APPENDIX 1
Memorandum submitted by the Parliamentary
Commissioner for Standards
Complaint against Dr John Reid and Mr John Maxton
SECTION V
THE
FULL RESPONSES
TO THE
COMPLAINTS BY
DR REID
AND MR
MAXTON
111. The initial responses from Dr Reid and Mr
Maxton to the complaints against them set out in my letters to
them of 27 January 2000 (Annexes 5 and 30) were contained in letters
to me dated 14 February 2000 (Annex 8) and 2 March 2000 (Annex
40), respectively. Those initial responses were incorporated into
the summaries of evidence relating to the complaints earlier in
this report.[71]
112. As soon as I believed that (with minor exceptions)
I had collected all the evidence I had sought or had been promised
by other witnesses as part of my investigation of the complaints,
I wrote again to Dr Reid and Mr Maxton. With these letters, dated
19 May 2000 (Annexes 14 and 64), I enclosed:
— a memorandum, in summary form, of
the evidence I had so far gathered, categorised as either "disputed"
or "undisputed"
— transcripts of interviews or records
of telephone conversations conducted by me with witnesses
— a written note and transcript of two
interviews conducted by Mr Nelson with Mr McKinney
— copies of the Scottish Labour Party (SLP)
budget documents supplied to me by Mr Rowley
— tables, prepared in my office and showing,
for Mr Reid and Mr Winslow, SLP salary projections and salaries
paid through the Office Costs Allowance (OCA)
— a list of written questions, principally
on matters where evidence from a witness or witnesses was at variance
with the initial responses of Dr Reid or Mr Maxton.
113. At the same time I undertook to show Dr
Reid and Mr Maxton any further evidence which might come to light
which was in conflict with their own.
114. I received the full responses of Dr Reid
and Mr Maxton in letters dated 5 July 2000 (Annexes 26 and 27)
and 14 June 2000 (Annex 77), respectively. Mr Maxton had initially
declined to let me have answers to my written questions. He informed
me in a letter dated 12 June 2000 (Annex 73) that he was content
for his previous letter to me dated 4 June (Annex 68) to be treated
as his formal response to the complaint, even though that letter
made only general comments on a number of procedural and other
items. Mr Maxton only agreed to provide detailed responses to
my questions after the Chairman of the Standards and Privileges
Committee, with the agreement of the Committee, had written to
him (Annex 74) urging him—not least in his own interests—to
provide the information I had requested.
Mr Maxton`s Full Response
115. The main points of Mr Maxton`s full response
were as follows:
(i) he had expected Mr Winslow to do
the work required of him by his contract as a Parliamentary researcher,
but that "when, where and how he did it was a matter for
him";
(ii) no witness in a position to know had
challenged Mr Winslow`s claim that he had fulfilled his contractual
obligations to Mr Maxton;
(iii) he had no knowledge of Mr Winslow`s
contract with the Labour Party and had no discussions with Mr
Rowley about Mr Winslow`s employment arrangements;
(iv) he had had no previous knowledge (ie
prior to my investigation) of the conference call in June 1999
involving Mr Rafferty, Mr Winslow and the other special advisers
to the Scottish Executive; and the First Minister, to whom Mr
Rafferty had said he reported the matter, had no recollection
of such a conversation;
(v) only Mr Winslow could say why he was
afraid of mischief-making by the media over the employment arrangements
of himself and Mr Reid, but such anxieties were justified by previous
actions on the part of Mr Nelson, who had "deliberately entrapped
Dr Reid`s son and then deliberately twisted remarks he had made";
(vi) in any case, Mr Rafferty had changed
his version of the conference call over the course of my successive
interviews with him during the investigation of the complaint;
(vii) he had no knowledge of the SLP budget
documents until they had been sent to him as part of the investigation
of the complaint and could not therefore comment on them;
(viii) by the time of the immediate run-up to
the Scottish Parliament elections Mr Winslow had accumulated an
entitlement of 18 days leave and, as he was due to leave Mr Maxton`s
employment, Mr Maxton allowed him to take his holidays then; even
so Mr Winslow, despite being on leave, continued to do some work
for Mr Maxton;
(ix) whilst there was evidence that Mr Winslow
worked hard for the Labour Party there was no evidence that he
did not fulfil his commitments to Mr Maxton;
(x) three of the principal witnesses had
been dismissed by the Labour Party and they apparently bore a
grudge against Dr Reid, of which Mr Maxton was the "unlucky
and unwitting victim".
116. It emerged in subsequent correspondence
with Mr Maxton that the three people he was referring to in his
allegation of a grudge against Dr Reid were Mr McKinney, Mr Rowley
and Mr Sullivan. Mr Maxton explained that their departure from
the Labour Party had been reported in the media in terms of their
having been sacked and he attached a press cutting in support
of this contention. He added that Mr Rafferty had subsequently
been dismissed as a special adviser to the First Minister.
117. Although Mr Maxton had declined to comment
on the SLP budget documents, disclaiming any responsibility for
them, I wrote to him again pointing out that the purpose of my
original question was to give him the opportunity to respond both
to Mr Rowley`s claim that the figures provided evidence for a
cross-subsidy between the OCA and the Labour Party, and to the
two notes which specifically referred to Mr Maxton and Dr Reid.
