Examination of Witnesses (Questions 340
- 349)
THURSDAY 19 JANUARY 2006
SIR JEREMY
GREENSTOCK GCMG
Q340 Chairman: Did that consideration
weigh with you?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: A little
bit in writing a book. Obviously, I wanted to remain within the
rules. I wanted the book cleared by the Foreign Office. I did
not want controversy over the publication of my book for the form
of it. I wanted discussion of the substance of it.
Q341 Kelvin Hopkins: I suspect your
book is much more interesting in historical terms than Christopher
Meyer's book and therefore much more intriguing. One hopes it
will be kept and published at some point. You describe yourself
as "just one civil servant". Is that not over-modest?
Were you not at the eye of the storm? You were crucially part
of the discussions leading up to war at the United Nations. If
one extrapolates from your modesty about your role, and you are
implying your book is cautious and almost innocuous at times,
the book could really be much more exciting than you are suggesting.
Is that not the case?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I regarded
the people in Number 10 as being at the centre, at the eye of
the storm, as far as the British involvement in Iraq was concerned.
I was writing about the United Nations where I was at the centre
of Security Council action on Iraq and Baghdad, where I was trying
to match Paul Bremer in his handling of Iraqi affairs. I did not
in this text stray into commenting on or trying to imply that
I had influence on the real centre of decision making in the British
process.
Q342 Kelvin Hopkins: Is it possible
that you were aware of some of those most crucial talks and events
which flipped us into war, when it could easily have gone the
other way? Public opinion was very sensitive at that time. There
was massive rebellion inside the Labour Party, including from
myself and several Members here. You may be able to illuminate
what happened and people may look back, having read your book,
and say, "I made the wrong decision. I should have voted
against war because of what Sir Jeremy revealed." That is
the kind of thing that might upset the Government.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No. I knew
and saw a lot of things that went on but you never know, when
you are in a satellite position of responsibility to the government,
what you do not know. I never knew about the so-called leaked
minute from David Manning to the Prime Minister of March 2002.
I had no idea that those discussions were happening at the time.
There were all sorts of things that were confidential to the Prime
Minister's team, the Foreign Secretary's team in particular, that
I did not know so I wrote the book fully aware that I could only
tell part of the story and aware that I should not pretend to
interpret events of which I had no direct experience.
Q343 Kelvin Hopkins: Do you have
any sense that if you had acted differently and commented differently
privately, or even publicly, we might not in the end have gone
to war? I am sure you are very honest in these matters but could
someone interpret your book as saying mea culpa, suggesting
that it would change our view of events in the Middle East? Could
you look back to what you did yourself and think: "If I had
acted differently, all of this might not have happened".
Do you have that sense, and might that come across in your book,
or am I pushing its significance too far?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: I do not
think there was ever a point at which, if I had acted differently,
it would have changed the course of events. I do not think that
I was ever in a leverage position of that kind.
Q344 Kelvin Hopkins: When politicians
react to something, it is usually one core bit, one central element.
Christopher Meyer's tittle-tattle was a lot of personal stuff
but if there is one big problem about your book, in the middle
of it if someone said, "Whatever you write, you cannot write
that". Is there something of that nature in your book of
which you are aware, and that the Foreign Secretary is aware of,
that is really the problem?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: No, I do
not think there is.
Q345 Kelvin Hopkins: Is it just a
general sense that this would be embarrassing, inconvenient, could
provoke the anti-war people in Parliament, people like myself,
and cause more damaging press comment, that kind of thing?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Probably.
Again, you would have to ask Mr Straw. The sense of raking over
the great controversy about going to war in Iraq is clearly something
that will be uncomfortable for the Government.
Q346 Kelvin Hopkins: I am perhaps
in the minority but I am uncomfortable about this blurring of
the distinction between politicians and civil servants and that
different codes should apply. I made this point to Lance Price
when he came to see us. I described him as a dodgy politician
like us. We are elected; we can make comment; we can be got rid
of but civil servants have a standing and a code which is above
all that and they ought to remain separate, discrete and have
different rules applied to them. You suggested that we ought to
have the same rules applied to us. Do you not think that politicians
really are fair game for the media but that civil servants ought
to stand back in a more traditional, less conspicuous role?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: Gradually
but increasingly senior civil servants can come into the public
arena. It is very difficult to make a clear cut distinction between
the two when public comment is so voluminous, when the press get
their fingers into everything, where information is coming out.
I do not know whether you are bringing this into your considerations,
but where public inquiries like the Scott Report and the Butler
Report bring things that civil servants have done very much into
the public domain, which have an effect on the way people act,
people keep their records, in public affairs. There is a huge
difference between somebody who has been elected and somebody
who is an unelected servant but in the business of publishing
memoirs I do not see that there needs to be such great distinction
in the principles that are laid down in either case. I think that
the Radcliffe area appropriately applies to both categories of
people.
Q347 Kelvin Hopkins: If politicians
are increasingly aware that their civil servants are going to
publish revelatory memoirs at a later stage, does that not change
crucially the relationship between them, and possibly what is
said and even decided by politicians because they are nervous
about their civil servants so they cannot rely on them perhaps
in the way they could in the past? That relationship is going
to change the nature of our whole politics in Britain, I would
say for the worse, although others might say differently.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: It does.
That is a consideration. But I am not sure that you can put what
had already happened before Meyer or Greenstock put pen to paper,
back in the box. It is much more of a pointer to these things
as to whether somebody like Alastair Campbell is going to write
a book or not than what a civil servant may say. The ripples that
we can cause are too slight to be such an enormous consideration.
This is now a public era. Everything becomes public very easily.
I do not think that in practice it stops life going on. People
have their advisers; they have their discussions; they get on
with it. Knuckles will be rapped if people produce memoirs that
stray beyond the lines. It does not stop the business of government.
Q348 Chairman: We have had some fascinating
evidence from you. A phrase that you have used on one or two occasions
is "on the whole". That is probably a bit of a give
away because when you were asked, "Would this embarrass the
Government?" you said, "No, on the whole." "Would
it embarrass our relationship with the United States?" "No,
on the whole." I suspect in that phrase "on the whole"
we get a clue to some of what is going on here. Having listened
to you for an hour or so I still cannot understand why you did
not publish this book. You have given us a very compelling case
for why such books should be written. You have said our system
is strong enough to take the little flurries that come out of
books like this. The only thing that happened was that you went
to see the Foreign Secretary who said he did not want you to.
That seems to count for little in the scale of argument that you
have given compellingly today. Why did you just keel over?
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: You put
it pejoratively but what happened was that, by the time a decision
had to be made on publication, I had not received the comments
that had been promised from the Foreign Office. Was I to go ahead
against the rules and publish without receiving clearance or was
I to delay? Since I had started from the beginning with the intention
of seeking complete clearance of the text, since I knew that there
would be political controversy which I was not seeking if I went
ahead without clearance, I was left with no choice but to delay
publication.
Q349 Chairman: The Foreign Office
never refused clearance.
Sir Jeremy Greenstock: They said
they were going to offer comments. They delayed the submission
of those comments. For what reason, I do not know. You will have
to ask the Foreign Office.
Chairman: We are genuinely grateful for
the evidence, not just because of the particular case that you
describe but because of the general case that you have made for
a flexible and transparent approach to this whole area. Thank
you very much indeed.
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