Examination of Witness (Questions 793-799)
12 JANUARY 2005
SIR ALAN
BUDD
Q793 Chairman: Good morning everyone.
I welcome our witness and guest this morning, Sir Alan Budd. It
is very kind of you to come and see us. We had not intended to
ask you to come in because you had not intended to do an inquiry,
presumably. We are concluding, as you know, an inquiry into inquiries
and we have invited in to see us people who have run recent inquiries
and because you are our most recent inquirer we thought it would
be very useful just to round off our investigations with a discussion
with you. It is very kind of you to agree so readily to come along.
Would you like to say anything by way of introduction or do you
just want to take some questions from us?
Sir Alan Budd: I certainly do
not want to make a statement, Chairman. I just want to say that
I am very happy indeed to help the Committee but I am here on
the assumption that what you want to discuss is processes and
procedures and not the findings of my inquiry; I believe I have
said everything I have to say on that particular subject.
Q794 Chairman: We are going to do our
very best not to revisit the substance of your inquiry but we
want to talk to you about doing it and some of the issues associated
with that. Could I start off—as I have started off with
some of our other witnesses like Lord Hutton and Lord Butler—by
asking you to tell us how it all happened. How did you get to
do this inquiry? What were you doing when you received the call?
Sir Alan Budd: What I was doing
was giving a talk in the City. When I read in the papers that
morning that the inquiry might be held by a retired civil servant
I did wonder whether it might possibly be myself and when a slip
of paper was handed to me while I was talking, saying "Please
ring John Gieve immediately" I thought that this must be
it, this is the black spot. I went out and there was John Gieve
on the other end of the line asking me if I would undertake this
inquiry and I agreed to do so.
Q795 Chairman: Did you not think to yourself
when you got that note and had time to reflect before you made
the return call that this would be an act of supreme folly? You
were wandering into the eye of a political storm, a scholar and
a gentleman; you were bound to be crucified whatever happened.
Why did you not just go on holiday?
Sir Alan Budd: I think there is
a modest answer to that question which is that I suffer from a
chronic inability to say "no". A less modest answer
would be that I do have some sense of public duty and if you are
asked to do something, however unpleasant and however obvious
it is right from the start that you can only come out of it badly,
then nevertheless if you are politely asked to do it you ought
to do so. That is why I agreed.
Q796 Chairman: Our other witnesses have
also given us the public duty answer which is a good answer. That
is the beginning bit; let us go to the end bit now. When I saw
you being interviewed on television after you had concluded your
inquiry you were saying "never again". You were saying
that people had warned you that it would be like this and you
were never going to do such a thing again. It was pretty awful,
was it not?
Sir Alan Budd: It was difficult
for the reasons that these inquires always are extremely difficult
and this was an inquiry about events which were unfolding in some
sense as I did it, including of course, most importantly and dramatically,
the resignation of the Home Secretary as a result of my findings.
It was not something that had happened in the distant past which
was being picked over in a quiet way; it was breaking news, as
the media call it. That made it very, very difficult. Also in
the event there was enormous pressure to complete the report—as
I wished to do—by 21 December which was the last day on
which Parliament was sitting. Although that seemed an easy deadline
when I began—I will just add in a piece of personal reminiscence,
if you will forgive me, Chairman—when John Gieve rang me
I said that I had to be on a plane to Cuba on 27 December or that
will be the end of my marriage. He said words to the effect of
"Good heavens, it is never going to take until 27 December".
This was supposed to be a very short inquiry which will end quickly;
it was not a short inquiry and to make it end quickly it was only
possible because my colleagues and I were working more than 16
hours a day to complete it.
Q797 Chairman: You refer to the pressure
of time, but that was a self-imposed pressure of time.
Sir Alan Budd: It became self-imposed.
No time limit was imposed on me. When I realised that it was important
to finish it by 21 December if one could then I did try very hard
to meet that particular deadline because if I had not met it the
report would only have been published last week and since Mr Blunkett
had resigned it seemed important also to try to explain to the
general public why he had done this.
Q798 Chairman: Why did you say "never
again"?
Sir Alan Budd: I suspect I have
said that before and if I were asked again politely I probably
would do it again. However, it was an extremely difficult time,
a difficult question and a difficult experience.
Q799 Chairman: Did you think the way
in which you and your inquiry were pilloried was unfair?
Sir Alan Budd: It is hopeless
to expect fairness. I admit that I was annoyed right at the beginning
by people who questioned my independence. As soon as I was appointed
people said I would never produce an independent report. That,
I have to say, was deeply insulting. There was that at the beginning
and then when the inquiry produced a result that no-one had expected,
namely that it was found that there had been intervention in the
application for indefinite leave to remain and the decision had
been changed, that was not something that anybody thought was
the case at the outset. As a result of that the Home Secretary
chose to resign and to find people writing as if I could never
discover anything if it were thrust in front of my face was irritating
but one has to rise above these things. People whose opinions
I respect were very complimentary about what I did and that, I
think, is what matters to me in the end.
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