Examination of Witnesses (Questions 260
- 279)
THURSDAY 15 DECEMBER 2005
MR LANCE
PRICE
Q260 Mr Prentice: Would it be okay
for a man who has spent his adult life in the Labour Party presumably
for the Mail to offer a huge sum of money to someone in
Downing Street who has been keeping a diary but is about to leave
the government and then publish all this stuff at the most damaging
time in the run-up to a General Election to destabilise the Labour
Government? Would that be okay?
Mr Price: No, it would not be
okay. If I can make the point that—
Q261 Mr Prentice: You made the point
about the time lapse.
Mr Price: No, not that point at
all. I still have enough concern, and it is not a concern for
this Committee but it might be a concern of yours and it might
be a concern of mine, for the political wellbeing of this Government
to believe that publishing the book, as I did, immediately after
a General Election, when any fallout that there might have been,
and I did not anticipate much, would have been well forgotten
by the time Labour went to the polls again, was more responsible
than publishing it, which I suppose I could have done, in the
run-up to the General Election or at a time when Tony Blair was
on the ropes or, even, arguably closer to the next election when
it could have done damage not necessarily to Mr Blair but to his
successor.
Q262 Mr Prentice: One final question,
if I may. Are there any areas in the public realm, loosely defined,
which are off-limits? I am thinking about the Royal Household,
and I think the Royal Household now insists on confidentiality
clauses. Do you think it would be in the public interest for people
working for the Queen to keep diaries and publish and be damned?
Mr Price: I think that if we are
living in a modern democracy then the people we seek to work for,
and in your case seek to represent, have a right to know how that
democracy functions. They have a right to know more than just
the views of the great and the good who then move on, Prime Ministers,
ministers and so on. I think you do have to ask yourself the question
who writes history. Is history only written by former Prime Ministers
and former ministers who wish to no doubt remind us all how talented
and clever they were, and how successful they were in promoting
their particular causes, or is history to be written by a range
of people who had the privilege to see how government works? Provided
that contribution to history does not do any harm, and I do not
believe my book has done any harm, then I think it is legitimate.
Q263 Mr Prentice: I say this generously,
but I am sure you will get a footnote.
Mr Price: I ask for no more.
Q264 Chairman: Do you not accept
even for a second that an effective democracy requires some private
space at the centre of government where confidential discussions
can be had and confidences are kept and, far from that being damaging
to democracy, it is essential for democracy? If we want to bring
the system down—you objected to five minutes—we have
the instant kiss and tells which means, as Geoff Mulgan has pointed
out, there is a corrosion of trust across the system which makes
effective government impossible. Democracy is not well-served
by that, is it?
Mr Price: A book published five
years after an adviser left Downing Street, after two General
Elections have passed, and after the date at which the Prime Minister
has announced that he does not intend to run another election,
is not another kiss and tell.
Q265 Chairman: While the person you
served is still in office.
Mr Price: The Prime Minister is
still in office; just as when the book was written by Sarah Hogg
and Jonathan Hill, John Major was still in office. It is very
hard to set down hard and fast rules. If I had written a book
which was called "The Winning Ways of New Labour" and
was a long list of all the achievements of New Labour during the
time that I was in government I would not be sitting here. It
is not just about timing, it is not just about content. This is
why I think if we are to find a system that works, we have to
find a great deal more clarity about what is acceptable and when
it is acceptable.
Q266 Chairman: What I was asking
you was will you accept that government does require a private
space in which—
Mr Price: Yes, I do.
Q267 Chairman:—confidential
discussions can be had and that serves the purpose of good government.
Mr Price: Yes.
Q268 Chairman: That will be eroded
if people rush into print while those people are still in place,
governments are still in office, and it will be corrosive of the
kind of good government that we would all like to see.
Mr Price: Yes, I do, but I waited
five years. It may be that it was to my disadvantage that I happened
to work for a government that is so successful it keeps on winning
elections and I have not had the opportunity to wait for them
to leave office, and I hope I do not have to face that situation
quite frankly. It comes back to one of the points I made earlier.
You talk about kiss and tell and going out and telling secrets
within five minutes or whatever it might be, but people do that
all the time and they do it anonymously. I waited five years and
I put my name on the dust jacket. I think there is a difference.
Q269 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I am intrigued
because at the start of the book you make the point about the
Cabinet Secretary saying that publishing the book is "completely
unacceptable" and at the end of the book under "Acknowledgements"
you say—I am sorry, I was reading a bit, I hope you will
bear with me, this fascinating thing about William Hague going
to Jordan and nearly falling over the coffin.
Mr Price: I am glad you find something
to recommend it.
Q270 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Sorry,
I cannot find it. Basically, in it you make the point that you
were pushed to write this book. The mandarins, the guardians of
the system, did not want you to do it. Is that not the argument
where we come down to where you cannot trust the people within
the system? Basically it is that the system itself is draconian,
it has got no direction. We have talked about copyright today,
permissions with Radcliffe, we have gone right across the spectrum.
