Examination of Witnesses (Questions 283
- 299)
THURSDAY 19 JANUARY 2006
SIR JEREMY
GREENSTOCK GCMG
Q283 Chairman: Good morning, everyone.
I am delighted to welcome on behalf of the Committee, Sir Jeremy
Greenstock, distinguished diplomat, the British permanent representative
at the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, and then the UK special
representative in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, but that is not why
we have asked you to come. We have asked you to come because we
are doing an inquiry into memoirs and you have been in the news
with your publishing project, currently suspended, and we would
very much like to ask some questions about this. We are very grateful
for the memorandum which you have sent us, which is very sharp
and to the point. Would you like to say anything by way of introduction
or shall we just ask you some questions?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Let us
let it flow, Chairman, that is fine.
Q284 Chairman: What I would ask you
to start with is, when this idea of writing a book occurred to
you, did you grapple with the problem of a very recently retiring
diplomat at the centre of very currently controversial events
writing an instant memoir? Did that strike you as a project which
raised difficulties?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: The business
of writing a book comes to you, it came to me, in a series of
stages, you do not go from one to 10 overnight. As I sought to
explain very briefly in my written memorandum, I had begun with
the idea of writing something about how the United Nations works
because in my five years' experience at the UN there were very
few people outside the system who do understand what happens inside
it and what the various relationships are and what the political
considerations are. I felt that could be done, even though the
norm is for people to wait some years before they write about
their official experience, in a way which would be helpful and
not particularly controversial. That was before I was asked to
go to Baghdad. The months leading up to the conflict in Iraq also
took me into a different state of thinking about the issue and
a different position in terms of my public persona. The issue
of Iraq was extremely controversial, a lot of things were said
about it which were wrong or under-informed. I felt the subject
itself, the whole saga of Iraq, was rapidly becoming, and indeed
has become, the seminal foreign policy issue of the era, and I
gradually moved into a state of wanting to explain as clearly
as I could within the rules what happened, how things turned out
as they did, in order to allow the public to have a more informed
debate about it. But it was always my intention to seek clearance
under the rules and see how it came out. So it was a progressive
series of stages which led me—and you have to put on top
of that my experience in Baghdad after the war—to think
it might be worth setting out some things in public. While you
are thinking that, all sorts of people are discussing things with
you, are in seminars with you, you go on all sorts of programmes
to talk about it in your public capacity with the support of your
department, and you get into a habit of talking about these things
in public, so it does not seem such a great step to setting these
things down in writing.
Q285 Chairman: It is interesting
as you describe it, but did you not see the red lights flashing
earlier on at the implications of a just-retired senior diplomat,
involved at the centre of currently controversial events, writing
a book from the inside about those events, and the implication
that would have for trust within the system?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, but
had they been red lights, I would have backed off. I clearly considered
the context within which I would be doing it and there were orange
flashes of realisation that you could only select certain things
to say. All of us in public service, if we get into considering
this at all, are aware that there is a huge amount that you just
cannot say, but there are some things that you can say, and my
hope is in this Committee's consideration of recent events and
of the evidence you have heard that you will throw some light
for us all on where the dividing lines are between what cannot
be said and what can usefully be said in the public interest in
an era where it is quite difficult to get at the truth in spite
of the mass of information. It seems to me to be quite a broad
spectrum, where at one end you have what the Government issues,
which may or may not in the eyes of the public be credible, at
the other end you have a whole welter of stuff coming out of the
media, which may or may not be geared to be sensationalist and
entertaining and critical and insulting or amusing, and in the
middle there is not so much that everybody out there can put their
trust in as informed comment about what is really happening underneath
the frenetic surface. So I think there is a public interest, within
certain rules, in those who have been part of and who understand
the evolution of events making some comments on it, but there
have to be limits.
Q286 Chairman: You think it is possible
for someone who has only just left public service to intervene
in current controversies from an informed, inside perspective,
for the reasons you very properly say, there is a public interest
in there, and you think that that is reconcilable with the public
interest in maintaining confidential relationships inside the
process?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I would
not have necessarily used the word "intervene", one
is just writing something with some comment in it and telling
the story. I think it depends on the circumstances. The difficulty
we have had before and since Radcliffe is in making the precise
judgments on a particular text under guidelines which allow some
room for flexibility. I do not think that there should be an absolute
prohibition in regards of timing so long as the proper people
in the proper positions make a judgment on what can or cannot
be set out in the text. So the rules are fine, as far as I am
concerned, they should be gone through, but there is a case for
not being absolutely inflexible.
Q287 Chairman: I understand the argument
for flexibility. In the withdrawn catalogue entry for your book,
it says, and indeed you say, "In the UK, retired public officials
do not normally write books on events still current. I am breaking
that convention because the lessons drawn from the saga in Iraq
are too important to leave until later." Assuming that is
a correct quotation, this is a rather different approach from
the one you are describing. This is not an argument for flexibility,
this is you saying, "I am consciously breaking a convention
that I know exists because what I have to say is important and
needs to be said."
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I am going
against the convention but I am not breaking the rules. Iraq is
an unconventional issue. This is the point I am making, Chairman.
In certain circumstances there is a public interest in certain
things not going entirely to the norm. That is just the case I
am making. I cannot remember exactly in what circumstances I wrote
those words and why the publisher took them up, it is too far
in the past now, too many things have happened, but I wanted to
make the point perfectly openly, and I am happy to be open with
you about it, that I did think Iraq was different.