118. On the first point, Mr Maxton again offered
no observations, arguing that it was for Mr Rowley to justify
his own interpretation of the figures. On the second, Mr Maxton
said that, having spoken with Labour Party officials, he believed
the reference to himself in the notes was intended to record the
fact that Mr Winslow had another source of income in addition
to his Party salary, which was not sufficient on its own for him
to live on.
119. Mr Maxton did not, as part of his formal
submission, take up my invitation to him to supply documentary
or other evidence of the nature and volume of work carried out
for him by Mr Winslow, or to see me to explain in detail the employment
arrangements of Mr Winslow.
Dr Reid`s Full Response
120. Dr Reid`s full response consisted of : a
covering letter; a statement; answers to my written questions
to him; annotations to his statement to me of 14 February 2000;
a set of press cuttings; and a binder containing examples of work
done for Dr Reid by Kevin Reid and Suzanne Hilliard.[72]
121. In his covering letter, Dr Reid made a number
of points by way of background, including the following:
(i) geographical remoteness from Westminster
required Members with seats in Scotland to employ "unorthodox
methods of conducting [constituency] business" and to rely
heavily on personal staff to carry out their work without direct
supervision; if a Member was also a Minister, as in Dr Reid`s
case, this problem was even more acute;
(ii) the concept of "full-time", as
applied to the researchers, was unhelpful because there was no
agreed definition of the term and, in any case, expectations of
what hours a full-time Party official should work during an election
campaign were much higher; what mattered was the actual number
of hours worked;
(iii) there was no rule of the House which precluded
a Parliamentary researcher, contracted part-time to a Member,
from pursuing other activities, paid or unpaid, full-time or part-time;
(iv) none of the witnesses claiming to have knowledge
of the hours worked by Kevin Reid or Ms Hilliard were their direct
line managers.
122. Of Ms Hilliard, Dr Reid said that although
her efforts for the Party increased as the elections approached
they never exceeded 8 hours a day and did not encroach upon the
mornings, when she did all the work for Dr Reid required by her
Parliamentary contract. Although Ms Hilliard had accepted that,
during the last few weeks of the campaign, she only spent about
12-15 hours on constituency work this did not imply any breach
of her obligations to the House, as the variable nature of her
contract meant that the stipulated 20 hours did not have to be
met every week. Dr Reid added that Mr Rafferty`s evidence on this
point was particularly unreliable since his recollection was vague,
and, in any case, he worked in a separate room from Ms Hilliard
and could not have monitored the hours she kept.
123. Dr Reid said that none of the evidence produced
in support of the complaint proved that either Ms Hilliard or
Mr Reid had failed to carry out their Parliamentary obligations.
He added:
"Conversely, the statements of myself, Kevin
Reid, and Suzanne Hilliard testify to the fact that this work
was done. This is backed by documentary material. It is also supported
by the simple fact that the contrary view has to be based on the
frankly incredible proposition that throughout most of the relevant
period I would have to be assumed to have discharged my duties
as a Minister and Member of Parliament in London while also personally
undertaking all my constituency work and correspondence single-handedly.
No Member of Parliament, or anyone with any experience of the
work of a Member of Parliament could believe this."
124. On the question of the election bonus of
£406 paid to Ms Hilliard, Dr Reid stated that, whilst he
did not know the basis for the payment, since Ms Hilliard had
no contractual obligation to the Party it was assumed by him to
have been a reward "for working at least 25 hours for the
Party". He added : "Of course, 25 hours working for
the Party would not have precluded [Ms Hilliard] from discharging
her duties to [me]."
125. Of Kevin Reid, Dr Reid said that the complainant
had failed to make out a case for concluding that the hours he
worked for the party were such that Mr Reid could not have carried
out his obligations as a Parliamentary researcher.
126. Mr Reid`s own evidence was that he worked
3 hours a day for the Party until July 1998 and thereafter 4 to
4½ hours a day, before going onto a full-time contract in
October 1998. The witnesses who contradicted Mr Reid`s statement
were not, according to Dr Reid, in a position to have first-hand
knowledge of Mr Reid`s hours and their evidence was confused and
vague.
127. Summarising the evidence on this point,
Dr Reid said:
"There is no statement that reliably controverts
[Kevin Reid`s] hours worked in the relevant period. Not one witness
has [Kevin Reid] leaving after 2pm during the relevant period.
There is no statement that suggests that [Kevin Reid] was not
in a position to carry out his weekly "20 hours variable"
of duties for [me]. [Kevin Reid] did in truth carry out those
duties for [me]."
128. Moreover, according to Dr Reid, his son
had explained in some detail in his own evidence the nature of
the work he had done for Dr Reid in terms of press monitoring
and political briefing during the relevant period (May to October
1998).
