Andrew Tyrie: Parliament risks being a busted flush

Michael Martin botched the biggest decision of his political life. He urgently needs to show some leadership

At the end of November, police arrested Damian Green MP and raided his offices and homes for the serious criminal offence of conspiracy to leak government documents. Their grounds for arrest looked flimsy and have virtually collapsed. But the political debris left behind remains toxic, not just for Parliament but for the public. When Parliament's independence of the Government is so comprehensibly exposed as a sham, we move a step closer to elective dictatorship.

Parliament's failure to stop this raid – conducted by police without a warrant – appeared farcical to the public, in as much as they cared. The Speaker must now provide some leadership, but so far that has been lacking.

In recent weeks, the Speaker has looked like a pawn of the executive. The raids amount to a worrying extension of police powers. The Government has behaved incompetently before the raid and disgracefully after it, not least by thwarting a Parliamentary investigation.

Parliament is the main casualty and, led by the Speaker, it alone can begin the repair job. The Speaker must now act decisively and help rescue Parliament's credibility by standing up to the Government and insisting on a full inquiry into the mess. He must find a way to refer the Green affair to the respected Standards and Privileges Committee. Unfortunately, so far he has resisted it.

By turning down requests from MPs for a referral, he is making a serious mistake, for at least two reasons. First, when the suspicion gets about that a Speaker is prepared to allow the executive to ride roughshod over him, he and – for the rest of his term – Parliament become a busted flush. Second, the Speaker is not a disinterested party: his own conduct in the Damian Green affair will inevitably form part of any inquiry. He must show himself determined to secure that investigation, whoever it will embarrass. If he doesn't, he will appear to be protecting himself from scrutiny.

The Government has cleverly exploited this vulnerability. It thwarted the Speaker's original proposal for an ad hoc committee of seven senior MPs by demanding that it have a Labour majority and that it adjourn until the police complete their own investigation. It knew this crude wrecking tactic would be unacceptable to the opposition parties and also guessed, rightly so far, that the Speaker would not publicly challenge the Government.

If Speaker Martin does force an immediate investigation he will rally support for his decisiveness and courage in the Commons and beyond. He will signal that on this, at least, Mr Blair's poodle Commons has not simply been replaced by Mr Brown's. If he doesn't, the spotlight will inevitably fall back on his decisions and those of his most senior staff.

The Speaker would be in a much stronger position if he had at least got it right after the raid. But his statement of 3 December – the biggest of his political life – was botched. He should have taken responsibility for the actions of his staff. Instead, he blamed them, particularly the Serjeant at Arms. When MPs tried to question him, he cut even the first very senior one – a former Home Secretary – off short, and, after 20 minutes, inadvisedly closed down all further questions. Likewise his proposal, in the statement, that he appoint the ad hoc committee was flawed; after all, he will be one of the subjects of any investigation.

It is incomprehensible that he did not immediately call for the Commons' Committee on Standards and Privileges. Even this shameless Government would baulk at blocking a reference to this politically balanced and well-respected group who avoid partisanship. The issues at stake are central to their remit.

Now that the opposition parties have, rightly, declined to participate in a Government-dominated committee, the Speaker's proposal lies in ruins. Just before Christmas, he wrung his hands saying he could do nothing more. Not so. He should demand that the Government set aside the "committee of seven" and refer the issue to the Standards and Privileges Committee. Both the Speaker's statements played into the Government's hands at the expense of Parliament.

We all make mistakes, and I have hesitated before criticising someone who cannot so easily reply. The Speakership would become impossible were the office subjected to constant challenge. But asking for at least some explanation of major decisions is reasonable in an age of accountability.

Nobody comes out of this affair well. The Government's heavy-handed tactics to deter leaks are a disgrace. I deprecate leaks. They corrode trust between ministers and civil servants. But ministers need to reflect on why civil servants now behave in this way. Does the Government see no connection between its own obsessive leaking over many years and the corrosive, leaky culture that now exists in Whitehall? We are told that Civil Service morale is low: leaks and spin partly explain that.

Then there is the clumsy operation of the police, which signals a deeper encroachment upon individual freedoms. The point of a leak investigation, whoever conducts it, is to identify the source. In this case, he was quickly discovered. So what did the police see as their objective in the Green raids?

The Thatcher government liberalised the Official Secrets Act so that leaking was no longer a criminal offence except, mainly, in cases of national security. The police have now resuscitated a common law criminal offence as the ground for their anti-leak raid. That is unacceptable.

Finally, there is Parliament itself. We should be asking ourselves how it has come to be in such a parlous state that this catalogue of self-reinforcing blunders has been possible. If the Speaker helps Parliament act, and quickly, some good can yet come of the Damian Green affair.

Andrew Tyrie is the Conservative MP for Chichester and a member of David Cameron's democracy taskforce