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By Sam Macrory - 19th January 2010
There was much stroking of chins and speculative theorising when Sir Menzies Campbell's privilege committee met yesterday afternoon, but little in the way of decisive conclusions.
And certainly nothing in the way of ground-breaking revelations.
The committee is investigating the fall-out of last May's warrant-free police search of Tory MP Damian Green's parliamentary office for allegedly illegally obtained documents.
Dr Malcolm Jack, the clerk of the House of Commons, in the enviable position of being a blame-free player in the whole fiasco.
With that in mind, he seemed rather happy to remain on the danger-free fence that he occupied for much of the session, with the pressure of declaring an opinion leaving Dr Jack looking decidedly wobbly.
As he rummaged with his papers and read through helpful notes passed to him by a poker-faced advisor, he demonstrated a masterpiece in non-committment when answering Sir Ming's question on whether the "whole area" required an agreed procedure to determine what constituted ‘privileged'.
"It doesn't, but it could", Dr Jack replied.
Which sounds like a yes, or perhaps a no, but then privilege, he added, was something of a "grey area".
The greyness made for a frustrating afternoon, and on more than one occasion the committee looked like it had run out of questions as Dr Jack smiled beatifically back at them.
If no-one knows the answer, then it's pretty hard to ask questions.
Those in favour of a written constitution to determine this sort of thing will have been whipped into a frenzy.
If an MP was immune from the law when in the "privileged" position of speaking on the floor of the House, asked Ann Coffey (Lab, Stockport), then why shouldn't the documents intended for use in that speech by privileged too?
David Blunkett (Lab, Sheffield Brightside), with a look faint amusement, wondered whether the Speaker could prove that those documents would be used in the Chamber.
But, Coffey added, MPs "have lots of material we use and some we don't".
And some we keep for the future, Sir Ming chimed in.
So documents might or might not be used for a speech, which might or might not make them privileged. Which is impossible to define anyway.
We were getting nowhere.
Thankfully Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Con, Kensington and Chelsea) came up with a killer solution.
"There is no reason why we couldn't develop a better dialogue with the police," he declared, prompting Blunkett to mutter "that's why it's taking us so long to get through this".
Blunkett was the most agitated of the committee, asking Dr Jack if the role of the Clerk could perhaps be a little more proactive and less about "coming to see the oracle".
Dr Jack didn't seem to like the sound of that, telling the committee that he was a mere adviser to the pre-eminent Speaker - but he did agree that a little more collective support and discussion could take place amongst the House authorities.
So, an hour in and the plan of action had marked out more discussions with the police and better communications among the House's big players – the Clerk, the Serjeant at Arms, and the Speaker – as the best way to proceed.
Watching, the policeman at the door must have wondered how it took them so long in the first place.
Sam Macrory writes for The House Magazine.
Dods Parliamentary Communications Ltd