Along with a number of other people, I went along to Parliament’s Portcullis House last Wednesday. It was for a meeting on the government’s Green Paper on a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities hosted by the JCHR – the Joint (meaning Lords and Commons) Committee on Human Rights. Henry Porter and Guy Aitchison have both reported on it in their ways. Most members of the Committee were present, as were some key representatives of the three main political parties: Michael Wills, currently Minister at the Justice Department, whose name and picture adorn the Green paper alongside Jack Straw; David Howarth the Liberal Democrat shadow Minister of Justice, and Dominic Grieve the Tory shadow for Justice, a possible successor to Jack Straw. Each addressed us about the Green Paper and related issues.

Also in attendance were a number of people who had submitted evidence to the JCHR’s inquiry on a Bill of Rights, though those who stayed away - or who were denied admission - probably had the best of it. Only after leaving the meeting did I realize that neither the Chairman of the JCHR (Andrew Dismore MP) nor the Justice minister (Michael Wills MP) had answered my question about why trade union rights are not seriously addressed in either the JCHR’s own report on a British Bill of Rights based on the extensive hearings it held, or the government’s subsequent Green Paper. Most of us may have given up on the latter as Guy has blogged. But, as I explained in my intervention, the exclusion of this issue from the former is particularly remarkable; it is more than a silence, and is closer to a suppression in view of the facts that

• four of the 31 written submissions to its inquiry (by TULO (the Trade Union and Labour Party Liaison Organisation), TUC, Unite the Union, and Thompsons (the trade union solicitors) directly addressed this question;See HL 165-II, HC 150-II, Ev 168 - 175?

Keith Ewing (King's College London):  According to Vernon Bogdanor, the Damien Green affair is a ‘storm in a teacup’; while according to Harriet Harman it raises ‘big constitutional principles’. They cannot both be right.  What also cannot be right is the Home Office response that this is an operational policing matter, which is not the responsibility of ministers (who as Jackie Ashley points out in this morning’s Guardian are first and foremost MPs).

Although the facts and circumstances of the affair continue to unfold, and although we do not yet have a clear picture of what has happened, there are nevertheless a few inconvenient principles around which the debate needs to be constructed, principles some of which to his great credit Dennis MacShane appeared to identify well on the Today programme, also this morning.