Examination of Witnesses (Questions 400
- 419)
THURSDAY 16 MARCH 2006
RT HON
TONY BENN
Q400 Chairman: Did you not get a
letter from the Cabinet Secretary of the day saying he had heard
that you were going to publish?
Mr Benn: Yes, I did; yes. I had
a letter from him saying that it was agreed that all Cabinet ministers
would do it as a Cabinet decision. I disputed that that was a
decision and I never submitted it and would not under any circumstances
because my obligation was to my constituents, my colleagues and
my conscience but not to an appointed official.
Q401 Chairman: So the whole idea
of having a set of rules is . . . ?
Mr Benn: Nonsense.
Q402 Mr Liddell-Grainger: May I just
ask you about Peter Wright's diaries, which came out and then
Lord Armstrong had to go to scrutinise them. Peter Wright did
have information which may or may not be right—we shall
probably never know—but it was certainly devastating at
the time where there was a potential plot against the Prime Minister
and many others. You would say that we should know about that.
Mr Benn: Yes.
Q403 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I think
there were parts of that we should not have known about, which
was the burglary and all the rest of it. Is there a balance where
national security has to do things? You have talked about uranium
and certain securities.
Mr Benn: The Wright case is a
very interesting one. I used to listen on shortwave radio to the
book Spycatcher being read. The Danish radio read it in
English and I used to listen with earphones thinking that it was
like living in occupied Germany during the war. I then decided
to read from Spycatcher myself in Hyde Park. I consulted
a lawyer who said I might be in trouble. I went to Hyde Park and
I read it. When I read it, every television camera was switched
off for fear that they might be blamed for having broadcast it.
What he said, which I had known for a long time, was that everyone
was bugged and burgled. My rubbish was collected every morning
in a Rover car. I know the Kensington Borough Council are very
efficient but . . . My son constructed a bell so when the black
sacks full of rubbish were lifted the spring lifted and the bell
rang. My phone was bugged. I know that because my daughter picked
up the phone and heard what I had just said to somebody else.
When I wrote to the Home Secretary and asked whether my phone
was being bugged, he did not reply. He did not reply three times,
so I went to see the Prime Minister who said "Well it's not
being bugged now". I knew what Peter Wright was saying was
absolutely true, but they did not want us to know it was going
on because it would have been inconvenient for the ministers who
had authorised it.
Q404 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Can we
talk about one other diary, that of Stella Rimington? She could
have written a potentially very damaging diary about her experiences
down the road. She submitted them; there were changes; they came
out fairly boringly. Do you think the things she agreed to hold
back on should be kept in abeyance for a period of time and then
published regardless? Obviously there is a lot in there which
could be very interesting.
Mr Benn: I met Stella Rimington;
she was busy bugging us all. If she was ready to talk about it,
it would have been a good thing for us to have known it. Let me
put it like this: if you do not know what goes on, that is by
banning these memoirs, then the public are in the dark and ministers
cannot be held accountable. Mind you, in many cases I do not think
ministers knew what the security services were doing any more
than I knew that plutonium was being sold. This idea that ministers
always know is a great mistake. I raised this with Northern Ireland
ministers once or twice and I got the feeling that they had not
the slightest idea what was going on.
Q405 Mr Liddell-Grainger: You talked
at great length about the uranium being sent to America, which
you had no idea about. Nowadays, given the power of the press,
the persuasion of the press, freedom of information, obviously
things go on which ministers do not know about, that is the nature
of it, but would you in your guestimate say that it has got less
or more because the state has to hide more because it is being
scrutinised more, or do you think it has got better? I cannot
base it on anything other than just a question.
Mr Benn: The role of the free
press is of huge importance and nothing I would want to say would
go against that, although increasingly the press are embedded
correspondents; they all go to Number 10 at eleven o'clock in
the morning and they come out at twelve and tell us what they
have been told, rather like the embedded correspondents in a war
zone. I think the press are less free in their judgment than they
should be and perhaps used to be, but you could not rely on the
press doing it when there are people who do know and describe
it. What is wrong, for example, about Sir Jeremy Greenstock writing
an account of his period in Iraq at this particular moment? Would
it not be beneficial for us to know his judgment on the matter?
Q406 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I do not
agree or disagree, but let us just look at one other one which
is Christopher Meyer. He wrote about his experience in Washington
and called the ministers "pygmies", he was fairly scathing
about the Prime Minister and his ability to understand the issues,
et cetera. How he quite came to that compared to Bush I have no
idea, but never mind. That could be damaging potentially not because
of what he said, but because the Americans in this case would
say they were dealing with a bunch of has-beens or half-wits or
whatever. That in its own way is damaging because it is undermining
the credibility of the nation, is it not?
Mr Benn: That is malice and gossip
and I agree that malice and gossip is damaging, but there is no
rule against malice and gossip. There is a rule about publishing,
but to be malicious and gossip Meyer could have gone to the Daily
Mail.
