1940. Maybe you thought
it.
(Sir John Kerr) I thought it was an extremely
interesting series of meetings we had, Sir Peter.
Mr Mackinlay
1941. But you would now concede this is
a grave matter and a matter legitimate for Parliament to probe
and investigate, having regard to our duty to oversee the Department,
would you not?
(Sir John Kerr) Mr Mackinlay, I always accepted
that. I do not want to go back over ground that we tilled in the
spring. My concern was about sequence.
1942. But some of us have had to endure
this in the spring, summer and autumn about whether or not it
was proper for us to probe this and that is why I feel very sensitive
about this matter. I made no apology for it. We were right to
probe this matter, were we not?
(Sir John Kerr) I know of nobody in Government,
Minister or officials, who thinks that the Committee is not entirely
within its rights to probe this matter. I think that goes across
the whole of Government. It certainly goes across the whole of
the Foreign Office. I know of nobody who thinks that the Committee
has no right. If I may add—and this is greatly daring because
this was ground we covered before—I personally think that
it was correct to produce for the Committee the Legg report, and
I think that until the Legg report was produced it was, as no
doubt my performance showed, very difficult for us to be sure
that a clear, rounded picture would emerge. I was not engaged
in any kind of cover-up. I am still not engaged in any kind of
cover-up, Mr Mackinlay.
1943. No.
(Sir John Kerr) Thank you. I had a disagreement
with some of this Committee about sequencing, but I absolutely
accept the right of this Committee to look into matters of this
kind, and I also accept, as I have said, that mistakes were made.
It is not a pretty picture. I think we have learned from it.
Mr Godman: May I say,
as a supplementary, that I all along argued that we should wait
for the Legg report and then conduct an investigation into this
less-than-pretty affair.
Chairman: Sir John,
we have come to a position where I understand you would prefer
us to try and wrap it up this morning. Sir Peter Emery has been
extremely patient and I call Sir Peter now to wrap this up.
Sir Peter Emery
1944. Chairman, may I apologise to the Committee
as I sent a note to you that I was unavoidably detained. I had
not intended to be, but was not here at the very start of the
Committee. Sir John, there are just three or four points, if I
may, where I would like to try to clear up odd ends. You did say
to us way back in your earlier evidence that Mr Penfold was stuck
in Conakry, as we have referred to today, in his hotel room and
that he had no secure communication with the Office. We have now
had evidence that secure communication between Conakry and London
existed. Why was not Mr Penfold told about this, or why did he
not know about this, and why could he not have used that secure
communication which you suggested to the Committee, or I took
to be the suggestion, that none existed but, in fact, it did?
(Sir John Kerr) I think I understand why you are
putting this point slightly indirectly, Sir Peter. I think we
are referring to evidence not taken in public. I myself did not
know that the other individual mentioned there in that evidence
did have such communications equipment.
1945. You did not know?
(Sir John Kerr) I can go on to answer your question.
I now know that he did and I know that some of the material which
Mr Penfold sent back, which you have seen as telegrams, was sent
via him, so once he turned up—he did not turn up until,
I think, 15 February, but once he turned up, in the remaining
three weeks before they get back to Conakry, there was a facility
available. I did not know that in the spring, Sir Peter. I apologise
if anything I said in the spring misled you.
1946. Thank you. Following that up, are
you satisfied with the way that the Foreign Office dealt with
the information it received from MOD during this period?
(Sir John Kerr) No, I think it would be hard,
against that record, to say that we were satisfied. To me, one
of the most professionally disturbing bits of the report is its
description of what happened to material from the Ministry of
Defence that arrived over a weekend. There appears to have been
a failure in the logging system, as a minimum. We have now introduced
a system which ensures that such material is logged in in three
different places. I do not think we made frightfully efficient
use of the material that was provided. I must say also that having,
like Sir Thomas Legg, read all of that material, it is a bit scrappy
and incoherent. It is supportive of something which we now know
we knew but we had not acted on, but none of it is big stuff.
I would also say that I think we can be too self-flagellating
about this. In the treatment in paragraphs 7.6 to 7.12 of six
or seven bits of MOD information, the description of what the
Foreign Office did with them is not very reassuring, but it is
also clear that no-one in the Ministry of Defence sent them to
Customs. It is clear that the whole of Whitehall dozed on that
stuff.
