Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-117)
MR DON
TOUHIG AND
MR JONATHAN
IREMONGER
1 DECEMBER 2005
Q100 Chairman: But you have conceded
that when the announcement was made about the scheme, you would
have expected Professor Hayward to be in it. Presumably your review
that looks at the efficiency of this scheme puts Professor Hayward
back in it?
Mr Touhig: What I am saying is
that when the scheme was announced, if I were Professor Hayward,
I would believe I would have been covered by this scheme. The
point I am making, as I have made several times, is that the way
we handled the announcement and developing the criteria ongoing
has meant that he is not in the scheme. I cannot say—
Q101 Chairman: You cannot say you
are going to put him back in it?
Mr Touhig: I cannot say that because
that would be unfair and I need, at the moment, to get to the
bottom of how we came to the understanding that I had up until
Monday. The criteria had been common right throughout. That is
one of the reasons we rejected Ann's recommendation for a major
inquiry because we believed the whole thing was running properly
with the criteria we had set down. I am now in doubt about that.
When I get that information, I will be in a better position to
judge how we got here. When we get that information, if it means
that the department has to look at the scheme overall again, we
will look at it.
Mr Iremonger: Could I make one
other comment? Professor Hayward applied because he thought he
was eligible. Somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000 ex-members of
the Indian Army also applied because they thought they were eligible.
Q102 Chairman: We are talking about
the civilian internees, are we not?
Mr Iremonger: The scheme has to
be coherent as a whole because the members of the Indian Army
were British at the time. Are they less eligible than Professor
Hayward?
Q103 Mr Burrowes: Obviously that
will extend in terms of the financial impact of the issue of eligibility.
Is the financial consideration a key relevant factor?
Mr Touhig: No.
Mr Iremonger: The issue is who
is the current British Government responsible for as the United
Kingdom as to people who have a link to the United Kingdom.
Q104 Mr Burrowes: As long as it is
not at all a financial consideration.
Mr Touhig: No. I made that clear
in my statement.
Q105 Mr Burrowes: For clarification,
finally: when was the Minister in particular made aware of the
contents of Alan Burnham's 2001 memo?
Mr Touhig: I cannot be sure when
that was, in all truth. I cannot be sure, but I made the point,
in response to the Chairman's remarks this morning, that what
I need to do, as part of this review, this inquiry, is to discover
what the department did in response to that memo. I am not clear
from the evidence I have at the moment what we did.
Q106 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Briefly,
Don, in your statements, and I am just following on from what
David said, you said that the budget had already been spent.
Mr Touhig: We had spent more than
we budgeted for.
Q107 Mr Liddell-Grainger: Have you
not got extra money to be able to sort this out?
Mr Touhig: There is not a question
on that.
Q108 Mr Liddell-Grainger: I think
you said, and you will correct me if I am wrong, that 25,000 people
had already had payments.
Mr Touhig: About 25,000.
Q109 Mr Liddell-Grainger: When Ron
Bridge was here, I think he said there were under 20,000 civilians,
or that is what he thought. Who are the 25,000? How was that made
up?
Mr Touhig: It is the POWs—I
think I have the exact figures here. I do have some figures on
the numbers.
Mr Iremonger: I think it is 20,000
for the number of civilians surviving after the war. By the time
the scheme came in 2001, a large number of those were deceased.
Mr Touhig: The figures I have
are 9,248 POWs (prisoners of war) and 15,517 civilians and/or
surviving spouses, coming to 24,765.
Q110 Mr Liddell-Grainger: The 15,517
have had some form of payment. What have they had, the £500
or the £10,000?
Mr Touhig: They have had £10,000.
Q111 Mr Liddell-Grainger: There are
still roughly 3,000 to go?
Mr Touhig: It depends on the criteria
that would apply. As we said in response to earlier questions,
if you had wider criteria, then a great many more people would
be eligible for a claim under the scheme.
Q112 Mr Liddell-Grainger: When you
have had your deliberations, will you be passing on facts to the
Ombudsman?
Mr Touhig: I do not see why not.
We might have a disagreement with the Ombudsman about her role,
on which I think she answered earlier this morning. I recognise
the Ombudsman has an important role to play in these matters.
As I have said earlier, there are times when government departments
will dispute the outcome of an Ombudsman's report but I think
it is better to be frank and honest about it. There are clearly
going to be matters that affect the Ombudsman and her interests
in this matter, and there is no way in which I believe anything
I tell you or the House should be denied the Ombudsman. She should
have all that I have got.
Q113 Chairman: It is a good job we
asked you to come along, is it not?
Mr Touhig: If it had been in a
couple of weeks' time, I might have been able to answer some of
the questions more fully. I do apologise to colleagues if they
feel that I have not answered as fully as I would like to.
Q114 Chairman: I understand that.
It was a good idea for us to ask you to come along on the back
of the Ombudsman's report because, as you say, it was only in
preparing for this session that this new information came to light.
Mr Touhig: I think that is great
credit to the foresight of this committee!
Q115 Chairman: You are going to make
a statement to Parliament before Christmas?
Mr Touhig: A statement will be
made to Parliament before Christmas.
Q116 Chairman: We may then want to
invite you back and we can talk again about some of the details
of this?
Mr Touhig: Indeed, and I would
be happy to come back.
Q117 Chairman: As people have said,
there is a tragedy in the fact that here is a scheme which was
hugely welcomed when it was announced and we all took pride in
the fact that a British Government was doing it and then to be
so penny-pinching, we finish up feeling a sense of shame about
the way it has been administered. I told you what Professor Hayward's
question to you was. Ann Moxley's question was: have they not
got something better to do? That means, given the numbers, given
the amount involved, surely this is not something that should
prevent the intention of the scheme being realised and all the
credit that came with it being fulfilled. We are looking to you
with great hope now, Don. You are going away and you are going
to do this review. You are going to make an announcement before
Christmas. As David said to you, it would make it even worse if,
having announced a review, the review were not to deal with the
kinds of issues that have been raised here and previously. We
thank you for coming along and being as honest as you can be.
We thank you for going off and doing the review that the Ombudsman
asked you to do, and we look forward to the product of it and
to talking to you further about it. That is probably as much as
we can say this morning. Thank you very much indeed.
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