History > 2008 > UK > Politics > House of Commons (I)
 

Police

'secretly taped

Damian Green arrest'

Wednesday 24 December 2008
02.47 GMT
Guardian.co.uk
Press Association
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk
at 02.47 GMT
on Wednesday 24 December 2008.
It was last updated
at 03.00 GMT on Wednesday 24 December 2008.

The controversy over the arrest of Tory frontbencher Damian Green took a new twist today after it emerged the arresting officers were wearing sound recording equipment at the time.

Police arrested and held shadow immigration minister Green for nine hours last month in connection with a Home Office leak inquiry. It prompted Tory accusations of "heavy-handed tactics" by Scotland Yard and piled pressure on the officer in charge of the probe, Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick.

In a statement today, the Metropolitan police said a tape recording of Green's arrest was made "without his knowledge".

The issue had now been referred to the UK's covert surveillance watchdog "for their advice", the force added.

The Met said: "A tape sound recording was made of the MP's arrest and subsequent period in police charge, without his knowledge, prior to arrival at Belgravia police station from Kent.

"This was authorised at superintendent level to provide an accurate record of anything that may have been said by officers or the MP over a period of nearly two and a half hours.

"This was done with the best of intentions but to ensure total transparency this matter has been voluntarily referred to the Office of the Surveillance Commissioners for their advice."

"The Crown Prosecution Service are also aware of this information which would be fully disclosable if any proceedings were to take place."

Green's arrest and the subsequent search of his offices in the houses of parliament provoked a furious exchange between the Conservative party and Quick, who is the UK's most senior counterterrorism officer.

He was forced to make an unreserved apology this week after he accused the Tories of trying to undermine his inquiry.

Acting Met Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson yesterday backed his assistant, saying he believed a "line had been drawn" under the row.

Last week the leaks inquiry came under fire after an independent review questioned the "proportionality" of the manner of Green's arrest on 27 November.

The Cabinet Office originally alerted police in October to alleged leaks of Home Office information.

Police 'secretly taped Damian Green arrest', G, 24.12.2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/24/damian-green-arrest-taped-say-police

Labour MP urges Speaker to resign

Saturday December 6 2008
11.02 GMT
Guardian.co.uk
Matthew Weaver and agencies

The position of the Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, was further undermined today when a backbencher became the first Labour MP to call for his resignation over the police raid on the offices of the Tory immigration spokesman, Damian Green.

Bob Marshall-Andrews said Martin had lost the confidence of the House after he allowed police to enter the Commons without a search warrant as part of an investigation into leaks at the Home Office.

The maverick leftwinger is the first Labour MP to call publicly for the Speaker to go. Two Tory MPs have already said that he should resign.

Marshall-Andrews said that Martin's handling of the affair represented a "deplorable breach of his duties" to the House of Commons.

"That is very serious and, frankly, I do not think he can continue," he told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme.

He was particularly scathing about Martin's attempt to pass responsibility for what happened to the Serjeant at Arms, Jill Pay, who signed the consent form allowing police to enter the House and search Green's office.

"She told the Speaker throughout. It is the Speaker's responsibility," Marshall-Andrews said.

"One of the worst things about this was the nature of the statement that he made which was a straightforward passing of his responsibilities to the Serjeant at Arms. He knew what was happening and he should have taken action to stop it."

"In those circumstances, the confidence of the House goes and without the confidence of the House he cannot do his job."

But the former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said that Martin was unlikely to be forced out because of Labour's desire to avoid a potentially embarrassing byelection.

Labour lost its previously safe seat of Glasgow East earlier this year.

"If the Speaker steps down, by convention he or she leaves the House of Commons and goes to the House of Lords. I can't imagine Gordon Brown looks forward with any enthusiasm to fighting another difficult byelection in Glasgow," Campbell told the Today programme.

"I think Mr Martin will remain in the Speaker's chair until the end of this parliament."

Meanwhile the shadow home secretary, Dominic Grieve, said that the junior civil servant at the centre of the Home Office leaks inquiry should be sacked if he had "done the leaking".

