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Sir Ivan Lawrence (Burton): I know that the hon. Gentleman would not want to mislead the House about the effect of the contents of the documents in question.If they were so essential to the defence, can the hon. Gentleman explain why the trial did not stop immediately following their disclosure, but continued for five weeks, until the evidence given by Alan Clark was heard?
Mr. Cook: Anybody who has read the transcript of the trial knows that the prosecution case collapsed under the
cross-examination of Alan Clark, when his evidence in chief was plainly inconsistent and unsustainable against the documents then obtained by the defence.
Mr. Cook: The hon. and learned Gentleman should read the transcript.
Mr. Cook: The hon. and learned Gentleman has lost his point, but he must not lose his rag.
There is a large problem with the Government's response. Sir Richard was the distinguished judge whose opinion the Government sought. Now that they do not like it, it is a bit rich to tell us that that opinion is not worth having, because Sir Richard is not distinguished enough.
The self-serving nature of this complaint can readily be understood if the House contemplates, just for a minute, what Ministers would be saying about Sir Richard Scott if he had told them what they wanted to hear. Then we would be told how conclusive his opinion was; how it was the product of three years' careful research and examination of all the legal judgments; how it was made on the authority of a long and respected career on the Bench.
Those facts are all still true. After three years' exhaustive research, Sir Richard concluded that there was no legal authority for the type of class claims for public interest immunity made in the Matrix Churchill trial.He also recommended that such class claims should never again be made in a criminal trial.
Mr. Cook:
Not again; the hon. Gentleman has had his chance.
I note that there was one recommendation that the President did not endorse in his speech. I understand why. Although Sir Richard makes a compelling case in the interests of justice for his recommendation that class claims for PIICs should not be used again in criminal trials, the Government dare not announce that they accept it, because to do so would be to concede that they were wrong in the Matrix Churchill case.
Mr. Neil Hamilton (Tatton):
May I take the hon. Gentleman back to the charge levelled by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), which the hon. Gentleman himself has described as the fourth charge in the Opposition's indictment, and from which he has moved somewhat in the course of his speech?
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman's attention span faltered before he reached the last paragraph of volume III of Sir Richard Scott's report, but if I read it to him perhaps he would like to answer it:
Sir Richard comes to this conclusion, in the very last sentence of volume 3:
Would the hon. Gentleman now withdraw his allegation?
Mr. Cook:
I accept that paragraph in its entirety.Will the hon. Gentleman do likewise? Will he accept the passage in the middle of that paragraph which has been omitted from the central office crib sheet, but which states that the legal advice that Ministers received
If Conservative Members are going to rely on the idea that Ministers acted only on legal advice, they must accept that that legal advice was wrong, and that it was given to them by another Minister.
Mr. Cook:
No. The hon. Gentleman has had his chance--
Mr. Hamilton:
On a point of order, Madam Speaker. The hon. Gentleman asked me a question. I now seek an opportunity to answer it.
Madam Speaker:
The hon. Gentleman has been here long enough to know that the Member at the Dispatch Box is unlikely to give way now.
Mr. Cook:
Not all Ministers acted on that legal advice. There was one shining example to all the rest of them.The Deputy Prime Minister has been very free in bandying my name around every studio that would let him in over the past week. I have given his comments careful consideration. I have concluded that what would hurt him most would be if I were to praise him. Let me now do so.
I praise the right hon. Gentleman willingly, because he was the first person to introduce the term "cover-up" to the discussion.Two years before anyone else thought of the term, the Deputy Prime Minister objected to the attempt to withhold documents because
I praise the right hon. Gentleman deservedly, because his reluctance to claim public interest immunity is praised by Sir Richard Scott as showing
The right hon. Gentleman is a collector of titles. To his roll call of Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State, perhaps we should now add Attorney-General- in-Chief. Certainly there should be a vacancy to fill. Some Conservative Members know that, even if they will not vote for it tonight. The hon. Member for Coventry, South-West (Mr. Butcher) illustrated their thinking with the helpful headline in the Coventry Evening Telegraph:
It must be a comfort to the Attorney-General to know that he has that quality of support behind him.
