Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 39)
THURSDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2005
LORD WILSON
OF DINTON
GCB AND PROFESSOR
PETER HENNESSY
Q20 Grant Shapps: Peter, what I am
really interested in is the split here between ministers and civil
servants. Five years might be exactly right for civil servants,
I do not know, plus the change in government. Surely for ministers
it is fair game? The one thing this whole thing teaches me is
that I should go home and starting writing a diary tonight, if
only as a defensive mechanism.
Professor Hennessy: You have been
corrupted, Mr Shapps!
Q21 Grant Shapps: Not at all. We
are here to look after ourselves and do not need to be molly-coddled
by more rules and regulations, certainly not by laws. Ministers
and politicians should be able to take care of themselves.
Professor Hennessy: You wait until
you are a minister!
Q22 Chairman: Richard, could I bring
you in because I would like to know if you would assent to this
prescription that Peter is giving us about what we might do about
this?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I do not
think I would lay down the time period like that because I can
think of some things which I would not want people to write after
five years and some things in less than five years which I would
not object to. What Radcliffe is saying is that over time, the
strength of the confidences does gradually weaken, and it does
depend a bit on context. He says that some things which are matters
of national security can be revealed very soon after they are
over because they suddenly cease being secure. Other things you
need to protect for much longer than that. I think that is true
of some confidences. There are personal matters to do with ministers
I worked for 30 or 40 years ago which I would not want to reveal.
Professor Hennessy: Give us one
example.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: Certainly
not.
Q23 Kelvin Hopkins: I am fascinated
by what I have heard, particularly because I was Brian Sedgemore's
party chairman in the 1970s, so I used to get these events retold
to me in the pub every Friday night. It was exactly as you say.
My impression is that what has really changed from that era is
the politics. We lived in an era of the mixed economy, social
democracy and pluralism in those days. Now we live in a world
driven from the centre by radical, right-wing politicians. It
is driven by neo-conservative international policies—foreign
policies and neo-liberal economic policies, and pluralism has
been pushed back. Have not the tensions arisen because of that
change?
Professor Hennessy: I think there
is a lot in that. If I was on the receiving end of the command
style premiership of your nominal leader, because you obviously
do not subscribe in full to the leadership principle, I would
get profoundly irritated. If, as it is sometimes put to me, the
kids at Number 10 come on the phone and say "Tony wants",
I would be tempted to say, "bugger off" and, if I did
not, I would make a note about the absurdity of their suggestions
at what I do as a secretary of state. I have never known a period
when secretaries of state and their permanent secretaries are
such diminished figures. I sometimes wonder how they can look
at themselves in the mirror in the morning. The kind of catharsis
through memoir, which is what it is, is what this leads to. If
you operate a court system of government, whether it is the Chancellor
or the Prime Minister, those who are on the receiving end of the
court find what weapons they can when they can, and it stores
up real trouble. If you are not naturally collegial, which the
Prime Minister is not though he is trying terribly hard—and
you used to spend hours to persuade him to be more collegial,
did you not, Richard—you are just asking for it, are you
not? The worms turn, and the worms turn on the page, and who can
blame them?
Q24 Kelvin Hopkins: Yes, indeed,
and I must say I cannot wait for the memoirs of our Cabinet which
meets, apparently, for five minutes just to listen to the Prime
Minister, and then goes away again. It used actually to discuss
papers and not to have votes as such but develop consensual approaches
to government, which is no longer the case. I will be fascinated
to read all these memoirs. Do you think this is leading to some
sort of breakdown or change, a reversion to the way we were, or
are we now into an entirely new era of working where the pages
will not be turned back?
Professor Hennessy: I know everybody
says this because it is the kind of fall-back position, but if
we had a civil service act that repainted the lines between who
does what within the governing marriage, including the special
advisers, it would be a start. The good chap theory of government
was based on what Sidney Low over 100 years ago called "the
tacit understandings on which British Government depends".
All that has gone. There is a tremendous tendency, which is what
gave you such anguish, was it not, that that is traditional stuff;
it just gets in the way; we have public service delivery. Once
the good chap theory has come to the equivalent of a combination
of management consultancy babble and self-interest, it has gone
really. I know you think, like Radcliffe, it can all be restored,
and I hope it can, but we have had nothing but this since 1997,
with the occasional reversion to trying to behave a little bit
better. Mrs Thatcher was just the same. Remember after Westland,
she tried to behave for a while and listen to people in Cabinet.