The Tories have been outraged over the decision of police investigating the leaks to arrest Green, arguing he was acting in the public interest in making the information public.

But in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Grieve said that the Home Office was entitled to sack the official concerned - Chris Galley, a former Tory parliament candidate - if he was responsible for the leaks.

"If he's done the leaking, it's quite clear the department has a right to dismiss him. Of course it does. It's a breakdown of trust. He's made a choice, and he will have to live by that choice," he said.

Grieve, who was previously the shadow attorney general, said that it would be wrong for MPs to try to "induce" civil servants into leaking information.

"I've never been asked to lay down firm guidelines for the party, but if someone came along and asked me if a leak should be induced, I would say no," he said.

Asked whether he had given that advice to Green, he replied: "Everything suggests to me that he acted with complete propriety in this matter."

His comments come amid accusations from some Labour MPs that the Tories' robust defence of Green risks forfeiting their right to respect for official secrecy by civil servants if they are elected to government.

    Labour MP urges Speaker to resign, G, 6.12.2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/06/damian-green-michaelmartin

6.15pm BST update

Brown wins dramatic victory

on 42-day detention

Wednesday June 11 2008
Guardian.co.uk
Deborah Summers and Jenny Percival
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk
on Wednesday June 11 2008.
It was last updated
at 18:23 on June 11 2008.

Gordon Brown tonight won a knife-edge victory to allow terror suspects to be detained for up to 42 days without charge.

In a dramatic vote MPs backed the proposals by 315 to 306.

The victory is belived to have been made possible because of the backing of the nine members of the Democratic Unionist party.

It is understood there were 37 Labour rebels.

With less than two hours to go before the vote Downing Street admitted that its latest advice from the Labour whips' office was "if the vote was to take place now, the government would not have enough votes to win".

The belief that the vote would be extremely tight was reinforced by the DUP's reluctance to say whether its members were going to support the government.

One Labour MP backing the PM suggested some Tory MPs expected to vote with the government were being encouraged by their whips to go home before the vote took place.

The prime minister's spokesman sought to play down suggestions that Labour rebels were being persuaded to support Brown with promises of a policy changes, such as dropping sanctions against Cuba and offers of £3,000-a-day compensation for suspects unlawfully detained under the new law.

He would only say Britain's position on Cuba was an issue "kept under review" and that since the sanctions were imposed by the EU it was up to the EU presidency to decide whether to take a fresh look at them.

On compensation for terror suspects, the spokesman said people who had been imprisoned unlawfully could already seek redress through the civil courts. "It's not a great issue of principle at stake here," he said. However, he did confirm the Home Office was in the process of working out details of how suspects detained under the proposed laws could be compensated.

Mohammad Sarwar, the Labour MP for Glasgow Govan, decided to back the government after he was told anyone locked up for as long as 42 days and then released without charge would receive compensation on a day-by-day basis.

At prime minister's questions earlier today, Brown urged MPs to back 42-day detention without charge for terrorism suspects or face the risk of having to rush through emergency measures "in a moment of panic".

Squaring up to his opponents ahead of tonight's crunch vote, Brown told critics he would take "no risks with security".

"Every senior policeman and every senior member of the security services have convinced me that an extension to 42 days' pre-charge detention is needed," Brown said. "I don't want, in a moment of panic, to come to the house for emergency measures."

But the Conservative leader, David Cameron, insisted prosecutors and security services believed the new powers were unnecessary.

In a fierce Commons clash, he branded the government's plans "unworkable" and a "symbolic assault on liberty that is unnecessary".

"Isn't it clear the terrorists want to destroy our freedom and when we trash our liberties we are doing their work for them?" Cameron asked.

Brown hit back, insisting: "It's no good to have opposition for opposition's sake. We have to take no risks with security."

The Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, accused the prime minister of "playing politics with civil liberties" and insisted that "no one" thought an extension from 28 to 42 days was necessary.

Brown replied that it was not only popular but also "necessary and right".

This evening's vote comes after weeks of arm-twisting and cajoling by ministers to try to win round waverers on the Labour benches.

