I have been quite surprised by the number of emails I have received from constituents outraged by the arrest of Damien Green MP. My fear was that the stock of politicians collectively was so low that the arrest of any one of us might provoke general rejoicing, and that any talk of parliamentary privilege would bring public ridicule. I am therefore very glad that people have reacted in the way that they have. No member of parliament is, or should be, above the law, but the law must protect proper parliamentary privilege, not because it is the privilege of elected politicians, but because it is the privilege of the people who elect us. It is their right of access to their elected representatives with absolute confidentiality that is at stake.
What strikes me as outrageous in this case is the lack of any sense of proportion by the senior police officers involved. They appear to have collectively taken leave of their senses. If there had been some great threat to national security, or some violent crime, one could understand their actions. The reality is that they were only investigating an administrative misdemeanour by a civil servant who wanted to put in the public domain facts about the failure of immigration policy which the government found embarrassing and wanted to cover up. A dozen or so anti terrorist officers were dispatched to search the premises of Damien Green and to incarcerate him under interrogation for nine hours because he let the public know that the security industry was riddled with illegal immigrants, some even working in the parliamentary estate, and one charged with guarding the Prime Minister's car. We now understand that one of the searches was carried out without a warrant which adds insult to injury. What infuriates me about this gross over reaction is that so many constituents complain to me that they so rarely see a police officer and that the crimes that they report are not followed up.
I sympathise with the policemen in the front line in our increasingly disordered society, they put up with an awful lot, and they have been poorly led. |