The real thing to do when you are watching these people is rather
like intelligence; you watch people when they do not think you
are looking at them—when they are on automatic pilot—because
they do not think they are under particular scrutiny, that is
when they give themselves away on the way they really conduct
government. I think you are closer to the model than Richard's
desire to see sides to them which can be played upon, playing
upon their decent side. Maybe I am entirely wrong about this.
I come back to this: if you could broker a modern version of the
good chap theory of government which took into account modern
realities, you really would have pulled off something quite formidable.
I think it is linked to your known views that we need a civil
Service Act, and that is not a suggestion which is greeted with
throbbing warmth across the road by anybody. There was not one
person in the Cabinet who was in favour of it, and even some of
your wretched colleagues at the Wednesday meeting of permanent
secretaries were not wholly in favour. If you can make that happen
and link it to this, I think you will have done the state some
service, you know.
Q25 Chairman: I can see Richard steaming.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I am not
steaming at all. I just wish to make it clear that silence does
not indicate consent.
Q26 Kelvin Hopkins: The point I make
in our discussion, and I agree entirely with what you said, Peter,
but this is really for Richard, is this: during the Benn-Sedgemore
era, Francis Cripps and Frances Morrell, and I am sure you remember
them both very well, used to meet Tony Benn in the morning before
the civil servants got to him and discuss with him the policies
of the day. The civil servants would then speak to the Secretary
of State afterwards. They used to get very upset about this, apparently.
Now we have a situation where the special advisers are the bosses,
in a sense. Rather than just advising the minister and then the
minister going to the civil servants, they are now interposed,
in a sense. They see the minister and the Civil Service much more,
and the top layer of the Civil Service, certainly under Sir Andrew
Turnbull, seem to have become more politicised; it is all part
of political grouping conspiring against Parliament to get things
through. When did that change take place, or is my description
not right?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I am, of
course, out of it now. This may sound like a commercial, but if
you look at The Code of Conduct for Special Advisers, which
we published in 2001, you will find in it a description of what
sorts of work a special adviser may do, and that is not consistent
with the description of the role of special adviser that you give.
I think the truth is that the role of special advisers is different
between different ministers at different periods. I think Francis
Cripps and Frances Morrell, who you rightly guess I do remember,
were in a very powerful position in that department. Your account
of how they operated, I think, if anything, is an underestimate.
They were interposed between Tony Benn and the department quite
often. I can remember one occasion that Brian Sedgemore has written
up—it is nearly 30 years ago—when I was instructed
by the secretary of state and, in the end, by the permanent secretary
to negotiate a Cabinet committee paper with them. It was a very
tortuous process but certainly they were there between the secretary
of state and the department. I will not go into it.
Q27 Kelvin Hopkins: I remember it
well. I know the sort of thing.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: It illustrated
the point that a lot of the issues people talk about today in
relation to special advisers are not new. All the issues that
people are talking about now were very much alive and kicking
30 years ago. One needs to pull back a bit from the suggestion
that we are all poor figures now and it was all marvellous in
the past. I hesitate to attribute it to an objective and independent
professor, but I think some of that is to do with the passing
of years. I think you do tend to see the past in a rosy glow.
There is one point I would like to come back to, which is a point
that Gordon Prentice raised. I think some things are changing.
One of them is the willingness of, let us say, the press to make
a civil servant more of a figure. Another is the willingness to
criticise civil servants through the press without your ever actually
knowing, if you are the civil servant, who is making the allegation.
I think that is an insidious and bad trend because it is unfair.
The hands of civil servants are tied. You cannot answer back,
just as you cannot answer back to criticisms in a memoir. There
ought to be something in the code which makes it very clear that
that is unacceptable, whoever does the briefing.
Q28 Chairman: Julia is going to bring
us back to memoirs. As Kelvin has a start on it, I do not want
to lose the moment just to ask you both this. I do not want to
quote back at you stuff you have been writing, Richard. You have
been expressing disquiet about the way in which government is
conducted now, and indeed Peter has, too, perhaps more predictably.
Although you are saying, in response to questions, that there
was never a golden age, you do not think there has been a great
falling off, you have been writing in a way which suggests that
there has been a falling off. Something has gone wrong with the
process of government; the quality of decision-making has begun
to be attenuated. Chris Foster, as you know, has written recently
something called Why are we so badly governed? He is someone
who has worked for both governments over many, many years. It
is quite a compelling indictment of the way in which news management
now drives decisions; Number 10 overrules departments; the quality
of material produced by government White Papers has deteriorated.
