Mr John Browne: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor and Maidenhead (Sir A. Glyn). Since I have been in the House, for just under 13 years, he has always been a marvellous character and certainly a great and friendly adviser to me. I know his constituency reasonably well and I am very sure that his constituents will miss him greatly. I would also like to echo the feelings of other hon....
Mr John Browne: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 585? [That this House is increasingly aware of how it was misled, and indeed used, as part of a finely calculated and deliberate injustice perpetrated for party political reasons against the honourable Member for Winchester and his constituents on 7th March 1990, by senior Government Ministers and the abuse of the whipping system...
Mr John Browne: I offer my sincere thanks to my right hon. Friend for the crucial personal role that he played in securing compensation for the three injured Grenadiers. Will he now look personally into the cases of some other very obvious cases of severe injuries to service men, in particular those of Mark Booth and Andy Konalyck of the Parachute Regiment and Martin Ketterick of the Royal Marines? In those...
Mr John Browne: Does my right hon. Friend accept that, since the collapse of the Soviet empire, the strategic threat to our country is far less certain in origin, and that air power with its flexibility has become even more significant in meeting and delivering strategic force to any area of threat? Does he agree that this weapons system will protect 7,000 jobs in vital high-tech areas, that it is a...
Mr John Browne: Will my right hon. Friend tell the House what he feels about the accuracy of the continued Russian accounting for nuclear warheads? Has he considered whether the western powers should purchase some of those warheads to prevent them from falling into the hands of non-nuclear powers that have no idea how to maintain or destroy them?
Mr John Browne: I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Mr. Hargreaves) wishes to have his debate, so I shall be brief. I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris) has just said, especially with regard to matching numbers with names. I also agree with him on the privacy issue. Here I point out that I introduced the Protection of Privacy Bill and I believe...
Mr John Browne: Oh, "could have"—the hon. Gentleman suggested that it might have been to my advantage to do so. I accept that the hon. Gentleman said "could have" apologised. The reason why I did not do so was that I thought that I was in the right and had nothing for which to apologise. I explained what I had done and that I thought that I was right. The Select Committee said that I was wrong—by sort of...
Mr John Browne: The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) says from a sedentary position that I was not told by the Select Committee members themselves. That is perfectly true, but as everyone knows, when dealing with Committees, all of one's advice comes from the Clerks Office and the Clerks to the Committee.
Mr John Browne: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's last point. When I was told that I had got it wrong, I apologised to the House. On the hon. Gentleman's first point, I think that hon. Members do a good job in Committee. I do not see many hon. Members sitting in the Tea Room reading the Financial Times when they should be in Committee. I believe that the hon. Gentleman is right to say that hon. Members...
Mr John Browne: The hon. Gentleman mentions a specific case and I have no idea of the details. All I can say is that, in general, I believe that hon. Members do a very good job on Committees. I do not know the specific case to which the hon. Gentleman is referring.
Mr John Browne: Yes, I did. The hon. Gentleman was not here for that part of my speech when I dealt with that specific issue.
Mr John Browne: I did not see the hon. Gentleman behind my back. It was an interesting situation because the actual document, it is alleged, was stolen from my files. Mr. Leigh wrote some articles. Obviously he had read that document, or he could not have written them. I was then accused of not producing the document. The Committee's judgment seemed incredible to me when it knew that Mr. Leigh must have...
Mr John Browne: I did answer—yes. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden avoided answering the vitally important question as to why the Select Committee refused to accept for investigation the case that I put to it about the hon. Member for Workington. If my hon. Friend reads the record of the debate, I should like him to give some reasons as to why it was not accepted. The Leader of the House made an...
Mr John Browne: I do not know whether that is reassuring, but I can only go by what people have said to me in the House. Hon. Members have told me that pressure was put on them through the informal system. If one reads the Division lists, it is pretty clear that the payroll vote was whipped. Ministers have confirmed that to me, but of course my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest was not a Minister....
Mr John Browne: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr John Browne: I respect what my hon. Friend has said, but I asked on a number of occasions to call witnesses. I asked the registrar, I think, on at least three occasions whether I could bring three specific people to address the Committee to have them cross-examined—particularly Mr. Chattington, Mr. Merrick Denton-Thompson and the former registrar. I was told, "Certainly not." I was told that the only...
Mr John Browne: The hon. Gentleman has paraphrased a lot. It was not that the voters of Winchester thought that here was a chap who was making money on the side—the article by Mr. Leigh suggested that I had done something wrong. My point was that, according to the registrar, whom I asked in 1983, I had done exactly correctly. That was the point, and that is why I issued the suit.
Mr John Browne: That is not the point. How could a suit like that possibly be pursued successfully when the Select Committee came along and said that I was not right in the way that I gave information to the Register of Members' Interests?
Mr John Browne: Yes, I do.
Mr John Browne: I find it hard to accept my right hon. Friend's statement. I know that he is an honourable man —I sincerely mean that—but he said that there was a free vote. Perhaps, on the surface, there was a free vote. Everyone in the House knows how the Whips operate, with the payroll and by applying pressures—what is called the informal vote.
