Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
SIR PHILIP
MAWER
28 FEBRUARY 2008
Q40 Julie Morgan: So what is your
status now?
Sir Philip Mawer: You mean now?
Q41 Julie Morgan: Yes.
Sir Philip Mawer: I think I am
strictly a consultant. I am not an employee of the Cabinet Office.
I am employed by them as a consultant on a consultancy basis.
I think that is the technical employment basis, Chairman. Frankly,
maybe I should have been more concerned about this, but I was
more concerned about doing the job and doing it in a way that
demonstrated its independence than fussing about the contract,
but maybe I ought to have looked at this more carefully.
Q42 Julie Morgan: So you are employed
as a consultant?
Sir Philip Mawer: I am employed,
but as a consultant. I am not an official, I am not a civil servant.
I have not gone through the Civil Service Commission and all that
sort of stuff in terms of my appointment.
Q43 Mr Prentice: It is strange, is
it not, for an independent regulator to be based in the Cabinet
Office and not alongside all the other ethical regulators? We
had Lord Mayhew in front of us, the Advisory Committee on Business
Appointments, and they lived together happily, all the regulators
together, but it seems strange that you have got to draw on support
from the very propriety and ethics people who are advising the
Cabinet Secretary and permanent secretaries, and so on.
Sir Philip Mawer: It is not that
different, in a way, from the situation that operates in the House.
I had my team as Parliamentary Commissioner, but they are the
same people who are advising members day to day on what to register,
what not to register, what to declare, what not to declare.
Q44 Mr Prentice: So there would be
nothing wrong with taking all the other ethical regulators and
having them supported by the Cabinet Office?
Sir Philip Mawer: You are touching
on, I realise, an issue which the Committee has addressed before.
There is a question about how the field of regulators as a whole
is organised, and you made proposals last year, I think it was,
for perhaps beginning to bring them into a more coherently shaped
sort of arrangement, and I think when the Cabinet Secretary appeared
before you in November he acknowledged that that question was
very much still up for debate: how the ethical regulators are
best supported and serviced, and so it is a moving scene, it is
a shifting scene, and I think exactly how we end up in the future
has yet to be worked out.
Q45 David Heyes: I want to press
you a bit further on this consultant status. I am a bit surprised
by that. I had assumed you were a civil servant.
Sir Philip Mawer: No.
Q46 David Heyes: Had you not been
a civil servant, then the other logical status would be for you
to have continued as a parliamentary officer. There would have
been logic in that. Ministers are, by definition, members of one
House or other of Parliament, but you are neither. You have told
us about what seems to be your idea about security of tenure,
that you have got the ability to be quite challenging to the Prime
Minister if the circumstances warranted it; that does not seem
to sit well with the idea of consultant status. Presumably your
consultancy can be terminated just like that.
Sir Philip Mawer: Indeed, it is
an appointment of the Prime Minister and it can be terminated
by the Prime Minister, but, frankly, in my independence the guarantee
of my effectiveness in the role does not rest at the end of the
day on the particular terms of my contract; what it rests on is
my own willingness, if I thought I was being crossed in the job
or prevented from doing it properly, to walk away from it. Frankly,
I would do that. Moreover, I know I would do it with, first, the
support of this Committee, or at least you would rapidly ask me
to appear before you and say why I had done it. Whether you then
supported me or not would be another matter; but I would be doing
it. In short, it would be a very public act and it would be done
in a very public context, and the ladies and gentlemen of the
press would be very interested in it. It is not something that
one threatens to do at the drop of a hat, but it is the ultimate
sanction and it is the ultimate sanction one has in any of these
roles and, frankly, that is more important at the end of the day
than precisely what the terms of your contract are.
Q47 David Heyes: I will not press
this any further, except with this one question. Do you know of
any other people in comparable jobs to yours, a regulatory ministerial
advisory role, who occupy their positions on the basis of consultancy?
Sir Philip Mawer: I do not, but
then, I am afraid, that reflects my ignorance of the terms of
their particular appointments rather than my knowledge. I am not
saying I am the only one. I do want to emphasise that, at the
end of the day, as I understand it, the consultancy arrangement
is simply a matter of employment convenience; it does not, in
my view, describe adequately the status or the degree of security
that one has in the job.
Q48 David Heyes: Let me take you
back to the annual report. It is very early days and I am not
expecting that you have got firm ideas about the shape of the
annual report, but have you given some thought to what it might
cover? Will it, for instance, include reports of any investigations
that you might carry out?
