Examination of witnesses (Questions 360 - 379)
TUESDAY 3 MARCH 1998
THE RT
HON THE
LORD IRVINE
OF LAIRG,
QC and MRS
SARAH TYACKE
360. Can I just ask the same question again. Did it occur
to you when you wrote this letter that there might be some political
embarrassment about these refurbishments?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) No.
361. Not at all? Did you have any assistance from your
officials in drafting that letter?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) None at all - just pause
for the answer - I wrote every word myself and I take the fullest
responsibility. My officials did not write a single word; I wrote
it myself. It was a subject in which I was very interested and
I wanted to see that the Committees had all the information that
I could give them and I cannot see how that can be faulted on
grounds of candour or anything else.
362. Did any of your officials see the letter before
it was sent?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) I am sure they would have
done, yes.
363. Did they offer any advice to you about the possible
political embarrassment that might cause?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) Not that I have any recollection
of.
364. Does this have any connection at all with your decision
to appoint an Information Officer?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) None at all. None at all.
365. When you took the decision to write - -
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) - - I have, by the way,
a very good Information Officer, an absolutely excellent Information
Officer, but because of my enhanced responsibilities in Government
and because of a reappraisal by my officials of the Department
and its responsibilities and its strengths and weaknesses and
its priorities and allocation of resources and everything else,
the view was taken because I had a much higher profile than my
predecessor because of the responsibilities which I have been
given in Government that it would be right that the office of
Information Officer should be upgraded. That seems to me to be
extremely sensible.
366. I think you said a moment ago that future generations
would be grateful for the refurbishments you are undertaking.
I am sure everybody agrees that future generations will be grateful
for keeping the Palace in a state of good repair. There is already
a budget for that of course - a rolling programme. £3.64
million is allocated for this year. Am I right in thinking that
your £650,000 comes out of that budget and therefore has
not part of the programme been set back, which future generations
would otherwise benefit from?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) Let me tell you, it needed
rewiring in the name of safety, it was full of asbestos, it needed
smoke alarms. There was a lot of work that urgently required doing
and that was catered for in previous sums set aside. To the extent
that there was a new vote of money by the Treasury, I am not going
to risk an answer because I do not actually know the facts but
they can easily be ascertained and you can be told. There is no
secret about them whatever
367. You have written a letter which has resulted in
two-thirds of a million extra public spending.
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) I do not accept the letter
that I have written has resulted in two-thirds of a million of
public expenditure any more than I would accept that when an advocate
appears in front of a court and succeeds in his argument that
he is party to the decision of the court. What I was doing was
not even submitting an argument to the Committee. I was setting
out the facts as dispassionately as I could with the pros and
cons of what we intended and I regard the decision as a decision
for the Committees and I believe that it is their decision and
their decision alone and not mine, although I have never concealed
that I thoroughly approve of what is happening and I believe that
future generations will agree and will regard all this as a remarkable
storm in a tea cup, although I entirely accept that £650,000
is a substantial sum of money.
368. Just one final point, do you see any conflict or
contradiction between what you have just described as a "storm
in a tea cup" and the acute political embarrassment which
parts of your party appear to feel over this issue?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) I do not accept that they
do feel acute political embarrassment. On the contrary I think
up and down the country people are of the view that this has been
blown grossly out of all proportion and that there are two signal
points which justify the expenditure: the restoration and preservation
of our national heritage and this Parliament; and the public benefit
that will be gained from the refurbishment of the residence, and
these are the overriding points in my judgment and I suspect in
the judgement of very many people across the country as well.
369. So it can be summed up as, if I may coin a phrase,
"Je ne regrette rien."
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) I am sorry?
370. "Je ne regrette rien."
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) I certainly do not think
that any apologies are due. On the contrary, I tend to side with
those commentators who have said "three cheers for this being
done in Parliament and three cheers for the House Committees that
decided to do it".
Chairman: Thank you very much for your answers on those
questions, Lord Chancellor. Had I thought the "pattern book"
row would be coming up today I would have thought it was about
Rupert Murdoch censoring HarperCollins and not about the choice
of wallpaper in the Lord Chancellor's lodgings.
