National Security Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

2nd reading
Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

I am receiving indications that I may hear something in the summing-up speech, so I shall live in hope.

As I wish to leave scope for other members of the ISC to drill down into the detail of all three areas on which the Bill ought to be focusing, I shall confine myself to just a few comments on each. First—as we have said—we warmly welcome the repeal of the Official Secrets Acts of 1911 to 1939, with their references to century-old concepts of data targets, such as “sketches” and “plans”, which have long been superseded in the digital age. The new espionage offence created by clause 1 should enable the intelligence and security agencies more effectively to combat hostile state action in a world that has undergone a technological revolution in the modern era.

Clause 2 is a worthwhile attempt to protect valuable trade secrets, although we feel that there are issues of complexity and breadth of definition which will require simplification if this new system is to succeed. Clause 3 is strongly to be supported, both for criminalising the giving of assistance to a foreign intelligence service and for empowering the agencies and the police legitimately to unravel the hostile networks involved. Clause 12 creates a new offence of sabotage, at home or overseas: causing damage to vital UK assets or infrastructure, whether intentionally or recklessly. Clause 13 introduces an offence of foreign interference, but only for conduct that involves an intention to have a negative impact on the UK, for or on behalf of the foreign power in question. We suggest that it be broadened to cover those who behave recklessly, even if an intention to aid a foreign adversary cannot be proven.

Secondly, the failure radically to reform the Official Secrets Act 1989 leaves in place a requirement to demonstrate that actual harm has been caused by a civil servant or someone outside Government service when publishing classified information. However, the act of disclosing and specifying what harm has been done will often compound the problem and increase the damage; some prosecutions thus have to be dropped in order to prevent such further harm. Although the Law Commission has offered recommendations to cater for disclosures made genuinely in the public interest, those recommendations cannot even be considered other than in the context of the repeal, replacement or at least root-and-branch reform of the 1989 Act.

[Mr Steve Baker]

I absolutely support what my right hon. Friend says about the 1989 Act, section 1(1) of which states:

“A person who is or has been…a member of the security and intelligence services; or…a person notified that he is subject to the provisions of this subsection…is guilty of an offence if without lawful authority he discloses any information”.

There is no caveat about “damaging”. Is not the fundamental problem that a distinction is drawn between categories of person in how they are treated?

[Dr Lewis]

There is such a distinction. One could certainly argue that it is a graver offence for someone entrusted officially with secrets to breach that trust than for a journalist who thinks he has a scoop but knows that he might be harming the national interest to proceed nevertheless, recklessly or with deliberate intent to do harm. However, we are not talking about a spy rifling through a filing cabinet and taking pictures with his Minox camera; we are now in an age when a technician can download a gigabyte of information in a short period and have it published worldwide, unread even by the people who have published it. That is where there are huge gaps in the legislation, and closing them will require revisiting the 1989 Act.

The third leg is that there will be many practical issues with the contents and the proper parliamentary scrutiny of any amendment to the Bill to initiate a foreign influence registration scheme. Careful drafting will be required to catch those who are consciously and deliberately, or unreasonably and recklessly, acting on behalf of another state and its interests, without criminalising every parliamentarian who runs a bilateral international friendship group, for example. High on the agenda must be the issue of dodgy donations from questionable sources to political parties and campaigns—another good reason for the closest possible examination of the provisions that the Government eventually bring forward. Nevertheless, as has been pointed out, our Australian friends enacted their foreign influence transparency scheme as recently as 2018, while our US allies introduced their own legislation as long ago as 1938, so there is no shortage of precedents on which we can draw to get the legislation right and close at least one more gap in our national security arrangements.

