Examination of Witnesses (Questions 160
- 179)
THURSDAY 15 DECEMBER 2005
SIR CHRISTOPHER
MEYER KCMG
Q160 Chairman: Where does it say
anywhere from anybody that this has been cleared?
Sir Christopher Meyer: My reading—
Q161 Chairman: No, not your reading.
It is on record, you have said it many times, that this book was
cleared. Show us the point where it was cleared?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Let me
quote you an e-mail, which the publishers received on the day
before we got the message from the Cabinet Office, saying that
the Government would have no comment to make on the book. I quote,
and this is from the publishers to me, just to give you a sense
of what we thought we were going through, ie a process of clearance:
"At the close of play yesterday the Cabinet Office told us
that there is still one official in the Cabinet Office whose comments
are awaited and that the Palace must be consulted over the references
to Prince Andrew and Prince Charles. I am expecting to hear from
the Cabinet Office again this morning, but their best guess is
that we are unlikely to have any problems from the Palace or from
those officials who have already read the book." If that
does not describe a process of clearance I would like to know
what does.
Q162 Chairman: When Gus O'Donnell
writes to you at the end of all this messy process and says that
he is disappointed that a former diplomat should betray confidences
like this, and then at the end of this letter, after saying that
it is not his job to check the remarks that you attribute to people,
"You should therefore not imply from this response that the
book has any form of official or unofficial approval", you
thought that meant clearance, did you?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I think
that is weasel words, and I do not actually know what it means.
Does it mean approval, because the context for that, Chairman,
is a discussion of facts and accuracy in the first half of the
sentence. What is extremely surprising in all of this, and I lay
this before you, is we get the verbal message on 21 October and
it takes until 8 November for a very brief letter to arrive from
the Cabinet Secretary which actually embellishes that verbal message.
The verbal message simply said, "The Government has no comment
to make on the text." I took that as clearance in the light
of what was going on before hand—you may think I am naive,
but there you are—and then, three weeks later, we get a
letter from the Cabinet Secretary which says, "The Government
has no comment to make on your book", and it immediately
makes a comment expressing his disappointment at the breach of
confidence.
Q163 Chairman: The word that was
in my mind was not "naive". What the system was trying
to tell you was that this was a thoroughly disreputable enterprise
and you should not do it?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Then why
did it not say so?
Q164 Paul Flynn: You are not claiming,
are you, that in fact what you were trying to do was to test a
rotten system and prove that it is rotten, it does not work, it
does not protect people's confidences? Can we look at some of
the things you say in the book, this alleged conversation you
had with Robin Cook where you say that he tried to do a deal with
you. He was trying to help, quite legitimately, I would have thought,
a constituent of his who had a personal problem with a matter
involving a child, and you described the deal that he tried to
do with you as "ethical as a seven pound note". I am
not sure why it was unethical for Robin Cook to act as a good
constituency MP, but I understand why it was unethical for you
behave in the way that you did. Did you normally behave in that
way to use the might of the Embassy and try to use the whole of
the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to solve a problem that was
a private one involving a member of your family?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I do not
think I quite get the thrust of the question.
Q165 Paul Flynn: You described the
deal as "ethical as a seven pound note"?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes.
Q166 Paul Flynn: Why was it unethical
then? If it was unethical why did you take it up?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I thought
that the question of Catherine's case went beyond doing deals
in this sense.
Q167 Paul Flynn: Where was the deal?
Robin Cook was behaving on behalf of a constituent?
Sir Christopher Meyer: It was
put to me, "If you do this, I will do that." I would
have done this in any event, which was helping him with his constituent.
Q168 Paul Flynn: Is there not a degree
of lack of credibility in this story? Of course you should have
done it and of course any minister can approach you about a constituency
matter. That is entirely right. What was the problem with the
ethics of it?
Sir Christopher Meyer: The problem
with the ethics of it was that in the end he did not discharge
his side of the bargain.
Q169 Paul Flynn: Because Lady Scotland
objected to it, quite rightly, that she should not be using the
Foreign and Commonwealth Office to solve a personal problem that
your family had?
Sir Christopher Meyer: But I am
afraid that the Government had already accepted this because there
was a unit in the Foreign Office dealing with international child
abduction, as there was in the Lord Chancellor's Department, as
it was then called, and it was accepted in government that this
issue, like all issues of international child abduction, went
beyond personal matters and had become a factor in interstate
relations, so is this not right, Mr Flynn, to say that this was
a personal matter.