1947. But, Sir John, you know, as do I,
that information is very seldom complete in itself. It fits in
a jigsaw with other pieces of information. That is, of course,
why it is important, as you say, that the logging system should
be looked at. Might I go back, I am sorry, to the briefing. I
know this was massively inadequate, but you did say that you felt
that officials were in no way at fault for not notifying you of
Lord Avebury's letter and the reference of it to the Restrictive
Enforcement Unit, but now that we know that AD(E) had suspicions
as early as 19 December that perhaps the High Commissioner or
other people had advised President Kabbah to hire mercenaries—that
is in 6.39 of Legg—it does, therefore, seem to me that if
that was available in December, flags were not beginning to wave.
This is what I find so difficult, that that sort of information
was withheld or not put into the briefings for two parliamentary
debates?
(Sir John Kerr) May I comment, first, on a little
point to clear it out of the way and then I am going to comment
on your big point. 6.39 describes a meeting between Penfold and
Murray in the Foreign Office on 29 January in which Penfold said
something to Murray about his meeting with Kabbah on 19 December.
We have talked about this in this Committee. I do not know what
previously had been said to the Department about that meeting
on 19 December. There is a suggestion that there might have been
a meeting with Andrews or St Cooke, it is not clear which. Neither
can recall a meeting, though one thinks, St Cooke thinks, that
Mr Penfold looked into the building just before Christmas. I have
said before—I think you were not here, Sir Peter, but I
would like to say again—that I do think a meeting between
a head of state and a high commissioner needs to be properly recorded.
That will not do as a way of recording a meeting on 19 December.
Now on your big point: from 29 January possibly, or certainly
from 2 February when Legg notes that Penfold wrote a minute which
said that he had been shown by Kabbah a copy of the contract with
Blackstone, which company would make available to Sandline up
to $10 million for the purchase of arms and equipment and the
provision of training, at that point, yes, I agree with you, Sir
Peter, from that point on the handling of the Avebury letter should
not have been in a separate compartment from the handling of this
news, because they were talking about the same thing. Avebury
was drawing to the Office's attention an Internet report of something
which Penfold had just told the Department was true. So at that
point I totally agree with you, Sir Peter. I think that the inadequacy
of the briefing for ministers is twofold: one, it is a dog's dinner,
in both cases, it is incompetently put together, and two, the
point you have just made.
1948. May I then ask you on that, every
piece of information that goes to ministers does not have to be
cleared by you before it is sent to ministers, does it?
(Sir John Kerr) No, I am happy to say it does
not.
1949. And, therefore, to hold you responsible
for factors which were well-known to other people that did not
reach ministers cannot necessarily be put at your door?
(Sir John Kerr) Sir Peter, I detect a sign of
an olive branch!
1950. I actually believe a degree of fairness
is essential in the whole of this. I am not certain about olives,
whether it is female or on the tree, but it is the fairness of
this which I was trying to ascertain. Having held out that olive
branch, may I take it back a little bit. I think it was 30 March
when all this really came about and you set in mechanism an internal
investigation, but you, I believe, informed ministers that you
did not have a clear idea of the weight of this at that moment
and, therefore, even at the beginning of April you did not inform
ministers. Commenting for a second, I find that surprising because
the appointment of an internal inquiry with the legal adviser
of the FCO and the Chairman of the Board of Customs and Excise,
and your then visit or meeting with Dame Valerie Strachan, I would
have thought this was a pretty unusual affair and that something
like that was not at least mentioned to ministers that that was
going on. If I was the Minister of State or the Secretary of State
and I heard about this from a third person rather than from you,
I would have been rather upset. Do you not think that would be
the case?
(Sir John Kerr) Indeed, Sir Peter. I acknowledged
that in earlier discussion this morning. It is the case that the
minutes which came to me were also copied to Mr Lloyd's office.
It is also the case that because he was away he did not see them
until sometime later. It is the case that these minutes which
came to me were not copied to the Foreign Secretary and that I
decided to set in hand action with the Chief Clerk, with the Legal
Adviser and so on, and that I did not mark these papers on to
the Foreign Secretary. In retrospect, it is also the case, Sir
Peter, that I wish I had.