National Security and Investment Bill

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Consideration of Lords amendments
Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

The ISC, on behalf of Parliament, is able to scrutinise the input of the intelligence agencies into these processes. It would not be able to scrutinise how that input is then handled, and the trouble is that because that input is top secret, the BEIS Committee would not be able to scrutinise it either. That means that there would be a scrutiny gap between what was being scrutinised by us as it went into the process of the new unit and what was being scrutinised by BEIS minus that sensitive material, so there would be no effective parliamentary scrutiny of the process whereby, as I said earlier, the highly sensitive security requirements were being balanced and offset against the commercial imperatives. Indeed, that may be the very reason why the Government are so reluctant to let the ISC see what is going on.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I fear that my right hon. Friend may have just answered my question before I ask it, but I am most grateful to him; he is making his speech with tremendous passion and is very persuasive. I just looked up the definition of “top secret” and I am wondering what will be missing from the output of the process that would mean that there are some scrutiny gaps. I think he has just explained that he wants to scrutinise the process and I can see why he would make that case, but will he just give us some indication as to what he expects would be top secret in that analysis, if that is at all possible?

[Dr Lewis]

If I gave an example of something that would be top secret—even if I were in a position to do so because we had started the work that we are not being allowed to start—I would then immediately be breaking the Official Secrets Act so, no, I cannot, and I would not even if I could. However, what is a certainty is that where there are circumstances where the intelligence agencies are advising on the security aspects, for example, of a potentially hostile state buying, overtly or covertly, into a strategically important asset, such as buying up a company engaged in cutting-edge technology. This unit will have to balance that against the possible commercial advantages of major investment from that other country.

The fact is that nobody on behalf of Parliament will be able to scrutinise that process unless either these amendments are accepted or the ISU—this new unit—is added to the list of units already on the memorandum of understanding. As I have said before and say again, if at any time the Minister wants to give me the assurance that it will be added, I am happy to let these amendments go from the face of the Bill.

As I explained, this is the reason that the ISC was set up as it is. If any Committee could do what the ISC does, it would not be necessary for the ISC to have all those unique facilities and arrangements. That is why paragraph 8 of the memorandum of understanding between the Government and the ISC categorically asserts:

“The ISC is the only committee of Parliament”—

I will say that again:

“the only committee of Parliament that has regular access to protectively marked information that is sensitive for national security reasons: this means that only the ISC is in a position to scrutinise effectively the work of the Agencies”—

and please listen to these next few words—

“and of those parts of Departments whose work is directly concerned with intelligence and security matters.”

A footnote to that sentence helpfully explains:

“This will not affect the wider scrutiny of departments…by other parliamentary committees. The ISC will aim to avoid any unnecessary duplication with the work of those Committees.”

With that machinery already in place, it is all the more baffling that the Government are now refusing to use the very body they created. Without including oversight by a properly structured and fully cleared security body, the Government are not placing security at the heart of the Bill.

The Government’s third and final argument is that if the ISC had a role, it would encroach on the BEIS Select Committee’s remit. This, too, is baffling and not borne out by experience. The Government’s own MOU already expressly states that the ISC scrutinises the classified parts of some Government Departments, leaving the remainder to the corresponding departmental Select Committees. That is what has always happened, perfectly harmoniously, in respect of a number of other Departments, so it is, again, bizarre that the Government now see this as a problem when they themselves have already made express provision for it.

The ISC can work seamlessly with the BEIS Select Committee on oversight of the Investment Security Unit, as it already does with other Select Committees such as the Defence Committee and the Home Affairs Committee, and in respect of the work of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. Far from being an “overreach” of our remit, in this particular case the ISC is trying to prevent its existing scope from being reduced. The unit that currently carries out investment security work is based in the Cabinet Office. Consequently, it is already overseen by the Intelligence and Security Committee. The ISC already scrutinises these activities in their current form in the Cabinet Office, so it cannot be “overreach” to do in future something that we already do. If the Government do not maintain this existing ISC scrutiny when the new Investment Security Unit takes over, it will be a step backwards from the current position.

If national security really is at the heart of the Bill, the ISC, as the national security oversight body, must be allowed to oversee it. The Government gave assurances to the House in 2013 that the ISC would oversee all security and intelligence matters. It is as simple as that. The sensible solution is that which was proposed and accepted in the other place—namely, the amendments that we are now being asked to reject for, as I have demonstrated, no good reason.