Earlier today the shadow home secretary, David Davis, said it looked like the government would win, but he said that the Tories would carry the battle to the House of Lords, where opposition is thought to be far more entrenched.

A Conservative government would "almost certainly" reverse the plans, Davis said.

    Brown wins dramatic victory on 42-day detention, G, 11.6.2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/jun/11/terrorism.uksecurity

Hybrid embryo research given go-ahead by MPs

Tuesday, 20 May 2008
The Independent
By Ben Russell,
Political Correspondent


Ground-breaking new laws permitting the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for research passed a crucial vote in the Commons last night after attempts to ban the technique were overwhelmingly rejected.


MPs voted by almost two-to-one to reject an attempt to ban all hybrid embryos using human and animal DNA despite claims that they would turn Britain into a "rogue state".

The Commons voted down the amendment to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill by 336 to 176, a majority of 160. A second amendment to outlaw so-called "true hybrids" containing 50 per cent animal DNA was also rejected after a three-hour debate. A third amendment, which would limit the use of hybrid embryos, was also voted down.

MPs were offered a free vote on the issue of hybrid embryos, the first of a series of highly contentious issues in the Bill that crosses traditional party lines. Gordon Brown and David Cameron have both backed the technique as a possible route to treatments that could save millions of lives.

But MPs opposed to the proposals said the hybrid embryos were morally unacceptable and offered no guarantee of a medical breakthrough.

Three Roman Catholic members of the Cabinet were among a series of ministers who backed a ban. Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, Des Browne, the Defence Secretary and Paul Murphy, the Welsh Secretary, all backed calls for a full ban on hybrid embryos and voted for moves by the Conservative front bench to enact a partial ban on "true hybrids".

Opening the debate yesterday Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, condemned human-animal hybrid embryos as "ethically wrong and almost certainly medically useless". He said: "There is no overwhelming, or indeed any large-scale body of scientific evidence to suggest that this research that does cross this ultimate boundary between humans and animals will actually cure anything."

Mr Leigh insisted that the medical benefits of hybrid embryo research were based on "exaggeration, misinformation and hyperbole". He warned: "In embryos you do have the genetic makeup of a complete human being and you cannot splice together a human and an animal." He said: "I'm not sure even my greatest political enemies would say that I was 30 per cent a daffodil and 80 per cent a mouse.

"I don't believe in my soul or my brain I'm 80 per cent a mouse or 30 per cent a daffodil. But I do think that we are special and, therefore, as the human race is special it is different from the animal race and I think that we should take this very seriously."

Gerald Kaufman, the veteran Labour MP, warned: "The question you ask is how far do you go? Where do you stop? If you permit the creation of hybrid embryos now what would you seek to permit next time?"

Mark Simmonds, the shadow Health minister, proposed a ban on so-called "pure hybrid" embryos containing half of the DNA from an animal.

But Dr Ian Gibson, Labour MP for Norwich North and a former senior academic biologist, urged MPs to back research. He read from a letter from a constituent whose daughter suffered from motor neuron disease, which described how the girl might be helped by medical advances from stem cell research.

Dr Gibson said: "I'm inspired by people writing to me out of the blue like that. I'm the last person to prevent our scientific and medical community trying to develop the kind of cures that help people just like that."

He said: "The reason you do science, the reason you do research, is because you have a hunch you have an idea, there is some previous work and you say 'I wonder what would happen if ...' and so on. That's how science advances."

Dawn Primarolo, the Health minister, said that hybrid embryo research offered a "valuable resource" for scientists. Both the Prime Minister and leader of the Opposition voted against a ban on hybrid embryo research in last night's free votes.

Proposals to allow the creation of "saviour siblings" genetically matched to help seriously ill older brothers or sisters also passed the Commons. An attempt to block the practice was rejected by 342 to 163, a majority of 279, while another attempt by the Conservative frontbench to limit the practice to life-threatening cases was rejected by 318 votes to 149.