Just the business of doing government is not as robust as it used
to be. As I read you, you pretty much assented to this.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: The things
I have been saying are things I actually said to this Committee
when I was Cabinet Secretary. I was not always sure you heard
me but I have been saying these things for a long time. I think
we are in the middle of huge constitutional change. What I have
always argued is that there is a trend towards devolution, in
formal constitutional terms: devolution to Scotland, Wales and
Northern Ireland; and a rebalancing between the state and the
individual. It is all on the record from previous sessions. At
the same time, I think at another level there is a trend towards
greater centralisation. As always happens, the important things
that go on in the constitution happen unobserved. The way in which
local government has become an agent of central government, which
is now declared by government ministers, rather than a democratic
local tier of government, is a hugely important development, which
has passed by virtually without much debate. The concentration
of power within government makes it all the more important that
within government there are proper processes to ensure and regulate
the use of power and the checks and balances which we need to
have in place. I think it makes the role of Parliament, the role
of this Committee, all the more important. There is nothing very
radical in that. It is just an observation as to how the constitution
is changing and the importance of the roles of different parts
of the constitution, the constitution ensuring that power is held
in check and in balance.
Professor Hennessy: I think we
have to remember that for all your sterling efforts as a Cabinet
Secretary in private to get better minute-taking, to have proper
Cabinet discussion, even the occasional Cabinet paper, what it
took to get to the point where we have some restoration of the
useful bit of the past were two accidental reports: the Hutton
Inquiry and the Butler Inquiry. But for the tragic death of Dr
Kelly, there would have been no Hutton Inquiry. If the American
President had not instituted an inquiry into intelligence-related
policy-making on the road to war in Iraq, we would not have had
Butler either. But for the light shone by those two completely
aberrational inquiries—they involved disclosures way beyond
the 30-year rule stuff, let alone the Freedom of Information Act—we
would not have had you being alerted to the extent you have been,
the press being alerted to the extent they were, and people like
me being able to quote chapter and verse rather than general anxieties.
That is what it took to get a partial restoration of papers and
proper minute-taking. You might as well have pleaded in vain in
private to get that back. This is no disrespect to you: it took
an external shock with quotes from chapter and verse in both of
those reports, whole rounds of experience in there, including
diaries, and David Omand having to reconstruct from his notes
because no minute was taken of the rolling discussion in Number
10, with people coming in and out about whether to tell the press
it was Dr Kelly if they thought it was, if they got the name.
That was monstrous. You were worried about that in private from
the beginning but you could do damn all about it. It took those
two accidents to alert Parliament and the public. We should never
forget that. Not one minister wanted either of those inquiries,
did they?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I should
just say again, for the record, that Peter Hennessy is very kindly
giving evidence on my behalf but I am not assenting to it. I feel
myself being manoeuvred into a position where others are giving
evidence on my behalf and writing my memoirs, which I am not going
to do.
Q29 Julia Goldsworthy: This is the
flip side of what Grant Shapps was saying, and so rather than
should there be a separate code for ministers and civil servants,
is it not more about what is driving the authors that is the most
important thing in terms of whether it is appropriate or not,
whether it is a desire to set the scene of some historical record
and give insight into the political processes, whether it is for
personal revenge, some kind of personal experiences, or it may
be even money. If they are going to get huge advances from newspapers,
is that what is driving them? Gus O'Donnell, when he gave evidence
to us, said he was looking into ways in which the Crown could
claim royalties as a way of overcoming that particular problem.
I would like your comments on that?
Professor Hennessy: There is a
precedent to that, if I remember. Reggie Jones (RV Jones) wrote
Most Secret War. He was a lovely man and he had taken away
to Aberdeen University as a young man in 1946 a large amount of
very sensitive material on which he wrote that book. This was
really official secrets stuff. He waited until the Ultra Secret
was up but it was still very hot in the Seventies. An unspoken
deal was done, which I think we got hold of and published in The
Times whereby they did not want to prosecute Reggie because
he was a thoroughly good thing and just imagine the court case.
So they did a deal whereby I think at least a part of his royalties
from Most Secret War went to the Crown. I do not think
that was ever admitted to, but in fact it was the case. If I can
find the cuttings from The Times, it would be there somewhere.