1951. With the emphasis by the Foreign Secretary
on his ethical foreign policy, the export of arms, and that this
was likely to be perhaps in breach of it even though you were
not certain whether it was, I have to say I am surprised that
that was not thought important enough to refer to the Foreign
Secretary. You do not disagree too much?
(Sir John Kerr) I think any accusation that the
Foreign Office may have been involved in connivance at a breach
of the law, any accusation that a British company has been exporting—
1952. That was not part of my question at
all.
(Sir John Kerr) —these are all serious matters.
I am answering your question, Sir Peter, I am coming round to
it slowly.
1953. Not too slowly, it is 1.30!
(Sir John Kerr) Your point is not necessary—we
already had Pelion on Ossa, and I do not think we needed a third.
I think this was a bad scene anyway which should have been brought
to the attention of ministers.
1954. May I then go to another point. I
did not know until going through Legg that the Foreign Secretary
and the Minister of State had confirmed to Legg that they shared
and approved the goal of drying up arms supplies to all parties
in Sierra Leone.
(Sir John Kerr) Yes.
1955. When did that meeting, in which they
must have been with officials of the Foreign Office, because that
is what it is referring to, take place?
(Sir John Kerr) I do not know about a meeting.
The idea of the correct scope of the Security Council Resolution
is spelt out in papers in August, September of 1997. I think some
of them are in the papers available to the Committee. I do not
know that there was a meeting, Sir Peter, I cannot tell you that,
but I do know that it was the view of the Office, officials and
approved by ministers, that we should be trying to dry up arms
supplies to all parties; that the place was awash with arms and
that the last thing it needed, even the good guys needed, was
any more. So there was not any serious dispute inside the Foreign
Office that the correct kind of Security Council Resolution would
be geographic in scope.
1956. What you have confirmed is what I
wanted confirmed, that ministers had been in some way approving
of that policy, whether by meeting or documentation. We then have
the two Adjournment Debates. I happen to believe that ministers
do not have to rely entirely on being the puppets of the Civil
Service, they actually have to ask questions themselves. Can you
tell the Committee what questions were asked by ministers in the
period from February until mid-April about any of this? Were the
ministers absolutely motionless? Did they not raise any queries
with your department about this? It was in the papers; articles
in the Guardian as well as everything else. Were no questions
asked by ministers of your department or members in your department?
(Sir John Kerr) That is not right, Sir Peter.
I cannot answer your question, I am afraid, because I do not know
what questions were asked, but I do know that Ann Grant saw Mr
Lloyd and I do know Ann Grant and Mr Andrews saw Baroness Symons
in connection—
1957. That was at the time of the Adjournment
Debate, I am talking about after that.
(Sir John Kerr) I do not know what other meetings
took place and I cannot tell you what questions may have been
asked or not asked. I do not know.
1958. The reason that I put the question
to you is that the responsibility for all this, the policy of
the Government, rests with HMG, with the Foreign Secretary and
his ministers. When all this is so much before people, that no
questions were being asked after the Adjournment Debates I find
very strange, particularly that you cannot refer to any questions
being raised, because I would have thought it was important to
you to have drawn this to the attention of the Committee if ministers
had been asking those questions.
(Sir John Kerr) I think in your desire to be fair
to officials, you may be going too far.
1959. This is not defending—
(Sir John Kerr) Not that I am rejecting your olive
branch, I love your olive branch, but it is very hard to expect
ministers to ask questions about something they have not been
told about, and the Penfold bombshell they had not been told about
and they should have been told about; the fact that Mr Penfold
had, on 19th December, been shown by Kabbah the draft of a contract,
including for arms. The moment we knew that is the moment when
ministers really should have been put in the picture. I do not
think that Tony Lloyd, who looks after a whole list of countries,
more even than the 31 countries covered by AD(E), should be expected
to call in AD(E) every day and say, "Is there anything on
your conscience about this one or that one or this one or that
one?" I do not know if he did ask questions following the
Adjournment Debate. I do not know, but I think you are being a
little harsh on ministers, Sir Peter.
