Wilson Doctrine

Martin Docherty-Hughes Excerpts

Monday 19th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Martin John Docherty (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for bringing this debate to the Floor of the House. Like many Members, I am disappointed that more Members have not chosen to join us, although I am delighted to see that many Scottish National party Members have chosen to do so.

This is a critical issue not only for all Members of this place but for those in all layers of Government, including Members of our Parliament in Edinburgh and of the Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland. It is also critical for members of other democratically elected mandates in the Union, especially Members of the European Parliament. I note that the Member who mentioned Members of the Scottish Parliament is no longer here, but I remind those who have sought to remind us of the differing mandates in Scotland, that there are also differing mandates for Members of the European Parliament who are elected on the regional system. It was suggested that we should include the entire nation of Scotland, which was a ridiculous proposition.

Like most dogma, this doctrine seems neither sacrosanct nor enforceable, and if truth be told, the will of the House has never been sought in this matter. As in so many matters, the House has been ill-informed on the limits of the Wilson doctrine. This might be my own personal cynicism, but I find that rather naive. We are now debating this for the first time and calling for legislation for the first time since 1966. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) had to physically go to court in order to bring the matter to the Floor of the House. I congratulate her on that.

The purpose of the workings of the Executive in a liberal democracy must be to maintain the defence of the separation of the Executive from this legislative body, be that in this House, in our Parliament in Edinburgh or in the devolved Assembles of Wales and Northern Ireland. The pronouncements of the late right hon. Member for Huyton, Harold Wilson, bound neither future Prime Ministers nor, it would seem, Home Secretaries. Instead, the doctrine is the statement of a belief and faith in what is usually a fairly small issue. In this instance, we are talking only about the telephone conversations of Members of this House, and nothing else. It is the perhaps naive collective belief of Members here and beyond that our representative role as constituency MPs should not be undermined by a range of intelligence agencies not limited to MI5, and that it has not been so undermined since that near ex cathedra statement of the Prime Minister in 1966.

If that belief and trust have been broken—the debate so far seems to suggest that they have been—it is the duty of the Government and perhaps of the Home Secretary of the day, without prompt and with due diligence, to seek a hasty remedy by bringing legislation before the House. The Home Secretary suggested earlier that there could be elements of the investigatory powers Bill that would find favour across the House, and I welcome that.

None the less, I ask the Government to publish with haste the details of how many Members have been investigated in a year. The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) also asked that question. I would perhaps go further and ask how many of those Members have been found wanting in their communications. Can we be told how many were found to pose a risk to the security of the country as a result of the examination of their telephone calls, emails and other communications for security purposes by all elements of the security services, so as to defend the reputation of this House and the need of its Members to be able to hold the Executive to account without hindrance?

This is also an issue for our Parliament in Edinburgh and the other devolved Assemblies. That was particularly the case for our colleagues in the Scottish Parliament during the independence referendum, critically in relation to the communications of the Scottish Cabinet—[Interruption.] I can hear tutting, but this is an issue that many people in the United Kingdom will find important. Let us be in no doubt that all communities in Scotland would find such a situation an outrage and an affront to the sovereign will of the Scottish people and the independence of their Parliament in devolved matters.

Not since the publication of the encyclical “Humanae Vitae” has a doctrine been so flagrantly ignored. The Wilson doctrine has not sought to propagate the population, but its principles have been unfulfilled and found wanting. The doctrine has been found wanting for some years, but never more so than on 15 July 2014 when the Home Secretary, in response to the now deputy Leader of the Opposition, the hon. Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), stated:

“Obviously, the Wilson doctrine applies to parliamentarians. It does not absolutely exclude the use of these powers against parliamentarians, but it sets certain requirements for those powers to be used in relation to a parliamentarian. It is not the case that parliamentarians are excluded and nobody else in the country is, but there is a certain set of rules and protocols that have to be met if there is a requirement to use any of these powers against a parliamentarian”.—[Official Report, 15 July 2014; Vol. 584, c. 713.]

As with most doctrines, people seem to be making this one up as they go along.

It would seem that the very nature of our constitutional framework leaves this House, this Parliament and its elected Members at the whim of the unelected and the unaccountable. It is a constitutional fudge that affords the Executive the opportunity to undermine the role and independence of this House and all its elected Members. I am not pointing a finger at the present Government; this could apply to any Government since the 1960s, or indeed earlier. I hope that when we debate the investigatory powers Bill, the Government will at least offer to support any legitimate defence of our liberty as parliamentarians. That applies to the liberty of those of us in this House, but also to those in our Parliament in Scotland and in the Assemblies of Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as to those who represent this country in the European Parliament.