Whitsun Adjournment

I shall jump on a bit in what I was going to say as a result of that excellent intervention; I hope that the House will forgive me if I go back and forth a little in my line of argument. I have come to the conclusion that nothing will concentrate the minds of the judges, the officials of this House or the officials who work for the Information Commissioner more than being put in the position in which they are seeking to put Members of this House. That is why I have, not at all facetiously, put in freedom of information requests asking for the private home addresses of High Court judges in general. Now that we know the names of the three High Court judges who took the decision, my parliamentary assistant has put in a supplementary request for their details to be made public. The grounds on which those judges came to their decision were that if someone really set their mind to it, it would be possible to find out legally and quite straightforwardly where anybody in the public eye lived. If that applies to us, it applies to them. However, in reality, the argument is a falsehood, as a moment's reflection will reveal. If somebody wishes to take basic security precautions in respect of their address, it is possible for them to do so. My address has never been on an electoral register, and that is quite legal. Owing to my individual political history, I have explained to the electoral returning officer every time that I would prefer to register under a nom de plume. Anybody can do that. I fill in my electoral registration form with my nom de plume and sign it ““Julian Lewis””, indicating that I have used that nom de plume. It is true that when I stand in elections, my private constituency address has to be published in certain electoral documents; that fact is used as an excuse by the various individuals and bodies to say, ““Well, the cat is out of the bag, so all the addresses for which money is claimed—either the London or constituency addresses—should be put in a big list on the internet.”” I have done an experiment. As I said, my private constituency address does not involve my partner and her safety. I have entered that address into the Google search engine with my name. I have had to fill in various forms with that address—I am talking only about my constituency address, not my London one—but despite that fact, no match comes up anywhere on the internet. If somebody is sufficiently evil-minded about it, they will no doubt now make a point of going to New Forest, East, ferreting around, finding the relevant forms and publishing my address in the papers. I have had to take that calculated risk in putting my head above the parapet and raising the issue at all. Good luck to them—they will just prove my point. However, at least my London address, where my partner lives with me, will not be involved. The people I have been talking about have taken leave of their senses. The problem has been that we have not had the opportunity properly to present the security considerations to those who ought to consider them—namely, the judges and commissioners. Furthermore, as I said in an intervention, we have not had an opportunity to raise the issues outside the House, because the very people who are determined that all this stuff should be exposed are the media themselves. I have no confidence whatever that I will be any more successful at making the public aware of the issues at stake as a result of this debate. I have tried my best with the media. I had a very long conversation with a journalist from The Times whom I know well and whom I regard as principled. I explained to him at length the issues about the disclosure of MPs' addresses, particularly in the context of the current terrorist environment. I explained to him what I would do, even if I were only an al-Qaeda sympathiser at home or abroad; I have given one example of what I would do, but I do not want to generate too many free ideas for the extremists out there by giving more. However, I could do plenty more things with my twisted mind; I am sure that the extremists do not need my suggestions anyway. The journalist had no answer to any of my points. He really did not—I am not doing him a disservice or being unfair to him. However, I could tell that he was uncomfortable with the conversation, which ended with him saying, ““Well, I'll have to think about it, Julian.”” I later had a conversation with a particularly experienced and distinguished parliamentary correspondent from one of the tabloid newspapers. He went even further than The Times correspondent. He said, ““Gosh! It would be barking mad for those addresses to be published.””