Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
WEDNESDAY 29 MARCH 2006
RT HON
JACK STRAW
MP
Q480 Jenny Willott: Do you think
most of the spin doctors of Number 10 would?
Mr Straw: If you are asking me
about special advisers, I think that special advisers are much
more in a position of civil servants than they are of ministers.
I served as a special adviser for three and a half years and you
gain confidences from other civil servants as a special adviser
doing your job which you would never ever gain as a minister,
so I happen to believe that similar rules should apply to special
advisers.
Q481 Jenny Willott: So as to civil
servants rather than to ministers?
Mr Straw: Yes, broadly the same
as to civil servants rather than as to ministers, and special
advisers are not accountable for their actions. Although they
are political appointees, in terms of their accountability they
are in a more similar position to civil servants than they are
to ministers.
Q482 Chairman: Just on Jenny's point
there, if the Prime Minister came forward with the proposition,
"Look, it is time to put a line in the sand here, boys and
girls. We have now decided that we are going to have some new
rules. You cannot publish for so many years. No more of these
instant books, diaries. It must go through the Cabinet Secretary
and there must be prior approval for anything you want to do,"
you would be there first signing up?
Mr Straw: If the recommendations
were sensible, yes, I would.
Q483 Chairman: Of the kind that I
have described?
Mr Straw: Yes, I would.
Q484 Chairman: Do you think your
colleagues would also?
Mr Straw: I cannot speak for all
my colleagues. As I say, I actually think the atmosphere in Cabinet
these days is much more collegiate and collective than it was
at the time of Crossman, Jenkins, Barbara Castle, Tony Benn, significantly
more. Could I just say this about timescales, because Jenny asked
me about that: similar issues have arisen in respect of freedom
of information. Whether information should be made public is always
a matter of time. There is some information which comes out sometimes
100 years later which was highly secret but there is no point
in keeping it quiet after 100 years. Most information we publish
at 30 years. What we agreed in the House—and the Chairman
will remember this—in discussions in respect of the Freedom
of Information Act was that the 30 year rule was too crude. There
is quite a lot of information which can be published and made
available under the FOI almost contemporaneously. You have got
to make a judgment about where the public interest lies.
Q485 Chairman: You said 15 years
is dead in the water. If Jeremy Greenstock comes to you this year
and says, "Okay, last year I couldn't, this year can I?"—
Mr Straw: The 15 years has plainly
not been followed.
Q486 Chairman: When could he?
Mr Straw: I was just about to
make the point, Chairman, that it depends on what exactly he is
talking about. To use an example which would not be in his book,
but if there were a compromise of intelligence then 15 years would
be too short in most cases, but if it is the normal run of the
mill, well after the particular administration has left office—
Q487 Chairman: That is the test,
you think?
Mr Straw: I think it is part of
the test. It is not conclusive, but it is part of the test.
Q488 Jenny Willott: Do you think
Alastair Campbell is behaving in an honourable way?
Mr Straw: Yes, I do, from what
I have seen, and he actually let me have a copy of the letter
which he had written to this Committee where he has made it clear
that he is intending to stick by the rules, and that is in character
as well.
Q489 Grant Shapps: Foreign Secretary,
we were actually privileged to have Sir Christopher Meyer in here
as part of his world book promotion tour for DC Confidential
and, to be honest, I did not really particularly take to him,
a slippery sort of character, hard to pin down, and very difficult
to lay a glove on, as the media pointed out afterwards. I can
understand why he really gets up your nose actually, but can you
actually name one element, something he wrote, which is actually
damaging?
Mr Straw: His book was not stopped,
and if it had been directly damaging to the public interest we
would have sought to stop it. I read your evidence, Mr Shapps.
I thought the press were very unfair, actually. I thought you
had laid a glove on him, but there we are.
Grant Shapps: You will not get round
me that way!
Mr Straw: But it was because he
did not appear to have breached the key criteria for legal action
that we did not stand in the way of its publication, but neither
did we approve of it, and that needs to be made clear. It was
a breach of trust, no question about it. As I have said, as a
result of the publication, I think he has suffered reputationally
far more than if we had pursued a legal action, whether he won
or lost in his particular case.
Q490 Grant Shapps: He may have suffered
reputationally but probably not financially, I should imagine,
in this particular case, but could you name me one element which
was actually damaging, or are you conceding there are none?
