Jacqui Smith out of her depth as constitutional row escalates

The Speaker Michael Martin is expected to order a review of the Commons procedures to protect Parliamentary privilege after the arrest by anti-terrorist police of the Opposition immigration spokesman, Damian Green, and the raid on his private Commons office by police investigating a series of leaks at the Home Office.

Martin will make a statement to MPs when the Commons resumes on Wednesday for the State Opening of Parliament, but Harriet Harman, the Leader of the House, gave a clear hint that he will respond to growing outrage at the heavy-handed arrest of Green which today spread to Labour MPs.

As some senior select committee chairmen were threatening to hold their own Commons investigations, Harman, a former civil rights lawyer, told Martin there needed to be an urgent review of procedures to ensure the protection of "big constitutional principles".

The row escalated today as former journalist and Labour minister for Europe, Denis Macshane, weighed in with calls for the rights of MPs to be defended, describing the heavy-handed treatment of Green as "a mammoth breach in the core democratic doctrine of parliamentary privilege".

Green's office was raided after his arrest by police, and his e-mails frozen, preventing him from carrying out his constituency business. The MPs want to know who authorised the police to march into Green's office. Speaker Martin was accused at the weekend of passing the buck to the new Serjeant at Arms, Jill Pay, who recently took over the ceremonial role in charge of policing the House of Commons.

The move towards holding a review was viewed by many MPs as further evdience that Jacqui Smith is completely out of her depth as Home Secretary. She refused to give an apology to Green on the BBC1 Andrew Marr show yesterday and gave a series of stock answers which showed she had no understanding of how opinion was hardening among fellow Cabinet ministers against the police raid.

Senior Tories are also furious that Smith used the interview to smear Green as part of her defence of the Government by hinting that Green was being interviewed about allegations that were far more serious than merely taking leaked documents from Chris Galley, a civil servant in her department, and a former Tory candidate.

Former shadow home secretary David Davis, a friend of Green and his former boss before resigning to fight the threat of the state to people's freedoms, accused Smith of peddling the line that Green had encouraged a public servant to break the law, an offence which carries the maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Davis is also furious that the Government is attempting to turn a leaks inquiry into a assault on the Opposition to do its job by exposing embarrassing facts about Smith's Home Office. "The suggestion that encouragement to expose the truth in the public interest should be a criminal offence carrying a maximum sentence of life imprisonment is novel even for this Labour Government," said Davis.

"I am outraged at the Home Secretary's behaviour. She started by saying that she hadn't been involved in the decision to arrest Damian Green. Now she is saying it is much more serious than people are imagining. All this is very improper. Either she involves herself in this or she doesn't. It is not only improper. It is dishonest."

Justice Secretary Jack Straw made it clear this morning the police raid on Green's Commons office will be investigated. "I am pretty certain it will be because of the extent of the concern," he said on the BBC Radio Today programme. Straw, a former Home Secretary, did his best to reconcile Jacqui Smith's views with Harriet Harman’s but conceded he was “surprised” at the way Green was arrested and understood the concerns of his colleagues - a point that Smith was apparently too inept to acknowlege.

The row now threatens to escalate into a full-scale constitutional storm, knocking off-course Brown's strategy for regaining the initiative over the economic meltdown after a weekend poll for the Observer showed the Tories had reopened a big lead over Labour in the wake of threats of tax rises in last week's Pre-Budget Report.

Brown knows how damaging leaks can be before a general election - he used leaks to soften up the Major Government for a humiliating defeat and inflated his own career when Labour was desperate to get out of opposition into power. By making Green an 'enemy of the state', Brown's Government is seen to be using state intimidation to stop more damaging leaks coming out from other civil servants in the run-up to polling day.

A Parliamentary inquiry into whether the police should have been allowed into Green's office will miss the real target. A full-scale inquiry is going to be demanded by David Cameron, the Tory leader, into the role of the Government in Green's arrest for doing his duty as an Opposition spokesman. But don't hold your breath. It would take another leak to get at the truth - and no civil servant in his right mind is going to risk that now.

THE MOLE: GREEN ARREST

FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 1, 2008