Q170 Paul Flynn: In one of the letters
you wrote you state that you believe strongly in the enduring
relevance of the diplomatic service at the beginning of the twenty-first
century. Have you not damaged this in a more serious way than
probably any of your predecessors? Would any Prime Minister in
the future want to take an ambassador into his confidence, to
invite him to dinners and that seemed to upset you very much when
you were not invited to dinners. Have you not put a gulf now between
politicians and diplomats in a very serious way that no-one can
be trusted in future?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No, is
the short answer to that question, and if there is any doubt about
it, then I go back again, the Radcliffe criteria are there, the
third criterion which deals with confidential relationships. If
what you say is true, the book appears not to have been judged
against that criterion and it should have been.
Q171 Paul Flynn: Let us not go on;
we have spent a great deal of time on this?
Sir Christopher Meyer: And I am
going to keep on coming back to it.
Q172 Paul Flynn: You seem to want
to concentrate on this to blame other people for this very unpleasant
book which, in the view of most people, most serious observers,
including people in the diplomatic service, has done a great deal
of damage to the future relationship between diplomats and politicians.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I disagree
with that and would like to enter a contrary argument, if I may.
Q173 Paul Flynn: You take it up with
Lord Turnbull and the other very distinguished people who have
said this. Why should we have any confidence that we will not
have a PCC confidential one day? Can you be trusted in your present
job not to be collecting tittle-tattle to betray confidences that
other people have? Are you really a fit person to be doing this
important job?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Entirely
fit, and let me go back to your earlier point, if I may. There
are a lot of people out there, as far as I can tell the majority,
who do not think this book is just a matter of tittle-tattle,
because one of the things it seeks to do, more or less successfully,
is to explain at the beginning of the twenty-first century what
exactly an ambassador does, what exactly an embassy is for and
why, in an age of instant communication and at times when prime
ministers and presidents can video conference with each other,
it is relevant to have people on the spot. If that does not reinforce
the diplomatic service I do not know what does.
Q174 Paul Flynn: It does not, it
damages the diplomatic service, and we have a great deal of evidence
on this from many of your distinguished colleagues who have not
sought to reveal confidential conversations in the way that you
did. You said to Mr Jay that he made a rather unpleasant insinuation
that money might warp "my view of the public interest",
that is your view of the public interest. Can you tell me how
much money you have made from this so we can make a judgment?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I have
no idea. I have no idea how much money I will make from this.
Q175 Paul Flynn: How do we do something
to stop people behaving like you in the future? Do we defer the
gongs that they get? Do we take the gongs away from them? Do we
make their pensions conditional on their respecting confidentiality?
How do we do it?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I would
come from a different starting point from you, Mr Flynn. You and
I are never going to agree on this. I would say that in an age
of the Freedom of Information Act, the ideology of open government,
all that sort of thing, that people should write and then they
should expect to have what they have written considered by a fair
and consistent process, that does not exist at the moment. As
for displeasing many of my colleagues, maybe I have displeased
many of my former colleagues, but I have been surprised at the
number of e-mails that I have received from people in the service
all over the world who absolutely support this book; so I just
do not agree with you.
Q176 Paul Flynn: There is popularity
in gossip and gossip-mongers are very popular people if you reveal
confidences, but I think you have been judged by your peers and
their judgment is that you are guilty?
Sir Christopher Meyer: Well, I
disagree with you, and I say no more.
Q177 Julie Morgan: Do you feel any
pangs of conscience at all about this book?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I do not
feel any pangs of conscience about this book. I stand by this
book. I did say at the start of this session when I was allowed
to make a brief opening statement that I had certain regrets at
the turbulence that had been caused for friends and colleagues
as a kind of backwash from the book, but if you are asking me
whether I regret publication, no.
Q178 Julie Morgan: I am asking you
whether you feel any pangs of doubt that you did the right thing
in writing this book?
Sir Christopher Meyer: I have
asked myself the question have I done the right thing by writing
this book, but I have been so sustained, so reinforced, by people
who think the book does a valuable service, people both on this
side of the Atlantic and on the other side, that those doubts
have been quashed.
Q179 Julie Morgan: I cannot say that
we have heard any of those supportive voices. Everything that
has hit the public domain has been criticism of what you have
done. You were entertaining people in your home. Many ministers
stayed with you in the diplomatic residence. Do you not feel you
had their sort of trust, that they put their trust in you and
that you broke their confidences? They were staying with you as
guests.
Sir Christopher Meyer: What I
did in this book, among other things, was to give a series of
pen-portraits of people who came to Washington. In almost every
single case these portraits, as far as ministers are concerned,
relate to ministers in the public discharge of their office, not
in private living but in public, with plenty of other people being
present as well, so these are not disclosures of boudoir secrets
in the embassy, but they are comments on the way in which ministers
did their jobs. If under the rules this is considered unacceptable
today in a book, then let the rules say so.
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