The House discussed the leaking of the Stephen Lawrence report yesterday. Here was a crucially important document whose contents go to the roots of our national malaise.  So naturally, it was the opportunity for a gigantic festival of hypocrisy, an orgy of cant, a saturnalia of double-speak.   We heard a government minister actually suggest that he had tried to stamp on the early publication of the report 'out of respect for this House and its procedures.'   Even some Labour MPs seemed taken aback. Respect for the House? The Government regards MPs much as a pharaoh looked on the slaves building his pyramid. He was glad to see them at work, and some tiny corner of him might even be grateful, but he would never dream of taking them on one side to discuss the plans.   Jack Straw, previously the recipient of the kindest epithet any politician can give another 'a safe pair of hands' was in deep trouble.   The mess over the injunctions had made him look foolish. The claim that he had acted in the interests of Parliament made him look weaselly as well.   Then he alleged that his real motive was to avoid 'distress to the Lawrence family' whom, it turned out, he had not consulted on the matter.   This was a desperate throw, an attempt to imply that anyone who criticised Jack Straw was actually trampling over people who have suffered agonies for more than six years.   But the slaves behind him were well-drilled, having felt the knotted rope on their backs too often. They cheered all his assertions, even the most ridiculous, and when Norman Fowler said that he felt 'the strongest sympathy for the family' they actually yelled 'No!' Of course the shadow home secretary went over the top. The Tories always do. Perhaps they think no one will pay attention unless they froth with rabid fury.   'Humiliating climbdown' he said. 'Defies belief . . . defiance of parliamentary democracy . . . a shabby episode that shows this government at its worst.' Although, as Gerald Kaufman pointed out a few moments later, Mr Fowler's party had pursued Sarah Tisdall into jail, had tried to put Clive Ponting into jail, and had pursued the Spycatcher case all the way to Australia.   So which was worse, a Tory claiming to be valiant for the freedom of the press, or a Labour backbencher implying that a problem does not exist if the last government got it wrong too? Mr Fowler had admitted that he was a director of a newspaper company, so Mr Straw startlingly accused him of 'speaking as a newspaper executive and not as an MP.'   'Cheap little man!' Mr Fowler muttered at this daft allegation. Tories demanded that he withdraw.   Betty Boothroyd said she had been distracted and had not heard what Mr Straw had said. (Who could blame her? If I were Speaker I would have a miniature TV fitted to my arm rest, so that I could catch Captain Pugwash instead.) Mr Straw repeated the charge. 'Bullseye!' yelled some ridiculous Labour sycophant.   Betty gently called on Jack to withdraw. 'I withdraw the remark,' he muttered. 'Apologise!' the Tories screamed.   'I apologise,' he mumbled at his chest, in the way which makes every parent yell: 'Say it as if you meant it!' There was a difference, he said, between a judicial inquiry and a 'run-of-the-mill government publication.'  The implication of this, that the Government could leak what it liked when it liked, raised the Tories to new levels of ersatz anger.   David Winnick, Keith Vaz and Diane Abbott tightened the hysterical atmosphere by, in effect, accusing the Conservatives of racism and contempt for the Lawrence family. 'I am disgusted . . . they did nothing about race and racism when they were in power!' said Mr Vaz, as if that had any bearing on Mr Straw's misjudgment.   The House at its very worst, as we old Commons hands say.