Examination of Witness (Questions 700-710)
9 DECEMBER 2004
RT HON
LORD MORRIS
OF MANCHESTER
Q700 Mr Prentice: The veterans' Minister,
Ivor Caplin, was quite critical. He told the world: "Lord
Lloyd consistently refuses to tell us how this inquiry was funded."
Why is it such a big deal to keep this information secret?
Lord Morris of Manchester: Can
I ask Dr Wright if members of the Committee have the report?
Q701 Chairman: They have the résumé.
Lord Morris of Manchester: If
you look at paragraph 3 at the very opening of the document, he
says: "One of our witnesses asked very understandably how
our inquiry was being financed. He may perhaps have been concerned
that the source of our funds might influence our views. The answer
is that we have been financed by a private trust. The trust has
asked to remain anonymous. We are bound to respect that request.
The trust has no private axe to grind other than to serve the
interests of the veterans. Without the funds provided by the trust,
this inquiry would not have been possible. We have also had two
other substantial donations, for which we are very grateful. In
addition, we are grateful to the Royal British Legion for providing
administrative support. We estimate that the total cost of the
inquiry, including publication, will be less than £60,000.
Sir Michael Davies will be receiving his expenses, if any, at
a modest honorarium. Dr Jones will be receiving his expenses.
As a retired Law Lord I don't wish to receive any remuneration
or expenses myself." That is what he said. I cannot go any
further than that except to say that he is a man of the very highest
probity.
Q702 Mr Prentice: I am sure that is true,
and I only raised it because of the comments of the Minister,
that is all. Why do you think the Government is resisting a public
inquiry into the Gulf War Syndrome?
Lord Morris of Manchester: They
have stated very openly again and again and again that they did
not think it was timely, but it is 14 years on now. I have heard
some reference this morning to the effect of the lapse of time
in achieving an outcome. This is not a pretty story. I am not
talking about one government; I am talking about successive administrations
since the conflict. If I may say so, it is not for anybody in
executive government who refused to give evidence to a public
inquiry to start asking questions of the kind you are suggesting.
There is nothing more opaque, surely, than to refuse to appear
before an inquiry? We had people from the United States appearing
before the inquiry here, for example the head of the General Accounting
Office, a very powerful lady indeed in the United States. We have
had people in the United States administration and expert advisers
of theirs who came across here to give evidence. I had the experience
as a British parliamentarian of cross-examining people in the
United States Congress who were our veterans from the United Kingdom
who had no inquiry to look into their experience here and I was
interviewing them in the United States. They crossed the Atlantic,
and one of them was terminally ill. He said he hoped to live to
see a public inquiry in Britain. I had no predisposition to appoint
a lawyer. In my maiden speech in the House of Lords which was
in December 1997, perhaps the only person I referred to then in
the House of Lords was Lord Lloyd. It comes back to what Brian
White was saying, and it will probably explain my personal position
more. As the promoter of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons
Act 1970, I was deeply interested in the case of Michael Ryan
v. Gloucester County Council about legal duties imposed on
a local authority under section 2 of the 1970 Act. This was a
very important case that went to the House of Lords. One of the
five Lords of Appeal was Lord Lloyd. I read the five opinions
of the Law Lords and it struck me that he had the best understanding
of the effect of the 1970 Act, as I intended it as the author,
as people of all parties in Parliament in supporting me to enact
my Bill intended. I said then in my maiden speech that I was glad
to be there to acknowledge his understanding of the purpose of
my legislation. If you like, I had a slight personal interest,
but no predisposition, and it was because of that that I went
to him; but he knew of me and I knew of him. It just amounted
to that. I think you could hardly have had a better choice. I
hope you will read the report in detail, and I think you will
be very admiring of the job he has done; but he is not adversarial.
Q703 Mr Prentice: Could I just move us
away from Lord Lloyd. Given that the Government is steadfastly
refusing to hold a public inquiry into Gulf War Syndrome, should
Parliament have procedures which would allow Parliament itself
to set up an inquiry; and how feasible do you think that is?
Lord Morris of Manchester: I think
it is entirely feasible. If I may say so, having served on the
Privileges Committee, as you probably appreciate Gordon, I am
deeply familiar with our processes here, but I have to say there
is much to be desired if you look at the United States system.
Their powers are enormous. I was cross-examining people, as I
say, over there. You may be interested that they are coming here.
I think in late January they—
Q704 Mr Prentice: In those circumstances,
would an inquiry set up by Parliament make recommendations to
the executive, or would Parliament take it upon itself to make
decisions that would bind the executive? Are you with me?
Lord Morris of Manchester: Parliament
could by itself bind the executive—
Q705 Mr Prentice: That is why I asked
about feasibility. Theoretically, Parliament is supreme and can
do anything, but it does not work out like that in practice.
Lord Morris of Manchester: No,
because in Parliament of course you have very powerful people,
often commanding the majority of Parliament, and certainly that
is the case at the moment, where private members are relatively
powerless. Parliament as a whole has the power that you mentioned,
but we must not speak of our Parliament as consisting of—in
the United States the legislature is the legislature and the executive
is the executive. Parliament can, and Parliament does sometimes
act representative of everyone and there is a united purpose in
Parliament. If the Government does not want an inquiry, that is
the end of the story. I have said quite clearly on the day of
the publication of the Lloyd report: "Today's publication
has a significance beyond ending the deadlock over Gulf War illnesses.
