Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
THURSDAY 15 DECEMBER 2005
SIR CHRISTOPHER
MEYER KCMG
Q140 Grant Shapps: The Radcliffe
Rules have been around a very long time?
Sir Christopher Meyer: The Radcliffe
Rules are extremely clear.
Q141 Grant Shapps: You have named
the three criteria.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes.
Q142 Grant Shapps: Do you accept
you broke them?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No, I do
not.
Q143 Grant Shapps: You do not?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No, because
it appears now that the book, having been cleared, is now being
uncleared after the process.
Q144 Grant Shapps: You think they
broke the rules really. That is your accusation.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Do not
put words into my mouth, but the system did not work. If this
is the case, the system did not work.
Q145 Grant Shapps: You present somebody
like me with a huge problem. I do not want us to make laws to
make this more complicated. I am not really even that keen on
tightening up the rules that much. I want it to be a fairly liberal
system where "the good chap theory" still works, but
you stretch that to the limit. You make it difficult for people
like me, who have read this massive documentation. I read your
memoirs and looked for a reason that I could defend you, but you
are making it almost impossible for somebody like me who thinks
this way to defend your memoirs.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I am very
sorry to hear that. Believe it or not, I am in your camp on the
matter of regulation, because I think actually the answer is fairly
simple. You basically stick with the present rules, I think you
do have to make some practical distinctions between people who
are in the service and people who have retired—that may
be a matter only for the diplomatic service, I do not know—and
my answer to you is it is not that we need the new laws or draconian
rules or statute or anything like that, it is just make the blinking
system that we have work—it did not work—if these
accusations have a basis.
Q146 Grant Shapps: So you sort of
accept that you have suffered reputational damage, not through
your own fault but through the system's fault?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Travelling
around the country talking to people about this book, book shops
and literary festivals and all kinds of funny places, one of the
things you discover is how many different ways people read a book.
That is one of the things that surprised me, going back to your
earlier question, the extraordinarily diverse way in which books
are read, and some people will think I am a charlatan.
Mr Prentice: Hear, hear.
Sir Christopher Meyer: There you
go. I could go on. Some people might think I am a "red-socked
fop", and all that, but what I am saying is in the country
at large I have had an astonishing amount of support. In some
areas my reputation has diminished, in others it is enhanced.
Q147 Mr Prentice: We have just been
listening to the Cabinet Secretary who talks of you sneering at
people. He spoke about your patronising and derogatory comments.
Press reports talk of you reeking conceit?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Reeking
conceit!
Q148 Mr Prentice: Are you comfortable
with yourself following the publication of this book?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Mr Prentice,
I am very comfortable with myself.
Q149 Mr Prentice: Okay, if you are
comfortable, let us just take the Committee through the correspondence,
because you say if the process is flawed it is not your fault
it is someone else's fault. When the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office wrote to you on 30 June after your book DC Confidential,
"all the revelations from Her Majesty's Ambassador in Washington",
when that was posted on the Amazon website it elicited this letter
on 30 June from the Foreign Office, and they said to you, "When
can I expect to receive the draft manuscript for approval?"
"When." You never answered that. The Foreign Office
went on, "Until then, it is clearly premature for you or
your publishers to publicise the proposed book. I look forward
to receiving an early reply." There were then subsequent
letters. On 12 July you said, in response to that earlier letter,
"At no point in the last two years until your letter has
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office seen fit to remind me of the
Official Secrets Act, the Diplomatic Service code of ethics or
the Diplomatic Service regulations." That is just a lie,
because we have the letter from the Permanent Secretary at the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Sir Michael Jay, who talks about
a conversation he had with you on 4 June 2004 to express the concerns
that he had and the Prime Minister had and other ministers had
that some of your public comments, and I am quoting, "appeared
to be straying towards the revelation of confidences gained in
conversations in which you had taken part." So it was just
a complete lie to say that the Foreign Office had never been in
touch with you for two years.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I am afraid,
Mr Prentice, that it is not a lie, and if you read the reply that
I sent to Sir Michael Jay on 7 August, you will see that I sharply
challenged his version of that conversation.