Mr Hancock
371. I feel the first question I ought to ask you is
would you care to give us all some advice on what to avoid at
B&Q because - -
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) What was that?
372. But I will not ask that question because you might
take too long in answering it and I will not get round to the
- - I did not expect you to answer that and I will not expect
you to.
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) It was very entertaining.
373. Oh, you want to answer it? I was led into it after
your sentiments about not buying cheap wallpaper from do-it-yourself
stores.
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) Any more than you would
choose cheap wallpaper for this Committee room.
374. Absolutely. I want to get off the subject.
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) Well, you are not achieving
it at the moment.
375. I was trying to bring a bit of humour into what
has been a fairly turgid half an hour. I would like to ask you
some questions about freedom of information but first you made
a very interesting comment about the data protection legislation
saying we were put in this position because of a European Directive.
Would you say that if we had not had this European Directive you
would have wanted to have seen the same sort of legislation coming
through in tandem with freedom of information?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) I do not want to speculate
about that. It seems to me that builds hypothesis on hypothesis.
Quite frankly, I have been sufficiently concerned with developing
real parts of the legislative programme not to speculate whether
in the absence of a Directive this very crowded legislative programme
and the next very crowded legislative programme might have included
legislation on data protection. That seems to me to be building
hypothesis on hypothesis in a way that is not very helpful.
376. Do you anticipate that the actual legislation which
will materialise will carry very much the same ambitions as the
White Paper? Do you feel that the White Paper is going to be in
any way diluted by the process between its publication and the
delivery of the legislation?
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) The White Paper, as you
know, is general principle. This White Paper is itself the subject
of consultation because - and this is a point you might have raised
- there are so many other statutes by the way that include restrictions
on disclosure which are going to have to be amended to a greater
or lesser extent in the Freedom of Information Bill. There is
a very considerable amount of development of this Bill to be done
but it is certainly intended that the basic principles of the
White Paper will be reflected in the Bill. Instructions, however,
have to go to Parliamentary draftsman and, as you know, the devil
is always in the detail and problems emerge in the course of drafting
which with the best will in the world you have not seen, even
over many hours in Committee discussing general principle, but
there is no hidden agenda. I am not aware of any material changes
in principle that will develop and I hope you think that the background
material to this White Paper which David Clark published, was
an absolute model of its kind, that just as we want in relation
to Government when advice is given to ministers by civil servants,
whilst preserving the integrity of that advice, to give the maximum
amount of background factual material as possible, that is also
a principle of the White Paper. I hope you think that David Clark
has been a model in that endeavour in providing this very very
full background material to this White Paper which actually in
my experience is pretty well unprecedented. I think I see Richard
Shepherd nodding his head.
377. I think that is right and the point I am trying
to make is I want to be confident that the hype does realise itself
in the reality of a piece of legislation which will give the majority
of the people in this country something that they can work with
and use.
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) Let me just respond to
that. You may remember at the beginning of the new Parliament
when we decided that we were not going to accept the easy option
of putting our predecessor's code of practice onto a statutory
basis there was no shortage of fingers on the betrayal button
to say at the very moment of acceding power we had lost our appetite
for freedom of information. I think fair-minded people would say
overall that it is a remarkable constitutional programme. The
devolution legislation resulted in White Papers of very considerable
complexity in record time after many, many hours of Cabinet Committee
work and referendums in September with the legislation on target.
The Human Rights Bill, which most people applaud, we can argue
about the detailed implications of this and that but most people
applaud, was on time. Be not of little faith. The freedom of information
legislation will do what you want it to do but we will all argue
about the details. That is what makes life entertaining.
378. Surely you are not surprised that we are a little
cynical when we are surrounded continuously with the hype mill?
We are given something every day and it is right we are given
the opportunity to question you.
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) I accept that but there
has been no hype.
379. Fine.
(Lord Irvine of Lairg) Listen, there has been
no hype in relation to this constitutional reform programme. We
have delivered on time. We will deliver on time. I am not aware
of any false hype in relation to any part of this constitutional
programme that there has been and you have not told me that there
has been.
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