Sir Philip Mawer: The annual report
will certainly make reference to any investigations that I have
carried out. Whether it will include detailed reports or not,
I doubt, because I see it more as an opportunity to explain the
nature of the job, the approach that I am taking to it, including
the advice side of the role; and I am envisaging that the report
will appear alongside the new list of ministers' interests which
the Prime Minister is committed to produce, and I want to take
the opportunity to explain, not in specific terms but in general
terms, how I approach advising ministers about the avoidance of
conflict of interests and so on. I think that will give some reassurance
to members of the public and I hope will be helpful.
Q49 David Heyes: Is that an annual
report?
Sir Philip Mawer: I am sorry?
Q50 David Heyes: Would that be an
annual report? Once you have done that, where do you go next year,
other than to repeat what you said this year? One expects an annual
report to contain at least a section that says: "These are
the things that we did during last year."
Sir Philip Mawer: Yes.
Q51 David Heyes: And you are not
going to do that.
Sir Philip Mawer: No, it will
do. I am going to do that. It will certainly say what I have done
in the past year.
Q52 David Heyes: What would that
be? If that is not going to be reports of your investigations,
what can it be?
Sir Philip Mawer: It will be,
for example, at the end of my first few months in office, a clear
description of the nature of the role and how I have gone about
doing it. What I regard as the key objectives to be achieved in
the role and how I think I am going to achieve them, and, yes,
it will give an account of what I have done in the six months
or so before it appears, including any investigations that I have
conducted. All I was quibbling over is it is not going to be a
full account, a detailed blow-by-blow account of every inquiry.
I did not do that in the parliamentary context and I would not
do it here. I do not see any point in repeating myself.
Q53 David Heyes: Who will your annual
report go to?
Sir Philip Mawer: It will be publicly
available. It will go through the Cabinet Secretary to the Prime
Minister and then be published and, therefore, be available to
this Committee and anybody else who is interested.
Q54 David Heyes: I guess one purpose
of the job and the purpose of your annual report would be about
raising public trust in what ministers do so that we can have
confidence in them. Have you got any other thoughts, other than
your annual report, for promoting your role, your existence, as
part of the process of enhancing public trust in political life?
Sir Philip Mawer: I will seek
to do it in any way I can, but drawing on my past experience,
what makes for public awareness of your role is when there is
a crisis and the newspapers carry your name and then the allegations,
and all the rest of it, flood in. Yes, of course I will take every
opportunity I can to make the existence of my role, the basis
on which I operate, and so on, known generally, but in terms of
media coverage and what the public are aware of, you know yourself,
the media are the key.
Q55 David Heyes: We can expect, perhaps,
to see a website about your role?
Sir Philip Mawer: I have not discussed
that specifically with the Cabinet Office, but I do not see why
there should not be some link to the Cabinet Office site, a page
on the Cabinet Office site which indicates the nature of my job,
et cetera.
Q56 David Heyes: Do you ever envisage
carrying out any investigations that do not find their way into
the public domain that are not included in your annual report:
any concealed investigation? Is that a situation you can envisage?
Sir Philip Mawer: I have assumed
that the whole point of my appointment to the role, and the creation
of the role by the Prime Minister in its current form, is to provide
public reassurance, and, therefore, I think it unlikely that I
am going to be asked to conduct inquiries the result of which
will not become, in one way or another, public knowledge. It will
be for the Prime Minister to decide, at the end of the day, whether
or not my reports are published. I will make my report to the
Prime Minister; he will decide whether or not to publish it. I
think he has already made clear that he will make public the facts
on the basis of which he reaches decisions about what to do in
any particular case. I think, in the light of that, it is highly
likely that my findings will be made public, the findings of any
investigation that I produce.
Q57 David Heyes: I am pretty sure
your predecessor did not publish an annual report. It is one of
the ways in which I think you are going to be more distinctive
in your role—
Sir Philip Mawer: Correct.
Q58 David Heyes: ---and more public
about what you do. Do you know whether Sir John Bourn ever conducted
any concealed investigations, any investigation that we never
found out about, which never got into the public domain?
Sir Philip Mawer: No, I am not
aware that he conducted any such investigations.
Q59 Mr Prentice: He did not do any
investigations at all.
Sir Philip Mawer: No, I do not
believe he did.
Mr Prentice: Indeed, he did not do anything!
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