29 Honorable Members

The government has defeated by 285 votes to 281 an amendment which sought to ensure that the committee of inquiry into the arrest of Damian Green MP was effective.

The amendment would have allowed the committee of inquiry to follow the lines originally proposed by the speaker: unfortunately the government has secured a committee with a government majority and more limited terms of reference. The result will be that it is being boycotted by the opposition parties and has zero credibility.

The 285 MPs who went into the government lobby not only failed to do their job in protecting the right of parliament to hold the executive to account: taking a longer term perspective they were foolish even in terms of the Labour party's sectonal interests. At some point, possibly after the next election, Labour will be back in opposition. Do they really want to go into that position having set the precedent that opposition MPs can be arrested and have their homes and offices searched by large numbers of anti-terrorist officers for embarrassing the government ?

Unwise enough for Labour MPs - what on earth the UK Independence Party MP Bob Spink thought he was doing in voting with Labour on this issue is beyond comprehension. I doubt very much that many UKIP voters support either the government's immigration policy or the idea that opposition MPs should be arrested for challenging it.


However, 29 Labour MPs had more sense. In addition to 184 Conservatives, 58 Lib Dems, 4 SNP and 2 Plaid Cymru MPs, plus George Galloway, Clare Short, Andrew Pelling, Richard Taylor and Bob Wareing, the following 29 Labour rebels also voted for a real inquiry:

Diane Abbott
Charles Clarke
Frank Cook
Jeremy Corbyn
Paul Farrelly
Frank Field
Mark Fisher
Paul Flynn
Ian Gibson
John Grogan
Fabian Hamilton
Dai Havard
Kate Hoey
Kelvin Hopkins
Glenda Jackson
Lynne Jones
Andrew Mackinlay
Denis MacShane
Bob Marshall-Andrews
John McDonnell
Gordon Prentice
Alan Simpson
Sir Peter Soulsby
Gisela Stuart
Paul Truswell
Keith Vaz
Alan Williams
David Winnick
Tony Wright

I have to confess that I would never in a million years have expected to find myself including Keith Vaz MP in a list of MPs I was singling out for praise but consistency demands that I do so.

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