Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
542-559)
RT HON
LORD WARNER,
RT HON
RICHARD CABORN
MP AND MR
STEPHEN HADDRILL
8 MAY 2008
Q542 Chairman: I am delighted to welcome
Richard Caborn, Lord Warner and Stephen Haddrill. We have asked
you to come because the Committee is conducting an inquiry into
lobbying. One of the matters on which we want to touch is what
is sometimes called the "revolving door" issue, that
is, the traffic from government into the outside world, particularly
industry, business and lobbying, and also traffic the other way.
Because all of you have experience of this, two of you as former
ministers who have gone to work for outside organisations that
may involve lobbying and one of you a former civil servant who
has gone to work for an outside organisation that may involve
lobby activity, you seem to be a representative panel to whom
we can put these kinds of questions. I should like to start by
asking how it has been for you. When it was time for you to move
on, two former ministers and one a former senior civil servant,
and find other things to do you had to apply to the Advisory Committee
on Business Appointments to ask what you could and could not do.
Could you explain how that system worked for you?
Mr Caborn: The revolving door
issue is an interesting one and we will answer that, but there
was a life before and a life after being a minister, if I may
say so. Whilst I have been in this place and had the privilege
of representing Sheffield Central I have also spent five years
as a Member of the European Parliament and, before that, I was
a convenor of shop stewards at Firth Browns and now Forgemasters.
I was Apprentice of the Year. I served my time and am immensely
proud to be an engineer. As an engineer I have been consulted
on many occasions. Before the revolving door issue arose I was
consulted by Forgemasters to give advice on the building of a
16,000-ton forging press. If Members want to join me afterwards
I will take them to my office and show them a picture on my wall
of a 4,000-ton forging press. I am very proud that that was the
first thing I built when I came out of my time as an apprentice
engineer. I am advising Forgemasters on building the largest forging
press in the world to take on, I hope, competition from Japan.
In addition to that, I had European experience and spent 10 years
as a minister. Further, like yourself I chaired a Select Committee,
for four years on the Trade and Industry Committee, which at that
time covered energy. You will remember that in the early 1990s
the Department of Energy became part of the Department of Trade
and Industry. I was the first chairman of that Select Committee
which did a major report on energy policy and the closure of 31
pits at that time. I do not know why Ian McCartney and I have
so excited some of members of the Committee that we have been
mentioned in dispatches all over the place. It would be good to
have an inquiry into why we have been singled out, if I may say
so. That being the case, I am more than willing to answer "the
revolving door". I do not believe that the revolving door
that has excited some of the members of the Committee was anything
to do with my being a minister; it was my incarnation before that.
Q543 Chairman: We see you as representative
figures; we could have chosen others but happen to have selected
you.
Mr Caborn: That is a good reason
why.
Q544 Chairman: I am interested that
you were Apprentice of the Year, but I do not think there is any
discussion as to whether you are qualified to do the kind of work
you are now doing. That is a quite separate issue. I return to
the question. Faced with the prospect of pursuing these activities,
you had to access the business appointments system. Perhaps you
would describe how it worked for you.
Lord Warner: You ask how it was
for me. People have commented on how young and healthy I look
since I ceased to be a minister, so life has not been bad. Mr
Caborn's point is an important one. I shall not give you my life
history, but most of us did things before we were ministers. I
was a minister for only four years and I had a lot of expertise
and knowledge before that. It is that knowledge and expertise
as much as anything that has been the reason why I am doing the
particular things I am doing since I became a minister. As far
as concerns the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments I
just accepted it as part of life. After I ceased to be a minister
I spent quite a few months doing nothing. Last September about
nine months after I ceased to be a minister I went through a process
of assembling a portfolio of activities some of which needed to
be cleared with the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments
and some of which did not. I filled in the forms and sent them
off. They dealt with them in a reasonably sensible way and sent
them back to me and said what I could and could not do. The main
thing they said I could not do for the first year after being
a minister was to lobby ministers, whatever that means. We might
come to what that means at some stage. I have honoured that. In
my first year out of office the only time I saw ministers was
at their request to talk about government business.
Q545 Chairman: Is the experience
that Lord Warner has described typical of all of you?
Mr Haddrill: I suppose that mine
is slightly different because I did not cease to be a civil servant
and then look for other things to pursue. I had an offer from
the Association of British Insurers which I wanted to take up,
so went into the business appointments process whilst still a
civil servant. It worked reasonably well and quickly, which is
important, because a prospective employer wants to know whether
and when you will be on board. I thought that was quite good.
I was surprised how little I knew about it even as a senior civil
servant before I started. I had a vague idea that there would
be some process but I did not have a very clear idea of exactly
what it involved. The fact is that it involves subjective judgments
which is almost bound to be the case in that kind of system. A
subjective judgment is hard to predict. In the circumstances I
did not quite know whether I would be able to leave the Civil
Service one day and pick up my new role fully the following day
or whether I would be having a conversation with my prospective
employers about doing only half the role for the first year which
they might not find very satisfactory and put me in a rather difficult
position. That subjectivity creates a bit of an issue for someone
in those circumstances.