If, for some reason we have not been told, the Government cannot accept provision for oversight on the face of the Bill, there is the other solution that I have previously indicated. The Justice and Security Act and the memorandum of understanding linked to it set out the ISC’s role and remit, which the Government expressly told Parliament was the oversight of all intelligence and security matters across Government, now and in the future. The memorandum of understanding mechanism was rightly described by the security Minister at the time, my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), as “flexible” because

“it can be changed much more easily than primary legislation.”––[Official Report, Justice and Security Public Bill Committee, 31 January 2013; c. 98.]

The matter before us today is exactly as described in 2013: an area of Government in respect of which the ISC has oversight responsibility has been moved to a different Department. The memorandum of understanding could therefore be updated to reflect this, by way of a simple exchange of letters, to add the Investment Security Unit to the list of bodies covered by the MOU. The ISC would happily accept a commitment from the Minister to this effect tonight, in lieu of the amendment. Either method will ensure what is needed: real oversight of the national security elements of this legislation by the only body constituted and equipped to carry it out, rather than what might be described as “scrutiny in name only”.

Principles of Democracy and the Rights of the Electorate

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Thursday 26th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

I am talking about both. I am talking about the principle of democracy, which is the stability that comes from both the Government and the system enjoying democratic legitimacy expressed through the ballot box.

My second point is about the European Union. I am here today, although I care about many things, because of the way that the European Union constitution was handled. It was put to referendums in Lithuania, Hungary, Slovenia, Italy, Spain, Austria, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Belgium, Estonia, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Germany and Finland, all of which said yes. I had read the constitution and I knew that when the referendum came I should vote against it because it was too bureaucratic and therefore, I thought, likely to be inhumane. When it went to France and the Netherlands, they said no, and so referendums were cancelled in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and, yes, the United Kingdom.

But what did the European Union and those who govern it do? They did not change course and say, “It turns out we can’t get this system through the democratic consent of the peoples of Europe, so we must take another course.” As anyone who has read Open Europe’s side-by-side comparison of the Lisbon treaty, which replaced the European constitution, next to that constitution will know, they are functionally equivalent. What they did was an absolute democratic outrage. They changed the constitution of France to avoid a referendum and they made Ireland vote twice. That is why I am in politics.

The fundamental issue at stake today—

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I get the impression that my hon. Friend is on his peroration, so I cannot resist adding a historical footnote on the Lisbon treaty. When a number of us argued that we ought to have a referendum on the Lisbon treaty in the United Kingdom, one party said that we should not have a referendum on that—we should have an in/out referendum on our membership of the European Union. That party was the Liberal Democrats. Where are they on that position today?

[Mr Baker]

Of course, as my right hon. Friend knows, they are now committed to always ignoring a leave result. That, too, is an outrage, but at least they are clear about it, and I feel confident that we could rely on them to abide by it.

The fundamental point is that the people must get the Government they vote for, and they must not get the Government they did not vote for but cannot get rid of. This is a fundamental point related to the dreams we all have of a better society. It is about the dignity of the individual and the right of every person to determine their future peacefully at the ballot box.

2019 Loan Charge

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mr Baker]

I certainly agree with the right hon. Gentleman that there is a job of work to be done across parties to uphold the rule of law, in particular the principle that legislation should not apply retrospectively. That is a subject on which I have made speeches over the years. We end up in a hideous cycle of undesired action, in particular to avoid taxation, followed by the injustice of retrospective action to protect other taxpayers and the misery that causes to large numbers of people. It must be brought to an end, but underpinning that we must be committed to the rule of law.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing this debate to the Chamber. Can I ask him about retrospection? My constituent, Alan Williams FCA, points out that HMRC already had sufficient power to recover tax from individuals, so it is rather its own convenience and its unwillingness to apply its existing powers that have led to this legislation. My constituent Andy Pocock points out that in his case, he has procedures under the existing legislation whereby he is allowed to appeal, but all that will be cut off retrospectively by the new legislation and he will not have a chance to fight and defend his corner.

