| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Alan Howarth (Newport, East) (Lab): The hon. Gentleman speaks of signing up to a false prospectus,
but he just expressed satisfaction that, through the Hutton report, the taint of mendacity, as he put it, had been removed from the Government. Will he acknowledge that ever since the last general election, the leadership of the Conservative party has systematically sought to taint my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister with mendacity? Does he recall the mantra of the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr. Duncan Smith) that people cannot believe a word that my right hon. Friend says? Will he accept that unless we have better standards from the Conservative party, it is not much use to ask for better standards from the media?
Mr. Grieve: I tell the right hon. Gentleman, whom I would call a friend in any context outside the House, that I will come to that point before I finish my comments and give the Secretary of State for Defence the opportunity to reply.
For those purposes, the text that sets up the committee is fine, but it would be nice to know that the Government's interpretation of that text, which is crystal clear in itself, accepts the fact that the committee can consider the use made by the Government of that intelligence material. We are entitled to an answer.
In the time available, I wish to turn away from the subject of WMD, which has been the main issue in the debate, to another matter that causes me considerable problems. Lord Hutton's report dealt with the BBC's role, and I have absolutely no difficulty with his findings on the lack of editorial control. I was particularly struck by the Prime Minister's comment in defining what he thought proper journalism was, when he told the House that it is a question of proper scrutiny of what is said, and the willingness to retract if something wrong has been said. I agree with him entirely on that.
I am bound to say, however, that it seems to me that the BBC has a point when it raises its anxieties about paragraph 282 of the report, in which a rather bald statement is made that the difference between reporting a source or reporting directly is
- "not a distinction recognised by the law in relation to actions for defamation."
I hope for some reassurance, however, that that quote will not be used to go behind the clear judgment in the Reynolds case, because the judgment is clear that under the Human Rights Act 1998, and the principle of freedom of expression, a latitude is given to journalists to enable them to report sources if they believe them to be credible. That is an important protection, and some of the powerful contributions to this afternoon's debate on the subject of the BBC seem to me to go straight to that issue.
Mr. Garnier: Surely the discussion that we need to have is not about the interesting points of qualified
privilege under common law, but whether this Government have a general bad reputation for twisting. That is why the public do not accept the findings of the Hutton inquiry—they find that the Government's behaviour in the past has rendered them incredible.
Mr. Grieve: My hon. and learned Friend is right, and I shall move on to that swiftly. On the employment law issues—
Ms Stuart: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Grieve: I am sorry, I cannot. I must allow enough time for the Defence Secretary.
I now turn to the issue that was raised by the leader of the Liberal Democrats. He said that Dr. Kennedy—[Hon. Members: "Kelly."] He said that Dr. Kelly should have been better treated because of his senior position. Surely, that entirely misses the point. Dr. Kelly was entitled to the ordinary protection given to employees. I must say to the Secretary of State that what shines through the Hutton report is not that the decision at the end of the day to disclose Dr. Kelly's name was wrong—I fully understand that when the checks and balances had been worked out, that had to happen. In fact, however, the report discloses that there was zero system whatever for evaluating his rights as an employee. Strictly, under the Data Protection Act 1998, his name should not even have been given by the Ministry of Defence to the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister's office without an evaluation of his data protection rights. The Government pass laws to apply to everybody else, but my complaint is not about the law itself but about the fact that they do not adhere to it themselves.
If I may say so to the Defence Secretary, I do not accuse him of perfidy in this matter. In the early 1990s, I spent my time representing Government Departments, and I can assure him that on every employment matter in which I was involved, it was clear that they were unable to adhere to their own procedures and systems. It is all very well saying that Dr. Kelly was properly treated, but the evidence at the end of the day is that there was no such evaluation. When it came to the crunch, the people who took the decisions that related to his status as an employee were not MOD officials at all but members of the Prime Minister's communications department. I hope very much that the Defence Secretary will deal with those points when he comes to wind up. Plainly, one of the grievances of the Kelly family is the sense that Dr. Kelly was ill used. Had the procedures been properly followed, the Defence Secretary would have been in a much better position to say that Dr. Kelly had not been ill used than he is now.
