Tom Griffin (London, OK): The arrest of Conservative immigration spokesman Damian Green has provoked a huge amount of comment since the first hints started emerging on the blogosphere last night.
ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie is incensed...
Given that Boris Johnson and others received prior warnings - but were unable to act - it seems very unlikely that a Home Office Minister (who did have the power to stop the police and may have even had to sanction what happened) did not have prior knowledge. Such is the reputation of this Government, few are likely to believe ministers' denials anyway. If Jacqui Smith did know she should resign.
...but so to is Lib Dem Shadow Home Secretary Chris Huhne...
Receiving information from Government departments in the public interest and publicising it is a key part of any MP’s role. This is the most worrying development for many years, with the potential to shift power even more conclusively from Parliament to the Government. It is also extraordinary considering Gordon Brown himself as Shadow Chancellor received and publicised many leaked official documents. It seems that either the law needs to be changed, or the police have overstepped the mark.
...and Labour's Sunder Katwala is also concerned.
Nine members of the counter-terrorism squad to arrest Damian Green sounds absurdly heavy-handed to me. As did the style of the police’s treatment of Ruth Turner during the cash for honours investigation. Aside from partisan bias, I can’t see any reason to take a different view of those cases on the information which I have.
Speaking of partisan bias, Guido's Zanu Labour taunts have got a mixed response from Tory bloggers.
A more substantive contribution comes from Douglas Carswell MP, who believed that the Speaker of the Commons sanctioned the police raid on Damian Green's office. No doubt William Lenthall would not approve.
Over at Liberal Conspiracy, Unity questions whether Green's actions were necessarily covered by parliamentary privilege:
its [the] final piece of leaked information cited by the BBC that could, were it be linked to Green, give him a serious problem - a list, compiled by Labour’s Whip’s Office of potential Labour rebels on the 42 days pre-charge detention vote. That is a (party) political matter that, while it may of interest to the public (and the oppostition, of course) is not a matter of legitimate public interest, not least at relates to the voting intentions of members of the legislature and not to a matter of government - although one hestiates to use the ‘W’ word (Watergate), the leaking of party political information to opposition members falls outside the legitimate scope of the public interest and amounts to political espionage.
Iain Dale has a few questions of his own, 15 to be precise, of which the final one gets to the heart of the privilege issue:
Have the Police impounded Damian Green's various computers? If so, how is his constituency casework [correspondence] safeguarded? How can any MPs' constituents now believe that their casework is totally confidential?