[Mr Baker]

One of Parliament’s duties is to restrain the Executive and ensure that their powers are reasonable. We should look carefully at the subject that my right hon. Friend has just raised. It is important that HMRC treats people in a decent and civilised way, and certainly more powers ought not to be taken than are strictly necessary.

Leaving the EU: Economic Analysis

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Baker]

The hon. Lady is entirely wrong; the sensible and pragmatic way forward, which honours the result of the referendum and ensures that this is a democracy with an independent Parliament able to ensure that control is exercised over the laws of this country, is to carry forward my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s policy, as she has set out in Florence and in the Lancaster House speech.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Is it not about time we set up a charity called “Soothsayers Anonymous” for people who simply cannot kick the habit of predicting when conflicts are going to break out, when we are going to have opinion polls that are going to be accurate and when we are going to have economic forecasts regarding the EU that are going to be accurate, even though history has shown time and again that they are not worth the paper they are written on?

[Mr Baker]

That is a very good point, but I am not sure we will make it Government policy to do it.

Euro Area

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Tuesday 21st July 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

It sometimes feels like we need a new language in which to have this conversation about the European Union and our relationship with it. I am grateful that, over the course of his career, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has on many occasions given us that language by saying things such as:

“It is the last gasp of an outdated ideology…that has no place in our new world of freedom”.

I agree with him.

A new nation state is hoving into view, and people should be clear about what we are discussing. The question is: should we continue on the path into that new nation state? There can now be no doubt that that is the trajectory of the eurozone. Advocates of European Union membership on substantially the current basis are in danger of being blindsided. We can see from this debate’s attendance that people are not paying close attention to the important issue of what the five Euro-presidents have said. By the way, the “five Euro-presidents”—the ridiculousness of it is palpable.

The five Euro-presidents have set out a new nation state, and it is clear that those who advocate membership on a substantially unreformed basis have not kept up with events. Too often it seems that people complacently assume that there will be a yes vote and that things will go on as before in a kind of status quo, but there will be no status quo on the ballot paper when the referendum comes. The choice will be either to continue on a substantially unreformed basis, if the Prime Minister does not get what he wants, or to say no and continue on a fundamentally different basis. Of course, I hope that the Prime Minister succeeds in delivering everything that he has ever set out. When the day comes, I would like to see yes meaning a fundamentally different relationship with the European Union that we and the Prime Minister can wholeheartedly support, and I would like no to turn out to be something that we do not need to consider.

The five Euro-presidents have set out a path to a new European nation. I fear that the truth is that they will not be willing to allow us to move to a fundamentally different path and that, in due course, the choice will be either the wild ride to political union that my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) set out or the conservative, moderate choice of sticking with our Parliament, our British courts, our British Lords and our ability to govern ourselves in the way that seems fit to us and that is accountable to the British people.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and to my right hon. and hon. Friends who spoke earlier, for their efforts in delving so deeply into the questions without completely losing the will to live, but can he explain to me how, despite all their sufferings, the Greek people seem to regard membership of the euro as the addict regards the use of heroin? It does them enormous harm, yet they do not seem to be able to give it up.

[Mr Baker]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point, and it may be that through the euro system Greece has done rather well in the past, through the fact that money was very easy for Greece—probably much easier than it should have been—and a nation that had probably been quite parsimonious was encouraged to take advantage of cheap credit and get into bad debt problems. It may well be that that system encouraged Greece to believe that a new way of living beyond one’s needs was possible; but as good Conservatives we will recognise that one must live within one’s means and balance the books. One must have low taxes, small government and sound money. However, I do not want to divert my remarks too far down that path.

