Examination of Evidence (Questions 180-196)
SIR HAYDEN
PHILLIPS GCB
16 MAY 2006
Q180 Mr Tyrie: You were given no
steer on the potential conflict which Keith Vaz has been alluding
to between what public opinion may want and what the political
parties may agree.
Sir Hayden Phillips: No.
Q181 Mr Tyrie: Were you given any
steer or was there any discussion at all on whether you think
it is possible to create a fair system of funding which imposes
a cap on donations from individuals or corporations, but which
does not impose a cap on trade unions?
Sir Hayden Phillips: Mr Tyrie,
you are trying to get me to tell you what the Prime Minister's
views are in detail on this subject.
Q182 Mr Tyrie: Let us put his views
to one side and let us have a go at your views.
Sir Hayden Phillips: I think he
might be asked rather than me. I do not propose to disclose the
conversations I will have with the chairman of the Conservative
Party and certain others in the public domain, nor should I disclose
any other conversations with any other party in the public domain.
Q183 Mr Tyrie: Sir Hayden, that is
a fair answer, but what about your views? Clearly, you will not
give me the Prime Minister's views.
Sir Hayden Phillips: Mr Vaz and
I have been round that buoy and I have tried to persuade him that
even though he may believe otherwise I am quite capable of operating
on the basis that on this set of issues I have no decided views
of my own.
Q184 Mr Tyrie: You think it may be
possible to imagine a fair system of party finance which imposes
a cap on individual donations, but which does not impose a cap
on trade union donations.
Sir Hayden Phillips: One of the
issues for discussion is caps on donations, whether they are caps
on organisations—trade unions or companies or whatever—that
is going to be part of the conversation.
Mr Tyrie: I just have a couple of other
questions, if that is all right.
Chairman: Be very quick because we are
running short of time.
Q185 Mr Tyrie: This is an issue of
considerable public interest. You said a moment ago that there
was consultation about your appointment prior to it; what led
you to have that impression?
Sir Hayden Phillips: As far as
I know, my name was mentioned as the person the Prime Minister
had in mind, both to the office of the Leader of the Conservative
Party and to the office of the Leader of the Liberal Democratic
Party, and I was told that they had no objection to my appointment.
That is what I was told.
Q186 Mr Tyrie: When were you told
that, how soon prior to your appointment?
Sir Hayden Phillips: It was either
the day before or the morning of the announcement.
Q187 Mr Tyrie: Perhaps you would
like to come back and clarify that point with the Committee on
paper. One other question, we have been discussing earlier today
why you appear to have been chosen for this very difficult role
and I think it is a very important role. Might not one of the
reasons be that you conducted a review of the honours system in
2004?
Sir Hayden Phillips: It might
be, but I do not know that it was.
Mr Tyrie: Do you think in retrospect
that that review did not go as well as might be hoped? After all,
within two years we are into the biggest honours scandal—
Q188 Chairman: That has been asked.
Sir Hayden Phillips: Mr Vaz has
kindly helped me round that particular obstacle. The only very
short reply is that the problems you refer to were not affected
by my review, my review dealt with the whole of the rest of the
honours system and as far as I know there has been no controversy
about it and those proposals have been implemented.
Q189 Mr Tyrie: That is certainly
not correct. Part of your review was to abolish the Honours Scrutiny
Committee and create another committee to appoint peerages, and
it is that committee which has now flagged up very serious problems
with a number of proposals, mainly from the Labour Party, for
peerages.
Sir Hayden Phillips: No, the House
of Lords Appointments Commission already existed and was doing
that job; the question was whether the Honours Scrutiny Committee
had outlived its natural life and its members all felt there was
no point in them continuing independently and they should be absorbed.
That was a consensus recommendation and I do not think it had
any effect at all on what subsequently happened.
Q190 Dr Whitehead: Sir Hayden, you
could regard this as partly a journey of self-discovery in as
much as you will know what you think by the end of the inquiry
and will report on that; indeed, I note that Lord Falconer, when
recently giving evidence to this Committee, stated that at the
end of the inquiry we would have a pretty good reason for not
accepting what Sir Hayden Phillips has said—so presumably
by then you would know what you think.
Sir Hayden Phillips: I hope so.
Q191 Dr Whitehead: If a number of
political parties in your discussion came to you with a consensus,
which was however not what you think, how would you approach that
in terms of your eventual report?
