MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

MPs committee to investigate Green's police incident

An influential committee of British MPs is to investigate the controversial arrest of Tory MP Damian Green, including the search of his office in Parliament, and politicians' involvement in the incident was announced on Tuesday.

Labour MP Keith Vaz, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, said it was "vital" the issue was thoroughly examined. "This is an important inquiry and it is vital that the issues of political involvement in police matters and the process of arrests of this kind are thoroughly examined," he said and added that "this inquiry is very much in the public interest." The terms of reference are yet to be decided but will cover "the police processes and the involvement, if any, of political figures in these matters". Mr Vaz said: "I hope that we can conduct the inquiry quickly and efficiently in order to ensure that best practice recommendations can be made as soon as possible." Another planned parliamentary inquiry into the matter is mired in chaos after both the Tories and Liberal Democrats said they would boycott it. Both main opposition parties have urged their MPs not to take part in the Speaker's inquiry in protest at the Government's insistence that its membership should reflect Labour's Commons majority and that it should not start work until after the police investigation. In a statement to MPs, Speaker Michael Martin told the Commons the police did not access MPs' sensitive information held on central parliamentary computers during their search of Damian Green's office. He said the Metropolitan Police did not access data on the central parliamentary server during their raid and added that no access will be given to the server unless police have a warrant.