Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-53)
RT HON
LORD HURD
OF WESTWELL
CH CBE, RT HON
LORD OWEN
CH, RT HON
SIR MENZIES
CAMPBELL CBE QC MP AND
ADAM PRICE
MP
3 APRIL 2008
Q40 Kelvin Hopkins: Precisely, and
I speak as one who has rebelled some might say frequently. I do
accept that most of my colleagues find that very hard indeed,
even if they privately might agree with my view. It is not just
because they want to be a minister or want to support the party,
the psychological pressures which come on people not to rebel
are enormous. I think if people had been a bit freer at the time
of the Iraq war, the Iraq war vote would have gone down, the Prime
Minister would have resigned and we would not have gone to war
in Iraq with America. Think the pressures were great—the
psychological pressures, loyalty, tribalism, and also the possibility
that bringing down a Prime Minister might lose you your seat in
an election. People do not want to do that, so there are all sorts
of reasons. I am trying to find out—I have various thoughts—what
constitutional changes we could make which would give Parliament
a much stronger role in relation to the Executive and stop Prime
Ministers having the enormous power they have in Britain compared
with almost every other Prime Minister in the democratic world.
Lord Hurd of Westwell: It is not
a constitutional power that they have. I entirely agree with Ming,
it is just the way our politics are structured, the psychology
of it and the role of parties. It is odd because what has emerged,
and it emerges from every conversation one has on this, as Ming
said, is people are passionately interested in political issues.
If you go to schools and universities, which I do all the time,
you will find this. What they do not see is the role of the party
in this, yet it is precisely the role of the party and the strength
of that role which is inhibiting the House of Commons from doing
what in the 19th Century it did almost as a matter of course.
Therefore, a straitjacket is not just a straitjacket on what Members
of Parliament do, it is also one of the reasons why people are
turned off politics as a whole. It is a matter of breaking it
case by case, vote by vote, not so much a matter of passing new
resolutions in general terms.
Adam Price: In Italy, they do
not have a Parliamentary democracy, it is controlled by the parties
and that is the political culture we have as well and that has
to be broken. Peter Oborne 's book, the Political Class,
has shed a lot of light on this, the fact that we now have a generation
of politicians who have emerged out of politics, they know nothing
else, working in politics, think-tanks, researchers, et cetera,
so it is probably worse now than at any point. Now is the time
to confront that because Members of Parliament need to have independence
of mind, that includes independence of mind from their parties
as well. I notice even Mike Gibbs said he would be prepared to
vote for an Iraq inquiry as long as it was allowed to go back
over the 1990s and 1980s. Why not? I would love to see Mike Gibbs
rebel against the Government on this issue, but why not. We need
to break that iron grip unfortunately that the whips and the party
managers have over our political thinking.
Lord Owen: It is quite impossible
to hold a proper inquiry that time limits your look at Iraq, quite
impossible. Of course you have to go back over the 1980's. I am
not sure there would be too much resistance there. Of course one
way this could be done—and personally I have even contemplated
it, but I have no powers in the House of Lords in the sense that
I cannot mobilise people—is the House of Lords can do primary
legislation and legally it could set up an inquiry. There is no
doubt that we could also reach a consensus broadly along the lines
which your Committee are leading you on to and that would then
have to be voted on by the House of Commons. That may be the right
procedure. That is also one of the problems which has not yet
been addressed. With the reform of the House of Lords, you have
to decide whether you want to make it toothless or whether you
want to give it some teeth.
Q41 Chairman: I think we have got
the point. I can see red lights flashing at that point.
Sir Menzies Campbell: It is a
delicious idea for the House of Lords to reform the House of Commons!
Kelvin Hopkins: There are many more possible
questions, but there is one question which I think is very important
and is particularly addressed to David and Douglas. Before Robin
Cook died he spoke to the Hansard Society and he said that the
party system had changed particularly because of the way the Labour
Party elects its leader. In the past it had elected its leader
through the Parliamentary Labour Party and as a result they had
a range of views within Cabinet, from Shirley Williams and Roy
Jenkins across to Barbara Castle and Tony Benn, and there were
genuine debates representing that range of views within Cabinet.