I want to pick up on something that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said about Germany. It has been an interesting journey, considering how people reflect on Germany. I am inclined to think that German commitment to the EU project is not malicious or controlling. It is not a problem, except that, perhaps because the EU is perceived as an anti-war project, the German people and their leaders have pursued the project far beyond what was reasonable, just and right, out of a sense of war guilt and a historical sense of shame. We as good individualists, in rejecting collectivism, may have to look at today’s generation of German people and say that they are not responsible for the horrors of the past. They must forgive themselves and move beyond the corrupting view that they have the responsibility to take forward, in a way that is quite dangerous, a project that can now be seen to have failed. History may not repeat itself, but it sometimes rhymes. We have had a horrible financial crisis.

Britain in the World

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Monday 1st June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Dr Lewis]

The answer is yes, and the hon. Gentleman has saved me from uttering the sentence I was going to utter next, but the point about that review, of course, is that although it was truly strategic, it was not properly funded. Ours went to the other extreme of being properly funded but not truly strategic. We have to try to get a balance between those two methods.

[Mr Baker]

I would just observe that, having conducted their review, the Labour Government went on to overstretch our armed forces in conflicts that did not comply with the review itself, and not only that, but they seem to have put in place at least the precursor military operations to the mess we now have. They seem to have been a thoroughgoing failure.

[Dr Lewis]

While not disagreeing with my hon. Friend, I am trying to explain to the House the means of conducting the review. That is the point I am interested in—not the way in which Labour may afterwards have carried out its defence and foreign policies, about which I would have a large measure of agreement with my hon. Friend. The fact is, it is one thing to fail to live up to a good plan, but it is another not to have a good plan in the first place; and if we want to have a good plan, we need to take our time over the strategic defence and security review, and not rush it, and not simply say, “You’ve got X amount of money; how much defence can you give us for that sum?”

I want to say a quick word about NATO and deterrence. We have heard a lot about the 2% and I do not intend to waste the House’s time by reiterating the arguments we have all heard many times, but I would just make one point on the subject: the 2% is not a target, it is a minimum, and therefore there should be no question of our failing to meet the minimum. The question is how much above that minimum we can safely manage to use as the basis for the future shape and size of our armed forces.

Epilepsy

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker]

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend. I have already passed the details to the Minister. I am aware of the inquest and the NHS investigation, but I will certainly take her advice and give those other bodies the opportunity to investigate.

That brings me on to the specific issue of consent. I have spoken to Mr and Mrs Monks today and they say that at no point was it explained to them that this medication could have these side effects. Jessica was 17 when she started taking it, and I feel that that possibility really should have been explained to her parents. They should have had the opportunity to take very strong action. Of course, they did take very strong action—they took the strongest action they could—and it seems to me, without wishing to pass judgment, that the key problem was that they could not get hold of the neurologist.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am puzzled that the instructions that came with the medication did not include a warning that if someone had those sorts of side effects, they should cease taking it.

[Steve Baker]

I am a layman, but one of the things I have learned today is that one cannot simply cease taking medication for epilepsy, so specialist advice is required.

Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Debate between Julian Lewis and Steve Baker

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Steve Baker]

I perhaps would not have chosen precisely the same words, but I entirely agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

I am sorry to disagree with both my hon. Friends, especially as they really are my hon. Friends. That analogy breaks down because this is not MPs being elected by other MPs; rather, it is the Chair of the Committee being elected by a group of MPs who will have been chosen with the final say-so of the House of Commons. The other point I would simply make is that I do not think people who know either me or my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) would regard us as falling entirely in the Whips’ narks category.

[Steve Baker]

Since my hon. Friend has brought me on to this territory early, let me deal with these points now, first by saying to my right hon. and learned Friend that I well remember the month when he became Secretary of State for Defence, because it was when I graduated from initial officer training. I am very well aware of his august experience and the extent to which it exceeds my own. I am also well aware that my hon. Friend is a man of great character and integrity and personal courage. This is not really the issue, however. The issue is the institutional arrangements we put in place not necessarily to constrain my right hon. and learned Friend and my hon. Friend, but to ensure the Committee is credible both now and in future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Baker]

The right hon. Lady’s question pre-empts some of my other remarks, but let me just draw her attention to what amendment 9 states:

“The Chair is to be a member of the House of Commons elected in the same way as the Chairs”

of other Committees, and:

“A person is not eligible to be elected as Chair of the ISC unless that person—

(a) has received the formal consent in writing of the Prime Minister to that person’s candidature, and

(b) is not a Minister of the Crown.”

