Good Liberals were up in arms when the police raided Damian Green's Commons office in 2008

It seems tomorrow's Sunday Times is reporting that police found "extreme pornography" on Damian Green's computer when they raided his Commons office and impounded it in 2008.

When we have finished giggling, it might be a good idea to recall that at the time all good Liberals were up in arms over that raid.

Here is the House Points column I wrote for Liberal Democrat News that week...

MPs Collared

Michael Jabez Foster said just one constituent had raised the search of Damian Green’s office with him. It was "self-indulgence", he argued, for MPs to debate it.

But the people of Hastings and Rye should be more concerned with the health of parliamentary democracy. So this column is devoted to some of Monday’s more enlightened contributions.

Theresa May: "Constituents do not give information to their Member of Parliament on the basis that one day it might be pored over by police officers. Parliamentary privilege is not our privilege; it is the people’s privilege."

Elfyn Llwyd: "It seems rather strange that we should be discussing the whole idea of prejudicing the inquiry, given that the Government tried to force through the 42-day measure on the premise that we were all going to discuss issues to do with individuals."

Simon Hughes: "If the police knocked on the door of one of my constituents in Southwark or Bermondsey, everybody inside would know … they do not have to let the police in unless they have a warrant."

Dominic Grieve: "Since the passage of the Official Secrets Act 1989, the leaking of material not concerning national security has ceased to be a criminal offence. On what basis, therefore, is a civil servant arrested for that, and on what conceivable basis is my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford [Damian Green] arrested?"

Menzies Campbell: "Our responsibilities involve both the scrutiny of Government and the redress of grievance. If we cannot be confident that our communications with our constituents are confidential, there is necessarily an inhibition in our ability to fulfil those responsibilities."

Andrew Mackinlay: "Leaks are food and drink to me as a backbench Member of Parliament, and I do not want to stop them coming to me."

Kenneth Clarke: "I first met the Leader of the House [Harriet Harman] when she was the legal adviser to the National Council for Civil Liberties. She was a pretty feisty, radical lawyer in those days, and … she would not conceivably have made the speech then that she made an hour or two ago. She would have been leading demonstrations outside about the behaviour of the Government."

I am not sure what Simon’s claim tells us about South London, but it was a good debate.

Damian Green's friends try to save his career by claiming woman 'may have mistaken his hand for a table cloth'

The Daily Telegraph wins our Headline of the Day Award by a distance.

Private Eye's lead story was on this blog in 2008

The lead story in the new Private Eye concerns hacks' attempts to turn up some dirt on our new prime minister.

They hoped to find it in a privately published history of the Oxford University Conservative Association that appeared in 1994 and left no episode of backstabbing or vote-rigging undocumented.

Trouble is, that history has suddenly become very scarce. Even college libraries known to have held copies now claim they do not.

But the Eye has seen one and can reveal that no wrongdoing by either the young Theresa Brasier or the young Philip May appears in it.

It does however have a story about Damian Green being thrown into the Cherwell.

I would be more impressed by this if it had not already appeared on this blog in 2008. This is what I quoted then:

One person who will perhaps be a little anxious at the news that David Davis has been replaced as shadow Home Secretary by Dominic Grieve is Conservative MP Damian Green, who has the immigration brief in Grieve's new department. 

The two men were at Oxford together in the 1970s, when Green (educated at Reading grammar school) was an undergraduate at Balliol College and his new boss (educated at Westminster public school) was at Magdalen. Green, who a contemporary remembers as an earnest sort of chap, was invited to a black-tie dinner at Magdalen and polished his shoes accordingly, but after dinner - and, sadly, history does not record the reason for this - Green found himself picked up in a display of high spirits and deposited in the Cherwell by a group of Magdalen hearties, including Dominic Grieve.

Quoted, because was not a scoop by me either. The story had appeared in the Observer's diary column Pendennis.

Still, I make that Lord Bonkers 1 Lord Gnome 0.

Ministry of Justice consultation on extra help for male rape victims

From the Ministry of Justice website:

For the first time ever, the Government has set aside a dedicated pot of money specifically to support men who have suffered sexual abuse including rape. We'd like your views and ideas on how we can spend this £500,000 fund in the best possible way to meet the needs of as many men as we can.

Submit your ideas via that website. The extra money was announced by Damian Green in February.

In which I am mentioned in Hansard three times

This morning Charlotte Henry tweeted that she would "officially give up" if Gareth Epps gets into Hansard. We can only hope that, however Gareth fares, she does not do so.

But her tweet did remind me that I was mentioned in the House of Commons three times in June 2003.

The first mention was by Angela Browning on 5 June. She asked John Reid, as Leader of the House:

Can we have a debate next week on the middle classes? I am sure that the Leader of the House will have noted that in Liberal Democrat News of 30 May, Jonathan Calder, who is a member of the party's federal policy committee, wrote an article about the Conservative policy of scrapping tuition fees. He says that it "has a lot to be said for it", but goes on to say:

"If the Conservatives do not speak for the stupid middle classes, who do they speak for?"

We should like to debate that rather old-fashioned concept with them.

And then on 23 June it was Tim Boswell in a debate on student finance said:

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford said, Liberal Democrat News provided a ringing endorsement of our policies in the shape of Jonathan Calder's article, which explained that my hon. Friend's idea of 

"getting rid of tuition fees, and financing the move by scrapping plans to extend the number of students even further, has a lot to be said for it." 

I agree. It is useful to have allies on occasion.

The member for Ashford was Damian Green, who had already intervened on Phil Willis, then our shadow education secretary, to say:

I feel that I should draw his attention to Liberal Democrat News of 30 May 2003. It is a publication that I read sporadically. This edition is particularly interesting because it makes the following thoughtful point: 

"Damian Green's idea of getting rid of tuition fees, and financing the move by scrapping plans to extend the number of students even further, has a lot to be said for it." 

I always welcome support from Liberal Democrat News, and I hope to get it from the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesmen, as well.

Phil, characteristically, was unfazed by this.

How long ago it all seems! In those days the Labour government's policy was to have 50 per cent of young people going to university. That always seemed unrealistic to me, and I even heard someone at the last Lib Dem Conference applauded with reasonable enthusiasm for saying so.

Today, of course, we have less than half of young people going to university and tuition fees, but that is austerity for you.

I imagine that my column appeared in a briefing for Conservative MPs and that Angela Browning seized on the wrong phrase. I doubt the bright young things at Tory head office included it because of my joke about the stupid middle classes, but it obviously enraged her.

June 2003, towards the end of Iain Duncan Smith's leadership, was about the nadir of Conservative fortunes. The fact that three of their MPs thought they could help their party by quoting me, confirms that judgement.

Chris Bryant reminds us that our liberties are not safe with Labour

One of the least creditable episodes of the last parliament was the arrest of the shadow minister Damian Green and the subsequent search of his office in the Palace of Westminster.

I discussed it in rather eccentric terms in a House Points column at the time:

Settle down, class. Open Calder’s History of England and we shall read about Charles I and the Five Members. Tompkins, you start: 

Parliament then passed a law that gave members control over the King's ministers. Charles I was furious and decided it was time to take action. On 4 January 1642, he arrived at Westminster with a great company of armed men to arrest Arthur Huggl… Hig... 

"Haselrig," you ignorant boy. 

Arthur Haselrig, John Pym, John Hampden, Denzil Holles and William Strode who were all MPs whom he regarded as troublemakers. The five men managed to escape before the soldiers arrived. 

When the king demanded to know where the Five Members were the Speaker, Michael Martin replied: "Help yourself, laddie. They are hiding in yon stationery cupboard." He then rolled on his back, waved his paws and asked: "Is there any chance of a peerage just now?" 

That will do, Tompkins. Sometimes I wonder about the Headmaster’s choice of textbooks. 

Because, of course, Charles encountered not Speaker Martin but Speaker Lenthall. And Lenthall famously replied: "May it please your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see nor tongue to speak in this place but as this House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me."

Green's arrest was mentioned on Twitter today by the Labour MP Chris Bryant. He is still indignant about it, but not in the way you might expect...

A reminder that our liberties are not safe with Labour. There are plenty of countries where opposition politicians do fear arrest, but we do not want Britain to be one of them.

House Points: The Damian Green debate

This week's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News. As I was busy with the day job, I thought I would let MPs write it for themselves.

MPs Collared

Michael Jabez Foster said just one constituent had raised the search of Damian Green’s office with him. It was "self-indulgence", he argued, for MPs to debate it.

But the people of Hastings and Rye should be more concerned with the health of parliamentary democracy. So this column is devoted to some of Monday’s more enlightened contributions.

Theresa May: "Constituents do not give information to their Member of Parliament on the basis that one day it might be pored over by police officers. Parliamentary privilege is not our privilege; it is the people’s privilege."

Elfyn Llwyd: "It seems rather strange that we should be discussing the whole idea of prejudicing the inquiry, given that the Government tried to force through the 42-day measure on the premise that we were all going to discuss issues to do with individuals."

Simon Hughes: "If the police knocked on the door of one of my constituents in Southwark or Bermondsey, everybody inside would know … they do not have to let the police in unless they have a warrant."

