Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
1-19)
RT HON
JACQUI SMITH
MP AND SIR
DAVID NORMINGTON
KCB
20 JANUARY 2009
Q1 Chairman: Home Secretary, Sir David,
welcome to this session. This is the first session of our inquiry
into the policing process of Home Office leak inquiries. Next
week we hope to have the Metropolitan Police and the Mayor of
London giving evidence to this Committee. Have there been any
developments since your statement to the House on 4 December when
you first told the House about the circumstances surrounding the
leak inquiry and the arrest of Mr Green?
Jacqui Smith: I
do not believe there have been any developments in the way in
which you are asking, Chairman. Perhaps I could just say by way
of introduction to this part of the session that obviously my
Permanent Secretary and I have agreed to appear in front of you.
We will be as helpful as we can, as I hope I was when I did the
statement in Parliament before Christmas. At the same time, I
am sure the whole Committee would understand that we have got
to be very careful not to prejudice an ongoing police investigation.
I think it is worthwhile just reminding people that in the statement
I made to the House I was very clear that I thought there were
four important principles at stake: that no one should be above
the law; that the police should have the operational independence
to conduct their investigations without fear or favour; that Members
of the House should be able to do their work and be able to hold
the Government to account, and that the impartiality of the Civil
Service should be protected. Throughout this whole process I have
been at pains to support the operational independence of the Metropolitan
Police and to uphold the Civil Service Code. I will be as forthcoming
as I can. I think it is probably worthwhile saying that it does
remain my view that it is inappropriate to comment on issues arising
from the handling of the police investigation whilst it is ongoing.
When the investigation and any possible proceedings arising from
it do reach a conclusion, I am clear that at that point there
will be a range of issues arising from both the investigation
and in fact the whole episode that we will want to follow up,
but obviously it is difficult to go into detail on some of those
today. We will be as helpful as we can, Chairman.
Q2 Chairman: Thank you very much.
You have always been very generous with your time whenever the
Committee has asked you to give evidence. We are not just examining
you today on this inquiry, there are a number of other issues
that have arisen since your last evidence session to the Committee
which we wish to touch on, counter-terrorism and indeed the accountability
of the police. In respect of what you have just told the Committee,
we have taken legal advice and we are confident that our inquiry
will not impinge on any ongoing investigation by the Metropolitan
Police. You mentioned the possibility of a review at the end of
this process. Is that likely to be an internal review of what
has happened or an external review? I understand you cannot talk
about the substance, but have you made up your mind as to what
sort of review you have in mind?
Jacqui Smith: It depends what
you mean by external review. If you mean internal only to the
Home Office, then the answer is no.
Q3 Chairman: So there is likely to
be something that goes beyond the Home Office after all these
matters have been settled?
Jacqui Smith: Yes.
Q4 Chairman: You will be initiating
a review that goes beyond an internal review?
Jacqui Smith: Yes.
Q5 Chairman: Sir David, in a letter
that the Director of Security at the Cabinet Office sent to the
Metropolitan Police that started off this whole matter the issue
of the type of documents leaked was raised and in that letter
he talked about documents relating to national security. What
most excited you about the documents that you had lost? What documents
have actually been leaked that caused you concern?
Sir David Normington: By definition,
I do not know for sure what has been leaked. I know that the Home
Office has had just over 20 leaks of documents, emails or information
over 2007-08, but I do not know whether there is more material
that has been leaked which is not in the public domain. I think
it is important to say about that letter, which was the letter
from the Cabinet Office inviting the police to do the investigation,
that it is really saying three things: first of all, we are very
concerned about the damage to the operation of the Home Office,
and that was serious just in terms of the relationship with ministers
and the confidence that people could have in us; secondly, there
was the concern that since it was clear that the leaker or leakers
was close to the heart of the Home Office there was a potential
risk to national security, and thirdly, there is a wider context
here which the letter refers to of Cabinet Office concern about
the leaks over a number of years of national security information,
some of which there was a possibility had come from the Home Office.
That is the context for the decision to call in, in my case, first
the Cabinet Office and then the police.
Q6 Chairman: We will come on to the
systematic leaking of documents. You were satisfied, because it
is in the public domain, that the civil servant concerned was
an assistant private secretary and that it is at that kind of
security level that the documents would have been cleared at?
Sir David Normington: He was not
an assistant private secretary. He provided administrative support.
He was an administrative officer and he provided administrative
support to a number of parts of private office.