So the Prime Minister, and the security establishment, would have the opportunity through that procedure to approve or reject a person who wished to stand for election as Chair of the Committee. That is not a perfect situation, but it is one that recognises the point the right hon. Lady makes.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

This is meant to be a helpful intervention. I think my hon. Friend accepts that if we are to have this Committee that is unlike any other in that it is the only Committee with access to top-secret, classified information, it is not good enough simply to say that any Member of this House, however honourable, who happens to be fortunate enough to win an election should automatically be appointed Chairman of such a Committee. Am I right that my hon. Friend acknowledges that that would be an impossible situation?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Lewis]

I would like to confine my remarks to an elaboration of a point that was made very effectively by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who sadly is not in his place at the moment. There seems to be a conflation of two separate concepts: whether the election of the Chair directly will aid the Committee’s credibility; and whether it will aid the efficacy of its performance. For the life of me, I cannot see how the method for electing the Chair would make any difference whatsoever if, for example, the Committee was carrying out an investigation and one or other of the security agencies chose not to supply it with certain information that ought to be supplied. I would have thought that the best insurance for an agency supplying the information that should be supplied is the consequences of what would happen if it did not do so and the omission came to public attention, as it inevitably would.

[Steve Baker]

If the Chair is elected and enjoys the authority of the House, apart from any prime ministerial patronage or the appearance of it, he would have the authority, and not just with the agencies, but in the public sphere, to be able to tell the Prime Minister that he was dissatisfied with the information provided by a particular agency, and in that way the two mechanisms come together and authority over the agencies is increased.

[Dr Lewis]

I am afraid that I do not think that cuts any ice whatsoever, because one cannot be in a position to be dissatisfied with information that one has not been given and does not know exists. The suggestion, which is implicit in my hon. Friend’s intervention, that the person who was Chair at the time of the particular historical episode to which he refers—it was before my time on the Committee—would have acted in any way differently had he been elected, and that he did not act simply because he felt insufficient legitimacy to do so because he had not been directly elected, is frankly unrealistic.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) seems to overlook the fact that changes in the Bill will massively strengthen the Committee’s position. The Committee will be able to require information to be provided, whereas previously it could only request it. That is a huge difference. The position of the House of Commons will be strengthened vis-à-vis the Committee’s membership, because previously the House could express an opinion about whether it had approved the people nominated to be members, but in fact the Prime Minister had the final say, whereas now the House will have the final say. If the House does not like the cohort of people who have been nominated, it can throw them out and the Prime Minister will have to nominate someone else.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe is focusing his attention on a really rather narrow issue, because the House of Commons will have the final say on who all the members of the Committee, at least from the House, will be, which at the moment is seven of the nine. Therefore, those members, who will themselves have been directly appointed by the House on the nomination of the Prime Minister, will then be in a very strong position to choose one of their own number to be Chair.

I will say one more thing on the matter. I do not think that the world would collapse if my hon. Friend’s amendment were successful, but we are taking a giant stride in the right direction. One thing I have found through working on the Committee is that it, probably more than any other Committee—all Select Committees like to flatter themselves for being relatively non-partisan—is totally non-partisan. Even if one wanted to be partisan, there is no one there to watch one being so, so there really is not much point. I can honestly say, as I said in an intervention at an earlier stage of the Bill’s consideration, that if anything unfortunate were to happen to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind), who chairs the Committee, I would almost certainly find myself voting for the Chair, if I had the option of voting for another Committee member, on a non-party basis.

I do not think that what my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe is proposing would be earth-shatteringly damaging if it went through, but I really do not think that it is terribly necessary, and I am concerned that people would put themselves forward and say, “I wish to be in this position,” only to find that they had been vetoed, for reasons they could not be told, by the Prime Minister. That would be a coruscating experience for all concerned.