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Shona McIsaac: To be fair to Mr. Williams, the evidence shows that he stated:
- "I was obviously aware that if I said anything that depended on knowledge of that leak that would be wrong. I did not do so."
First, a special adviser does not see the political significance of the report. Then, an ex-political editor does not know that it is a problem for a Select Committee report to be leaked to a Department. Then we come to Mr. Grant, Mr. Cook's private secretary. I am an ex-Foreign Office Minister, and hon. Members should understand what a private secretary is, because he is not someone who does the typing. He is a high-flying, highly qualified member of the Foreign Office who will almost certainly end up as an ambassador somewhere or, like Sir John Kerr, will become the permanent secretary of the Department--that is particularly true of the private secretary to the Foreign Secretary.
In the Foreign Office, one of the skills people are required to develop as a diplomat is political acuity and political antennae. According to the report, Mr. Grant said that
The report goes on to say of Mr. Grant:
My concern is that the Committee had no choice. When faced with evidence that had no obvious flaw in its internal logic, how could the Committee penetrate it? In future, the House should arm the Standards and Privileges Committee with rather heavier weapons.
Mrs. Beckett:
I have just been trying to refresh my memory in regard to Mr. Hood's evidence to the Select Committee. Notwithstanding the summary given by the right hon. Gentleman on the basis of his experience as a junior Foreign Office Minister, Mr. Hood's evidence makes it clear that, at the time in question, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary was dealing simultaneously with the hostage crisis in Yemen, with arrangements for
Mr. Hood said that one reason why he thought that the issue was not important enough to be drawn to the Foreign Secretary's attention immediately was the fact that he was entirely sure that there was nothing that the Foreign Office could or should do with the report. Does that not put Mr. Hood's evidence, and his decision, in a rather different context from that which the right hon. Gentleman has sought to portray?
Mr. Davis:
On many occasions during the periods of office of the two Foreign Secretaries whom I served, crises arose at the same time. For instance, there have been Cyprus crises, Turkish crises and European Union crises, all at once. The right hon. Lady obviously does not realise that part of the task of a Foreign Secretary is to deal with such matters simultaneously. The Foreign Secretary has a broad reach, and there are plenty of times when he has half a dozen big issues on his plate. What is being proposed is implausible, at least in my judgment.
Sir Peter Emery:
Is it not even more implausible, given that the Foreign Office is being referred to the Department of Trade and Industry in regard to a possible prosecution for an action that may have been taken by one of its officials? This is not something that happens every day; it is most unusual, and I should have thought that it was immensely important for it to be drawn to the Foreign Secretary's attention.
Mr. Davis:
My right hon. Friend's point is reinforced by the evidence of Sir John Kerr. He said that he did not understand the significance of the report, in parliamentary terms, because--I paraphrase--he was so shocked by the import for himself of the point raised by my right hon. Friend.
My argument, however, goes deeper than the point that the Leader of the House tried to pick up. How does the Standards and Privileges Committee test evidence such as this? It has no access to the necessary judicial procedures. The evidence should be taken on oath, separately, and probably in closed session, so that people cannot collude. That is what should be done if such a problem arises in the future.
Another problem relates to the powers of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. He or she can investigate infractions of standards in great detail--if any of us are accused of such infractions, he or she can have access to our bank accounts and to a number of other sources of evidence--but I understand that that does not apply to issues of privilege. That gives rise to two points, one of which was raised some months ago by the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay).
First, the ministerial code is, in effect, outside the powers of the House. It is adjudicated by the Government--by the Prime Minister, in the final analysis. That is wrong: it puts the Prime Minister in an impossible position. He must deal with political dimensions at the same time as dealing with natural justice dimensions, and he must simultaneously deal with the integrity of the Government. That is an impossible demand within the context of government. The ministerial code should be policed by the House, at least in the first instance.
Mr. Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West):
My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr. Davis) has introduced the question of whether, on privileges issues, there should be an investigating officer for the House, whose report could be made available to the Committee before the Committee comes to its conclusions and puts its own report and recommendations to the House. That is an interesting idea. There may be other occasions when it can be discussed. I am not sure that it is an issue that should be settled in the eighth report of the Select Committee on Standards and Privileges.