Q7 Chairman: So in terms of the ranking,
it would be below the ranking of assistant private secretary,
would it?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q8 Chairman: He was an admin officer
working in the Home Office?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q9 Chairman: On the question of the
documents that were leaked by the Home Office, presumably you
would find out about it because you would open The Guardian
or The Times or whatever and you would see the document
in there, so you knew the leak was occurring.
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q10 Chairman: From the newspaper
articles?
Sir David Normington: Yes. That
was usually the way it was done, mainly from newspapers.
Q11 Chairman: And ministers would
be concerned. Home Secretary, presumably that is how you would
have found out something was leaked.
Jacqui Smith: You find out that
something has been leaked if it appears in the newspapers, but
it does not necessarily follow that everything that has been leaked
appears in the newspapers. I think that is part of the concern
that the Permanent Secretary was representing, that when you get
to a situation where there have been 20 leak investigations over
a period of two years that does then raise questions about the
extent to which other information, classified information, may
be at risk as part of that process.
Q12 Chairman: I want you to paint
the picture practically of what happened. You find out that there
was a leak. You get in in the morning, you would see Sir David
and say, "Sir David, yet another leak. What are we going
to do about it?" What was the kind of language used that
so excited—
Sir David Normington: It was not
quite like that.
Q13 Chairman: Tell us what it is
like then. How did it go if it did not go as I described?
Jacqui Smith: The responsibility
for initiating a leak inquiry rests with the Permanent Secretary
who has responsibility for the security of the Department. The
Cabinet Office has broader responsibility with regard to security
responsibility for the Government. Is there frustration amongst
ministers of whatever potential political persuasion—and
this is represented very clearly in the Civil Service Code—about
the extent to which it is possible to do the everyday business
of Government if you think that you are being the subject of a
series of leaks? Yes, of course there is.
Q14 Chairman: I am trying to give
you the practicalities here. Did you raise it with him? Did he
raise it with you? Was it a collective raising of frustration?
How was it done practically when you knew this was happening?
Sir David Normington: It was a
bit of both really. We were completely frustrated and very concerned
about the situation. We seemed to have somebody or some people
who were deliberately and maliciously leaking material for political
purposes. From my point of view that is despicable, it is disloyal,
it is completely undermining the work of the Home Office and it
is completely unacceptable, I do not need to be told that by the
Home Secretary. Often on that day we would have had a conversation
where we exchanged our frustration and our anger about what was
happening.
Q15 Chairman: Steam would be coming
out of ears!
Sir David Normington: From both
of us, I think.
Q16 Tom Brake: Home Secretary, can
I just ask you on what day you finally opened a newspaper to read
about a link and you decided there is a systematic pattern of
leaking going on and we now need to take firm action? At what
point in recent history did the Home Office reach a point where
they felt that there was a coordinated campaign of leaking?
Jacqui Smith: I think the point
that the Permanent Secretary has made is that it probably was
not one single occasion, but when you have a situation where you
have had about 20 leak inquiries over a period of two years then
after a while it becomes apparent that this may not be simply
a series of separate or individual leaks but it may be more systematic
and that it may relate potentially to an individual who, given
the work that we do in the Home Office, may have access to information
that should be kept secret. That is the sort of process that you
think about and that raises the sort of concern that the Permanent
Secretary has already expressed.
Sir David Normington: Last summer,
after a lot of these leaks had occurred and we decided to investigate
almost all of them, we decided to ask someone to have another
look back at them all to see if they could find a pattern. So
in our minds there was an issue about whether this was systematic
or not. In fact, they did not really find anything which gave
us a lead and in a sense that is the first sign where we are thinking
this must be more than just random leaks, this must be systematic,
but at that point it did not tell us the answer to that question.
Q17 Tom Brake: So there was not one
single leak that triggered this action, it was just a cumulative
effect of a series of leaks?
Sir David Normington: Yes. In
late summer, when I came back from my holidays, I sat down with
the Cabinet Secretary and we discussed the seriousness of what
we were facing and that is the point at which we talked about
bringing in more expert help.
Q18 Mr Winnick: This sort of leaking
that you described is totally without any justification at all.
I doubt if any member of the Committee would say otherwise. You
indicated in reply to a question from the Chairman that the actual
position of this civil servant was relatively junior. Am I right?
Sir David Normington: Yes.
Q19 Mr Winnick: And yet this junior
civil servant had handled information that concerned national
security. Is that what you are telling us?
Sir David Normington: I have to
be careful. There are two answers to that. He had security clearance
only up to the level of "secret". He was working in
places, therefore, where he would have access to some sensitive
material. I have never gone on to claim that he leaked national
security information; indeed I must not make that assumption.
A lot of the material that was leaked to the press was not national
security information.
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