So there is a precedent for that. That was a one-off because they
suddenly realised that Reggie had this treasure trove. He really
did like the people he had left in Whitehall. It was the good
chap theory working; it was one of those very British compromises.
I do not think you could institutionalise that. It is interesting
that Jeremy Greenstock has agreed not to publish; I have not checked
that. We must not forget that the Director of the Ditchley Foundation
has abided by the good chap theory of government. You need to
check that. You will be able to do that rather more easily than
me, but I think he has agreed not to publish, at least for the
time being.
Q30 Chairman: The publishers did
not want it after it had been taken care of.
Professor Hennessy: Is that what
it was? You are ahead of me on that.
Q31 Mr Liddell-Grainger: He lost
his contract. I want to take you back to one diary we have not
talked about and that is Spycatcher.
Professor Hennessy: It was not
a diary. It was a memoir, written by a fruitcake.
Q32 Mr Liddell-Grainger: It may be,
but it ended up with the Cabinet Secretary, now Lord Armstrong,
making a journey with a briefcase because the establishment had
told him to go out to Australia and try to silence this bloke.
Professor Hennessy: You are cruel
remembering that but it is true, he was upset at Heathrow, was
he not?
Q33 Mr Liddell-Grainger: A little,
and I think the journalist may be one of those in the room. Was
that the downgrading of the Cabinet Secretary, having to go out
to try personally on behalf of the British Government to stop
a diary, a memoir, whatever, which was highly damaging? There
was an enormous amount of stuff in there about burglaries, break-ins,
the role of the Wilson Government. It was absolute dynamite. It
was not stopped. It was leaked back into the country as a sort
of dirty little memoir and it was being sold on street corners.
Is that not the sort of downward spiral?
Professor Hennessy: Robert Armstrong
should not have gone. It should have been the Attorney General.
Robert had done very well.
Q34 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Who made
him go?
Professor Hennessy: If I remember,
Robert had done extremely well in the Westland inquiry before
the Defence Select Committee. He had interposed his body, which
is one of the functions of a Crown servant, between ministers
and here. Permission was not granted to anybody else from the
Civil Service who was involved in the Westland affair to come.
Robert—fireproof Robert—took it all upon himself,
and he did extremely well. If I had been Robert, I would have
refused to go to Australia on the grounds it should be the Attorney
General because it had to be a Minister of the Crown. In those
days, we had Attorneys General, and the Attorney General should
have gone.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: Chairman,
I have always thought that Robert Armstrong was much maligned
over that episode. He has been very restrained in not publishing
his version of it, which is his right, and I would respect that.
I think one day this is one of those cases where history will
start putting the record right. You do have to have a sense, if
you are in public service, that in time if injustice has been
done, it will be put right, but sometimes you have to wait rather
a long time.
Q35 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Surely that
is a prime example of where the Civil Service were ordered to
deal with the situation which had been created because somebody
had done something which the government could not control? The
political side said that they did not want to know about that
and that they would send out the sacrificial lamb with his briefcase
and give a right to him on the way out to Australia, and the whole
thing was a disaster.
Professor Hennessy: Nobody could
quite have anticipated the degree to which that judge—and
I am libelling the Australian judiciary—was determined to
get revenge for dominion status. It was quite extraordinary to
watch all of that. I do not think anything in Robert's formation—and
he had been around the block a few times—had prepared him
for that.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I do not
think Robert Armstrong, or anyone, could have anticipated quite
how that was going to develop in that case.
Q36 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Stella Rimington
wrote a fairly boring book. When that came before the censors,
can you say how much was taken out? Was there anything to be taken
out? Was there stuff that you felt was going down the wrong line
and you said, "enough is enough"?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: The answer
to your question is: yes, quite a lot had to be rewritten, to
my recollection.
Q37 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Do you think
for spy chiefs—and Scarman would be fascinated to read this—and
for that sort of level of persons within the Intelligence Service
there should be a different, dare I say it, law, statutory obligation,
on people who are within the intelligence community? You were
talking about somebody who took all his archives up to Aberdeen,
Reggie Jones. That is obviously an early example. Should there
be a bit more for intelligence and the military?