The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Michael Heseltine):
Why should anybody trust the hon. Gentleman's judgment against the views of the Attorney-General, when two of the defence counsel acting in the Matrix Churchill case thought that the Attorney-General was right?
Mr. Cook:
I regret having to correct the Deputy Prime Minister while trying to achieve a spirit of unity with him,
Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley):
Stop dodging the question.
Mr. Cook:
I am not dodging it. I am arguing closely from the five volumes in front of me. It is the Attorney-General who is dodging. Three years ago, on the day the inquiry was announced, the Attorney-General said:
Well, Sir Richard has certainly pinned ministerial responsibility in this area. He has concluded that the Attorney-General bears "major responsibility" for the inadequate instruction of the prosecuting counsel. Now that responsibility has been pinned on him by the inquiry that he appointed, will he accept it? Will he recognise that the Government should never have put on trial a man who was an agent of our security services and who had been the prime source of our intelligence on Iraq?
The Deputy Prime Minister:
The Attorney-General advised me and my colleagues that the judge would consider the documents, and, if they were necessary for the defence, would order their release. The Attorney-General was proved right. Two of the defence counsel said that he was right. The hon. Gentleman has been attempting to wriggle out of the charges he originally made, but the hollow and synthetic allegations he has been publishing across the country for three years have now been exploded in his face.
Mr. Cook:
I regret having to be combative with the Deputy Prime Minister, but at least we have got him to his feet. It would perhaps have been helpful if the Prime Minister had risen to his. May I remind the Deputy Prime Minister of what he told Sir Richard?
The right hon. Gentleman was then asked:
The Deputy Prime Minister replied:
It is this failure for which Sir Richard holds the Attorney-General personally at fault. Yet tonight, no one is going to accept responsibility--no one is going to go. As the Secretary of State said a week ago, there are to be no regrets, no resignations. This is not just a Government who do not know how to accept blame: they are a Government who know no shame. That is an appropriate judgment from which to approach how we should each vote tonight.
Last week, I again heard the Deputy Prime Minister on the "Today" programme, gently remonstrating with the presenter, as is his style. He said:
I must confess that I was a bit surprised to hear that subconscious echo of his old opponent in the invitation to us all to rejoice--but, once again, I find myself in agreement. Conservative Members should heed his advice. They should not think of tonight's vote in terms of whether it is a defeat for the Government; they should look on it as a vote that will decide the quality of the democracy in which we live. They should rememberSir Richard's summing-up. In his final chapter, he said:
The first function of Parliament is to hold the Government to account. The first duty of hon. Members is to defend the rights of Parliament against any Government who threaten those rights. That is why Parliament cannot allow the current Government to ignore the findings of the Scott report: hon. Members were designedly misled, and Ministers consistently failed in their duty of accountability to the House.
"I must refer to the charges . . . that the Ministers who signed the PII Certificates were seeking to deprive defendants in a criminal trial of the means by which to clear themselves of the charges."
"The charges to which I have referred are not, in my opinion, well founded."
26 Feb 1996 : Column 615
"had no authoritative precedent in a criminal trial."
"it would look as though he had been engaged in an attempted cover-up".
"an instinct for the requirements of justice that was fully justified and corresponded with the legal principles correctly understood".
"Sack Lyell--but not yet".
"There could be no better way of examining whether ministerial responsibility should be pinned in any particular area".
"I had been assured that my certificate would send a clear message to the judge."
"Do you think a clear message of the kind you were intending was sent to the judge?"
"No, and it should have been."
"You keep looking at it in terms of will the Government be defeated. That isn't the way to look at it. You ought to rejoice we live in a democracy."
26 Feb 1996 : Column 617
"A failure by Ministers to meet the obligations of Ministerial accountability undermines the democratic process".
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