Q407 Mr Liddell-Grainger: He did.
Mr Benn: I am talking about writing
a book. He could have gone to them and said he thought the Foreign
Secretary or whoever was a pygmy and that gets out all the time,
but that is used as an excuse for denying us the knowledge of
what he actually thought at the time about his role in Washington.
Q408 Mr Liddell-Grainger: He has
sold a phenomenal number of books on being a red-socked fop and
telling everybody that the Cabinet were pygmies basically and
the Prime Minister really did not have a grasp of matters. I think
that was really what he was trying to say. That was him making
a commercial decision to sell as many books as he could regardless.
The tittle-tattle is damaging because it makes us look ridiculous.
Surely there has to be some mechanism—I do not know what
and maybe you disagree totally—that we can say that after
that period. It does not matter whether Jack Straw has retired
and the Prime Minister has gone; it is irrelevant, but it is rather
nice to know they are pygmies. However, at the moment it is not
good, when we are in the middle of a situation which is fairly
unstable in Iraq and Afghanistan; it is not bringing confidence
to a nation with which we are working at the moment.
Mr Benn: It is very embarrassing
to a minister to be described as a pygmy by a permanent secretary;
I accept that, but I cannot say it isn't in the national interest.
It may be in the interest of the electorate to know. I did not
read the book actually. I thought it was the source of a great
deal of trouble. I should have thought it was in the interests
of people to know how permanent officials saw the role of government
in Washington. Walter Wolfgang said one word at the Labour conference
"Nonsense" and he was charged under the Prevention of
Terrorism Act. When we have an ID card, until the day he dies
his ID card will say that he was interrogated under the Prevention
of Terrorism Act and that is an example of the Government wanting
to know all about us. When you examine these arguments, and you
put them with very great skill, they are old and familiar arguments;
it is embarrassing if the Americans discover that Sir Christopher
Meyer thought a minister was a pygmy. I should think the Americans
have thought that of many British ministers over the years without
the help of Sir Christopher Meyer; a view no doubt reciprocated
by British officials who have seen Bush and Cheney in action.
Q409 Chairman: You have made good
points in response, but I think Ian's point is that the world
in which we live wants malice and gossip. The money is to be found
in malice and gossip. That is what publishers want, that is what
newspapers want. Once you say there are no rules because the public
interest requires openness, it is not because people are after
high-minded truths, but after this kind of stuff. The question
then is whether it is actually in the public interest to have
that happen.
Mr Benn: I think malice and gossip
go on on such a scale that it has very little bearing on the issue
I am raising which is the right of people who have held responsible
positions to write and report what they learned when they were
there. You say that malice and gossip sells. I suppose that may
be the case; I do not know. The important thing is to know, for
people to read it and if I read a book of the kind Meyer wrote,
I should not be interested in what he said about ministers, I
should want to know when the decision was taken to go to war in
Iraq, who took it and when. I do not think you can use malice
and gossip.
Q410 Chairman: The former Cabinet
Secretary came here—
Mr Benn: Who was that?
Q411 Chairman: Sir Andrew Turnbull.
He said they spent all their time trying to persuade ministers
when they went on foreign trips to stay in embassies so that the
whole diplomatic side of the things can kick in. The effect of
Meyer is that no minister will stay in an embassy any more; they
are going to stay in a hotel. If they know that the ambassador
is going to publish a book giving these personal accounts of these
visiting ministers, why would they?
Mr Benn: I do not think that is
a valid argument at all. Mind you, the only time in my life when
I stayed with an ambassador they unpacked my bag and took out
my toothbrush and squeezed toothpaste on it. It was a level of
support I had never even dreamed of, but I prefer to stay in a
hotel myself. I think these are totally invalid arguments where
the establishment cover it up themselves and that is wholly undemocratic.
Q412 Chairman: I do not think Sir
Christopher Meyer was dispensing toothpaste for ministers.
Mr Benn: I do not know whether
he was. I had better read his book. I cannot believe that it did
any serious damage.
Q413 Mr Liddell-Grainger: We had
Simon Jenkins before us who has negotiated to buy serial rights
and he more than intimated that the thing that sells it is the
gossip and tattle; that is what they are after, that is what they
want. If you get a good story about the Prime Minister not being
able to understand what you are talking about, it does not matter
which Prime Minister, that is secondary. Surely it is the commercialism
now. I accept that is not fair at all: you wrote yours because
you wanted to do it and you wanted to make a point. Nowadays it
is commercialism; it is blatant commercialism. We have Campbell
about to come out, negotiating vast sums of money. We have had
other people in front of us who made an enormous amount. It has
just become a commercial circus. Surely we have to control it.
Mr Benn: If you examine what you
have said, think about it: if malice and gossip is damaging you
are not actually using the rules to protect malice and gossip
but to prevent the real information from coming out. I do not
think you can say "We have strict rules to prevent us saying
malicious things about each other". The rules are there to
see that information about what Government are doing does not
come out. I should have thought that if people buy books for malice
and gossip, then they will not be interested in why we went to
war with Iraq, if you see what I mean.
