Examination of Witnesses (Questions 60
- 71)
THURSDAY 17 NOVEMBER 2005
LORD WILSON
OF DINTON
GCB AND PROFESSOR
PETER HENNESSY
Q60 Grant Shapps: Can I keep you
on the point here? You are demonstrating the extent of the problem
amongst the current Cabinet and possibly past ones but you are
ignoring the solution, which is more of a medium-term solution,
which is the electorate will see this, they will get fed up with
it and eventually they will go for a prospective government which
says, "What we are going to do is come in and have much more
of a Cabinet-style government.".
Professor Hennessy: Whether they
believe you or not is another thing.
Q61 Grant Shapps: That is absolutely
true. Governments eventually may do it. One is reminded of the
way in which, perhaps ironically now, the Bush Presidency started
with this idea of a cleaner White House than had been there for
a while.
Professor Hennessy: They all say
that. The first people they have to delude are themselves. They
cannot help it.
Q62 Grant Shapps: You are critical
of short-termism and the speed with which these memoirs come out.
I would have thought you were attracted to a more medium-term
solution, which seems to me to be already there in the checks
and balances of politics and democracy and eventually the lot
will get thrown out simply for the fact that they have started
to look too presidential in style.
Professor Hennessy: I wish that
did turn elections but I do not think it does. Who knows what
turns elections? It would be nice if clean, decent and restrained
government was a factor.
Grant Shapps: There is evidence that
if you get sleazy enough then you get kicked out. You only have
to look at 1997 to see that. I would suggest there is probably
evidence, although we will have to wait another three or four
years to find out, that if the Government continues to be this
presidential base with so little collective Cabinet responsibility
and so on and so forth
Q63 Chairman: The problem with that
theory is that Clement Attlee got kicked out as well and he is
your great hero and mine, Peter. There is nobody more procedurally
correct than Clement Attlee.
Professor Hennessy: He wrote the
most boring set of memoirs.
Chairman: The idea that there is some
self-correcting mechanism at work here I do not think is true.
Q64 Mr Prentice: Peter, you have
previously referred to the Cabinet as being the most supine ever.
Professor Hennessy: Yes. It has
got a bit of life since I said that last but it is not much life.
Q65 Mr Prentice: When Campbell cashes
in his pension and publishes his memoirs do you think the floodgates
are going to open and we are going to have a whole series of memoirs
published by Cabinet Ministers who feel really wounded by what
Campbell said?
Professor Hennessy: The opening
shots will be people rebutting what he says the next day after
the first serialisation. My press chums will have a field day
doing a ring round and the resentment levels will be immensely
high and they will all be waiting for it. Alastair has got remarkable
gifts, not least he has got a turbo charged pen and he is not
the most charitable to those he regards as either misguided or
feeble, which is a pretty large category of the political class.
Everybody will be ready. It happened a bit with Dick Crossman
but not very much. I think everybody is anticipating that there
will be a gap before the memoirs and the diaries come out.
Q66 Chairman: It would be a cruel
irony, would it not, if we toughened up the rules and deprived
Alastair of his pension?
Professor Hennessy: I am crushed
at the thought!
Q67 Mr Prentice: We have been talking
about people in the intelligence community, civil servants and
politicians. What about senior police officers? We have got Sir
John Stevens who said some very critical things about the Home
Secretary and David Blunkett chose not to respond.
Professor Hennessy: His defence
was, "The Pollard book rubbished me and, therefore, I am
putting the record straight.". You can always express resentment,
whether justifiably or not, and be cross about it in putting the
record straight. Once this tit-for-tatting, which I think is what
we were talking about right at the beginning of this session,
has got out of hand, it is very hard to get it back.
Q68 Mr Prentice: Sir Ian Blair would
be party to the most sensitive discussions and could come up with
a book entitled "The 90 daysWhat Blair really said".
Do you think books and memoirs from people like Sir Ian Blair
should go through some clearance procedure? The late Ben Pimlott
said tongue in cheek that everyone should keep a diary. Would
you agree with that, Peter?
Professor Hennessy: Yes. I know
you are not encouraged to as a senior official but I think you
can after a decent interval. The Macmillan government thought
of prosecuting Sir Maurice Hankey, the first ever Cabinet Secretary,
because he was going to use his diary for a book called "Supreme
Command" about the Great War. This was in 1958 and that war
had ended in 1918. Ever since then I think Cabinet Secretaries
have been asked to say voluntarily that they would not keep diaries
post-Hankey, is that right?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: Nobody
ever asked me. I am not publishing diaries, memoirs, anything.
I have absolutely no plans to do it.
Q69 Mr Prentice: You have kept a
diary, have you?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I kept
my engagement diaries and press cuttings. I did jot things down,
it is what Radcliffe calls "the private discharge of psychological
tensions", but I have not looked at it all. I do not know
what it adds up to.
Professor Hennessy: I will help
you sift it!
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I am certainly
not publishing diaries or memoirs.
Q70 Mr Prentice: Presumably those
will go to the national archives when you pass on.
Lord Wilson of Dinton: They will
probably go into the waste bin.
Q71 Julia Goldsworthy: You said you
were dismayed by what you had seen happening more recently. What
would you do if you were still in a position to overcome these
problems?
Lord Wilson of Dinton: I am not
going to get into the business of telling my successor in public
how to do the job. He is a tremendous appointment, he has my full
support and I think he will turn out to be one of the classic
Cabinet Secretaries.
Professor Hennessy: Chairman,
I think we are both agreed that we want you to sort it out. We
have to say that because we think that.
Chairman: The danger of inviting you
as a witness, Peter, is that you always come and ask us to sort
things out, which we are never quite able to do. We have had a
splendid session. As Grant says, not only was it a wonderful performance,
we have had lots of real substance in there too. You should certainly
take to touring. There would be an audience for it everywhere.
Richard, I thought your suggestion that instead of writing books
these people should go and have some other kind of therapy is
one that needs some serious consideration. Thank you very much
indeed for coming along.
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