Letter to Chris Grayling MP for Epsom
and Ewell
I have hesitated to bother you because the issue
which concerns me seemed to me primarily one of policy and principle
rather than a personal complaint. But I am now persuaded that
I have grounds for pressing the issue of principle as hard as
I can in every conceivable quarter, which I continue to do; and
that I have been unfairly treated by my former employer.
I quote below the text of a letter I wrote to
the Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee last
June. I send it in full because it describes my concerns, and
also so that you may see the terms in which I addressed myself
to Dr Wright. I continue to correspond with one of the Clerks
to his Committee.
I have read relevant extracts from the Fifth
Report of the Select Committee and evidence given to the Committee
covering the issue of memoirs of former public servants. I am
troubled by the way in which the FCO in particular has re-drawn
its rules on publications. They have done so in such a way as
to give them wide and vague scope to lean on former members of
HM Diplomatic Service and to interfere with their rights to contribute
to public debate on matters of public interest. The revised rules
appear to compromise their retired colleagues' freedom of speech
and opinion.
I retired from HM Diplomatic Service in July
2005. I was then British High Commissioner in Nairobi. The FCO
changed its rules for diplomats—embodied in DSR 5 and the
corresponding HSR—in March 2006. Although I was conscious
of the drive for changes and the reasons behind it, I only confronted
them when the FCO selected me for a part-time job later in 2006.
I was then presented with a draft letter of appointment embodying
the new rules. This, taken with the explanatory background, seemed
to me to go very wide. In particular, it would have bound me,
not only while I did this propsective part-time (and non-sensitive
job), but for ever, to seek permission for every utterance I made
in whatever form on any matters on which my opinion might draw
on my professional experience.
I accordingly declined to sign the letter. My
propsective line managers made efforts over the next three months
to find a way of softening the rigour of the rules. But my views
on corruption and comment I made on that subject evidently led
the Minister responsible (Lord Triesman) to refuse to contemplate
any variation in the standard letter of appointment. I was stood
down from the job (in which I have already started work).
What is more important and of deeper concern
to me than having that job removed is that I think the present
rules are excessively wide-ranging and oppressive in their intent
and implication. I understand retiring members of the FCO now
have to acknowledge that the rules apply to them after retirment
and, indeed, until death. Whatever their framers may say now,
they threaten sanctions against a former FCO servant for a broad
range of failures to consult before engaging in public debate.
Memoirs are not the only or even main issue. Nor is the disclosure
of genuinely Confidential matters, which are covered by the Official
Secrets Act. The suggestion that diplomats should not say, write
or in any way express views which may draw on their whole professional
experience is very far-reaching. I think it may also be unenforceable.
But the sanctions against expressing opinions without prior clearance
will mean the loss of contributions by diplomats or home civil
servants to discussion of matters of public interest.
It seems to me from what I have read of the evidence
to your Committee and of the Fifth Report that there was no intention
to suppress public discussion nor to prevent contributions to
it from former public servants. The sense of what I read is rather
the other way. And almost every day one hears or sees a former
public servant or senior officer making a contribution which I
expect has not been put through the slow mill of prior official
sanction. I have occacionally done so myself.
My own experience has left me feeling doubtful
about what the FCO's revised DSR 5 is intended to deal with, but
disturbed by the use to which it has been put. I do not believe
I have done anything disloyal in commenting on the issue of corruption,
nor compromised matters which ought to be regarded as Confidential
and are in fact protected by the Official Secrets Act. I suppose
some of my comments since retirement on Rwanda and more particularly
on corruption might potentially have affronted the French Ambassador
and some elements of the Kenya Government respectively, but I
have heard of no serious adverse repercussions at the state level.
As for Ministers, Mr Hilary Benn has been kind enough to exchange
views in writing and orally on a matter on which he knows I feel
strongly and in a sense critical of part of his Department's policy.
It seems his tolerant view is not shared by civil servants in
DfID or the FCO.
My experience, if it is useful at all, might
just be to add a little weight to the Select Committee's evident
view that the FCO and Cabinet Office could better have revised
the relevent rules together and in consultation. In the process
perhaps they might have restrained their indignation over memoirs
and the threat they supposedly present to relations between civil
servants and ministers from being used as a reason for trying
to gag public servants, once their service to the Crown is spent,
from making any comment without prior authorisation.
I have thought hard before writing because I
felt reluctant to bother you. I am not writing to my constituency
MP because I do not have an individual case to pursue, at this
stage. I put it to you as the Chairperson of the Committee reflecting
Parliament's interest in the broader policy. It is that which
bothers me. If you think it useful, I am ready to give more of
the background to my recent experience. I should be very interested
in your comments, in any case.
I have of course argued my own case with the
Office at both official and at ministerial level. The replies
are tardy and unconvincing. It seems that the FCO will revise
its new DSR 5 (the regulation in question, which was tightened
in 2006), but only to harmonise it with the Home Civil Service's
rule.
I am more persuaded than ever that what the
FCO is about is against the public interest, almost certainly
an abuse of individual rights to free expression, and that they
have little idea of what their purpose is or how they will run
a potentially oppressive regime. I have written to the Clerk of
the Foreign Affairs Committee to draw the matter to his Committee's
attention (The PASC is aware).
I hope to interest you in my argument of principle.
But I write to you as the MP for Epsom and Ewell, where I have
lived for over 30 years, to ask you kindly to consider taking
up the issue of the FCO's refusal to pay me for the time I put
into this part-time job—at their request—while they
tried (on their own initiative) to find a way of contracting me
without use of the obnoxious letter of appointment. The reply
last year from the then Director HR to my representations ran
thus:
"While you clearly did spend time in the
office preparing for the role, there was also a cost to the FCO
in briefing you, in exploring possible exemption to the rules
for you and, of course, an opportunity cost in not moving straight
to the next candidate on the list for the position."
That seems to me outrageous, The next candidate
did not, incidentally, stay very long. Nor is the sum involved
a large one; but it is not insignificant (for 72.45 hours). There
is certainly no way in which I would have agreed to work for the
FCO for nothing; nor do I accept that I should have taken all
the risks of starting work before my contractual position was
sorted out, I started in good faith believing implicitly in the
Office's good faith.
I have taken up the matter of payment through
the Diplomatic Service Association, who have it in hand, I may
consider making a small claim, but I realise one ought to do these
things consecutively. The trouble with that is that one then runs
over time limits for making cases. I wonder whether, notwithstanding
the last point, in order not to risk further lapses of time, you
might consider making a special case to the Ombudsman to require
the FCO to explain and perhaps reconsider a decision which is
arbitrary and, in my view, quite possibly illegal, whatever its
moral merits or demerits.
I am sorry to take up so much of your time.
I have never done so before, and did not expect to find myself
in such contention with my old employer. My situation both distresses
me and makes me indignant after 37 years' service. I hope the
issue of principle is one of interest to you. But I repeat that
I am writing in particular to you as the Member of Parliament
for Epsom and Ewell to ask you to consider the complaint over
non-payment.
Please let me know whether I can usefully send
you copies of any of my correspondence or explanations of any
matters.
9 March 2008
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