Until now, if executive government refused an independent inquiry,
it was end of story. Lord Lloyd's report ends that veto and we
owe this tilting of the balance against executive government principally
to him and those who have worked in close fellowship with him."
This report does place us in new territory. I ask you to read
it with that in mind. I could have gone stronger and said "especially
if the legal road is closed, where do you go as an aggrieved person?"
I would say that very few duties fall on parliamentarians more
compelling than to act fairly to those who are prepared to lay
down their lives in the interests of his country, and the bereaved
families of those who did so. That is what the background is.
Parliament can do it. In my time, only very rarely has Parliament
acted as if the executive was not mixed up with the legislature,
although there are many people who like it that way anyway. I
am not surprised by the way that former senior civil servants
and perhaps existing senior civil servants, if they do not like
judges, would prefer it to be left to former senior civil servants
and fellow members of the Athenaeum Club.
Q706 Mr Prentice: Is there a kind of
precedent when Parliament has done something which you are recommending,
that it should set up its own kind of inquiry?
Lord Morris of Manchester: I am
not recommending it; it is what has been done. We meet now on
the morrow—I think over time this will be looked at as a
report of the very highest distinction. It may have seemed odd
that I am speaking in these terms but all I can argue is that
you should look at it. I talked about the relentless logic. This
report also is a work of sustained forensic brilliance. He is
not attacking people; he is raising the questions and answering
the questions, and giving his reasons why he should take this
view. He is not being critical of the MoD, of their absence from
it. He has just said it was for them to decide.
Q707 Chairman: It obviously made it a
weaker inquiry, though, did it not, because they could not compel
witnesses; they could not have official evidence; they could not
have access to the documents.
Lord Morris of Manchester: What
is so refreshing there though is the fact that they had a game
plan. Incidentally, they worked all summer long. The impression
given by the media is that parliamentarians leave, but they did
not leave. They were not spending the summer on any kind of holiday.
So many people wanted to see them; there were queues of people
wanting to see them who had been wanting all the time for an independent
inquiry. Here was an independent inquiry held in public.
Q708 Mr Hopkins: I would not need persuading
that the report is a good report, and I am entirely on your side
in regard to what you say. The significance of it is the way successive
governments have refused and resisted at every turn even to provide
evidence. There are all sorts of possible explanations as to why
they have done this, but I do not think your report is in any
way tainted at all. The significance of it is that the Government
has resisted all the way through.
Lord Morris of Manchester: I would
argue this morning that it does take us into new territory. I
think I published the first work on select committees by a Member
of Parliament—at least that is what I was told by people
in 1970—The Growth of Parliamentary Scrutiny by Committee.
That again was part of my approach to this. I am absolutely certain
that this does take us into new territory. My discipline is history—and
contemporary history, I believe, is a contradiction in terms—but
I believe that over time, once people look at this, it will be
seen as a report of profound importance in terms of the balance
between executive government and the legislature.
Q709 Brian White: Do you think there
is a role for private public inquiries, if that is not a contradiction
in terms?
Lord Morris of Manchester: This
was not private; it was held—
Brian White: I mean outside of government
calling it; do you think there is a role for your kind of public
inquiry to become much more a feature of our constitution?
Q710 Mr Heyes: Have you created a model
that we could adopt in circumstances where government is obdurate
and resisting calls for an inquiry?
Lord Morris of Manchester: You
have heard this morning some criticism of the bill that is before
the House of Lords, the Public Inquiries Bill. All I can say,
from my experience of having put a great deal of legislation on
the statute book both as a minister and as a private member, is
that bills never come out of the process as they go into it. I
think you will find that that Bill will be very considerably altered.
I hope that it will be altered to some extent by the report of
your Committee. One important asset of this Committee is that
it is not tied, some would say hog-tied, to a particular department
of state. I was a cross-departmental minister, the first Minister
for Disabled People, with a cabinet body that I was chairing across
12 departments of state. You are looking across departments, not
just within them, and I think you are in a very strong position
to have a major impact. This morning I think I should have said
far more about the reasons for the weariness of the ex service
community in trying to get an independent look at their problems.
Of course, Lloyd has already been vindicated. If you look at the
Research Advisory Committee of the Secretary for Veterans' Affairs
in the United States, it says conclusively that neurological damage
was caused by the fall-out of Kamisiyah by pyridostigmine, which
is included in the NAPS tablets, and by the heavy use of organophosphates.
All my views on this have been published on the website of the
inquiry because it was background to the reason why the inquiry
was set up. I am saying that we waited far too long. It was wrong
in my view that it should have been left to any individual to
have to try to set up an inquiry. In the United States a Presidential
Commission of Inquiry was appointed to look into Gulf War illnesses.
I have said that they had a sort of standing select committee,
on which I have been a co-opted member, which has been good enough
to bring people from Britain, because there was no inquiry for
them to speak to here, and time was passing on. Perhaps you can
say that they were impatient, but they were told it was not time
yet; but meanwhile people were dying—dying, with what their
GPs had described as medically unexplained illnesses. What Lord
Lloyd has done is to address that problem. I would be very glad
to come and see you again when you have read the report.
Chairman: That is probably the note on
which we should conclude because that is of course the driving
force for doing it. We wanted to have you come and speak about
it because it is an innovation and we want to reflect upon the
extent to which it can be seen as a precedent or something that
we can build on. We commend you for having done it. Thank you
for coming along and talking about it this morning to us. We shall
certainly look at all the associated material. Some we have got,
but I shall ensure that we will all have copies of the full report
too. Thank you very much indeed.
| 