Q288 Chairman: I am sure colleagues
will want to pursue that. In your account of the process of trying
both to break the convention and play by the rules, you submitted
bits of your book as you did them to the Foreign Office and, as
you describe it, you were getting co-operative responses and the
system seemed to be working all right. Then, the Foreign Secretary
intervened and said he did not like the whole enterprise and you
went to see him. What did he say to you?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: He said
he thought I was going against the norm, that I was letting the
system down and that he believed in quite severe restrictions
in the whole area of publishing one's official experience, and
he hoped I would consider what he was saying and desist. That
was the sum of what he was saying.
Q289 Chairman: But this had not been
the view expressed hitherto by the Foreign Office machine itself,
which had co-operated with the enterprise of looking at material
submitted, commenting on it and you being prepared to make requested
changes.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, that
is true. It is also the case, as I understand it, and the conversation
with Mr Straw bore this out. He had not read my text.
Q290 Chairman: Is this not the point
though, his objection was to the enterprise, not to the content,
it was the enterprise of someone in your position publishing such
a book at such a moment.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: That seemed
to be the case, yes, but it did not seem to be the reaction of
those who were dealing with the text under the regulations in
force.
Q291 Chairman: There is nothing in
the diplomatic service regulations on this which talks at all
about ministers having a role in this process. You simply submit
it to a named person in the machine, the machine deals with it,
that machine was ticking over, as you thought, quite nicely until
there was political intervention. Do you think it is proper that
a minister should be able to veto effectively, as happened in
this case, a book of this kind?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes, entirely
proper, and indeed a lot of the previous papers in Radcliffe and
previously make it quite clear that in the view of those writing
at the time it should be the responsibility of the Secretary of
State, at times the Prime Minister, to make such decisions. Of
course in the public system in any matter which affects policy
or has to do with the public service, a minister can have the
final word.
Q292 Chairman: In relation to the
Home Civil Service, the Cabinet Secretary is the guardian of this
system, and that is who the prospective memoirist deals with.
They do not have sudden political interventions which seem to
cut across the process that is in place. This is what happened
in this case, is it not?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: In terms
of facts, yes. In terms of the sequence of events, that turnaround
in the situation at the end of June I think, as far as I can see,
was a considerable surprise to senior members of the Foreign Office.
Q293 Chairman: But having met the
Foreign Secretary, you decided he was right, you were wrong, and
that you would not publish the book.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No, that
is rather too telescoped a version of it. I decided what he had
said needed to be considered, that he was not correct in saying
that I had gone beyond the rules in submitting a text to the Foreign
Office. He was talking as if I had already published. If there
was a proscription in principle against the writing of memoirs,
there would not be the rules for clearing them, so I think he
was making a point of principle which was not justified. On the
other hand, he was very much against the exercise and he was my
previous boss, he is the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth
Affairs, and the fact he held those views weighed with me together
with other considerations.
Q294 Chairman: And it trumped this
great sense of public interest you had previously had in publication?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It is not
for me finally to judge the public interest. I accept that. That
is why I submitted my text for clearance. I did so in the expectation,
which to some extent was borne out, that the process of discussion
with the Foreign Office would refine my judgment on what could
or could not be expressed against the standards which applied
at the time, and that I would need to make some revisions. So
that process was going on and I thought it was a perfectly fair
one. The Foreign Secretary's intervention was rather a lot sharper
than that, so it surprised both me and the people with whom I
was discussing the norms which seemed to apply to what I was writing.
Q295 Grant Shapps: To continue, if
I may, on this point, you just said that Jack Straw had a point
of principle which was not justified. Can you elaborate on that
because I am not clear.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I am only
making the point that he seemed to be saying there should be an
absolute restriction on diplomats, in this case, writing about
their public experience, at least while most of the people who
were involved in those affairs were still in public office. The
point I am making is that that has to be judged in the discussion
with your Department or with the Cabinet Secretary over the text
you have written, it is a judgment on the specific rather than
an absolute restriction in principle. That is where I differ.
Q296 Grant Shapps: So if I understand
your point correctly, you felt he was wrong to say that but nonetheless
you would take his point of view into account. Is that a fair
summation?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Yes. I
was a bit puzzled he was saying it without having looked at my
text, partly I think because what I was writing was, in my view,
in net terms helpful to the Government's case on Iraq rather than
the opposite.
Q297 Grant Shapps: From the outside
I suppose it could look like you caved into political pressure.
You have been to see the Foreign Secretary, he has told you he
does not want you to publish, he has not read it, you have said
what he said was not justified, I am curious now whether you did
in fact cave into political pressure or was it more that he made
your conscience catch up with you, he somehow pricked something
in your own conscience?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: There are
other considerations, of course. For a start, I think the effect
of his intervention was to make the Foreign Office scissors and
pen rather more active on my text than they had been previously,
so it affected others as much as it affected me. Secondly, with
other things which were going on and other books which were being
published and public comment on all of that, the atmosphere was
becoming considerably more febrile than it was when I started.
There were judgments to be made against other considerations than
just the Foreign Secretary's intervention.
Q298 Grant Shapps: Your memoirs are
an interesting case for us because of all the people we have interviewed
as witnesses on this subject, you are the only one who openly
says, and it obviously did happen, that there was direct political
influence as to whether or not you published. When do you think
you might well publish your memoirs?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I have
not made that decision. The book is not in the deep freeze, it
is in the fridge.
Q299 Grant Shapps: That suggests
three months, six months, and then you will have to throw it away.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: That is,
it can be quite quickly recooked if necessary. I have a gentleman's
agreement with my publishers that I will come back to them. The
original contract is set aside, there would need to be a new contract,
but that was by mutual agreement, they did not end the association
on their side. I will judge by events and by the atmosphere at
the moment when it might be relevant to return to it. The possibility
is never.
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