Sir Malcolm Jack KCB

Lord Beith Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to offer, from the Liberal Democrat Benches, support for the motion in recognition of the work of Sir Malcolm Jack. Forty-four years is an extraordinarily long time in the service of the House. I always find it worrying when people who have been here longer than I have leave, for one reason or another. Like policemen getting younger, it is a reminder of things one does not want to know about.

Sir Malcolm arrived here from a background which was, in those days, not conventional, and all the better for that. He had been educated at school in Hong Kong and attended Liverpool university where he got a first- class degree. It is a model not sufficiently followed, perhaps, even in subsequent years and one to which we should return to draw a wide breadth of talent into the service of the House. It was certainly not a mistake to recruit that Liverpool university graduate—quite the contrary. It was a very wise move.

In the course of Sir Malcolm’s time here, it has been a pleasure to be able to talk to a scholar of achievement and repute, which marks him out, and that has been of great benefit to us. But the line in the motion that most appeals to me is the reference to his “courteous and helpful advice”. If the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) self-deprecatingly described himself as the fool who started the argument with Sir Malcolm Jack, I was the slightly wiser man who sought his advice. It was the Justice Committee which asked the Clerk of the House to give us evidence, took that evidence from him, published it in a report and made it available to the House so that it had a powerful effect on the Parliamentary Standards Act 2009. I think we all acknowledge how important it was to protect the rights of our constituents that are embodied in that unhelpful phrase, “parliamentary privilege”, a subject on which he has a surpassing knowledge.

While supplying that “courteous and helpful advice” and doing the things that Clerks traditionally do, Sir Malcolm was continuing a process by which the Clerk of the House became the chief executive of the House—a pretty challenging process and one in which he has helped us significantly. It is a process that will continue under his distinguished successor, and its difficulties and challenges must not be underestimated. The fact that Sir Malcolm coped well with those is a mark of the respect in which we now hold him and is a further and particularly compelling reason why we should thank him for his service to the House and wish him much happiness, enjoyment and scholarship in the future.