Keith Vaz
Main Page: Keith Vaz (Labour - Leicester East)Department Debates - View all Keith Vaz's debates with the Home Office
(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Damian Green
My hon. Friend makes a very wise point. I am still not entirely clear whether those on the Opposition Front Bench support this, because the shadow Home Secretary neglected to say that.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
There may be support for the substance of what the Minister has said today, but what concerns the House is the fact that we have had to wait for an urgent question to be asked before being given this information. It is unsatisfactory. The Minister for Security was clear to the Select Committee when she appeared before us last December that Parliament would be told first about these matters and that it would not appear in the newspapers. Is not the best course of action to move the statement from Wednesday to Monday, when the order lapses, so that Parliament can question the Home Secretary on these matters? That is a way to resolve this rather unfortunate state of affairs.
Damian Green
The right hon. Gentleman will have heard me say several times that the statement has long been planned for next week, and it was announced to the House that it would be made then. With regard to the deadline being Monday, it is entirely reasonable that the law should revert to what it was. It was a temporary emergency arrangement for six months, which would lapse on Monday anyway. To try to equate that with the wider counter-terrorism review is not quite right. As I have said repeatedly, the Home Secretary has always planned to come to the House to talk about the very important wider counter-terrorism review. Indeed, the House was given unusually long notice of when she would appear, so it has been kept entirely in the loop on this.