Business of the House

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 16th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

As a former local government Minister, I know that there is no way of coming up with a draft settlement that satisfies every single local authority. As my hon. Friend will know, we are consulting on the proposals announced on Monday, and if he or members of his local authority have comments to make about the settlement, they should make them. There will be an opportunity to debate the final settlement when it is laid before the House next year.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will the Leader of the House invite the Home Secretary to come to the House again to correct comments that she made about public order policing in her statement last Monday? She informed the House then that protesters

“who remained peaceful and wished to leave via Whitehall were able to do so.”—[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 643, c. 665.]

When I pressed her on that, she confirmed it. Since then an e-mail has been passed to me by, among others, my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith), which reports that peaceful protesters spent hours trying to leave and being prevented from doing so by police. Although the police told them that they could leave, they actually prevented that from happening. Will the Home Secretary come and tell us the truth about the policing of the demonstration?