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4.21 pm
Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East): The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) has been extremely fair to me--an unusual case of Llanelli rallying to the defence of Swansea.
The Standards and Privileges Committee has again produced a powerful and thorough report, and its Chairman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon), is to be commended on it. So far as it refers to the conduct of my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Ross), I can say only that I much regret losing a diligent and valued colleague from the Committee and I regret also the circumstances of his leaving. He has given a full and honourable apology to the House this afternoon.
So far as the second issue is concerned--the appropriate conduct of Ministers and civil servants on receiving reports--it is clearly right that neither Ministers nor civil servants should make use of such reports and that they should return them immediately. I would have thought that that was common courtesy and should not necessarily be enshrined in a code. However, I welcome the fact that the Government have responded immediately and that the ministerial code is now to be revised.
The House will not be surprised if I concentrate on two parts of the eighth report that refer to me, the footnote on page ix and the last paragraph on page xv, which states:
The allegation of a full briefing is a serious one. It goes to the heart of the integrity of the Committee and to the authority of its Chairman. Over the two years I have been privileged to chair the Foreign Affairs Committee, I have done my utmost to be Parliament's man, independent of Government and seeking to keep the Executive
accountable for what they have done and what they have failed to do. The Committee has received many plaudits for that role.
What are the facts? I wear several hats in the House. Mr. Henderson, the head of the parliamentary relations department, had recently taken up his post. He asked my office to arrange an informal meeting to leave his card, as it were, and to seek my advice on how best to relate to the Foreign Affairs Committee. I also chair the House's Commonwealth Parliamentary Association branch and I lead our delegation to the North Atlantic Assembly. I recall, for example, that the CPA figured largely in our conversation, in which I gave Mr. Henderson names of colleagues whom it would be valuable for him to meet.
The Foreign Affairs Committee report had, by that day, already been presented to the House. It was to be published the following day, so no question of privilege arose, and it was raised in our conversation only in passing. I recall saying to Mr. Henderson that I hoped that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary would not rush to rubbish the report, and that anyone who had followed our proceedings would certainly know that officials, and not Ministers, were mainly in the frame. As Mr. Henderson was the man whose duty it was to try to improve relations between the Foreign Office and the Foreign Affairs Committee, which had been impaired in the course of our inquiry, I advised him that the Committee would never accept that the Government could prevent it from embarking on an inquiry by setting up an official inquiry, such as the Legg inquiry.
At the end of the meeting, I felt that I had done my best to do a good turn by giving Mr. Henderson the names of key parliamentary colleagues for him to meet. I believe that I actually introduced him to one or two of them.
I saw the eighth report of the Standards and Privileges Committee on 29 June, the day it was published. I was astonished and puzzled by the allegation of "detailed briefing", and immediately telephoned Mr. Henderson. I cannot recall the exact details of our conversation, but I do remember that I felt fully vindicated as a result of what he said to me, which was that I had done nothing improper and had said nothing that was not already effectively in the public domain.
Not only did I not fully brief Mr. Henderson, I had also scrupulously avoided seeing my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister of State, as a matter of principle. However, on the evening before publication, by chance I met my right hon. Friend briefly in the Division Lobby. I urged him not to rubbish our report, as he had criticised the Committee forcefully in December. I went no further: no more, and no less, was said.
Mr. Menzies Campbell (North-East Fife):
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is giving a most lucid explanation of the report's contents, in so far as they affect him. However, will he say why he apprehended that the Foreign Secretary might rubbish the report of the Committee, of which the hon. Gentleman is Chairman?
Mr. Anderson:
The answer is simple. The right hon. and learned Gentleman would understand my reasons had he read what my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary told the Committee when he appeared before it in December, in the course of our inquiry, or the various comments that my right hon. Friend made--or which were attributed to him--afterwards.
The report was thorough and, in my judgment, important. My hope was that it would be treated properly by the Department.
