Examination of witness (Questions 1200
- 1219)
TUESDAY 3 NOVEMBER 1998
MR
PETER
PENFOLD,
CMG,
OBE
1200. Did you mention Sandline to him at
that time?
(Mr Penfold) No, I did not.
1201. Were any questions asked about Sandline?
(Mr Penfold) No, they were not.
1202. When there were Adjournment Debates
in the House at around about this time, did anybody in the FCO
seek your input into drafting a briefing or replies?
(Mr Penfold) No, they did not.
1203. Were you aware of the fact this was
going to take place?
(Mr Penfold) I do not think I was aware they were
going to take place, but I was aware afterwards.
1204. You were sent—
(Mr Penfold) I was sent Hansard extracts.
1205. But only Hansard?
(Mr Penfold) Yes.
1206. When did you first see the briefings
prepared for Ministers?
(Mr Penfold) I am not sure I have seen them.
1207. Moving on from those sort of meetings,
the letter that you wrote on 30th December is, in my view, the
most critical part of the help that you can give us. I think it
would be helpful, to me at least, to get a really clear idea of
what actually transpired. You wrote the letter yourself?
(Mr Penfold) Yes, I did. I wrote it from home.
1208. In long hand? On Foreign Office paper
or on your own notepaper?
(Mr Penfold) I wrote it on my own notepaper. No,
it was written on just plain paper and I have one of those sticker
things which gives my home address and I stuck that on the top.
1209. Did you take a copy or did you write
out a copy?
(Mr Penfold) I made a copy. In my home in Abingdon,
on my desk, I have one of these phone fax machines which also
makes copies. In fact, having written this, it occurred to me,
particularly, quite frankly, because of the comments I had made
about the Honours Awards and I was not sending a copy to the Honours
Section, I thought I may need a copy of this in future, so I stuck
it in the machine and it came out. It was written on my personal
paper in Abingdon.
1210. Some fax machines date-stamp their
faxes, does yours date-stamp copies by any chance?
(Mr Penfold) No, it does not, I am afraid.
1211. Were you alone when you wrote the
letter?
(Mr Penfold) No, my wife was at home.
1212. She was aware that you were writing
something?
(Mr Penfold) Yes, because she saw me post the
letter. More importantly, when I was asked for a copy of this
letter, and this was not until some time in April—30th March,
1st April—in order to get a copy I had to try and get in
touch with my wife (because I was then in Freetown and she was
at Oxford University) and she had to go to the house, look through
my personal papers and then fax it out. So she faxed a copy to
me in Freetown. With hindsight I wish in fact she had faxed direct
to the office, but I wanted to refresh my mind as to what I had
put in the letter before I copied it out. I then immediately faxed
it out to the Department.
1213. That procedure of somebody in your
position writing your own letters and sending them, is this the
first time in your career you have ever done anything like that?
(Mr Penfold) What, written a manuscript—?
1214. No—
(Mr Penfold) Not at all. In fact when I first
got to Conakry all my reports were in manuscript.
1215. And they would have been sent by post
or by secure communications.
(Mr Penfold) All my reports in Conakry were having
to be sent by the hotel fax in their business office.
1216. The point I am seeking is, if in the
past you have written yourself, have you ever posted them before?
(Mr Penfold) I had posted letters to the office,
yes. Again we should bear in mind that when I came back to the
UK I worked from home. It is a two hour journey in and therefore
with anything I was doing I tended to work from home and post
things to the office.
1217. Was it your normal practice, when
you posted something, to telephone the office to ask if they had
received it?
(Mr Penfold) No.
1218. The next time you saw the person,
would you have asked them whether they had received it?
(Mr Penfold) Yes, I may have. I may have referred
to them but, as I mentioned in my statement, as soon as I posted
this letter I was literally on the way to the airport to get on
a flight to go to Canada. I was going on holiday for four weeks.
1219. The point I am trying to establish
is whether or not your subsequent conduct after posting it was
what would normally be the case for somebody in your position,
or whether this was the only occasion you did not double-check
whether it had arrived?
(Mr Penfold) It would come up in a conversation
when you are in the Department or talking to the Department, but
on this occasion I was actually going off on holiday for four
weeks.
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