I thank the Chairman of the Liaison Committee, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon), for the way in which he introduced the report; he did so very fairly. He said that there were two forms of unanimity, and the first form rightly applied to the Committee. It is not to make a point about any other Committee, but simply to point out that there was nothing of particular difficulty in reaching conclusions on the matter. The most important conclusion that we reached was in the interim response to the Speaker, which said that Members who had received material that they should not have received should return it straight away. That is clear. It is good English. It is good practice. I hope that it will be followed.
I hope that the next thing that I say will not be seen as a contradiction. The report does not deal with material that is wrongly leaked to the press. One of the first things that happened when I joined the House was that a Committee of the House recommended that either the editor or a journalist from The Economist should be punished, having printed something that they had wrongly received. With rare exceptions, which I cannot contemplate at the moment, I do not believe that the House should be in the business of trying to punish journalists for doing their job, which is to make available to all what is known to a few.
As I understand it, the Foreign Affairs Committee looked seriously at the issue on the basis that it was a leak to a Department whose actions were being considered by the Select Committee. Publication in a newspaper may have come about because of a bad act, but, once something has been published, it is open to all to see at the same time; it is not just for the privileged. It may be designed to undermine the proceedings of a Select Committee, but it has been done differently and more openly. That is not to justify a Member going to the press, but to try to draw a distinction. It is worth spelling out that we are not trying to muzzle the press, even if it obtains material following an action that cannot be justified.
That debate needs to take place on another occasion. A fair number of reports from the Standards and Privileges Committee are not usually debated because they do not recommend action by the House, yet some of those reports are as significant as the ones that recommend an action by an hon. Member or the House itself.
On another occasion, it would be useful to go into what I regard as some of the misconceptions in today's article by Peter Riddell in The Times, which seems to bring together a number of issues that should not properly be brought together in that way. However, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden said, in this case, the commissioner does not come into the eighth report, so I will not waste the House's time by following up some of the different views that Peter Riddell could have mentioned.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the former Home Secretary, has made a strong case. The whole House will be grateful for the way in which right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken.
Had I worked rather more seriously at university, I should probably have joined the civil service, like my brother, father and grandfather, so I have more of a public than a political service background. We could possibly build too much on those two words "full briefing" in the letter from the Foreign Secretary. It would have been interesting to have heard from the official concerned. It would be interesting to see the report that he circulated in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. If the Leader of the House does not disclose it this afternoon, I am sure that one Committee or another will obtain it. I do not regard it as the sort of paper that the civil service or Ministers can keep secret, and I see no reason why they should.
In one of the parliamentary answers that I was most pleased with when I was a Minister--I cannot say proud--I got two sentences into one line of one column of Hansard:
A bad trend has been set. However, the Government--who, understandably, consider the next day's newspaper headlines to be a very significant part of the parliamentary process--should understand that responding in that manner to Select Committee reports contradicts the parliamentary process. They should read those reports, consider them and allow them to be published so that other people, too, may read them.
On the day on which the Committee's ninth report was published, reports on Teletext stated that "So-and-so was cleared", whereas anyone who had read that report would
realise that that statement was not so much relevant as part of a briefing to ensure that the report itself--to which many civil servants had given much time--would be obscured.
"he had not appreciated the status of the document".
He did not realise that it was important enough to give to the Foreign Secretary, despite the fact that the prospect of it was on the front pages of the newspapers, and it was potentially the most embarrassing matter facing the Foreign Office.
"Likewise, he had not informed the Foreign Secretary about the earlier leak of the draft report on EU enlargement because there was nothing in the substance of the report which the Foreign Secretary needed to know."
That undermines his earlier argument. If there was something in the text of the report that the Foreign Secretary needed to know, he would have passed it on. I have heard many comments about how busy the Foreign Secretary was at that time. Foreign Secretaries are always busy. I have served two Foreign Secretaries, and I cannot think of a time when their special adviser, their politically appointed press officer--although we did not have such people--and their principal private secretary were unable to get to see them for three weeks.
"I made a mistake. I apologise."--[Official Report, 2 December 1985; Vol. 88, c. 84.]
As a Minister, it is not very difficult to say that, especially if it is true. The Leader of the House says that Ministers in the previous Government did not always abide by conventions or guidance in responding to Select Committee reports--that is the standard response that one expects from the present Government. Ministers keep reminding us that the previous Government were never perfect, but they seldom confess to any mistakes of their own; they seldom come here to say that they are sorry. The right hon. Lady should institute a review, perhaps by an outside person, to see how many times the present Government have managed to get publicity that responds instantly, in an adversarial way, to a Select Committee report on the day it is published, or on the days before.
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