Examination of Witness (Questions 800-819)
12 JANUARY 2005
SIR ALAN
BUDD
Q800 Chairman: Could I pick up on or
two points from what you say in the introduction to your report
about the kind of inquiry that it was. First of all you say to
John Gieve: "You asked me to undertake an independent investigation
into the allegation that had been made against the then Home Secretary,
David Blunkett, that he misused his official position" but
that is not what the terms of reference say.
Sir Alan Budd: No.
Q801 Chairman: If you were asked to undertake
an investigation into one thing, why are the terms of reference
different? What was your involvement in framing those terms of
reference? Were you given them or did you discuss them?
Sir Alan Budd: I discussed the
terms of reference. I distinguished between what I think of as
an introductory sentence setting out the background to my inquiry—which
you have quoted, Chairman—and the terms of reference. What
I was entirely guided by and limited myself to were the terms
of reference. I did not regard myself as bound by that introductory
background however. That, to me, was background—that is
what had happened—and I was asked a specific question which
I did my best to answer.
Q802 Chairman: This was a source of some
difficulty, was it not, because everyone thought you were investigating
the charge that the Home Secretary had abused his official position?
The terms of reference were not that.
Sir Alan Budd: To me the Home
Office includes the Home Secretary. I was inquiring into the handling
by the Home Office and that, to me, includes any action by the
Home Secretary.
Q803 Chairman: The allegation that you
say you were asked to undertake to examine this allegation of
the misuse of official position, one would have thought therefore
that there would have been a conclusion which said whether there
was an abuse of an official position.
Sir Alan Budd: That is not how
I interpreted the task I had been set.
Q804 Chairman: You say at the beginning
that that is what you had been asked to do.
Sir Alan Budd: Yes, because I
am quoting from Sir John Gieve's letter to me; that is a direct
quote from his letter to me.
Q805 Chairman: You see there is some
difficulty here. If you are asked to do one thing and then you
do something else people at the end will say that you actually
have not told us what we wanted to know.
Sir Alan Budd: With respect, Chairman,
I think I was asked to undertake the task defined by the terms
of reference and that is what I did.
Q806 Chairman: We will return to this
with Mr Gieve shortly. Perhaps I could just pick up one other
thing with you. You talk about the advantages and disadvantages—your
words—about it not being a statutory inquiry, not having
a legal status. You talk about the advantages of informality and
so on. What were the disadvantages?
Sir Alan Budd: There might have
been disadvantages in terms of willingness of people to give evidence
and ability to obtain documents. Those were potential disadvantages.
I do not think there were any disadvantages in practice but there
might have been because a statutory inquiry might have given me
additional powers. In the event I did not need any additional
powers; the powers such as I did have proved completely adequate.
So in practice I found no disadvantages from the fact that this
was a non-statutory requirement.
Q807 Chairman: You say: "This had
advantages and disadvantages" but now you are saying that
there were not any disadvantages.
Sir Alan Budd: Again I am making
a general statement about using one form of inquiry rather than
another.
Q808 Chairman: Finally on this, could
I ask you about what you say in paragraph 1.16 where you say,
"I have not regarded it as appropriate for me to express
views on the application of the Ministerial Code of Conduct to
the conduct of Mr Blunkett. These are matters for others and there
is a well-established machinery for examining these issues."
Most people thought this was a kind of Ministerial Code inquiry
because, as you say at the beginning of your report, the central
allegation was about ministerial conduct. You were in the curious
position of doing a kind of quasi Ministerial Code inquiry, were
you not?
Sir Alan Budd: My inquiry clearly
had implications relating to whether a minister had observed the
Ministerial Code of Conduct. I regard the Ministerial Code of
Conduct and inquiries relating to such matters as a special topic
to be dealt with in a special way by special bodies whose job
it is to make such inquiries. That was not what I thought I was
doing. I was not doing that specialised task and so I did not
set my inquiry up in such a way as to say what is the Ministerial
Code of Conduct 1, 2, 3, 4? Were there breaches of the Ministerial
Code of Conduct? It is my understanding that such inquiries are
performed elsewhere.
Q809 Chairman: What is this well-established
machinery for examining those kinds of things?
Sir Alan Budd: Sir Phillip Mawer's
inquiry into the question of the railway warrants for example
was such an inquiry.
Q810 Chairman: That was a Parliamentary
Commissioner Inquiry into the conduct of a Member of Parliament.
