Lord Snape—Hansard Transcripts
Telephone Call to Lord Snape ("PS")
from "Claire Taylor" ("Woman") of the Sunday
Times, Tuesday 20 January 2009
Telephone CD1 page 23 of 28
PS: Peter Snape.
Woman: Hello Lord Snape, it's Clare
Taylor here calling from Michael Johnson Associates.
PS: Oh, hi.
Woman: Hello, sorry I missed your call
last night.
PS: That's okay.
Woman: Yes, it was just a call slightly
out of the blue, I suppose. I work for a company called Michael
Johnson Associates. We are a kind of public affairs/communications
company and we're looking to kind of expand our public affairs
network, I suppose, in London. We haven't really done that much,
erm, PA work here before. And I had a researcher do some work
to kind of identify people with consultancy experience who might
be interested in maybe working with us on a consultancy kind of
basis and your name came up. So I was just wanting to speak to
you about whether that's the kind of thing you're interested in.
I think you do some work for a consultancy. Is that right?
PS: Yes, I have my own.
Woman: Oh, right, okay.
PS: It's usually in the transport field
[inaudible] that's my area of supposed expertise.
Woman: [laughs] But would you
be interested in doing some work for another company or might
it work, I suppose, if we had some, erm, you know, the right kind
of work to freelance out to you guys?
PS: Yes, that would be helpful, but
[inaudible]
Woman: Yes, yeah that would be good.
Are you around next week?
PS: Yes, I am. Just let me get my diary.
Woman: Okay.
PS: Just a second. ... How would Thursday
suit?
Woman: Yes, Thursday would be okay.
What kind of time?
PS: Late morning?
Woman: Yes, okay. So, about 11-ish?
Telephone CD1 page 24 of 28
PS: 11 would be fine, yes. Do you want
to come to me or do you want me to go to you?
Woman: Erm, it doesn't really matter,
I suppose. Let me just have a look where I'm going to be first
thing in the morning. ... Well, actually I'm quite near Whitehall,
so shall I pop to the Lords, if that's okay?
PS: Well, yes, my office is actually
just round the corner ...
Woman: Oh, okay.
PS: ... from the Lords. It's on the
corner of, er, I usually get this wrong, Great Peter Street and
Little Peter Street. I'm sorry, it's Great College Street and
Little College Street. There's so many of them round there.
Woman: Yes, I know.
PS: I get mixed up with Great College
and Little College.
Woman: Okay. Where should I come to?
What's the exact address?
PS: I haven't given it you yet. It's
called Fielden House.
Woman: Fielden House?
PS: F-I-E-L-D-E-N, yes. It's above the
door. It's very easy to see. As you're turning off the Embankment
you'll be able to see into Great College Street, you can see it
on the corner facing you. I mean, it's the first corner of Great
College Street. Opposite there's a car park on the right-hand
side, an underground car park on the right-hand side.
Woman: Okay.
PS: It's almost opposite, in fact, the
exit from Black Rod's Garden in the House of Lords.
Woman: All right, okay, brilliant. Well,
I'll see you there at 11 then on Thursday.
PS: I'll tell security to expect you.
My office is on the third floor, but I'll come down and pick you
up.
Woman: Okay, that's great. Thanks. See
you then. Bye.
[end of call]
Meeting of Lord Snape ("PS")
with "Claire Taylor" ("Woman") and "David
Thompson" ("Man") of the Sunday Times at Fielden
House, Thursday 22 January 2009
Lord Snape Meeting page 1 of 33
Male voice 1: They go one way and (inaudible)
the other way. That's all to do with the (inaudible, but could
be "computer")
Woman: Hello. We're here to see Lord
Snape.
Male voice 1: Lord?
Woman: Snape.
Male voice 1: Right. And your name is?
Woman: Clare Taylor and David Thompson.
He says he is going to be here at 11.30. I don't know what time
it is.
Male voice 1: Yeah, I'll see if he's
on his way (he is speaking on the phone) Hello. You've
got a couple of visitors. Thank you.
Female voice: Thanks.
Man: Shall we go through this way (inaudible)?
(someone is whistling)
Male voice 1: Come this way, please.
(Inaudible ... movement)
(Inaudible chatter ... Lord Snape
has not yet arrived voices at some distance from microphone)
PS: Good morning.
Woman: Hello.
PS: I'm Lord Snape.
Woman: Hello. Clare Taylor ... This
is David Thompson, one of our directors.
Man: Hi, nice to meet you.
Woman: We're just waiting to go through
this security thing.
Man: You don't have to do this, presumably.
PS: Er ... no, no. They trust me not
to blow myself up. It's everybody else that they're concerned
about.
Lord Snape Meeting page 2 of 33
Male Voice: Have they got to go through
the security or not?.
Male voice: Yes.
(A lot of background chatter, movement
of the microphone)
Male voice, security guard?) Can you
go back a bit.
Woman: On the feet.
[they are having photos taken for
visitor passes]
Male Voice: Yes. It's slightly better
than the other one I used.
(Movement of the microphone, general
chatter)
Woman: Thank you.
Male voice: It needs to warm up first.
Woman: Oh, OK ... like a photocopier.
(Chatter. Sound of a machine whirring)
Male voice security guard?: Here we
go. There you are.
Woman: Thank you.
Male voice security guard?: That's OK.
Man: Thank you.
(Movement of the microphone, lots
of background noise)
Man: Is this whole building Lords offices?.
PS: It is yes, yes. Fairly new. Most
of us had desks, you know, across at the House, but er ...
Man: But then you had to share, or do
you have to share here as well?
PS: We have to share here as well. My
colleague and I work it between us so that normally if one's in,
the other one isn't.
Woman: So you can divide it up.
Lord Snape Meeting page 3 of 33
PS: Yeah. He runs a property company
anyway, so he's not here as often.
Woman: Oh, that's okay.
PS: And, of course, there are a couple
of coffee machines here ["Third Floor, Doors Opening"]
we can always use.
PS: I'm at the younger end of the House
of Lords. Believe it or not, I thought of as a young'un in the
House of Lords.
Unknown male voice: Hello, good morning.
PS: If there's a vote in the House,
you know, it's seven or eight minutes to get over there.
Man: Oh, you've got a terrific view,
haven't you?
PS: Yes
Man: Bet you've got the best office
in the building. Well, I guess there's one or two above.
PS: Yes, it is quite nice, isn't it?
Woman: Yes, lovely.
[5.00]
Man: What are they doing to the car
park down there?
PS: Er, they're doing something. Westminster
Council are doing something, I'm not sure. There'll be some building
up there eventually.
Man: Wasn't there an underground car
park?
PS: Yes, it's still there. I mean, various
Peers are silly enough to drive their cars in London and sometimes
park it there.
Man: I know. I know.
PS: I make a habit of not driving in
London for obvious reasons.
Woman: Yes, exactly. Too horrific.
Man: It's years since I have driven
in London. I stopped just before the congestion charge [inaudible]
Lord Snape Meeting page 4 of 33
PS: I bring my car down at Christmas
if I want to take a few souvenirs back with me. But I think I've
only brought mine down twice since the congestion charge started.
Around here, you've got to pay and my daughter, who lives in London,
hadn't realised that she'd passed through one corner of the congestion
charge. Of course, if you don't pay within 24 hours or something,
it's 100 quid or something.
Woman: Oh no.
PS: Yeah. [inaudible] Ignorance
is no excuse, these days.
Man: Especially if you go through a
corner.
PS: She lives in *** and she had been
somewhere and was just driving back there and she must have just
clipped the corner.
Man: Yes, but you don't ... There are
big signs up but you don't really clock them, do you?
PS: No, you don't do you? Especially
if it's only a few yards.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: You think it's something else.
Man: Also, in London, there are so many
distracting things, so many lights and different little distractions
...
Woman: Buses.
PS: Yes.
Man: Now, I'll try to explain who we
are. [Laughter]. We're from a company called Michael Johnson
Associates. We were initially a public affairs company in Brussels
and we set up an office here in the UK in 2002. Initially we did
sort of financial PR, but more recently we've been doing public
affairs work. And we were looking for somebody who could help
us out in the House there. And I think what happened was that
our researcher, Linda, did some research—
Woman: Yes, she identified a couple
of people who she thought might be interested in this kind of
work or who were kind of familiar with it and your name came up.
PS: Ah.
Man: Which is why we're coming to see
you.
Lord Snape Meeting page 5 of 33
PS: Right.
Man: In particular, we've got one client
who's a far eastern client who came to us initially because he
was one of our Brussels clients. He's a man called Lu Li Jiang.
He's an entrepreneur from Hong Kong and he exports leather goods—a
lot of shoes actually—to the European Union. We did some
work with him on shoe import tariffs, which is how he came to
us. But more recently, he's now in a consortium with a company
called Won King. I won't expect you to remember all these—
PS: No.
Man: But they're a Taiwanese company
who have big retail interests throughout the Far East actually.
If you lived in the Far East you'd know them like you'd know Marks
& Spencer's. But—
PS: I was in the Taiwan actually last
year.
Woman: Oh.
Man: Really?
PS: Yes. I didn't come across them.
I did get some railway knowledge.
Man: When I say retail, they're in clothing
retail.
PS: Yes.
Man: The purpose of this consortium
is to set up something called Emerald (?), which over the next
18 months is going to be setting up 40 retail shops—quite
substantial shops—across the UK.
PS: Are they sure about their timing?
Woman: Well
Man: Certainly there'll be available
buildings I think is probably about all you can say—
PS: Yes, well Woolworths have got one
or two very good places.
Woman: Yes.
Man: Exactly. I've said this to other
people. If you imagine—do you know the shop Uniqlo? It's
got quite a high-street presence at the moment.
Lord Snape Meeting page 6 of 33
PS: I have to tell you that's my wife's
department. We have an agreement that she does the shopping and
I [inaudible].
Man: So if you think, say, Gap and you
think slightly, a similar sort of clothing, but actually they're
more competitively priced, as Uniqlo are, that's the sort of market
they're aiming for. And they were looking for someone to help
them do parliamentary work in relation to any problems, any issues
that they identify as they set up this group of retail shops across
the country. Now, one thing that they identified, which would
come into effect just as they were opening, would be something
called the Business Rates Supplement Bill.
PS: Hmm, hmm.
Man: I don't know—I wouldn't expect
you to be familiar with it necessarily, but you may be, I don't
know. In effect, what it does is that it allows local councils
to levy an extra 2% charge on the business rates on properties
over £50,000.
[10.00]
And since all the properties are likely
to be over £50,000—and we're talking about quite substantial
retail outlets—then they will become liable for the tax.
The tax itself has been quite unpopular with people like the CBI,
the federation of private business and other organisations.
PS: The money's hypothecated for some
purpose, isn't it?
Man: Yes. The whole purpose if it seems
to be— The tax was suggested by the Lyons report, but it
seems to have been taken on by the Government specifically for
Crossrail, really.
PS: Mmm.
Man: But the Bill doesn't provide just
for Crossrail. It allows local councils to use it across at country
level. Of course, the fear is that the local council will use
it as a way of raising money. But, I mean, it has to be hypothecated.
It has to be identified for specific schemes.
PS: Specific schemes. Yeah. Sure.
Man: And one of the things we were looking
for help on—and it's an issue that Mr Jiang's people have
identified to us early on—is that they would quite like
to see if we could amend it so that its onerous tax would not
necessarily affect business. So, for example, I know that quite
a lot of groups such as the CBI have been looking to, say, give
retailers and businesses who will be liable for the tax a vote
on whether they should pay the tax.
PS: Yeah.
Man: I don't know whether in the end
the Government will buy that, but that's one option.
Lord Snape Meeting page 7 of 33
Woman: Yeah.
PS: I think that given the congestion
charge experience it's the last option the Government [inaudible].
Man: They just kicked it into touch,
didn't they?
PS: Turkeys not voting for Christmas.
Man: The other is, and it may well be
more realistic and it would be useful for our client, would be
that you had a two-year exemption on paying the tax for any new
business. The argument would be that it's a particularly difficult
time for any business to start.
PS: Yes.
Man: It's bad enough as it is starting,
and therefore you should have— And so we were hoping that
we might be able to amend it to include a clause such as that.
Now, the question is, I mean, you know, what we would do is pay
you on a retainer as a consultant to, in effect, help us amend
this Bill. Now, is that something a) you would do, or b) you would
be able to do?
PS: I don't think I would. The problem
about having a direct financial interest is that one is not supposed
to initiate legislation which would benefit the person who gives
you or pays you this financial interest. So, you know, if I specifically
worked for your company, for example, then I'd need to take advice,
as these people are your clients, as to whether or not I could
amend it. I certainly couldn't do it if I was working directly
for the client themselves.
Man: Right.
PS: But I'd need to take advice.
Man: Oh, I see. So if you were working
for Michael Johnson Associates you might be able to do it but
not if—
PS: Not if I were working directly for
the person or industry concerned. That's off the top of my head
and I would have thought that's the way the rules would be interpreted.
For example, I played quite a prominent role in local government
transport Bill that's just gone through, but I could do so because
I was talking about exemptions for the specific bus industry,
although I worked for First Group which is declared in the Register
of Members' Interests.
Man: Yes.
Lord Snape Meeting page 8 of 33
PS: So provided I made that declaration,
then I could amend, let us say, what I liked and I would have
thought, although I will take advice from the Registrar of Members'
Interests in the Lords, that I feel that would also appertain
if I worked for your company rather than specifically ...
Man: Yes.
PS: I might well have to declare that
you have certain clients involved in this particular field.
Woman: That's before—well, speaking
in the House you'd have to declare that.
PS: Yes, and put it in the Register.
Woman: And put it in the register.
PS: Yes.
Woman: What kind of consulting—when
we spoke on the phone you said you've got your own consulting
agency.
PS: When I left the House of Commons
in 2001 I was working for National Express on a virtually full-time
basis. I was chairman of their bus division for some time and
their main bus subsidiary was based in Birmingham, which is where
my former constituency was.
[15.00]
So I was not anxious to go straight
from the Commons to the Lords, a) because I had virtually a full-time
job and b) I'd had enough of politics to be honest—you know,
I wanted a break from the whole thing. National Express at that
time had made an unwise choice of trying to run Melbourne's trams
as well as those in Sydney and southern Perth, so I was flying
backwards and forwards. I was out for three years, yeah; I was
in the second batch of peerages created after the 2001 election,
so I had a break. So I formed this consultancy while I was out,
although it is virtually—although I sort of do nil returns
for tax purposes. I am now directly employed [inaudible] I
am employed as a consultant by First Group, `cause I couldn't
get on with the new chief executive of the National Express Group,
and they haven't—you know, I'm 66—I don't particularly
want, you know, to be working seven days a week. I can, sort of,
re-inter my original consultancy, or else I could work as an individual
for you or for anybody else, as I do. I have three different companies
that I work for at the present time, which I declare. I am sure
that you went to the Register of Members' Interests.
Woman: Yeah, I had a quick look, yeah.
Man: So you're employed—First
Group employ you, but you could—
PS: I am actually self-employed. First
Group pay me a retainer—
Lord Snape Meeting page 9 of 33
Woman: To be a consultant.
PS: Yeah, to be a consultant to them,
at a daily rate when I am sort of at their office in Aberdeen,
so [inaudible] They have an office in Paddington.
Woman: Oh, okay.
Man: Sorry, I must have missed it. They
employ you—
PS: I am actually self-employed.
Man: You are paid a fee by them.
PS: Yeah.
Man: And would you be able to amend
legislation for First Group?
PS: Not specifically, but I can amend
legislation which applies to the bus industry, provided I declare
an interest first.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: I mean, I couldn't say, for example,
let's say First Group—First Great Western—I couldn't
get some exemption or do something specifically on rail fares,
for example, on First Great Western.
Man: Right.
PS: Because I would be initiating legislation
for a company from which I am paid, which would be improper under
the rules of the House.
Man: I see.
PS: But if I was wanting to exempt the
whole of the railway industry from some particular clause I could
do so on the grounds that, you know, this is for the public good
or the benefit of the industry rather than one specific client.
Man: I see. I see. I see. So, in our
instance, you could, for example, argue that the exemption was
for the general business—
PS: A newly set-up business anywhere
in the country ought to be exempt from this supplementary rate
because of the high cost of starting up and the need for Government
to encourage small businesses—small and large—in the
current economic situation.
Lord Snape Meeting page 10 of 33
Man: Well, in that case, so would you
therefore—I mean, it matters not to us whether you are representing
us or whether you are representing our client. It would be whatever's
more convenient for you, really.
PS: Well, the obvious question that
the Registrar would ask me would be, "Who's paying you?"
So it would have to be either yourself—again, it doesn't
particularly matter to me provided I can do it on a blanket basis,
but I could not, sort of, as I said earlier, represent your client
in this and say, "There should be an exemption for this particular
company because of" [inaudible] or whatever.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: I could well argue, I'm sure, under
the rules, that there should be an exemption for new businesses
from the extra business rate.
Man: Right, I see. And, because actually
in terms of who pays, it's a question of whether they pay you
directly or whether we pay you. It could go either way.
PS: Yeah.
Man: That's something that we can arrange
whatever, I guess.
PS: I probably should know this but
I don't. At what stage is the legislation at the present time?
Man: Second Reading in the Commons last
week.
PS: Oh, okay. A lot more time, then.
Woman: Yeah.
Man: And it's currently in Committee
at the moment, actually, I think. I think there's a sort of—
Woman: In Committee at the Commons.
Man: Yeah.
PS: Well, yeah. I mean, they've got
to allow something like 10 parliamentary days between Second Reading
and Committee stage, so they may well have set the Committee up.
Why not approach a Member of the House of Commons who's involved
in the detail? The trouble is, by the time it gets to the Lords,
it has had a bit of a kicking around in the Commons, and, sort
of, attitudes have set and can be intransigent. You can still
amend things in the Lords, but, I
Lord Snape Meeting page 11 of 33
mean, it wouldn't be a bad idea if you've
got somebody to at least float the idea in the Commons.
Woman: To do work on it in the Commons
as well.
PS: Yeah, yeah.
Woman: Is that something you would be
able to do? I don't know how good your contacts are in the Commons,
or if you think it's better for you to concentrate on the Lords
because you're in the Lords?
[20.00]
PS: Well, I mean, I know lots of Members
of the House of Commons. I was there for many years. When you're
out for two elections, there's suddenly all these young people
wandering around [inaudible]. I would need to look at the
Committee. I mean, it wouldn't be any problem. I can see who's
on the Committee, anybody I could sort of approach and say ...
To do that, I'd need something from you outlining these proposals.
Woman: Yes, of course, yeah.
PS: So that I could say, look, you know,
I've had this idea, or I've been approached about this idea. You
know, I think we'd have to do it a bit more professionally than
that. But, I mean, depending on who was on the Commons Committee
I'd have a chat and see whether I could get them to table an amendment
in Committee. I mean, it'd be better if you could get a government
person to do it, purely in political terms, but you could possibly
get a member of the Opposition. I mean, they're always looking
for amendments to table anyway because, you know, Oppositions
have got to debate these things and come up with different ideas.
It sounds the sort of idea that the Conservative Opposition would
be—the Liberals, perhaps, as well on the Committee—would
be interested in pushing.
Man: The overall Minister is Hazel Blears,
but it's actually being done by John Healey, a junior Minister.
PS: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, again,
I could approach him, you know, sort of behind the scenes to say,
you know, "This is the purpose behind this amendment—look
at it."
Woman: Yeah, "What do you think?".
PS: I wouldn't get a concrete thing
one way or another. He'll take it away and the civil servants
will give him 16 reasons why it shouldn't be done, but [inaudible]
it appears to me to be an eminently sensible idea anyway,
given the current economic circumstances in particular, yeah.
I mean, getting it debated in Committee would be useful, if only
to get the Government's view and see how sympathetic they are.
And, of course, in the Lords—Committee stage in the Lords
is always on the Floor of the House. I mean, it's slightly different
procedure from the Commons where it's kicked upstairs into, you
know, a
Lord Snape Meeting page 12 of 33
Committee Room. We do legislation on
the Floor of the House. I don't know whether you've ever been
into the Lords.
Woman: No.
PS: Debates are not particularly well
attended, and the Government of course doesn't have a majority,
so—I think we've got 216 Members, the Tories have about
208, there are 70-odd Liberals, and 200 and odd Cross-Benchers.
Again, if you got a few of them interested in matters like this,
they can lean on the Government, because the Government never
wants to be defeated in the House, `cos it means the legislation's
got to go back to the Commons.
Woman: Yeah, it gets kicked back.
PS: Lords amendments are struck out,
it's sent back to us, so they're usually anxious to—it's
much easier in a way to get a compromise in the Lords, because
of the lack of a government majority. If, even in Committee, even
at an early stage in Committee, if Ministers indicated they'd
look at the idea, which is what they normally say if they're not
going to throw it out completely, then that'd sort of suggest
that perhaps it'd be included in debate in the Lords/on the
clause ??, in which case they'd amend it themselves if that
was their—[inaudible] table a government amendment,
you know, if they accepted the idea in principle.
Man: But they would, so we wouldn't
actually have to put down an amendment in that—
PS: In those circumstances that I've
just outlined, no. If the Government's indicated that they were
sympathetic to it, they quite often say, well, rather—if
it's been debated first in the Committee in the Commons, the Government
quite often say, "Well, we'll look at it and see what we
can do on Report stage". If they're still discussing it at
Report stage, they can amend it in the Lords—they will amend
it themselves in the Lords if, you know, they're prepared to accept
it, rather than be seen to be forced into it when it gets up the
corridor.
Man: I see, I see. So how do, in the
first instance, how do you make sure it's discussed in Committee?
PS: You get somebody to table an amendment,
fairly simply [inaudible]
Woman: To the Committee.
PS: Well, any Member of the Committee,
you see, can table an amendment at any stage—24 hours' notice
it'll appear on the Order Paper, and of course you're dependent
on the Chairman of the Committee selecting it for debate. There's
not normally a problem about that, but it's obviously relevant—just
to stop people tacking things on to Bills that have no real purpose
as far as that Bill is concerned, so the Chairman can say, "I'm
not debating that", but, I mean, [inaudible]
Lord Snape Meeting page 13 of 33
Man: And would you be, do you think
you'd be able to get it, given that you want to, I don't know,
would you be able to get an amendment tabled on the Committee,
do you think?
PS: Yes, I mean, I'd get somebody to
do it, yeah, I mean.
Woman: I didn't know how straightforward
it would be to—
PS: Well, everyone's always looking
for ideas. The problem for Back-Benchers is—Government Back-Benchers
in particular are encouraged to do their mail on Committee and
not speak, `cause they've got [inaudible] to get this legislation
through [inaudible], whereas Opposition Back-Benchers always
want to cut their teeth in Committee and impress the Whips and
the shadow Minister on there, so they want to be coming up with
ideas. Again, I mean, it's important not to get too political
in Committee.
[25.00]
If you got an Opposition person to table
such an amendment, you wouldn't want them to say, "Typical
of this Government, damaging business. This is a good idea that
will help save business money". And, you know, what you need
is somebody to say, "Given the economic situation, maybe
this is an idea the Government should look at". So, you know,
you pick people incred...—reasonably carefully.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: If you want people to just lark
around???, then fine. But if your purpose is to get legislation
changed then you've got to compromise and you've got to get ...
Woman: Well that's your objective, isn't
it? Rather than bashing the Government.
PS: Not always, if it's a Committee,
but ... [inaudible]
Woman: [Laughs] No, but it's
certainly our objective.
PS: Yeah, sure.
Woman: We don't want the Government
to be bashed, we just want the legislation changed.
Man: Yeah, absolutely. Also, there are
two Committee stages, aren't there? So presumably you might be
better off doing it in the Lords. Because presumably ... I don't
know, I don't ...
