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Letter From the Editor of The Guardian
to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
Thank you for your letter.
I'm sorry you think I am guilty of being disingenuous.
I may have been guilty of over-simplification. But I don't think
I over-simplified matters any more than you did in your letter
to The Times or than Mr Hamilton did in his utterly misleading
letter to The Sunday Telegraph this week.
Let me try a less-simplified version. I think
you have to imagine yourself in a complainant's shoes to appreciate
some of our difficulties since the beginning of October.
Firstly, you will appreciate, it was not our
original choice that the Hamilton affair should be tested by
Parliament. We were ready to test the case in a court of law,
with all evidence aired in public and under the rules of cross-examination.
I have no doubt at all that we would have won such a case. I suspect
Hamilton knew that, too. Having spurned Parliament in favour
of the law courts, he moved back to Parliament when it dawned
on him that he'd lose at law.
So the affair then moved into a forum, the rules
and procedures of which were quite unknown and untested. In place
of publicly-tested evidence we were required to submit to an inquiry
which would, initially, be conducted in private. I still have
little knowledge of how you are conducting that inquiry. I do
not know, for instance, whether you are deciding the matter mainly
on the documents or whether you will be questioning Mr Hamilton
or other witnesses. I do not know whether there will be any transcript
of any examination, and, if so, whether we will be able to see
it and challenge it. I do not know what your standards of proof
will be.
I hope you understand that all these are real
concerns to any complainant, particularly in circumstances where
the subject of the complaint has vigorously tried to make the
complainant's own integrity an issue. Mr Hamilton wants to ensure
that The Guardian is on trial every bit as much as he is.
There were further complications in this case
from the outset since we had grave worries about the procedure
Mr Hamilton chose stemming from the Willetts memorandum. I notified
you of these concerns on 8 October. I think the verdict of the
Select Committee on the Willetts affair showed that our concerns
were well-founded.
It is against this background of uncertainty
and ambivalence that we first registered our complaints. On 16
October I suggested a discussion with our lawyers since we had
at that stage a vast amount of evidence in 40-odd ring binders.
I wrote to you as follows: "They [the papers] are already
assembled in a logical order and could be with you immediately."
A day or two spent in early October going through that documentation
with the people who were most familiar with it would, I still
maintain, have greatly speeded up the inquiry. That is rather
a different matter than talking to lawyers at this stage of events.
You replied that you had not yet appointed an
independent Counsel or decided on your procedures. You asked
me to make specific charges against any other MPs involved.
On 18 October, as requested, I wrote to you
with specific complaints against seven other MPs. In view of
this I do not understand how you could write to The Times
more than two months later: "as yet The Guardian's
allegations against others have not been formally specified."
On the same day I sent you a four-page document setting out
the terms of reference we believed your inquiry should investigate.
This included a number of further specific allegations.
On 25 October I wrote to you, on legal advice,
suggesting we spoke about the additional evidence you might need
in addition to the trial bundle. You did not respond to this request.
On 31 October you set a deadline of five working
days for receiving all the evidence in our possession. At the
same time you imposed a condition that we would not be free ever
to use such material again unless it were first published by
the Select Committee. This was another example of the anomalies
thrown up by a process which was new and untested. It was a condition
that we could not agree to, as you know. Nevertheless I wrote
you again the following day inviting you to seek the agreement
of all parties to examine all the documents in our possession.
Again, I offered the help of our legal advisers to guide you or
Mr Pleming through this material.
You responded on 4 November saying that you
had - that day - written seeking the permission of other parties
to consent to all documents in the libel case being disclosed
to you and agreeing that The Guardian might provide that
bundle. When we spoke four weeks later - on 28 November - you
told me that Mr Hamilton had just told you that day that
he did not consent to such a condition. I cannot see how The
Guardian can in any way be blamed for this delay, as you
sought to imply in your letter to The Times.
In that same letter you declined to see Geoffrey
Robertson, though you said you would "consider" asking
our solicitor to take you through the evidence. You did not do
so in fact until yesterday.
On 7 November I wrote to you seeking clarification
on the point of privilege and once again offering the help of
our lawyers, together with the chronology and master bundle. We
duly prepared four copies of the same. You did not reply until
19 November. In that letter you sought to reassure us on the point
of privilege. You reserved your position on whether you wished
to be assisted by our lawyers. You told us you had yet to settle
certain aspects of your procedure, particularly concerning the
availability of transcripts. It was not finally until 25 November
that the matter considering privilege was resolved. You had the
core bundle of papers three days later - with, as I have observed,
Mr Hamilton still not consenting to his papers being submitted
by The Guardian. I see that Mr Hamilton publicly claims
to have provided you evidence - on our behalf as well as his -
on 3 December. This is plainly an untrue claim, which has
gone uncorrected by you.
I do not consider, in the light of the above
chronology, that The Guardian can be blamed for any delays
during the sequence of events that took place between 1 October
and 28 November, nor do I think it is "disingenuous"
to protest at blame being attached to the paper in such a public
manner - particularly as Mr Hamilton's delays, evasions and misleading
statements have gone unchallenged by you.
In my last letter to you I noted that you did
not communicate with me between 3 December and 2 January, by
which time you had already written to The Times. I also
explained to you the constraints under which our solicitors were
working, the entire cost being borne by The Guardian. Geraldine
is addressing separately the question of the period between 3
December and Christmas. I attach a copy of her reply to Mr Pleming's
fax of yesterday.
I set out this chronology not because I wish
to prolong any disagreement with you, but simply that you might
better understand the difficulties, confusions and expense a
complainant may encounter in laying a complicated complaint before
Parliament under unformed and untested procedures. I am sure some
of this is inevitable in any system that is newly-established.
But I hope you comprehend better that my letters to The Times
and to you were not "disingenuous" but were written
out of a genuine sense of grievance at being so publicly - and
damagingly - blamed.
We are, as a medium-sized and reasonably well-resourced
national newspaper, doing our best to co-operate in making the
new system Parliament has established for its own regulation work.
I cannot help wondering how a private individual or small business
concern would fare in laying a complaint about his/her MP before
Parliament at their own expense.
I enclose, out of courtesy, a copy of my reply
to Mr Hamilton's most recent letter to The Sunday Telegraph.
9 January 1997
Letter from the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards to Mr Alan Rusbridger
Thank you for your letter of today.
Clearly, we both have a rather different perception
of past events but I think the important thing now is to concentrate
on the enquiry. I think we now know (or should do after Nigel
Pleming sees Geraldine Proudler tomorrow) of all the papers which
are going to be available to us and I shall get on with the oral
hearings as soon as possible. Incidentally, with reference to
your letter to The Sunday Telegraph, we have not, in fact,
had a master set from you (only a core bundle plus indices) but
we do have Hamilton's master set and I am assuming that there
is no impediment to our using it.
There is one point I should like to raise on
the "other" Members. My understanding was that the allegations
would probably refer to 25-30 Members. If, as you say, they refer
only to the additional seven referred to in your letter of 18
October (and if your letter plus the "narrative summaries"
promised for tomorrow constitute the allegations in full) I shall
put the allegations to the Members concerned as quickly as possible
and seek statements from them.
There remain the others about whom allegations
have been made in The Guardian and elsewhere - principally
the recipients of contributions from Ian Greer towards election
expenses. In some cases, the public presentation implied possible
misconduct and you may remember that, in a statement to the House,
the Speaker asked that I should enquire into those as well, since
they were in the public domain.
Even if they are not to be the subject of complaint,
would it be possible to have all your relevant press cuttings,
on the basis of which I could at least summarily consider whether
any rules have been broken?
9 January 1997
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