    Hybrid embryo research given go-ahead by MPs, I, 20.5.2008, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/hybrid-embryo-research-given-goahead-by-mps-831008.html

Racism rife in Commons, says MP

Dawn Butler, one of only two black women in the House,
speaks out about the discrimination
she has suffered from politicians of all parties

Sunday April 13 2008
The Observer
Amelia Hill and Jo Revill
This article appeared in the Observer
on Sunday April 13 2008 on p5 of the News section.
It was last updated at 01:00 on April 13 2008.

The House of Commons, held up as a beacon of democracy, has a 'dirty little secret', according to black MPs - its racism.

Dawn Butler, only the third black woman ever to have become an MP, said she faced such frequent racism from politicians of all parties that she had to 'pick her battles' to avoid being constantly in conflict with her colleagues. Disillusioned by what she has found, she is calling for a dedicated complaints department with the power to suspend politicians and send them on awareness training courses.

'I thought people in Parliament would be progressive. It is still a shock that they are not,' she said. 'Over the past 400-plus years, the only black people - and black women in particular - in Parliament have been there to cook and clean. For some politicians, it's still a shock to come face to face with a black women with any real power. Racism and sexism is Parliament's dirty little secret.'

She is backed by Diane Abbott, the only other black woman in the Commons, who said that she had suffered 20 years of prejudice. 'In the beginning, some of it was sheer ignorance. I remember being shocked when a Labour MP asked me once whether we celebrated Christmas in Jamaica,' said Abbott, Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.

'It has not helped that the Labour party powers-that-be have always seen me as "uppity" but I have dealt with the racism and misogyny by reaching out to other black women.'

Butler, who won the Brent South seat in 2005 when she was 35, described how shocked she was by the attitude of a senior Conservative who challenged her right to have a drink on the Commons' Thameside terrace, a privilege reserved for MPs.

In an article written for the Fawcett Society's new collection of essays, Seeing Double: Race and Gender in Ethnic Minority Women's Lives, Butler describes how former Tory minister David Heathcote-Amory confronted her as she went to sit in the members' section on the terrace. 'He actually said to me: "What are you doing here? This is for members only."

'He then proceeded to ask me: "Are you a member?" And I said: "Yes I am, are you?" And he turned around and said to his colleague: "They're letting anybody in nowadays."

'This man could not equate the image he saw in front of him with that of an MP. It was quite upsetting for my team and so we had to take it further.'

In an interview with The Observer, Butler went on to describe how an official complaint she made was stonewalled. 'It's not as though Parliament has a human resources department that you can complain to and expect disciplinary action from,' Butler said. 'So after being told by the Tory chief whip and the Speaker of the House that there was nothing to be done about it, I had no choice but to let it drop.'

Heathcote-Amory, MP for Wells, rejected the allegation that his remarks to Butler in September 2006 were racist. 'It is quite absurd,' he said. 'What she is actually objecting to is that I didn't recognise her as a new MP. I simply asked her what she was doing at that end of the terrace, and they are quite sensitive about this kind of thing, they think that any kind of reprimand from anyone is racially motivated.' He agreed that there was a problem with too few black and minority ethnic MPs being elected.

'The trouble is that feminism has trumped everything. We are a bit obsessed with getting more women in and I think genuinely broad-based politics is one that takes people from every social and religious group. But we are exaggeratedly courteous to anyone with a different skin colour, so the idea that anything I have said is racist is absurd.'

But Butler has also described further incidents in which she claims to have suffered explicit racism from politicians, lobbyists and police who provide security at the Commons.

'I was using the members' lift in the middle of last year, when a number of politicians started talking about how cleaners and catering staff shouldn't be allowed to use that specific lift,' she recalled. 'It was obvious they were talking about me and so I started to drop hints that I was an MP.

'They didn't pick up on my hints and continued complaining in a loud voice. When we all got out of the lift, I ran along the corridor after the particular person who had been most involved, and tried to make them realise how rude it was to talk like that; it would have been rude even if I had been a cleaner or caterer,' she said.

Zohra Moosa, editor of the Fawcett Society book, said: 'With only two black women MPs and not a single Asian woman, Parliament has never once been representative of Britain. There is no excuse for an unrepresentative democracy in this day and age but, until we change the way our institutions work, we will never have the politicians we need.'

