Whitsun Adjournment

I welcome that response, which takes me nicely on in my line of argument. I am sure that only a momentary oversight has prevented the hon. Gentleman from adding his signature to early-day motion 1620 on this matter, and I look forward to his doing so. It is not fair to expect Mr. Speaker constantly to have to stick his neck out to defend what the hon. Gentleman previously referred to in another context as the privileges of this House if Mr. Speaker is not made firmly aware of the united opinion of this House when it needs him to defend our privileges or, as some would call them, our rights. This is a matter of rights. Let us consider the question of mail, which the hon. Gentleman so rightly raised. If I were applying an extremist mind to an extremist cause—I like to think that I apply my mind to moderate causes, such as the defeat of extremism—I know what I would do if I wanted to knock this ridiculous proposal on the head. I would buy a large packet of white soap powder and 646 envelopes, and I would then place a quantity of the soap powder in each envelope, together with a little note saying, ““Ha, ha. You have just opened a packet of anthrax””, and send an envelope to each of the 646 private home addresses. Of course, people would not have opened a packet of anthrax, but it would take a brave or reckless MP not to take the trouble of immediately contacting the emergency services in case the envelope of white powder really did contain anthrax, as has happened in a case in the United States. Are we insane enough to make this sort of information nationally available? If an experienced, professional, terrorist organisation is determined to knock off a particular MP, it will, of course, track that MP and do something bad to him. But why should we make it easy for such an organisation to do the same thing to 645 other MPs at the same time? I could not understand how we reached this state until today's business questions, when the hon. Member for North Durham (Mr. Jones) said something that I had not known: that when these matters were being argued before the relevant commissions, no professional security advice had apparently even been taken. What on earth did the officials of this House think they were playing at when they omitted to take that basic step?