Sir Hayden Phillips: This reflects
some conversations we have had earlier. What I want to aim to
achieve is a position in which the analysis of the issues—and
I know you are very familiar with many of these issues and indeed
have analysed them yourself—and the discussions with political
parties about what their views as to the future might be, can
be brought together. That, in a sense, I see as the core of the
task and I do not know quite how that will yet go, but I hope
they can be brought together so that at the end of the day there
is analysis that will be able to support a set of recommendations
which, as much as possible as the terms of reference say, are
agreed between the political parties.
Q192 Dr Whitehead: Are you considering
international perspectives or looking at other countries in terms
of coming to a view about where you stand?
Sir Hayden Phillips: Yes, it is
a necessary part of the discipline of going through the analysis,
trying to see what works and does not work, even though you are
looking at different cultural and political contexts which you
clearly have to be aware of. That must be a part of the exercise,
but I do not think a dominant part of it.
Q193 Dr Whitehead: Just to clarify
my understanding of how as it were the inquiry will proceed, effectively
you will undertake a number of inquiries, including international
perspectives, which will collectively inform your view, and during
the course of coming to that view you will talk to the political
parties who may have a joint view between themselves as to what
would be advantageous all round, but those two views may not coincide.
If you did find that to be the case, would you seek to persuade
the political parties to come towards your view, or would the
political parties seek your view to come towards theirs?
Sir Hayden Phillips: I do not
know the answer to that question. I hope we can conduct a process
of conversation and analysis sufficiently in tandem that that
gulf does not appear. As we were saying, we might come to some
agreement between political parties but I might feel in my bones
that public opinion might not find that wholly acceptable. That
is one sort of dilemma, another one would be one in which indeed
there was a consensus amongst the political parties, but I have
come to a view from my analysis and indeed from my talks with
them which was not absolutely on all fours with that. I do not
know how we would necessarily handle that; I hope we would all
strive to avoid that happening because that would not necessarily
be in the general public interest.
Q194 Dr Whitehead: Do you have, finally,
any particular countries and methods of practice in existing state
funding or aid for political parties from particular countries
that you would find helpful to analyse during your inquiries?
Sir Hayden Phillips: I think I
should look—and I am interested if I may say so in your
own views on this—at as it were Westminster-style democracies,
Canada and Australia, and it is worth a look, possibly, at one
or two Scandinavian countries. I am already familiar with some
of the practices in France and Germany which are different political
cultures and will not necessarily be analogous in any sense, and
I am sure there are some lessons to be learned from the way the
United States does these things, particularly in terms of what
I have already said about the fact that you can set up controls,
often very tight controls, but evasion of them is a chronic problem
that you have to look out for and you have to try and spot what
happens if, because if you change the way that political parties
are funded then people's behaviours will change and that is very
difficult to forecast, it is not something that you can model
as you can model the financial effects on a party of a capital
donation of £50,000. You can do some work like that, but
what is much more difficult is to think forward about how a set
of recommendations will change people's behaviours, and I think
part of the conversations with the parties should be about what
impact they think their proposals will have on the behaviour of
political parties. We should look beyond the immediate issue to
try to say how would this system change the way people operate
in, say, two or three years time and ask those difficult questions,
because unless we can satisfy ourselves that we know enough and
have thought enough about those things, it is really quite risky
just to throw a consensual set of proposals forward and hope for
the best. Does that make sense?
Dr Whitehead: Thank you.
Q195 Barbara Keeley: I want to come
back to this question of consensus and just ask you about mechanisms
that you might be considering for achieving that, perhaps in the
latter part of your work. You have clearly started with bilateral
meetings with party leaders so I just wondered what thoughts you
have about what mechanism you might use or that might be appropriate
for bridging any gap between the parties, because it seems to
me that there is a gap between parties at the moment, those considering
or currently supporting state funding and those that seem to be
against it. How might you achieve that, or do you think you will
just carry on meeting parties bilaterally and trying to move them?
Sir Hayden Phillips: Clearly,
I will, as I was explaining in answer to earlier questions, go
on having meetings where those are fruitful and we are coming
towards a greater degree of agreement. Equally, however, there
is nothing to prevent—indeed it would be a good thing—parties
speaking to each other themselves, using me as a helpful agent
in that process. In this area there is going to be no substitute,
I am afraid, for grinding on through the meetings that are required
to see how you get on.
Q196 Chairman: Sir Hayden, we have
many more witnesses to see this afternoon. Happy grinding, as
you describe it. Thank you for giving your evidence this afternoon;
I think we will be seeing you again.
Sir Hayden Phillips: I expected
you to say that, Chairman. I look forward to it .
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