We cannot stop it anymore, can we? Are the brakes not off? You
are the new breed of exposé.
Mr Price: Let us just stick to
my book. I do not believe that the system has been destroyed by
my book. I made an effort to work within the system. I think if
the system were reformed to a certain extent then, as I say, I
was happy to work with the rules as they are at the moment but
I would certainly be happy to work with and recommend a system
of voluntary discussion and consideration of books that could
work perfectly acceptably, provided it is seen to be fair, so
that people can see the criterion against which their writing
is likely to be judged, they know that if they go into the system
they will be treated equally and with equal responsibility as
other people who go into the system. At the moment, I think probably
the system is kept deliberately opaque. It is clear that you have
to submit your text to the Cabinet Secretary but it is not explicit
that he has to give his consent, that is the presumption that
is made. The way in which the guidance that I was given was phrased
I did find confusing. All the way through I was feeling my way.
I think you have to give people a bit more guidance than that
if we are to reach a conclusion in which books are published by
people—and I put myself within that category—who do
not wish to undermine the good and effective governance of this
country but may at the same time believe that there is a public
right to know how they are governed.
Q271 Mr Liddell-Grainger: You obviously
admire the Prime Minister and all that he has achieved and all
the rest of it, and that comes out in the book, but do you think
you undermined him by publishing a book like this when you did?
Mr Price: No, I do not. Nobody
has yet demonstrated to me how this book has damaged either the
Prime Minister or the conduct of government.
Q272 Chairman: In one of your answers
just a few moments ago you talked about named civil servants who
cannot speak for themselves. Of course, you were a civil servant,
albeit a temporary civil servant, and you have clearly spoken
for yourself. You would have heard Christopher Meyer this morning
saying that the terms of trade have changed and essentially that
civil servants now can and should speak for themselves. What do
you think about that?
Mr Price: As I understood what
Sir Christopher was saying, he was seeking to draw a distinction
between career civil servants still in service and those who have
retired from service or left service for whatever reason. I certainly
have no objection to civil servants publishing books after they
have left office, and they have done that.
Q273 Chairman: Do you think the Meyer
book is acceptable?
Mr Price: I am not sure it is
for me to judge whether the Meyer book is acceptable. I am not
going to start criticising Christopher Meyer's book. The only
distinction I would draw between Christopher Meyer's book and
mine, apart from the fact that he was in a far more senior and
far more interesting position, and I am sure there is much more
interesting material in his than there is in mine, is that I waited
longer than he did before I published. It is for others to judge
whether that is a relevant distinction or not.
Q274 Chairman: I am interested that
you will not pass comment on a book produced by a former senior
diplomat soon after retiring from office. You would not have been
coy about this before you wrote your book, would you?
Mr Price: I hesitate slightly
simply because although I have read parts of Christopher Meyer's
book, as we all have, I have not read it all.
Q275 Chairman: Knowing the kind of
issue we are talking about, you do not have a feeling as to whether,
in principle, this is the right thing to do or not?
Mr Price: I certainly think it
is right for former ambassadors, for senior civil servants, former
Cabinet Secretaries, to write books and to write memoirs, the
question is at what point does it become acceptable for them to
do it and at what point does that shift that I was describing
earlier between a presumption that things should remain confidential
unless a clear case for publication can be demonstrated, to the
other position where there should be a presumption in favour of
publication unless real harm can be demonstrated has been reached.
Q276 Mr Prentice: But it is okay
for Christopher Meyer to refer to Jack Straw as someone to be
"liked rather than admired" and Geoff Hoon to be a "frigid
panda"?
Mr Price: You had the opportunity
to ask Sir Christopher about his own book. I am not a literary
critic.
Mr Prentice: But Jack Straw was then,
and is now, Foreign Secretary. I am just astonished that you do
not have a view on it.
Q277 Chairman: I asked Christopher
Meyer, if Andrew Turnbull produced a book now of your kind, about
life at the centre, what went on in the office, would that be
right.
Mr Price: I think there would
come a point, and I don't know whether Lord Turnbull has been
out of office long enough for that point to have been reached,
at which it would be acceptable for him to write a book about
his experience as Secretary to the Cabinet.
Q278 Chairman: No, not a general
book about being a Cabinet Secretary, but your kind of book about
who said what to whom in the office.
Mr Price: I hope there would then
be a process that he would go through as a former Cabinet Secretary,
just as there could and should have been a process that I would
go through, in which there would be a discussion and perhaps even
some form of appeal procedure if there could not be agreement
on what should and should not be included.
Q279 Chairman: But the current Cabinet
Secretary would say to him, "Sorry, Andrew, this is completely
unacceptable. The whole project is something that you cannot do".
Mr Price: If a future Cabinet
Secretary were to turn round to Lord Turnbull and say, "Your
book is completely unacceptable", I think he would have the
same grounds for objection to that that I had, which is that it
cannot be completely unacceptable because those bits that are
already in the public domain have to be acceptable.
| 