129. Turning to the allegation that he told Mr
McKinney, when offering Kevin Reid`s services to the party, that
he (Dr Reid) would pay his son`s salary, Dr Reid pointed to the
differences between Mr McKinney`s statement in evidence to my
inquiry and the words he had used in his earlier conversations
with Mr Nelson. In the former, Mr McKinney had referred merely
to the suggestion by Dr Reid that Kevin Reid should work for the
Party, with no mention of money. In the latter, when prompted
by Mr Nelson, he had referred, albeit ambiguously, to Dr Reid`s
willingness to find the necessary funds. Dr Reid added that a
minute of a Labour Party weekly strategy meeting in April 1998
(a copy of which was attached to his response) showed the issue
of finding additional personnel for the election campaign team
being discussed under the heading "Potential to draft in
people currently employed by Scottish MPs". In Dr Reid`s
view, this document supported his contention that any offer he
might have made to find ways of funding Kevin Reid`s campaign
work was in the context of financial provision being made by the
Labour Party.
130. Dr Reid denied that the reason for moving
his son onto a full-time contract with the Party in October 1998
had had anything to do with fears about possible press investigation
of Mr Reid`s employment arrangements. Why, Dr Reid asked, would
he agree to a change in his son`s employment status with the Party
in order to protect himself against accusations of impropriety,
only then to replicate the same allegedly improper arrangement
with Ms Hilliard? Dr Reid conceded that he may have drawn Mr Rowley`s
attention to adverse press coverage of the alleged misuse by Conservative
Members of Parliament of public funds for party political purposes,
but, if so, this would have been merely in order "to illustrate
why a [full-time] contract for Kevin Reid was necessary to reflect
the proposed change in [his] duties".
131. Dr Reid questioned Mr Rafferty`s reliability
as a witness concerning the issue of the conference call in the
summer of 1999 during which Mr Winslow expressed his concern over
press mischief-making. Dr Reid pointed to the variations in Mr
Rafferty`s evidence on this point over the course of his interviews
during the investigation of the complaint—and to the fact
that only in his later evidence did Mr Rafferty express the view
that Mr Winslow`s anxiety reflected a possible misuse of public
funds.
132. So far as the SLP budget documents were
concerned, Dr Reid denied any involvement in their creation and
said that he was not responsible for interpreting them. In his
answers to the written questions put to him, however, Dr Reid
maintained that it was not clear to him how the figures in the
budget documents supported the allegation that they had been drawn
up taking account of the House of Commons salaries of Mr Reid
and Mr Maxton. He did not, however, offer any explanation for
the notes referring to the salaries received by Mr Reid and Mr
Winslow from Dr Reid and Mr Maxton.
133. Dr Reid challenged the credibility or reliability
of Mr McKinney, Mr Rafferty, Mr Rowley and Mr Sullivan, either
by making specific allegations about their previous conduct or
by inviting me to make further inquiries into the manner or content
of their evidence to me. In particular, Dr Reid drew attention,
as had Mr Maxton, to the circumstances in which Mr McKinney, Mr
Rowley and Mr Sullivan had left the employment of the Labour Party
and to the dismissal of Mr Rafferty by the First Minister, which
Dr Reid claimed cast doubt on Mr Rafferty`s honesty as a witness,
whether or not he bore a grudge against Dr Reid.
134. In response to the question as to why Mr
Rowley should make untruthful allegations about him, Dr Reid supposed
that Mr Rowley had made similar accusations on tape to Mr Nelson
and that he "may feel he cannot back out from this serious
attack on [my] probity".
135. Dr Reid also made a number of allegations
against Mr Nelson which, he argued, undermined Mr Nelson`s credibility
and reliability as a complainant. Chief amongst these were:
(i) that Mr Nelson had made accusations against
Kevin Reid of breaches of the rules of conduct of the Scottish
Parliament,[73]
but that these accusations had been rejected by the Parliament`s
Standards Committee;
(ii) that Mr Nelson had been involved in pursuing
journalistic campaigns against Dr Reid and Kevin Reid, as detailed
in Dr Reid`s statement of 14 February 2000;
(iii) that Mr Nelson had been criticised in the
Report of the Inquiry[74]
into Children`s Homes in North Wales for making allegations in
a Sunday newspaper article without evidence (in support of this
claim, Dr Reid attached to his submission an extract from the
report which stated:
"...it is reasonably clear ... that [Mr
Nelson] had not been in possession of any actual evidence of child
abuse by [... ] at the time when his article appeared.")
136. Dr Reid`s full response to the complaint
concluded with the following paragraph:
"Close and proper analysis of the statements
provided reveals neither any established case of wrong-doing by
[me] nor any prima facie case. As the statements provided deal
with only those matters where there is an apparent conflict with
[my] evidence, it is supposed that the Parliamentary Commissioner
for Standards has other sources of evidence which may support
[my] position. It is not known what these might be. What is clear
is that the principal persons on whom the complainer has relied
do not reliably support the complaint, or indeed any variation
of it."
71 See paragraphs 38 to 110. Back
72 See
paragraphs 84-86 and 94. Back
73 The
so-called "Lobbygate" case. Back
74 Lost
in Care, the Report of the
Tribunal of Inquiry, chaired by Sir Ronald Waterhouse into the
abuse of children in care in the former counties of Gwynedd and
Clwyd in Wales since 1974 (HC 201, Session 1999-2000). Back
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