Now, the Cabinet is a cipher, loyal to the Prime Minister, and
if anybody steps out of line then they find themselves on the
back benches. That is a crude simplification of his argument.
But this has changed the nature of our party politics and has
given enormously greater power to the Prime Minister than in the
past. They do not have to deal with the factions in the party
anymore because they have got absolute control of the party. I
think it started perhaps with Margaret Thatcher, but Margaret
Thatcher was much more open and spoke to a range of views within
her party more than did Tony Blair. Tony Blair was not interested
in a range of views, he was interested in his own view. I only
met him a couple of times in Downing Street so I did not know
him personally, but he was very clear, he said, "You accept
our view. This is the line. This is what you are going to do".
Chairman: I think that was a commentary
rather than a question.
Q42 Kelvin Hopkins: I would like
David and Douglas to comment, if they have got any thoughts on
that.
Lord Owen: At the end of the day,
it was the House of Commons which got rid of Margaret Thatcher
and it was the House of Commons which got rid of Tony Blair.
Q43 Kelvin Hopkins: It took a long
time.
Lord Owen: It was the Labour Party
Members who got rid of Tony Blair by giving him the timetable
to leave and it was the Conservative Party MPs who got rid of
Margaret Thatcher.
Q44 Kelvin Hopkins: We are forced
into nuclear options all the time instead of having a real debate.
Lord Owen: At the end of the day,
although they get elected by a wider franchise, Conservative,
Labour and Liberal leaders, which I personally strongly support,
they are made or broken and they leave office if they lose the
confidence of the House of Commons. That has been recently shown
on two most powerful Prime Ministers, Tony Blair and Margaret
Thatcher. At the end of the day, their failure to carry their
own MPs meant they were kicked out of office.
Chairman: That is a party answer. Enoch
Powell once said that it is a mistake to talk about Parliament
in a collective sense because Parliament now is where the party
battle is conducted. The argument against what we are proposing
in a way is the Marconi, the fact that we have entered an era
when party trumps all, even the ability in Parliament to do things
that it ought to do.
Q45 Mr Prentice: I agree with that.
Everything is played for party advantage and I am looking at you,
Ming!
Sir Menzies Campbell: Why are
you looking at me!
Q46 Mr Prentice: The suggestion that
MPs can just be dispassionate about everything without realising
the consequences for the party is just lunacy. This is why we
have such a problem in addressing this issue because at the end
of the day, it all comes down to the calculation about party advantage.
We have got to break through that and it is a struggle to find
the way forward. Gordon Brown says he wants an inquiry but not
yet because we have troops on the ground. Like every Labour MP,
I got a briefing before the debate. I am not going to read it
out verbatim because it says, "Dissemination of this political
briefing is prohibited and may be unlawful", so I am not
going to do, I do not want to get into trouble with Gordon Brown!
Sir Menzies Campbell: That is
not like you, if I may say so!
Q47 Mr Prentice: They talk about
the precedence for an inquiry at this stage when we have troops
on the ground and we are all concerned about that, we have got
the military in Iraq. The briefing says there was an inquiry into
the Dardanelles during the First World War but only after the
specific operation had been concluded, no inquiry into Suez—we
have talked about that already—no inquiry into the Korean
War, the Gulf or the Balkan conflicts, the Franks inquiry which
we talked about earlier, it may have been agreed during the conflict
but it was not set up until after the end of the Falklands conflict.
That is what Labour MPs were being told, yes, but there is no
precedent for having an inquiry when our troops are engaged on
the ground. That is an issue we have got to grapple with. Maybe
that was just an observation from me rather than a question.
Sir Menzies Campbell: If Douglas
Hurd is right about troops remaining in Iraq for a lot longer
than people contemplate, then you would never have an inquiry.
