Examination of Witness (Questions 868-879)
12 JANUARY 2005
SIR JOHN
GIEVE, KCB
Q868 Chairman: Moving into our second
half, we are delighted to have Sir John Gieve with us, Permanent
Secretary at the Home Office. You were able to come and give evidence
to us earlier on our general inquiry into inquiries; we did not
know at that time that we would be seeing you again in the context
of a particular inquiry, but that is one of the happy coincidences
of life. Do you want to say anything to us before we ask you some
questions?
Sir John Gieve: No, I do not think
so. I am sorry I am a bit hoarse today but if my voice fails I
will try to revive it with water.
Q869 Chairman: We will not tax you too
much I hope. Could I just take you back to questions I asked Sir
Alan Budd right at the beginning about the genesis of this particular
inquiry? There were you, happily presiding over the Home Office,
when all this blew up. It was a political storm and something
had to be done. What was the process that produced the inquiry
that Sir Alan Budd conducted?
Sir John Gieve: As you know The
Sunday Telegraph on 28 November ran a story with a number
of allegations and David Blunkett's responses to them. On the
morning of that day, the Sunday, I started a series of phone calls—and
I spent most of that day on the telephone—about what further
action was required. David Blunkett was very keen that this particular
allegation; which had been picked out by The Sunday Telegraph
and by the other journalists then following it up as being by
far the most serious, should be investigated. With the Prime Minister's
agreement he said he would ask me to find an independent investigator.
That was announced on the Sunday. I discussed that with Andrew
Turnbull as to who that might be and did he have a list of potential
runners. On the Monday morning I started making some phone calls
to the potential runners to see who was available and willing
to do it. Alan Budd was available, able and willing so he got
the job.
Q870 Chairman: Was he the first choice?
Sir John Gieve: He was not the
first person I rang up but in these circumstances you have a few
hours in which to find someone and you cannot just go for one
person.
Q871 Chairman: Was the Prime Minister
keen that there should be an inquiry?
Sir John Gieve: I did not speak
personally to the Prime Minister but he was content with the inquiry
and he said so afterwards.
Q872 Chairman: Keen and content are not
quite the same.
Sir John Gieve: In this particular
case the impetus was coming from David Blunkett and he said very
early on on the Sunday morning that he thought we needed to have
an inquiry into it. In the past, allegations of this sort have
been investigated by permanent secretaries but that has been an
unhappy experience and I was relieved, therefore, that it was
a question of finding an independent figure of standing to come
in and look at it.
Q873 Chairman: Normally the inquiry is
set up by the minister himself, is it not?
Sir John Gieve: The background
to this was that it was the minister's conduct which was in question
and that is why I think he thought it was natural to ask me to
find someone rather than himself doing so.
Q874 Chairman: Let me ask the question
that I asked Sir Alan a moment ago. If there are any tests of
what a Ministerial Code inquiry should be, this presumably meets
all the requirements. That is, it is an allegation of ministerial
misconduct; the abuse of office. That was the charge, indeed that
is the first opening sentence of Alan's report, the allegation
that you took to him to investigate. What I do not understand
is why therefore this was not an inquiry set up by the Prime Minister
under the Ministerial Code to look at ministerial conduct.
Sir John Gieve: The Government's
approach to this was set out in response to the Committee on Standards
and Public Life. They did a report—the ninth report—in
2003 on, among other things, this question of how breaches of
Ministerial Code should be investigated. They came up with some
suggestions which the Government did not wholly accept but one
thing they said was that it was for the Prime Minister to decide
whether the Ministerial Code had been breached in a way that required
action. To quote their report they say: "The individual selected
to carry out an investigation should investigate the facts and
report his or her findings to the Prime Minister who will then
decide" and so on and so forth. So I do not think it was
unusual; this inquiry was into the facts and that is what I asked
Alan Budd to do, to produce the facts of the case which is what
he did. The Ministerial Code is in quite general terms. What it
says is that the minister must not allow a conflict to arise between
their private interests and their public duty. That is not wholly
a question of fact; there is also a question of judgment involved
as to whether there has been a material conflict. Those are the
points I think you were making at the end to Alan Budd. How material
was it? Was this really a breach of the Code or was it something
which was of relatively minor significance? That is essentially
a political judgment which is why in general I do not think inquiries
do say: "Did he breach the Ministerial Code?" That judgment
is left to the Prime Minister and the investigator looks at the
facts. The position is a bit different from the Parliamentary
Commissioner who does look at that but the committee that he reports
to is the final arbiter; they are, if you like, in the position
of the Prime Minister in that case of deciding whether an MP has
or has not breached the standards required of an MP. I suppose
the special feature of this case was that the Prime Minister did
not set up the inquiry; David pre-empted him and said he thought
there needed to be an inquiry. He did not wait for the Prime Minister
to step in and say there should be an inquiry; he pre-empted that
and he asked me to do it.