The point raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) and others relates to the Government's reputation for truthfulness or otherwise. It is a pertinent issue, because the one thing that shines through this afternoon's debate is that although there have been some attacks and some discussions about whether Mr. Gilligan might be a scoundrel, it is certainly not suggested that Mr. Dyke or Mr. Davies is. Indeed, the evidence relating to Dr. Kelly does not suggest that he was acting maliciously either. Yet, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell
(Mr. Mackay) said, every one of those individuals got themselves into a situation whereby they came to distrust the Government so much that they were drawn into conflict with them or adopted positions from which they could not back down.Three weeks after I was elected in 1997, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) and I, among others, were taken out by representatives of the BBC, who, we were told, had concluded that their style of reporting was too confrontational and that they would endeavour in future to be more understanding of politicians' difficulties. What happened in the intervening period to create a situation whereby the director-general and the chairman—both of whom have been donors to the Labour party and must therefore, one assumes, be favourable towards it—felt that their relations with the Government had so broken down?
My hon. Friend the Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Patrick Cormack) praised the Prime Minister for his eloquence—indeed, we heard plenty of that in the debate on the war with Iraq. However, the problem is that while eloquence, sincerity and powers of communication may do much good for our country—I say that, although I disagree with Government policies—an entirely different attitude is taken by the weasels in the background, from Jo Moore trying to bury bad news on 11 September to Mr. Campbell deciding, as is recorded in his diary, that the key issue in relation to Dr. Kelly was a plea bargain. I am extremely pleased that Mr. Campbell has left the service of the Government and is no longer being funded by the taxpayer.
I say this to the Defence Secretary: unless the Government can learn the lesson that their spin, developed over seven years, has led to such a monumental growth of distrust that they are no longer believed even when they are telling the truth, we will continue to have a problem. Indicative of that problem is the fact that when the Prime Minister was first asked on the plane whether he had been involved in the naming of Dr. Kelly, he felt so frightened and constrained—because at that stage nobody had pointed out that he was entitled to name him—that he had to give an obfuscatory reply. As long as that continues, this country is in serious difficulty, and the Government will be judged on their record in putting that right in future.
6.42 pm
The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Geoffrey Hoon): This has been an excellent and lively debate, with 32 speeches from Members of most parties reflecting most points of view. My only observation is that many of those speeches anticipated the report of the next inquiry instead of dealing with the report of the inquiry that has just taken place. That is exemplified by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve)—although, as the excellent lawyer that I know him to be, he will not want to waste a good speech, so he will be able to use large parts of it on the next occasion.
I join right hon. and hon. Members in thanking the noble and learned Lord Hutton for producing such a detailed and comprehensive report. I am sure that I speak for all those involved in stating that we are grateful for the efficiency and dispatch with which he completed what was always likely to be a difficult task.
I also join right hon. and hon. Members in deprecating the attacks on the noble and learned Lord Hutton. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Beard) made that point with his usual eloquence. I was surprised that the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Llwyd) criticised Lord Hutton's report, because I recall him saying last year:
- "However, I, like others, am impressed by the way that the Hutton inquiry was set up and is proceeding. That could well be a model."—[Official Report, 22 October 2003; Vol. 411, c. 704.]
But it is important to start with David Kelly. In his report, Lord Hutton quoted the citation recommending Dr. Kelly for the award of the CMG. It commended Dr. Kelly's pioneering work as an arms inspector in the former Soviet Union and in Iraq and stated:
- "he has pursued this work tirelessly and with good humour, despite the significant hardship, hostility and personal risk encountered during extended periods of service in both countries."
On the detail of the report itself in so far as it affects the Ministry of Defence, and in terms of learning lessons, as suggested by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), Lord Hutton decided that the major charges levelled against the Ministry of Defence were unfounded. In particular, he found that there was no dishonourable, underhand or duplicitous Government strategy covertly to leak Dr. Kelly's name to the media.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |