Simon Carr: The Sketch

Home Secretary seeks some clarity as he comes under fire from all sides

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Five dissenters as MPs back Bill to allow internment

Three doomed statements the Home Secretary habitually makes. They go: I want to make this point; let me make this perfectly clear; there's a fundamental misunderstanding that I'm going to clear up.

But first, this. The mop-headed MP for Henley, Boris Johnson, was presenting The Spectator's parliamentary awards the other week and introduced David Blunkett as possibly the world's first blind prime minister: not only would it be a great thing in itself, it would really annoy Gordon Brown (Mr Blunkett forgot to smile at this).

MPs suffer a variety of disabilities, most of them psychological. Mr Blunkett probably enjoys his fair share of them. But his blindness does, I think, cause him banal but important problems at the dispatch box.

At the last ministerial statement, Oliver Letwin, shadow Home Secretary, asked 15 questions, and Mr Blunkett replied to three of them. Not because he didn't want to answer the questions, but because he couldn't remember what they were.

Without a capacity to take notes (aren't there Braille machines for this?) you'd have to rely on a commanding memory. A powerful intellect might help you squeak out of trouble, too. Neither of these are the Home Secretary's most obvious gifts. Courage, yes, a stout heart and all that, these are good things which Mr Blunkett possesses in large measure. But the ability to hold in his head ­ or in his hand during a debate ­ a wide schedule of points that have to be made: no. There is a weakness there. It doesn't make him ­ what d'you call it? ­ prime ministerial.

Yesterday he was opposed from all sides of the House as he introduced his Anti-Terrorism Bill. In broad terms: he was suspending the Human Rights Act in order to be able to incarcerate suspected foreign terrorists. Members objected to this.

Douglas Hogg, white with indignation (or age, or disappointment, or maybe it's just his natural colouring) asked with modulated incredulity: "He has taken 10 weeks to introduce the Bill amounting to 114 pages, and we are asked to pass it in two days!"

Mr Blunkett doubted there was a link between the time available for debate and the level of scrutiny that would result. He didn't say why.

Kevin McNamara, member of the relevant committee, pointed out they had the time equivalent of four ordinary committee sessions to consider what was the embryo of five different Bills.

Mr Blunkett waved this away. The debate, he said, had been going on ever since he mooted the idea over two months ago. As he was foggily repeating this to the Tory Edward Garnier, he became aware of Labour's Mark Fisher repeating the words: "Haven't. Seen. The Bill."

"I'm being heckled behind me, by the member for Stoke," Mr Blunkett said. "Does he want to intervene?" Mr Fisher, a former minister and an irascible graduate of Slough Grammar School, spoke movingly. He is the founding spirit of Parliament First, a cross-party group of MPs that, um, puts Parliament first. He pointed out to Mr Blunkett that it was the law they were expected to scrutinise, not transcripts from morning radio programmes.

"I've no intention of getting into conflict," the Home Secretary replied. He wanted to make that perfectly clear. It was too big a job.

Simoncarr75@hotmail.com