Q875 Chairman: This is what I am testing
you on because some of what you say bears on other points. The
central point, as you have said, of the Code is about this perception
of conflict between public and private roles. That is what the
Code talks about. As you have rightly said the guardian of that
Code is the Prime Minister. When allegations are made about that
Code having been breached it has always been the Prime Minister
who has set up inquiries and these inquiries report to the Prime
Minister. What I am saying to you is that this was prima facie
a Code issue and yet it was done through you, a permanent secretary,
ringing someone up, bringing someone in to do a quick inquiry,
agreed by the Prime Minister but not put in place by the Prime
Minister as a Code inquiry. Even allowing for the wonderful flexibility
of our system it would be nice to think there is something coherent
going on here. I do not really understand why what is prime facie
a Code inquiry cannot be done in that way. Sir Anthony Hammond's
inquiry into the Hinduja affair was set up, as I recall it, by
the Prime Minister and reported to the Prime Minister.
Sir John Gieve: I cannot remember
whether it was to him or to the Cabinet Secretary. The Ministerial
Code is quite clear on this. It says it is the personal responsibility
of each minister to ensure that his actions are in accordance
with the Code and to make those judgments but the final arbiter
is the Prime Minister. I think in this case the minister himself
said that this question had been raised about his conduct and
he wanted to get an independent view on it. I think it could have
been set up differently but the nature of the inquiry was agreed
with the Prime Minister, the potential "who should do it"
was cleared with Number 10 and the Cabinet Secretary. The fact
that it should be someone of standing who had some experience
of the Civil Service was agreed with them. I discussed the names
with Sir Andrew Turnbull. It could have been someone else. In
fact it might have been a bit more comfortable for me if Andrew
Turnbull had done the appointment but I do not think it would
have made the slightest difference to the nature or results of
the inquiry.
Q876 Chairman: There is at least a perception
of when an inquiry is being conducted into the affairs of a department
and bearing on ministerial conduct it does not immediately suggest
itself that it is a good idea to have that department set up that
inquiry and for the permanent secretary of that department to
go off looking for someone to do it. Surely, as I keep saying
to you, if the Code is the document governing ministerial conduct,
issued and owned by the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister
is the custodian of that document, such inquiries have to go through
that route. At least we thought that was the case.
Sir John Gieve: Can I make three
points on that? First, it is not at all unusual for the Home Office
to commission independent reviews of its own affairs and that
is something that permanent secretaries and indeed other officials
and ministers in the Home Office do all the time. I do not think
there is a general rule that the Home Office cannot and should
not ask for independent investigations of aspects of its affairs.
They are a very important way in which I get to know how the department
has been running as well as for public reassurance. Secondly,
you have to ask whether it was fit for purpose. This was a very
unusual situation. An allegation had been made, it was in the
heat of the political battle, the minister was still in office
and everyone agreed, I think, that we needed to establish the
relevant facts and this did establish the relevant facts quickly
and effectively and, as a result, David Blunkett resigned as we
know. I am not saying it is the only way it could have been done,
but in a sense I feel that this was an inquiry which self-evidently
reached the point that it needed to get to.
Q877 Chairman: One last point which I
again put to Sir Alan: he says that you asked him to undertake
this independent investigation into the allegation that had been
made against the then Home Secretary that he misused his official
position. That is what you asked him to do and people expected
him to report on that. Yet, as he has told us, his terms of reference
did not require him to pronounce on that. He was asked to do one
thing and, as it were, reported on something else.
Sir John Gieve: I do not accept
that at all. The terms of reference were perfectly clear, which
were to inquire into the handling by the Home Office including
the Home Secretary of this application. He did not discover every
detail of the facts but he discovered the key facts and published
them. The opening paragraph explained why I had asked him to do
it, why investigate this particular application among the half
million that year. The answer was: because an allegation had been
made that it had been handled improperly. I asked Alan Budd to
establish and set out the facts, which he did.
Q878 Chairman: It was not because it
was not a Ministerial Code inquiry.
Sir John Gieve: I think it is
for ministers and ultimately the Prime Minister to decide whether
or not there has been a material breach of the Ministerial Code.
That is quite clear in the Code itself; it is quite clear in our
response to the Committee on Standards and Public Life and actually
that aspect of it I think is agreed with the Committee. There
is also an element of political judgment in this about what is
a material breach and so on. I think it would have been odd to
ask Sir Alan Budd to decide off his own back whether it had been
a serious breach. It is not just a question of facts and that
is why the Committee said we wanted someone to come in and set
out the facts and then in a sense it is a political judgment of
whether there has been a breach and, if so, is it material, does
it make his position impossible, and so on.
Q879 Chairman: Having done the inquiry
and knowing what we know, what judgement have you formed about
whether there was a breach or not?
Sir John Gieve: Something definitely
went wrong in this case. As we said in our response, in this particular
case David did have a private interest which was not declared
overtly and it was dealt with as though he had not, so something
went wrong. I agree with Alan that in a sense the historians'
view of how serious a mistake it was is slightly beside the point
because David had said very clearly that it had not happened,
that the handling of this application had not been speeded up
because of his intervention and Alan's report said that it had
been speeded up as a result of his intervention. The critical
thing turned out to be the rebuttal, the fact that that rebuttal
did not stand up rather than how serious was the original mistake.
I cannot remember any case which is quite like this one, but it
is very often the case in ministerial resignations that it is
the change of story or the fact that the original rebuttal does
not stand up which becomes the key point.
Chairman: Thank you for all that. Let
me bring colleagues in now. David?
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