saw this duty of confidentiality as overriding. I cannot believe that that is the only reason that we ended up with the situation that the Speaker did not know that there was not a warrant to search a Member of Parliament's offices. I am suggesting to you that the problems and difficulties are probably more complex than those which you are presenting. It is not so straightforward, is it?

  Ms Pay: I can only tell you from my perspective. If you want a larger, organisational picture, maybe you need to ask the Director General who is sitting near me, or maybe somebody could respond to the Committee in writing after this meeting. I can tell you from my perspective but not from the larger, strategic view of the organisation.

  Q765  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: You said in your answer to Mr Howard that you had not asked the Speaker for his consent to whether you should sign this form because you believed you had delegated authority to make that decision yourself.

  Ms Pay: Yes.

  Q766  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: Why did you believe that?

  Ms Pay: First of all, there is this concept that the Speaker is responsible for security but delegates executive authority to the Serjeant. That is the overriding view but, because this was new to me and I had not come across this before, that is why I went to seek advice from the Clerk of the House, to just check out that point: had I the authority to give consent to the search.

  Q767  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: The Clerk, when he gave evidence to us—I am sure you have read his evidence—said that he was in no doubt that the Speaker's consent ought to have been obtained but he acknowledged that what he had said to you was that you must consult the Speaker. He did not explicitly say that you must get his consent, although that is what he thought he was communicating to you.

  Ms Pay: Yes.

  Q768  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: When the Clerk gave you his advice that you should consult the Speaker, what did you understand him at that time to mean?

  Ms Pay: To consult the Speaker, to talk to the Speaker about what was happening, but I did not interpret it to overtly ask for the Speaker's agreement to the consent to search.

  Q769  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: The way we reconcile your evidence with the Clerk of the House's evidence is that there was a confusion between what he thought he was telling you and how you understood—

  Ms Pay: There was a misunderstanding.

  Q770  Sir Malcolm Rifkind: As to the meaning of the word "consult"?

  Ms Pay: That is right, yes.

  Q771  Mr Blunkett: For the sake of clarification around what happened on the day of the arrest, I would be most grateful if you would just run through with us again the timetable. As I understood it, at around ten to two, you were informed that the arrest had taken place. Is that correct?

  Ms Pay: Yes, that is right.

  Q772  Mr Blunkett: You spoke to the Clerk when?

  Ms Pay: I got to the Clerk's office at 20 past two.

  Q773  Mr Blunkett: That is when he then knew that an arrest had taken place?

  Ms Pay: He had seen it on Sky News. Sky News got it first.

  Q774  Mr Blunkett: When you went to tell him, he told you he already knew?

  Ms Pay: Yes.

  Q775  Mr Blunkett: At that point, did you have a conversation about the likely implications in view of the privilege and in view of the likelihood obviously of the House as a whole being concerned in this matter?

  Ms Pay: The conversation we had was about the likelihood that the House would not obstruct a criminal investigation, whatever the process. This is what I took it to mean: if the McKay process had been followed, he thought it was unlikely that the House would obstruct a criminal investigation. That was an overall point. He also gave me some very good advice. He said, "You must keep a record and a time line of everything that was said, to whom and when because there will be an inquiry into this in due course." That made me realise that it was extremely serious. That also triggered my request to Chief Superintendent Bateman to have a very clear statement about the difference between consent to search and a warrant, because obviously this was going to be a very big and serious issue.

  Q776  Ann Coffey: When you were talking about the problem having arisen because of this duty of confidentiality, did you mean by that that you also saw that the information the police had given you was confidential and to be kept from the Speaker as well? You felt that duty of confidentiality?

  Ms Pay: No. I insisted to the police all the way through that I was going to tell the Speaker. There was no question that I would not tell the Speaker this.

  Q777  Ann Coffey: When I asked you about why the Speaker believed that there was a warrant to search the office and I asked how that situation could have arisen, you said you felt it arose from a misunderstanding or accepting a duty of confidentiality.

  Ms Pay: How the misunderstanding occurred, yes. I do not think it was due to that. I think it was due to the fact that I believed that I had the authority to give the consent to search and that that had taken me down a route where there was not a warrant. I accepted that and I did not feel that I needed to explain all of that route to the Speaker because I was not asking his agreement to the consent to search. I did not follow the line of warrant with him.

  Q778  Ann Coffey: It was because you believed you had the authority, not him.

  Ms Pay: Yes.

  Q779  Ann Coffey: It was more to do with that than the duty of confidentiality?

  Ms Pay: Yes.



 
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