Q546 Chairman: Was it an entirely
paper exercise for all of you, that is, you filled in a form,
it went in and somebody told you what had been decided?
Lord Warner: I was written to
by the chairman of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments
when I left ministerial office to remind me that I had to submit
would-be appointments to the Committee.
Q547 Chairman: But nobody interviewed
you or asked for more details about what you were doing?
Lord Warner: No.
Q548 Chairman: Presumably, you all
think that to have a process of that kind is necessary, or was
it seen as irksome?
Mr Caborn: I think it is necessary.
There needs to be integrity and accountability in the system and
that is part of it. From my point of view the 12-month period
is fine and is absolutely right. The system must have that integrity.
I have always taken the view as chairman of the Select Committee
and during my 11 years as a trustee of the Industry and Parliament
Trust that it is absolutely right to try to bring industry and
wealth creators close to Parliament so there is an exchange and
an understanding of each other. I think that Parliament is the
richer for that.
Lord Warner: I did not take any
objection to it, and I would not have done so if someone had asked
to see me to talk about these things. I thought it was a fair
and reasonable process. Personally, I would not have objected
to being interviewed either by a member of the commission or someone
on behalf of it.
Q549 Chairman: Did you think that
the restriction on lobbying imposed on all of you for differential
periods was entirely reasonable, and did you understand what it
meant?
Mr Haddrill: I found it a bit
odd but I thought it reasonable and necessary. In my case it was
six months but it was in two parts: part one was that I should
not lobby government ministers and officials. I spent a lot of
my time talking to other public bodies, for example the Financial
Services Authority, not the Civil Service. Indeed, so much of
government goes on outside the Government and Civil Service that
there is a question about how widely that runs. The second part
was an understanding that the ABI[1]
was an organisation that the Government talked to quite a lot
as part of normal business and so if the Government wanted to
talk to me I should be able to talk to them, so it was really
a "you can't but you kind of can" message. It took a
little interpretation but in practice I got a sense of what I
could and could not do. I could not put an issue on the agenda
with a minister; I could not call him up and ask to see him, but
if there was something troubling him and he called me up I could
talk to him.
Q550 Chairman: But if any of you were
to bump into former colleagues during this period of purdah and
had a conversation about matters relevant to what you were doing
that could conceivably be described as lobbying. There is no enforcement
mechanism. The prescription is put in but there is no monitoring
of it; it is all down to just how people behave, is it not?
Lord Warner: I think one has to
see it in context. If you look at the dictionary definition of
"lobbyist", which means essentially someone who hangs
around legislators or ministers to try to influence their decision/vote,
you can say that chief whips do that. If you are health minister
in the House of Lords you do that. I was a minister and received
MPs who came to argue their case for their constituents some of
whom had a commercial interest. Is that lobbying or is it a conversation
or discussion?
Q551 Mr Prentice: We do not get paid
another £75,000 for doing that, do we?
Lord Warner: I am not trying to
make a cheap point. I am saying that the word itself is open to
a variety of interpretations and on a strict dictionary interpretation
you could say that all sorts of people are in the business of
lobbying in terms of trying to influence the decisions of ministers.
This is part of a spectrum.
Q552 Chairman: It is a matter of
being paid to do it. Two of you are Members of the two Houses.
Is there a sense in the country that there is something unseemly
about Members of Parliament also working for outside organisations
and lobbying government?
Lord Warner: Speaking personally,
I have not been lobbying government. I was hired to give my advice
largely on health and social care issues but also on how government,
including local government, worked and decisions were taken. I
have spent all of my time doing that. In my time as an adviser
I have had only one meeting with a minister. That was not a private
meeting; it was with civil servants and it was merely to enable
someone to put a point of view. I do not believe I have lobbied
at all in my time as an adviser, and I do not think I was hired
by any of the organisations for which I worked. I am not a naive
person. I was hired to give them advice in the areas where I had
some expertise.
Q553 Chairman: But DLA Piper for
whom you work tells us that your job involves "deepening
client relationships" and "introducing new contacts".[2]
The contacts that are useful to them are entirely those that you
have gleaned through your work inside government. In the case
of Mr Haddrill the ABI says that it aims, "to shape and influence
decisions made by the Government, regulator and other public authorities".[3]
It says this of you: "Stephen aims to ensure that the ABI
is highly influential with government and regulators on behalf
of all its members."[4]
Your role is quite explicit.
