Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
Lord Moonie
10 MARCH 2009
Q80 Lord Irvine of Lairg: It was
not necessarily in your mind at the time?
Lord Moonie: I think in my mind at the
time was that they would find it much easier to get their amendment
put down if they were dealing with Opposition spokesmen.
Q81 Lord Irvine of Lairg: But then
you do say later, "You've got to make the first contact."
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Q82 Lord Irvine of Lairg: And you
say that you can give a few names of people they, the lobby company,
can approach?
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Q83 Lord Irvine of Lairg: Can we
leave the transcript there and can we go to the two telephone
conversations with Gillard of the Sunday Times of which
you have the Hansard transcripts?
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Q84 Lord Irvine of Lairg: Put shortly,
Gillard was trying to get you to agree that what you had indicated
you could do was in breach of the rules. That was his purpose
in the conversation. If you go to [Hansard CD2] page 20 of 29,
you will see that he put it to you, "You can't put down amendments,
but you can get others to do it for you." That is what he
wanted you to agree to. But you said, "No, what I would tend
to do is to put them in touch with people who would. I mean, for
example, you ..." meaning them, ".. make common cause
with other people who are interested in seeing legislation amended,
or they can speak to Opposition members who may be interested
in this line of inquiry or line of interest." You went on
and said, "What I would tend to do is to put them in touch
with people who would."
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Q85 Lord Irvine of Lairg: That of
course is completely unobjectionable.
Lord Moonie: Yes, that is right.
Q86 Lord Irvine of Lairg: Then what
Gillard did was he returned to his theme on page 21 of 29, and
he said at the top of the page, "Putting down an amendment
yourself for a pay client ..."—that should probably
be a "paying client"—"... wouldn't be something
you could do." Then you replied firmly in the vernacular,
"Och, shit, no, I don't think I would ever consider that."
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Q87 Lord Irvine of Lairg: Could you
amplify that, not necessarily in the vernacular?
Lord Moonie: I was basically agreeing
with him, yes, putting down an amendment yourself would not be
something you would do, yes. I would never consider that.
Q88 Chairman: Could I ask something
before that? If you look at page 20, towards the bottom half,
you said, "You don't lobby Ministers directly on clients'
behalf. You certainly don't speak on their behalf in either House."
Further down you say, "everything has to be done at second
hand." What does that mean?
Lord Moonie: It means I can advise them
whom to speak to and who is likely to help, but I cannot do that
first hand.
Q89 Baroness Manningham-Buller: What
did you mean in the next bit by saying you would put them in touch
with people?
Lord Moonie: I would tell them whom to
write to.
Q90 Lord Irvine of Lairg: Gillard,
we note off the transcript, persisted at page 21, and pressed
you that you would get others to put down an amendment on behalf
of the client.
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Q91 Lord Irvine of Lairg: And you
maintained, about a third of the way in, "I don't know. I
would have to ask somebody. Again, it's not something I would
do without clearing up exactly whether it's legitimate or not."
So you were saying before you did anything you would have to seek
advice?
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: Chairman, I am going to
move on to the next transcript, if I may.
Chairman: Yes, of course.
Q92 Baroness Manningham-Buller: Can
I just ask before you do that? Still on page 21, there is a conversation
about John Healey, Lord Moonie.
Lord Moonie: Yes.
Q93 Baroness Manningham-Buller: Where
you say, according to this transcript, "And I made it clear
to them that while I could write to John on their behalf, obviously
not using House ... of Lords paper." Could you just tell
us what your thinking was about this because it is not clear to
me what you are trying to say here?
Lord Moonie: It is really not clear to
me what I was trying to say either. I have to explain that this
conversation was taking place on one of the nastiest days of weather
ever. I was standing outside a restaurant in Glasgow without a
coat on, in the sleet, trying to make sense of what he was saying
as the Argyll Street traffic went past. Quite frankly, I could
not recall exactly at that stage what had gone on. Somebody had
mentioned at some stage John Healey to me. It was a vague notion
in my mind that anybody can write to a Minister; you cannot use
your position in the House to write to them, and if you are going
to write to them on any issue it has to be made clear you are
writing as a private individual and not a member of the House.
I thought that might be something which could possibly be done.
Q94 Baroness Manningham-Buller: But
you would be writing actually as a paid individual who was a member
of the House?
Lord Moonie: I suspect I would be, yes.
I think that is why I wanted it cleared up. I certainly wanted
to clear that up. That was one of the areas I wanted cleared up
very definitely. Other than the woman who called herself Claire
Taylor who spoke to me earlier that Friday morning, obviously
trying to get me to say I agreed to speak to John Healey, I had
no—
Lord Irvine of Lairg: I cannot find, and I am
not sure if others can, any reference in the main transcript,
that is to say the Hansard transcript or indeed the Sunday
Times transcript, of any reference to your having said you
would contact John Healey.
Chairman: Yes.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: Can you find it?
Q95 Chairman: Yes, indeed. That is
the missing phone call.
Lord Moonie: There is a phone call that
was purported to have been made to me on the night before I sent
my email, although in fact I think it was actually on the Wednesday
morning, in which I spoke to John.
Q96 Lord Irvine of Lairg: I am talking
about the main transcript.
Lord Moonie: There is nothing in the
main transcript. I submit in passing there is nothing in the phone
call either, as I recall.
Q97 Baroness Manningham-Buller: You
recollect, it would appear from this transcript, that you had
offered to write to John Healey on their behalf apparently.
Lord Moonie: That is not really what
I recollect at all. I was trying to explain the circumstances
in which I was making this phone call. It was a stressful situation.
One does not like the fact (inaudible) which I did not,
I would not have spoken to the chap at all. That is the first
rule of anybody with any contact, as you probably know as well
as I do, you just do not speak to them. However, having spoken
to him and having been led down the path, I was not thinking clearly
at the time. For all I knew, I might have said that to him but
I could not recall it.
Q98 Lord Irvine of Lairg: I find
this, if I may say so, a very puzzling area, but we will come
to it later when we come to the transcript of the records by the
Sunday Times and what they recall you saying to them, when
there was an actual transcript note of the conversations, so we
will come to it later if we may. I agree with Lady Manningham-Buller,
this is a puzzling section.
Lord Moonie: What I was doing here was
thinking out loud. If I had suggested that, clearly I could not
do it as a member of the House, but if I was an employee of the
company, say, it might be possible I could write to them in that
circumstance. Again, I was just thinking out loud, something one
should not do with journalists, as I would be the first to admit,
and supposedly as an expert on dealing with journalists I failed
on this occasion.
Q99 Baroness Manningham-Buller: But
either way you are a member of the House.
Lord Moonie: You cannot get away from
that in anything you do in life, of course not. The question is
whether you are breaching the privilege of being a member or not,
and that is a different distinction.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: Let us go to the transcript
of the second conversation and it really begins at [Hansard CD2]
page 24 of 29. Speaking for myself, I really get nothing new out
of it. You maintain there, at the foot of the page on 24, that
all you had indicated you would do was to identify peers, probably
Opposition spokespeople, who might agree to put an amendment down.
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