Q48 Mr Prentice: We would never have
one. Okay.
Lord Hurd of Westwell: You quoted
precedent, but it is not an argument at all, there is no real
argument. Okay, the troops were out of the Dardanelles but all
the people involved were still fighting, still in action, and
it was a very difficult thing to have an inquiry into the Dardanelles,
particularly for Churchill but he welcomed it.
Q49 Mr Prentice: Because he was a
target.
Lord Hurd of Westwell: The fact
of the lack of precedent does not constitute an argument at all.
Q50 Mr Prentice: Fair enough. A final
point to Lord Owen. Jeremy Greenstock, our man in Baghdad, has
written a book about his time as our man in Baghdad and that was
blocked by Jack Straw and has still not been published. At the
very beginning you were talking about your penchant for openness
when you were an MP, but your views perhaps have changed. Do you
think there is a case for Jeremy Greenstock's book to be published?
Lord Owen: It will ultimately
be published.
Q51 Mr Prentice: But you are calling
for an inquiry now. Why can you not call for Jeremy Greenstock's
book to be published now as an aid to our understanding because
the American equivalent, I forget the guy's name now, the person
who ran the Coalition Provisional Authority, his book was published
years ago.
Lord Owen: A lot of people's books
have been published and a more important book by the UK ambassador
in Washington in the run up to the war has been published. We
have now seen the Prime Minister's Chief of Staff, who was also
made a civil servant, publish the whole account of the Northern
Ireland negotiations. Your Committee took evidence on this whole
thing. Again, I think there are no absolute rules. Jeremy Greenstock's
views have become fairly obvious. The honest answer is he could
defy the ban if he wished to. He does not choose to in part, because
he is head of Ditchley, which is a quasi-governmental position,
he is an honest and decent diplomat and he wants to take account
of those criticisms. There was also a ban on a former ambassador
publishing an account, Sir Nicholas Henderson, which he went along
with with extreme reluctance. It has probably got to be left to
the diplomat. Effectively, there are no rules that he could be
banned from it. Jack Straw could not stop his pension, which would
be the only real sanction, he might try but he could not stop
it. I do think there are problems about the privacy of civil service
advice. Of course, one of the issues would be we would discover
whether, as I believe it was, Greenstock told Tony Blair the votes
do not exist in the UN Security Council, Second Resolution. I
do not think that is a terribly devastating piece of information
to come out.
Q52 Mr Prentice We should publish,
that is what you are telling us?
Lord Owen: Jeremy Greenstock will
publish and I think he will publish when he leaves Ditchley.
Q53 Chairman: This was raised at
the beginning. If there was a change of Government in a couple
of years' time and if an inquiry either had been established already
before that happened or if one was established subsequently, would
there be an issue about access to the documents from the previous
administration? You are shaking your heads in opposite directions.
Lord Owen: I think there would
be an issue.
Lord Hurd of Westwell: There would
be an issue but it is one of those rules which is constantly broken.
I do not think it would be a real issue. It could be overridden.
Lord Owen: The freedom of information
is now overriding all this. Sir Stephen Wall has just published
a book on the history of the negotiations in the European Community
from 1984 to the present day, and it is a very good book too,
but basically it is breaking many of the traditions and that goes
across two administrations.
Chairman: Gentlemen, you have been extremely
helpful to us in trying to test some of these procedural ideas
against solid experience and practice. I think Charles' point
is the key one. With the particular case we are talking about,
there is bafflement on the part of the public as to why Parliament,
which, as Ming has told us, is sovereign, and we tell ourselves
endlessly is supreme, cannot do the thing which the public obviously
wants to happen, which is to have a proper inquiry into what happened
in Iraq. I think it is bad for the institution that this is the
case and it is bad for its relationship with the political system.
We want to try and find a mechanism which can take this forward
and we are very grateful to all of you for coming and helping
us with that today. Thank you very much indeed.
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