Mr Straw: What I concede—and
I have not got the book in front of me—is that there was
no case for seeking legal action or to prevent him from publishing
it, which there could have been and have been sometimes in respect
of other publications. Nonetheless—and this is the point
about this—the law is a very restrictive facility in these
circumstances. The fact that there was not a basis for taking
legal action against him does not mean that we approved it. We
did it because it was plainly and very significantly a breach
of confidence.
Q491 Grant Shapps: So really actually
what you have experienced is what we have all experienced, that
he is the sort of guy who gets under your skin? He is annoying?
You do not approve of his book, but actually there is nothing
that he did that was wrong?
Mr Straw: No. Let me say that
when I was dealing with him day by day, from time to time, when
he was Ambassador in Washington I rubbed along with him because
I actually think (to come back to my point about the permanent
civil service) that that is what you have as a duty as a minister.
You take the collective civil service as is and get on with it.
I have got no particular views on that.
Q492 Grant Shapps: So the problem
is actually, as you have described it, that really he has just
been unprofessional? That is the complaint, that he has been unprofessional,
but he did not do anything illegal?
Mr Straw: Plainly, he did not
do anything which caused us to take him to court, and I have answered
that, but he had been unprofessional. He had broken the trust
which was fundamental to him getting the job and keeping the job.
Q493 Grant Shapps: Did you, whilst
you were working with him, suspect that he might be the kind of
cad that he has turned out to be?
Mr Straw: No. If I had thought
that he was going to write a book of this kind, then I would have
said to him, "I don't think you can carry on doing your job."
Q494 Grant Shapps: So whilst as an
Ambassador he may have thrown exceedingly good parties, you would
not have thought there was any reason not to stay at his residence,
for example?
Mr Straw: No, I always stayed
at his residence. Let me also say that I asked him to stay on
because he was due to leave, and did leave, at the end of February
2003. That meant there was going to be a six or seven month hiatus
between him leaving office and David Manning taking over, because
it was important that David Manning should stay as the Prime Minister's
diplomatic adviser for that period of six months or so leading
up to the summer. I asked him if he would carry on, but in the
end he refused to do so, for reasons which he has sought to explain
to the Committee, and I respected his decision.
Q495 Grant Shapps: So would you now
go and stay at the residence of the Ambassador, knowing what could
happen?
Mr Straw: I do stay at residences,
is the answer. I know this was an issue raised by Andrew Turnbull.
I do stay at residences. I have got direct responsibility for
Ambassadors and it would be absurd if the Foreign Secretary chose
to stay in hotels rather than using the opportunity to stay in
the residences -
Q496 Grant Shapps: It is good to
hear this experience has not put you off!
Mr Straw: No, no, and going back
to Mr Hopkins's point, what the Meyer book has done, I think,
has been to re-enliven these conventions in the minds of officials.
I think there will be very, very few members of the Diplomatic
Service doing a Meyer in the foreseeable future.
Q497 Grant Shapps: I see, so actually
in your mind not only has he damaged his own reputation by disgracing
himself and therefore it has been extremely detrimental to him,
but it has also done the job of reminding all the other civil
servants that they cannot do the same thing? So this is rather
a satisfactory outcome?
Mr Straw: I think he has reminded
them. These conventions have enforcement behind them, but they
cannot work unless people voluntarily sign up to them and follow
them. It has just made the service as a whole very angry, and
this again was a point brought out by Andrew Turnbull, that if
you end up in a situation where trust breaks down significantly
between ministers and officials then you will have to move towards
the kind of system which you have in the United States, which
I happen to regard as satisfactory.
Q498 Grant Shapps: I am pleased you
mention this, because this is what I want to come on to. Could
I just cover this last point. We have talked about Paul Brenner's
book which Gordon brought up and you mentioned the idea of the
American system which means that civil servants are actually political
appointees. In fact on another investigation we had your brother
in here, I think peddling the same line. Is this something you
would favour, perhaps?
Mr Straw: My brother is my brother
and he must be responsible for his own views. Personally, I am
signed up broadly to the current arrangements because I happen
to think they work and I think that if you go down the path of
the American system or, say, the French system you end up with
more problems than you solve.
Q499 Chairman: May we have five minutes?
Mr Straw: Could we make it three,
because I am really pushed for time.
Chairman: I want to try and make sure
that everyone has had a go, but we will be very quick.
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