| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. David Heath (Somerton and Frome): I have no wish to defend any newspaper, but journalists at The Sunday Times will have read the Foreign Secretary's letter, which is printed in appendix 4 on page xv of the Committee's report, in which he clearly says that
- "the Chair of the FAC gave a full briefing to Andy Henderson".
Mr. Anderson: I can only surmise that the person who drafted the letter that went before the Standards and Privileges Committee and which appears in appendix 4 had not consulted Mr. Henderson before he did so. Obviously, the Foreign Secretary would have signed that letter in good faith.
In brief, I had given an hour of my time to help an official. During the meeting, the Sierra Leone report arose in passing. All that I said was general and in the public domain, as has been confirmed by the only other person involved--the official who was present. I fully expressed the Committee's known concerns, which could have been clear to anyone who had followed our proceedings.
Mr. Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton):
The House is grateful to the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) for clarifying the fact that he did not give a briefing to the Foreign Office official the day before the publication of the report. However, his later remarks sowed seeds of doubt about what different officials believed and what information they had to hand. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has given an undertaking that the minute will be made available.
Mr. Donald Anderson:
I am happy to request that the minute be made available, but I have no powers to force anyone to divulge it.
Mr. Davey:
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's clarification. I hope that the Leader of the House will give an undertaking to the House that she will ask her colleagues to ensure that the minute is placed in the Library because it will help to answer all the questions that hon. Members have raised today.
Mrs. Beckett:
I have the utmost sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), who has been placed, primarily by The Sunday Times, in a rather difficult position. He has, of course, reacted strongly to any suggestion that he has been wrongly involved in briefing. Coming to these matters with the benefit of a degree of impartiality and having read the references in the report, I did not interpret them in the way that my hon. Friend, let alone The Sunday Times, did, and it did not occur to me that any allegation was being made against my hon. Friend of the kind that he would clearly want to refute.
It seemed to me--as it does now that I have heard his explanation--that there has been a misunderstanding about the use of the word "full". My hon. Friend has made it clear that he gave an incoming official a full briefing about the work of the Select Committee, in which he touched on the matter of Sierra Leone. If the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) reads the Standards and Privileges Committee's report, he will find that it says that no use was made of the additional information. It does not, therefore, seem to me that the information was very germane to the report. I shall, of course, draw the hon. Gentleman's request to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, but whether he will feel that the matter needs to be pursued in that way or to that degree is another matter.
Mr. Davey:
I do not think that the right hon. Lady's response is adequate. The House needs a promise that the minute will be published. The aim of this debate is to get to the bottom of the issues that the Committee was considering. The right hon. Lady seems to suggest that the newspaper misunderstood the report, but the report is very clear. On page xv, it says:
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West):
If this debate continues for the next 10 or 15 minutes, would there not be time for the Leader of the House to ask the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to allow the House to see the minute that was circulated after the meeting? Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the right hon. Lady might want to describe in her winding-up speech the guidelines for Ministers on commenting on Select Committee reports when they cannot have had time to read them in detail? That seems one important issue. The right hon. Lady no doubt already has a briefing which she will read. How much nicer it would be if she also gave the Foreign Office briefing. The point has been made about the intensity of a noun and the strength of an adjective--"full briefing". That could be explained by the Government's disclosure, under open government rules, of a document that cannot be of any risk to anybody.
Mr. Davey:
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention. I hope that the Leader of the House heard his two points and will act on them.
Mrs. Beckett:
I can help the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Worthing, West (Mr. Bottomley). The guidance given to Ministers on how to respond to Select Committee reports is unchanged from that issued in 1990, when the hon. Member for Worthing, West was a member of the Government.
Mr. Davey:
The guidance may not have been changed, but the House is trying to get to the bottom of a serious matter. The right hon. Lady's Government tell the House time and again that they are in favour of open government. I would have thought that, in that spirit, she would ensure that the information is made available to the House.
Shona McIsaac
: The report on Sierra Leone was agreed to by the Committee on 3 February and published on 9 February. This briefing took place during that period. The hon. Gentleman will notice that, although paragraph 8 of the report relates to some of the other leaks, it states:
Mr. Davey:
We seem to be getting to a case of angels on a pinhead. The hon. Lady is making a point similar to that made by the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) when he gave his interpretation of the report. I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues on the Committee on a very strong report which does not pull any punches, although I do not necessarily agree with his interpretation of what the report is trying to convey.
Mr. Tom Levitt (High Peak):
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Davey:
No; I want to make some progress.
The right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne said that he and his Committee were not criticising the Foreign Secretary, but they got dangerously close to doing so. As the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) said, it seems rather odd that a senior Minister receiving a leaked report from a Select Committee should not have instinctively understood that something was wrong, and known that he should not have received it and that he should declare doing so immediately.
Receiving a leak of a Select Committee report is almost tantamount to receiving stolen goods. We should be expecting a very high standard of behaviour among Ministers. We should be assured that their instincts--their understanding of our process and our culture--are such that they abide by the highest of standards in reacting to what was clearly a wrong act by an hon. Member, to which he has admitted. The Foreign Secretary and his colleagues on the Labour Benches are only making the issue worse. My advice is that they should stop digging.
Mr. Tam Dalyell (Linlithgow):
As someone who has been in this place for 37 years, may I rather cynically say that the hon. Gentleman ought to understand that one of the less attractive features of the House of Commons is that there is one law that applies to Back Benchers and another law that tends to apply to senior Ministers? I find that attitude profoundly distasteful.
Mr. Davey:
I am very grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention. I think that many people around the House share his concerns.
"the Chair of the FAC gave a full briefing to Andy Henderson, the Head of the FCO Parliamentary Relations Department"--
Mr. Menzies Campbell:
Read on.
"making clear that the bulk of the Report's criticism would be aimed at senior officials. Mr. Henderson minuted that exchange to officials within the FCO."
So, people knew what was going on. The right hon. Lady and her friends should take cognisance of that and be more open to the House.
"although improper, they do not raise questions of privilege".
The question of privilege is raised only at the draft stage--not when a report has been agreed.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |