Police are investigating a break-in at the parliamentary offices of Ed Miliband, the Labour leader. Forensic teams yesterday examined the suite of offices in the Norman Shaw South building, next to Portcullis House, after the burglary on Friday evening.
Labour officials were last night still trying to establish if any documents had been stolen. “We do not know whether anything was taken. We do not know the motivation for this crime,” a Labour source said. “But we are deeply concerned that this can take place within the Palace of Westminster.”
The burglary is the latest in a crimewave to hit the House of Commons. A total of 25 laptop computers went missing in the first six months of last year, prompting Keith Vaz, the chairman of the home affairs select committee, to say that he was considering setting up a neighbourhood watch scheme for the Commons.
Laptops, a sat nav, iPod, watch and camcorder disappeared between January and June last year. More recently, laptops have also gone missing from the press gallery. Just five laptops were stolen from the Commons between 2006 and 2010.
Ed Miliband and his advisers share offices on the second floor of Norman Shaw South with Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor. The suite, which overlooks the Thames, has seven separate rooms and was also used by David Cameron and George Osborne in opposition. It is not thought Miliband or Balls’s personal rooms were burgled.
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The Commons authorities last year appointed a “director of security” after a protester lunged towards Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corporation, with a shaving-foam pie while he was giving evidence to a select committee.
Security officials have been carrying out a survey of where to fit extra doors that can only be opened with a pass. A spokesman for the Commons declined to comment.