Q414 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I do admit
that these Cabinet minutes of 1975 about the EU and the things
which were said are fascinating, but I am a sad old anorak. I
am not going to buy this as a story. I like what it says. I am
just fascinated by what you and Jenkins and everyone else said
in these minutes; it is fascinatingly interesting stuff. If you
actually then said in the middle that you thought the Prime Minister
was gay, it would have been the most fantastic seller; it would
have been an absolutely brilliant piece of tittle-tattle. This
is great as an historical document of enormous interest at the
time. There is a lovely quote from you which says ". . .
he was not inflexibly opposed to Britain's membership of the EEC"
which is wonderful.
Mr Benn: That was not me; that
was Eric Varley, was it not? It says the Secretary of State for
Energy; I was not Secretary of State for Energy at the time.
Q415 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I thought
it was you. That is even more interesting.
Mr Benn: You thought that was
me and so did I until I realised the date!
Q416 Mr Liddell-Grainger: It is fascinating
history but it is a document, a very interesting document. If
you want to cause the mischief and the trouble, you would spice
this up in today's terms. I am using today's speak. Surely that
cannot be right.
Mr Benn: I think you are helping
my argument by saying actually what this is all about is to stop
nasty stories getting into the public debate and I think that
is what you are really saying, that is what it is really about
and that is totally and absolutely contrary to the public interest.
I accept the view that it was the sneers from Meyer about ministers
which really annoyed them and actually what should have worried
them, if the rules were being applied on high principle, would
be what he described as what happened at the time. They do not
bother about that; it is the malice and the gossip. You have to
live with that in public life. I do not know what your party is
like, they must be terribly friendly, but the Labour Party is
known on occasions to be spiced up in conversation with a degree
of malice and gossip which is unpleasant, titillating and entertaining.
Q417 Mr Liddell-Grainger: You have
sat in the tearoom, we have all sat in the tearoom and we gossip
like mad; you know that as well as I do. There is a slight difference
between us lot having a jolly good gossip, which we all do, we
love it, and potentially damaging revelations in a larger context.
You obviously disagree totally. We are going to beg to disagree
on this one, I am sorry.
Mr Benn: People are mature. Do
not underestimate the intelligence of the electorate. One of the
great problems of the establishment is that they think people
are so ignorant that they cannot distinguish between malice and
gossip and real information. The longer I live the more impressed
I am by the incredibly high level of intelligence of people who
are all on Google and the internet, they know, they read, they
can discount and distinguish between the information which would
be helpful to them and the gossip which titillates and sells books.
Q418 Kelvin Hopkins: The important
thing, is it not, is to get truth out and particularly truth for
the purposes of history. Is it not worrying that in the run-up
to the Iraq war—and Lord Butler focused on this—a
lot of the crucial discussions were deliberately not minuted,
so we shall never have information even under the 30-year rule?
This is precisely what happened; we shall presumably only have
the accounts of the Prime Minister when he writes his memoirs.
Is that not deeply worrying?
Mr Benn: The new form in which
government is conducted—it was not the case when I was there—using
e-mail and so on may mean that the basic information is not permanently
in the records to be studied afterwards. The more informal the
nature of government decision making—and I was last a minister
in 1979 and it was quite different then because the technology
had not developed at all—the more it becomes like that,
the more important it is that people's recollections of what was
said should be available.
Q419 Kelvin Hopkins: Is it not also
worrying that the Cabinet appears just to have taken really very
little part in these discussions and to have had very little role
in making the decision and, as you say, they just had reports
from the Prime Minister? Will the 30-year rule record show a pathetic
performance compared with what discussions went on about the EEC
as recorded in the documents you have presented to us?
Mr Benn: Of course I have not
seen Cabinet minutes since I left the Cabinet in 1979, though
these have come out. I do think that the nature of Cabinet government
is totally transformed from what it was: short Cabinet meetings
where announcements are made rather than discussions and debate.
We outvoted the Prime Minister. Can you imagine circumstances
where you went round the table and the Prime Minister was in a
minority? I think that was a genuine democratic debate and I was
proud to be a member of a committee where it was possible. They
were formidable people: Jenkins, Crosland, Crossman and so on.
I thought the Cabinet at the time was very high quality: Jim Callaghan,
Wilson, Elwyn-Jones; very, very interesting. I used to sit in
Cabinet with three sheets of blank paper: on one I wrote what
was going on; one was for what I should say if I were called;
thirdly, what I had to do after the Cabinet. I kept these three
bits of paper and then if it was interesting I missed my lunch
and went and dictated my diary straight away. Looking back on
it now I find it riveting because I can go back on a CD-Rom of
my diaries and pick any Cabinet, any issue and follow it right
the way through. It helps me now to be a sensible and useful citizen.
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