Lord Warner: Most of the clients
I advise are related to the people I know and the systems of local
government that I understand, the NHS and sometimes government
departments but not ministers. We have to understand that government
and public bodies are often seen by the outside world as rather
opaque institutions; it finds it very difficult to penetrate them
quite a lot of the time. Indeed, that was why I made the point
about MPs bringing people to meet ministers. I was not trying
to make a cheap shot. They do that because those people often
find it very difficult to understand the workings of institutions
in the public sector. They are facilitating a conversation.
Q554 Chairman: I would like to get
you to answer the question I asked which was: do you consider
that the public thinks there is something unseemly about people
who are still members of the legislature and working inside government
taking on paid employment to lobby bits of government in which
they are involved?
Mr Caborn: Obviously, you are
going to lobby government. I looked at the questions very carefully.
You will know that I was asked to come to this Committee late
last week because my colleague Ian McCartney is having an operation.
I read the terms of reference and some of the evidence that has
been submitted to the Committee. It is all predicated on an attempt
to affect Parliament and government. It is not about having a
set of ground rules to ensure that Parliament and government are
accessible. I go back to my earlier point. One thing I did when
I was chairman of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry was
to ensure, as far as I could, that Parliament was knowledgeable
about what industry was saying. My 11 years on the Industry Parliament
Trust were spent trying to bring Parliament and government closer
to wealth creators in industry and commerce. It is as though we
have in the House of Commons political virgins who cannot be touched
by anybody who seeks to lobby them.
Q555 Chairman: It is the fact that
large sums of money are involved in this relationship.
Mr Caborn: Let us come to that.
The one interest you did not read out was mine: AMEC. I can tell
you that AMEC for whom I am a consultant is more to do with my
trade union and European background. I am an engineer. I have
dealt with North Sea oil in which it has been deeply involved.
I have also known the past three managing directors of that company
on a fairly personal level. The reason I agree with the 12 months
is that I was a trade minister for two years and that could have
affected it. I think it was absolutely right that it should be
12 months in terms of the conditions laid down. But I am not in
the game of lobbying government in that sense; I am there to advise
on the skills I had before I became a minister.
Q556 Mr Walker: All of you bring
experiences to your employers. Those experiences have value. Just
before you go to sleep at night does it occur to you that you
are also there for your contacts and relationships with people
in government and senior decision-makers, so it is not just a
matter of your experiences but your relationships? After all,
business is driven by relationships.
Mr Haddrill: Relationships are
important. It is three years since I joined the ABI and it is
remarkable how fast government turns over in that period. Almost
from day one you start to find new relationships emerging and
becoming important. We keep using the word "lobbying".
Most of the time I find that what government want to know is what
our industry, consumer groups and all sorts of organisations think
and, quite rightly, they come to us. I am glad they do. We give
them what we think is a view of the world from our perspective
and they value it, but, to pick up an earlier phrase, they are
not policy virgins either; they are perfectly capable of assessing
that. They know where I am coming from and are capable of assessing
it against the views of others and forming an opinion. That is
a good public policy-making process; it is much better than government
sitting in a box and not speaking to anyone.
Lord Warner: I do not lie awake
at night thinking about this and it does not occur to me before
I go to bed in the way you put it mainly because, for reasons
of personal vanity, I took some care about what I was getting
myself into. I have a mixed portfolio: I have a public appointment,
some private appointments and some voluntary ones. I deliberately
wanted a mixed portfolio so I could see aspects of public service
and involvement of private and public sectors from different perspectives,
and that is what I do.
Q557 Mr Walker: Does it ever occur
to you that your contacts and relationships may be part of the
value you bring to your clients—because that occurs to everybody
else?
Lord Warner: We are talking about
two things here. I acknowledge that contacts are important, but
we are talking about whether it is ministers or a wider range
of contacts. I know huge numbers of people. I have been in paid
employment for nearly 50 years and have spent a lot of time in
local and central government and I know lots of people. I can
pick up the phone to a chief executive in a local authority and
have a conversation about what is going on in local government
on a particular issue at the moment. Of course people value that
contact but you are not seeking to influence a set of decisions;
you are having a conversation with someone about a piece of information.
Q558 Mr Walker: But business is about
influencing by decisions. I have nothing against lobbying, but
why be so po-faced about it? Why are you so defensive about it?
Lord Warner: I am not defensive.
Q559 Mr Walker: Ultimately, you work
for a number of health clients because you have been a minister
for health for four years. There is nothing to be ashamed of;
it is just a fact of life. You are of commercial value to them
because of your contacts, experiences and relationships.
Lord Warner: We come back to the
issue of what is meant by lobbying. What Mr Caborn is saying is
that it has been given pejorative overtones in the way we are
sitting here having this discussion. Most of the time I am having
a conversation with people who value my advice or ask me to find
out about something. Finding out about something does not mean
that I seek to persuade somebody of a particular point of view.
There is a difference and I do not regard that as lobbying.
1 Association of British Insurers Back
2
Q 541 Back
3
Our Vision and Mission, www.abi.org.uk Back
4
Our Director General, www.abi.org.uk Back
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