    Racism rife in Commons, says MP, O, 13.4.2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/13/race.houseofcommons

4.45pm GMT / 11.45am ET update

Miliband admits US rendition flights

stopped on UK soil

Thursday February 21 2008
Guardian.co.uk
Mark Tran
This article was first published on guardian.co.uk
on Thursday February 21 2008.
It was last updated
at 16:57 on February 21 2008.

Britain acknowledged today for the first time that US planes on "extraordinary rendition" flights stopped on British soil twice.

The admission came from the foreign secretary, David Miliband, who apologised to MPs for incorrect information given by his predecessor, Jack Straw, and the former prime minister Tony Blair.

Miliband said the government had recently received information from Washington that two flights - one to Guantánamo Bay and one to Morocco – had stopped over at Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean.

Each plane carried a single terror suspect and neither of the men had been tortured, the CIA said.

"Contrary to earlier explicit assurances that Diego Garcia had not been used for rendition flights, recent US investigations have now revealed two occasions, both in 2002, when this had in fact occurred," Miliband told MPs.

He said he had discussed the issue with the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.

"We both agree that the mistakes made in these two cases are not acceptable, and she shares my deep regret that this information has only just come to light," Miliband said.

Gordon Brown, speaking in Brussels, said he shared "the disappointment that everybody has" about the rendition flights issue.

The prime minister told reporters: "We have just been informed by the United States of America about what has actually happened. The US has expressed regret for us not knowing about this issue. We share the disappointment that everybody has about what's actually happened."

There have been long-standing suspicions that the CIA has used one of its so-called black site prisons on Diego Garcia, which is home to a large US military base, to hold suspects, although Miliband today assured MPs that no US detainees had ever been held on Diego Garcia.

Miliband has been told by the US that neither of the men in the rendition flight to Diego Garcia was British. One is currently in Guantánamo Bay and the other has been released.

The foreign secretary said an "error in the earlier US records search meant that these cases did not come to light".

The director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, acknowledged the agency had made a "mistake" in failing to establish the proper nature of the flights.

"The refuelling, conducted more than five years ago, lasted just a short time. But it happened," he told the Associated Press.

"That we found this mistake ourselves, and that we brought it to the attention of the British government, in no way changes or excuses the reality that we were in the wrong. An important part of intelligence work, inherently urgent, complex and uncertain, is to take responsibility for errors and to learn from them."

Reprieve, a legal charity that represents a number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, has in the past accused the government of cooperating with the US on extraordinary rendition – the practice of seizing terrorism suspects and interrogating them on non-US territory.

The US president, George Bush, acknowledged in September 2006 the existence of the CIA's black site prisons. He said al-Qaida suspects or members of the Taliban who "withhold information that could save American lives" had been taken "to an environment where they can be held secretly, questioned by experts".

Bush did not disclose the location of any prison, but suspicion has been growing for years that one may have been located on Diego Garcia, around 1,000 miles off Sri Lanka's southern coast.

The 2,000 islanders were expelled in the early 1970s after the British government struck a secret deal to lease the 37-mile-long island to the US military.

Barry McCaffrey, a retired four-star US general who is a professor of international security studies at the West Point military academy, has twice spoken publicly about the use of Diego Garcia as a detention centre for suspects.

In May 2004, he said: "We're probably holding around 3,000 people, you know, Bagram airfield, Diego Garcia, Guantánamo, 16 camps throughout Iraq." In December last year he repeated the claim.

The registration number of a Gulfstream executive jet has been linked to several CIA prisoner operations that flew from Washington to Diego Garcia, via Athens, on September 11 2002, soon after the capture of Ramzi Binalshibh, a suspected planner of the September 11 attacks.

A European investigator said last year he had proof that Poland and Romania hosted secret prisons for the CIA in which it interrogated top al-Qaida suspects using methods akin to torture.

British police said they had found no evidence to support claims that CIA planes transporting terrorism suspects to face possible torture in secret prisons in Europe had landed illegally at British airports.

Miliband admits US rendition flights stopped on UK soil, G, 21.2.2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/21/ciarendition.usa