Sir Alan Budd: Yes, I also believe
that there are procedures which are set out by the Prime Minister
for such inquiries. I am not speaking as an expert on inquiries
into the Ministerial Code of Conduct; as I say, I regard those
as a special case on which I am certainly not expert, but it was
not an inquiry of that nature that I thought I was conducting.
Q811 Chairman: An inquiry that is founded
on an allegation that a senior minister abused his official position
is centrally a Ministerial Code inquiry. That goes to the heart
of the Ministerial Code.
Sir Alan Budd: That was not how
I interpreted my task. As I said in our earlier discussion, Chairman,
I regarded myself as bound by the terms of reference.
Q812 Chairman: You know the system; did
you not feel inclined to say when you were approached about this
that this is clearly something that touches the Ministerial Code?
If the allegation is about ministerial conduct it must be examined
through that kind of machinery. People thought it was that kind
of inquiry but, as you rightly say, that is set up by the Prime
Minister.
Sir Alan Budd: Yes.
Q813 Chairman: This was set up by the
Permanent Secretary in the Home Office.
Sir Alan Budd: You said in passing,
Chairman, that I know the system; I do not know the system. You
are all experts in these matters; I am absolutely not. I was aware
that there is such a matter as the Ministerial Code of Conduct
and inquiries are made unto it. Such as I do know about it are
matters that I have learned since I started this inquiry and are
certainly not things that I knew when I was asked to undertake
it or that would have occurred to me to have raised with John
Gieve.
Chairman: Let us come back to that in
a moment or two. Anne, would you like to ask a question?
Q814 Mrs Campbell: Sir Alan, one of the
things that you did become fairly knowledgeable about were the
standing procedures for dealing with cases in which ministers
have personal connections.
Sir Alan Budd: Yes.
Q815 Mrs Campbell: You went on to say
in your report—and this is a direct quote from your report—"There
is no audit trail in IND to allow me to properly examine the process
that led to the changing of the decision on 6 May, and in that
respect the procedures were not followed". My understanding
is that you were handed a file on Ms Casalme's case when you began
your inquiry but that that file was not complete and you had to
hunt around for papers, faxes and e-mails during your investigation.
If the procedures had been followed properly what would you have
expected to find?
Sir Alan Budd: I think what I
would have expected to find would have been an audit trail—which
was the expression I used—which would have recorded the
fact that this was an inquiry raised by a minister in a case in
which the minister had an interest and I would have expected to
have found that on the file of the applicant, Ms Casalme, which
recorded this interest, recorded the retrieval of the file and
recorded the change in the decision.
Q816 Mrs Campbell: Were you surprised
that the faxes and e-mails which pertained to this were not in
the file and had to be specially recovered?
Sir Alan Budd: The faxes were
never retrieved nor would the e-mails have been on it. I do not
think it is a question of the e-mails. What one would have expected
would have been a fuller note on the file explaining why the file
was retrieved and why the decision was changed.
Q817 Mrs Campbell: Did you specifically
investigate whether any of the records had been deleted at any
stage or deleted since your inquiry began?
Sir Alan Budd: I did investigate
whether or not any e-mails had been deleted and they had not been.
Q818 Mrs Campbell: How did you do that
investigation? Can you just explain?
Sir Alan Budd: I am not a technical
expert but there are a number of points from which old e-mails
could be retrieved and the Security and Anti-Corruption Unit (who
did what I thought was brilliant forensic work in retrieving the
e-mails and also retrieving an earlier record on the computer
system) were able to tell me that no-one had gone in after the
inquiry was set up to delete e-mails. That had not happened.
Q819 Mrs Campbell: Can you just tell
us so that we have a better understanding, what is the practice
in the Home Office about saving e-mails and deleting them? Are
they deleted after a certain length of time or are they just deleted
when the case is closed?
Sir Alan Budd: What I was concerned
with was this particular case rather than with general practice.
Sir John will be able to give you better answers to this question
but as I understand it relevant e-mails would normally be retained
or some record of them would be retained but, as you know very
well, there is a lot of e-mail traffic of a fairly casual and
transitory nature and I would not regard it as suspicious if e-mails
were deleted otherwise files fill up. Of course, systems like
the Home Office system are routinely backed up and therefore what
is kept is a historical record of the e-mails that are being transmitted
from one point to another. That is why we were able to retrieve
the e-mails.
| 