Mrs. Beckett:
As my hon. Friend will appreciate, my memory of the events is not as clear as his, but am I correct in recalling that, over the weekend preceding the report's publication, there were references in the press--which I am sure did not emanate from my hon. Friend--to the effect that the report would be extremely critical of Ministers? Was it not in that context that my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary made his remarks?
Mr. Anderson:
I shall come to the leaks over that weekend in a moment. As I shall explain to the House, I have received a letter of explanation from the official concerned, in which he stated that I had also told him how angry I was that there had been leaks over that weekend.
Sir John Stanley (Tonbridge and Malling):
The hon. Gentleman has made a very serious statement. He has said that the Foreign Secretary's evidence to the Standards and Privileges Committee was materially incorrect. The Foreign Office minute, passed by Mr. Henderson to the Foreign Office officials concerned, of his discussion with the hon. Gentleman is available. It will clearly demonstrate either that a full briefing was given, as the Foreign Secretary suggested, or, as the hon. Gentleman has suggested, that no such briefing was given. In light of that, may I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he request the Foreign Secretary today to place a copy of that minute in the Library of the House?
Mr. Anderson:
I would not be unhappy with that, but I can probably go virtually as far, since I will shortly quote a letter from the official concerned which covers that same conversation.
After speaking to Mr. Henderson on 29 June on the telephone, I went immediately to the office of the Clerk of the Foreign Affairs Committee, referred to the report of the Standards and Privileges Committee, and told the Clerk that Mr. Henderson had confirmed my recollection. Since I considered that a Committee matter, I asked the Clerk to write formally to his opposite number, Mr. Henderson, on behalf of the Committee, to ask in effect for further and better particulars before placing the correspondence before the Committee.
I received Mr. Henderson's reply this morning. It is dated Friday 9 July. I shall quote it in full to avoid any misunderstanding and any suggestion that I might have quoted it selectively. After the standard first paragraph, thanking the Clerk for his letter, it continues:
"On the day before publication the Chair of the FAC gave a full briefing to Andy Henderson, the Head of the FCO Parliamentary Relations Department, making clear that the bulk of the Report's criticism would be aimed at senior officials."
Let me say from the start that I totally rebut the idea that I fully briefed that official or, indeed, any Minister or adviser, or that I divulged or intended to divulge details of the report.
"To answer the points you raised:
12 Jul 1999 : Column 39
'Who initiated the meeting on 8 February?'
The meeting took place at my initiative. It was an introductory courtesy call on the Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and in my new role as Head of Parliamentary Relations Department. The meeting had been arranged well before we knew that the Foreign Affairs Committee report into Sierra Leone would be released the following day;
'What were the circumstances in which the meeting took place?' The meeting took place over a cup of coffee in the cafeteria of 1 Parliament Street. It lasted a little less than one hour. We discussed a number of issues relating to the FCO's relationship with the Committee and more widely with Parliament in general;
'What did Mr. Anderson say to me about the Report?'
The reply from Mr. Henderson goes a little further than I recall, but all the matters mentioned were fully in the public domain. There was certainly not a full briefing as alleged in appendix 4. There is a clear difference between the FCO letter in that appendix and Mr. Henderson's letter, which suggests that he had not been consulted by the drafter of the letter before the report was issued. If he had been, I think that he would certainly have wished to revise it.
Mr. Anderson told me that the Report would primarily criticise officials rather than Ministers, focusing in particular on a perceived failure to respond to the seriousness of events. He also indicated that the Committee remained concerned about the FCO's reluctance to co-operate with the Committee until the Legg inquiry had completed its work and the decision to deny access to 'C'.
He regretted the press leaks of the report the previous weekend. He hoped that the FCO would react constructively to the serious points made in the Report and counselled against an aggressive or angry response.
'Whether what he said could be construed as a leak of the Sierra Leone Report?'
Mr. Anderson briefed me in general terms but did not go into detail on any of the Report's specific recommendations. It would have been odd if he hadn't mentioned it, given its release the following day."
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