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The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Sir Patrick Mayhew): Does the hon. and learned Gentleman intend to convey to the House the fact that he accepts, in view of his recent remarks about the law, that it cannot possibly be a matter of culpability on the part of the Attorney-General that he gave the advice that he did on the law? It cannot possibly be a matter for culpability in the light of the conflicting opinions that have been voiced recently.
Mr. Campbell: I made it clear that I believe thatSir Richard Scott is correct and that his judgment on the Attorney-General's advice is correct. In that respect,I support Sir Richard Scott. His conclusion, without any equivocation, was that it was wrong advice. I have had some small experience of prosecuting, and if I gave wrong advice in a matter of this importance I would certainly consider my position. From what I know of the right hon. and learned Gentleman and the way in which he conducted himself when he appeared before the Select Committee on Trade and Industry to give evidence in relation to the prosecuting authority--HM Customs and Excise--I suspect that he would have taken a similar view.
The real issue for the Attorney-General to face is his failure to advise prosecuting counsel of the reservations of the then President of the Board of Trade.
We must have some sympathy for the then President of the Board of Trade, who has now left the Chamber.Sir Richard Scott gave him a medal, but he cannot wear it: if he does, he will merely show up the fact that others did not win medals. It might be said that he will show up their inadequacy, but, in particular, he will show up the inadequacy of the Attorney-General.
The Attorney-General accepts that the brief sent toMr. Alan Moses was inadequate. Sir Richard Scott concludes that it was inadequate because there were no copies of the correspondence that had passed between the Attorney-General and the then President of the Board of Trade. He goes on to say that the instructions given to Mr. Alan Moses were contrary to the wishes of the President of the Board of Trade and that the major
responsibility for that inadequacy must be borne by the Attorney-General. The stand taken by the President of the Board of Trade raised issues that were not
Those issues needed the Attorney-General's supervision.
In what I consider a devastating passage, Sir Richard says that the views of the then President of the Board of Trade raised serious issues of a legal and constitutional nature, and that the Attorney-General should have recognised that. The absence of personal involvement that the President of the Board of Trade's stance made necessary is a criticism levelled against the Attorney-General.
I examined the evidence given by the then President of the Board of Trade to Sir Richard Scott at the oral hearing. The hon. Member for Livingston has already referred to one question and answer. The right hon. Gentleman was asked:
He replied:
He was asked:
He replied:
The right hon. Gentleman was asked, "Does that concern you?", and he replied, "Of course."
A little later, in response to a rather longer, rambling question, the right hon. Gentleman said:
A little while ago, the present Deputy Prime Minister came loyally to the Dispatch Box, but I did not understand his intervention to depart in any respect from the opinion that he expressed during the giving of oral evidence to the Scott inquiry on 28 February 1994. It is not a question of honour; it is a question of competence. We must ask--I believe that the Attorney-General must ask--how he can command public confidence in the light of these matters.
Sir Patrick Mayhew:
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Gentleman for allowing me to intervene for a second time.
We must address the question, and the question is whether my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General is personally responsible for what happened. Does the hon. and learned Gentleman accept that, having been a Law Officer for nearly nine years,man and boy, I have never heard of a Law Officer checking instructions to counsel prepared by the Treasury Solicitor's Department, which is presided over by the head of the Government legal service? Would that not impose a wholly unreal standard? In this instance, when
the Treasury Solicitor's Department had the relevant correspondence, it was in possession of all that was necessary for it to prepare the appropriate instructions.
Mr. Campbell:
I yield to the right hon. and learned Gentleman's experience as a Law Officer; but I wonder whether, in positing certain cases, he is doing more than saying that, in a routine context, that is what happened. This was not a routine case, but a case in which the then President of the Board of Trade declined to sign a public interest immunity certificate until he had engaged in direct negotiation and correspondence with the Attorney-General--and, indeed, until he had received an assurance that his reservations about having to sign the certificate would be properly conveyed to the judge at the trial.I fancy that, in the nine years that the right hon. and learned Gentleman spent as a Law Officer, there were not many cases of that type.
The President of the Board of Trade has made a number of proposals. He may have made them in a rather different tone from the tone that he used 10 days ago, but the position does not seem to have changed. We shall consider the proposals in detail; it is a pity that they were not circulated rather more widely before the debate. I echo the hon. Member for Livingston in saying that, without a commitment to a culture of freedom of information rather than official secrets, we cannot be sure that circumstances of the kind that Sir Richard Scott was forced to investigate will not arise again. The best defence against abuse of power is public scrutiny. The proposals would carry much more weight if they had been accompanied by a frank recognition of responsibility for the catalogue of culpability identified by Sir Richard Scott.
I go further. In their present tentative form, there is no guarantee that, if all those proposals had been implemented in 1988 and 1989, they would have prevented the abuse of both power and position thatSir Richard has identified.
Mr. Paul Channon (Southend, West):
Clearly, as a layman, I am not in a position to argue with the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) about the legal aspects of the case. I can only say--and I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman will concede this to be fair--that, over the past week, a large number of senior judges and others, including defence counsel, have concluded that what my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General did was right: indeed,we have been told that by no less than the Master of the Rolls. If my right hon. and learned Friend is to be convicted of dereliction of duty, when many senior members of the Bar support what he did, that is exceedingly unfair.
I want to concentrate on the guidelines. For a short time, as Minister of Trade, I was one of those who had to deal with the problems in the early 1980s. I therefore have some experience of dealing with the guidelines. Given the way in which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has been accused over the past few weeks,I feel that there is a fundamental misconception of the role of the guidelines. They were not holy writ, set down like the laws of the Medes and Persians; they were broad guidelines, and officials were asked to examine the suggestion of exporting certain goods in the light of those guidelines. In important cases, Ministers themselves decided whether to allow exports to take place.
Mr. Channon:
I shall deal with the question of weapons in a moment, but my hon. Friend was right to intervene. As the report makes clear, the whole intention was to ensure that no lethal weapons were supplied either to Iraq or to Iran. Of course, the definitions of lethal and non-lethal are not absolutely clear cut in all cases, but that was the honest intention that Ministers had when they applied the guidelines. Nevertheless, there were many cases in the early days--and, I suspect, later--when goods that could probably have been exported under the guidelines were not. It was Ministers who decided; it was not a question of the blind application of a rigid set of guidelines.
"mundane, routine or run of the mill".
"Having now looked at the passages we have drawn your attention to during the submissions that were made 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."
"And, in fact, having looked at it, does it seem to you now the message sent to the judge was that your certificate was like everyone else's?"
"I understand that is what did happen."
"No, it was only after all of this that I saw what was being said in the court. I thought that I had done all that was necessary, andI asked the question whether the Judge would get a message and I was assured he would and indeed you can see clearly that that was the reply to me. I thought I had done all I properly could to indicate to the judge what I thought the position to be, and I find it difficult to explain the way in which events worked out."
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