Professor Hennessy: That is difficult
because the precedent for Stella Rimington's book was Sir Percy
Sillitoe's book Cloak without Dagger, which he had written
after ceasing to be Head of MI5 in 1955, and to which Mr Attlee
wrote a foreword. It was an extremely boring book. It was mainly
about being Chief Constable in Kent, which even in those days
was not the most riveting job in the public service. It was very
hard to tell Stella not to because of the wretched Sillitoe book.
As the British system of government works on precedent and custom
and practice, that is what they had to go on, was it not? Not
that I am recommending this to you, but I suppose you could, as
part of the Intelligence Services Act, if you had wanted in 1994
put in a statutory bar on ever saying anything to anybody. Their
indoctrination processes tell them that anyway. Again, it is the
world we have lost. Ten thousand people kept the Ultra Secret
for 20 years. Is that not extraordinary—20,000 people knew
at least a part of the Ultra Secret and they kept it for 20 years.
Those days are gone.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I would
repeat the point, at the risk of repetition, that the home Civil
Service has a remarkable record in observing the duty of confidentiality.
I do not think there is evidence that that is sliding.
Professor Hennessy: The intelligence
services have been pretty mute. Even somebody who is interested
in that world understands that they have to be. We have found
two ways: on the back of the Spycatcher affair, they got
a counsellor to whom they could go if they were anguished about
pensions or anything else. That has worked pretty well. There
is also the oversight committee, the Intelligence and Security
Committee, which I know is not flesh of your flesh quite but it
has done an extremely good job. On the back of that Spycatcher
affair, reforms were put in place, which I think together have
worked pretty well. Do you not?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I think
so.
Q38 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Shaylor
had to be brought back from France. He did exactly the same; he
skipped out of the country and basically in the end he was extradited.
Surely again that shows an example of where an intelligence officer
decided to publish and be damned. Whether the stuff he said was
true or not, I do not know. Again, the Government got dragged
into something where they had to try to get somebody back who
had written a memoir which was potentially very damaging to the
country. There is another example of where we are fairly neutered
as a nation. That literally ended up with an embarrassing situation
and the government in France trying to get this bloke out.
Professor Hennessy: He was convicted,
as was Richard Tomlinson, if I remember. I think there has to
be an extra special duty of care on people in the intelligence
world. This is an extremely nasty world. When they make the cases
they do, and if stuff is disclosed that gives away techniques
or even agents—not that Shaylor or Tomlinson gave away agents
but I think Tomlinson did name some people who were officers—that
is extremely difficult because it is very hard to recruit people
if you think it is going to come out. It is an obvious link and
it is one they make all the time, and I understand that. In many
ways, they are a separate case from what we are talking about.
Having said that, for Christopher Meyer and Jeremy Greenstock,
and indeed you and your colleagues, the intelligence product is
something that is very much part of your world. You may not be
actually in it, but the sensitivity of the stuff, because you
are the customer, does affect you. It is important that it is
related to this, but the actual duty of confidentiality on an
officer in MI5 and MI6 or a GCHQ employee is very high, the highest
there is really, and I understand that. I think we all do. We
have found a way in this country of mitigating that kind of blanket
ban where you did not even get anything after 30 years, not a
whisper, until the Waldegrave Initiative, however old it was,
even though the Cold War was over. We found a very sensible way
of reaching quarter-way houses, if not half-way houses, on this
as has the Houses of Parliament. In a funny way Richard's optimism
about sensible procedures is still possible, you can rely upon
people's decency, it is a combination of the good regiment discipline,
the kind of morale that these outfits should have, plus codes
for guidance, he's worked in that area and that is the most delicate
area of all. On the back of the Spycatcher nonsense beneficial
reform did occur, did it not?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I just
wanted to give a plug for official histories. I do think it is
important that people have an understanding of what goes on in
Government and I think the official history programme is an important
part of that. Before I ceased to be Cabinet Secretary we commissioned,
with the Prime Minister's approval, a series of official histories
in which academics are allowed to have full access to all the
papers and write up the history of a particular episode or period,
like the Falklands War which I think has now been published. I
think that programme may fairly soon be running out and I do just
hope this Committee may take an interest in ensuring that it continues
to run because there is a real public interest in that programme.
Professor Hennessy: I agree with
that.
Q39 Chairman: The problem is the
Daily Mail does not produce a big chequebook for official
histories.
Professor Hennessy: Why are we
obsessed with the Daily Mail? Everybody runs in fear of
them. You should just tell them to bugger off. That is twice we
have mentioned the Daily Mail.
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