Dominic Grieve: "Since the passage of the Official Secrets Act 1989, the leaking of material not concerning national security has ceased to be a criminal offence. On what basis, therefore, is a civil servant arrested for that, and on what conceivable basis is my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford [Damian Green] arrested?"

Menzies Campbell: "Our responsibilities involve both the scrutiny of Government and the redress of grievance. If we cannot be confident that our communications with our constituents are confidential, there is necessarily an inhibition in our ability to fulfil those responsibilities."

Andrew Mackinlay: "Leaks are food and drink to me as a backbench Member of Parliament, and I do not want to stop them coming to me."

Kenneth Clarke: "I first met the Leader of the House [Harriet Harman] when she was the legal adviser to the National Council for Civil Liberties. She was a pretty feisty, radical lawyer in those days, and … she would not conceivably have made the speech then that she made an hour or two ago. She would have been leading demonstrations outside about the behaviour of the Government."

I am not sure what Simon’s claim tells us about South London, but it was a good debate.

Damian Green in cold water

While Damian Green is enjoying an unexpected period of celebrity, it is time to remind readers of the time that he was thrown into the Cherwell by Dominic Grieve.

Mr Speaker Martin's last chance

The current Speaker has once last chance not to go down in history as one of the most partisan and discredited figures to occupy the role.

Iain Dale reports that Harriet Harman's plans for a meeting to discuss the Speaker's statement on the arrest of Damian Green have been leaked to the Conservatives. It is clear from the memo that she is trying to tell him what he should say. And it is clear from the list of those invited that she is acting purely out of party interest.

As Iain says:

Invited to the meeting are Jacqui Smith and Jack Straw, as well as Cabinet Secretary Gus O'Donnell, Jill Pay, the Serjeant at Arms and the Parliamentary Clerk, Malcolm Jack and a representative from the Speaker's Office. Strangely the Tories and LibDems have not been invited.

The Speaker should tell Harman that he will decide with whom he discuss his statement and he will decide what he will say.

Sadly, I doubt that he has the courage, the independence or the intellect to do so.

Harriet Harman breaks ranks on Damian Green arrest

The leader of the house has become the first cabinet minister to distance herself from the arrest of the Tory immigration spokesman. The BBC reports:

Harriet Harman has said she is "very concerned" by the arrest of Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green.

Ms Harman also said she understood MPs' anger at the way police officers had raided Mr Green's Parliamentary and constituency bases.

And she said protection of MPs' offices from police raids must be reviewed.

A sign of the way the wind is blowing?

Arrest of Damian Green by counter-terrorism police is an outrage

The arrest of a shadow cabinet minister under anti-terrorism powers can only have taken place with sanction from the highest level. And, if the Daily Telegraph is correct, then it is clear that Green's offence is embarrassing the government:

It is understood that the inquiry is focusing on four Home Office documents allegedly obtained by the Conservatives. Last November, documents from the private office of Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, were leaked to the opposition.

They showed that ministers had known for four months that thousands of illegal immigrants had been cleared to work as security guards but had not told Parliament.
Other documents included information about an illegal immigrant working at House of Commons and a list of Labour MPs preparing to vote against the Government's anti-terrorism measures.

Moreover, by acting in this way the government will only strengthen the public perception that it has something to hide on immigration. You would have to be quite extraordinarily stupid to think anthing else. In fact, it hard to think of anyone who who could be so mind-numbingly stupid as to approve this action.

Hello, my name is Jacqui Smith.

Dominic Grieve joins the Bullingdon Club

One result of David Davis's decision to gallop off madly in all directions has been Dominic Grieve's promotion to shadow home secretary.

He is an effective, courteous performer in the Commons and has always struck me as a lawyerly, even scholarly, figure. But in Sunday's Observer Pendennis showed another side to him:

One person who will perhaps be a little anxious at the news that David Davis has been replaced as shadow Home Secretary by Dominic Grieve is Conservative MP Damian Green, who has the immigration brief in Grieve's new department.

The two men were at Oxford together in the 1970s, when Green (educated at Reading grammar school) was an undergraduate at Balliol College and his new boss (educated at Westminster public school) was at Magdalen. Green, who a contemporary remembers as an earnest sort of chap, was invited to a black-tie dinner at Magdalen and polished his shoes accordingly, but after dinner - and, sadly, history does not record the reason for this - Green found himself picked up in a display of high spirits and deposited in the Cherwell by a group of Magdalen hearties, including Dominic Grieve.

It is clear that Grieve will fit in well with David Cameron's circle. Meanwhile the parallels between Damian Green and John Mortimer's Leslie Titmuss should be explored by the nation's literary critics.