Q150 Mr Prentice: So it is your recollections
against his recollections, and you are inviting the Committee
to form a judgment about whose recollections they believe. Is
that what you are saying?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Mr Prentice,
I can only say what I think happened. You will have to form a
judgment. When Michael Jay said in his letter to me that he had,
indeed, invoked the DSR5, no such thing was said at the time.
Q151 Mr Prentice: You keep banging
on about process, and yet, on 15 August, yet another letter from
the Foreign Office. It says this: "We would like to be in
touch in early September." They would like you to get in
touch with them?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes.
Q152 Mr Prentice: "To ensure
that we can agree on a mechanism and timing for satisfying our
concerns while avoiding and minimising any disruption to your
plans for publication." They were bending over backwards.
Then they go on to say, "It is essential that we find a way
to do this." No reply.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Oh, yes,
there was a reply.
Q153 Mr Prentice: There was a reply
from your publishers to Gus O'Donnell?
Sir Christopher Meyer: May I answer
these multiple questions?
Chairman: I think you had better.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Thank you,
Chairman. That series of correspondence, which started on 30 June
and ended on 15 August, as far as I was concerned, came to a very
satisfactory conclusion, because the letter from Dickie Stagg,
Richard Stagg, Director of Corporate Finance—
Q154 Mr Prentice: That is 15 August
that I have just quoted?
Sir Christopher Meyer:—of
15 August—he had telephoned me before he wrote that letter
and I had thought that what he was proposing made absolutely eminent
good sense, and we said, "Right, we will talk again in September",
and that was the conclusion of our conversation.
Q155 Mr Prentice: And did you talk?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No, we
did not, because the Cabinet Office called me in early September
when I returned from some leave, and they said to me, "We
will take this over. Send the manuscript to us" (and it was
Howell James, Permanent Secretary for Government Communications,
who made the call to me) "and we will ensure that your manuscript
is distributed to the Foreign Office and to anybody else in Whitehall
that is relevant", and that is precisely what happened. You
see, these letters keep on saying, "You must hand your manuscript
in", and, "When are we going to see it?" The reason
I could not give them the manuscript or tell them when the manuscript
would be available was because I had not finished the book.
Q156 Mr Prentice: You told us earlier
you had finished it on 18 September.
Sir Christopher Meyer: No, I said
13 September. At the time, and I do not know how much of this
detail you want.
Q157 Mr Prentice: As much as is necessary?
Sir Christopher Meyer: You be
the judge.
Mr Prentice: I will.
Sir Christopher Meyer: There was
a time in the summer when I thought I was not going to finish
the book at all because it was too difficult. I had no idea when
this was going to finish, and I kept on telling them that. I kept
on saying, "This book is not yet finished. I do not know
when it will be finished. I am aiming for the autumn." I
think in one of the letters I refer to October.
Q158 Mr Prentice: You do?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Which proved
not to be correct, because in the end it was more like November,
and, I come back again to the basic point, the book is finished
on 13 September. I am sorry, I hand in the final chapters on 13
September. It then goes through a period of editing, it then goes
to the printers to produce page proofs and within three weeks
it is with the Cabinet Office. Maybe I am not reading this right,
but the notion which I see emerging from the Foreign Secretary's
written answer to your question that I somehow withheld all this
back until the last moment is false.
Q159 Mr Prentice: Maybe the Cabinet
Office stepped in because the Foreign Office was getting absolutely
nowhere. I have just quoted the correspondence asking you to submit
manuscripts, giving them an indication when it is likely to be
ready, and you just ignored that.
Sir Christopher Meyer: There was
no manuscript to give them and, had I not had a phone call from
Howell James, then I would have picked up the phone either to
Jay or to Stagg and said, "The thing is finished and it will
be with you, I hope, in about", whatever it was, "two
weeks, three weeks."
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