PS: Well, the Committee stage in the
Lords, as I said, is taken on the Floor of the House. Now, the
Government's trying to persuade their people not to table too
many amendments, because a) they make a guess at how long Committee
stage is going to be. Like the Banking Bill, which is very controversive
[sic] at this stage. I think we've done four days on it
so far because, you know, there are so many amendments, many of
them tabled by the Government themselves. [Inaudible] Legislation
is poorly drafted to start with. But I mean something like
Lord Snape Meeting page 14 of 33
this, I mean I'm guessing, er, there'd
be I would guess two Bills that particular day, so they'd want
this through in maybe three or four hours.
Man: Right.
PS: As far as the Lords Committee stage
is concerned, I mean in the Commons it doesn't particularly matter.
You know, they hazard a guess when they sit in Committee, "How
long will this take? Let's say two weeks", or something like
that. But they normally only met Tuesdays and Thursdays, you know,
for Committee stage in the Commons, unless it's something particularly
controversial, in which case they'll meet Tuesday, Thursday afternoon
and other days too. So I would have thought ... I do not know
how big the Bill is, I mean, I can get a copy of it from downstairs,
but, er, is there much in ... Have you seen the actual printed
copy of the Bill?
Man: Yes, but I can't remember how many
pages it was.
Woman: No, I haven't seen it. I don't
think it's particularly massive. I haven't got that impression
anyway.
Man: No, the only thing that I was just
thinking was that I think it goes out at ... The last day of Committee
stage is early February sometime. It's just that we didn't have
an awful lot of time, that's all.
PS: Is that right?
Man: I think that's about ...
PS: Ah. Er. What's the name of the actual
Bill? Can you tell me?
Man: It's the Business Rates (Supplement)
Bill.
[Pause]
PS: I'm having lunch with the Shadow
Minister for the West Midlands. I wonder whether she will lend
me a copy of the Bill.
[Pause]
PS: Business Rates Supplementary Bill?
Woman: Yeah.
Man: Business Rates Supplements Bill,
I think.
Lord Snape Meeting page 15 of 33
PS: Yes.
[Pause]
PS: [on phone] Hi, is Belinda
there? It's Peter Snape. No, OK, I'll try her on her mobile. Thanks
very much. Bye bye.
[Pause]
PS: Somewhere, when I came in, I put
my phone.
Woman: [Laughs]
Man: Oh, your mobile?
PS: Yeah.
Man: Er ....
PS: I think that's one of the numbers
that's on there.
Man: It's there. I can see it's under
that piece of paper. Right next to your left hand.
Woman: [Laughs]
PS: I used to have lots of assistants
when I was in the House of Commons.
Woman: Yeah, I bet.
PS: Doing it all myself. Very difficult.
[Pause]
[30.00]
PS: [phone call] I thought you
might be. The way you were whispering, yes. Can you make it as
far as the door without upsetting anybody? Okay. You are out there.
We are lunching today. Well, as part of my happiness about that,
I wonder if I could ask you, or one of your many minions to bring
me a copy of the, or to bring with you, a copy of the Business
Rates Supplementary Bill. Is that all right? Okay. Well, I'll
explain later. Right, right. So can you drop by my office on the
way? Because if we're going across the road then it's handy isn't
it. Okay, you're anticipating a vote then. Okay. Is this all [inaudible]
of your expenses bill? Very sensible. Okay, just hanging up.
Thanks very much. [end of phone call] They just went for
a vote or she said she'd send somebody over with it now, anyway
she'll bring it over on her way.
Lord Snape Meeting page 16 of 33
Woman: Great.
Man: Who's that?
PS: Lynda Waltho. She's the MP for Stourbridge.
She's newly just appointed, the Prime Minister's just appointed
her as regional Minister for the West Midlands.
Man: I see.
PS: It's the sort of thing that she
might be interested in anyway.
Woman: Yes.
Man: Yes.
PS: She's anxious to be seen on the
side of business.
Man: It sounds like something you'd
take up on our behalf.
PS: Well, I'd certainly look at it,
yes. It's quite, er, interesting. I think it's something worthwhile.
Man: Yes.
Woman: Mmm.
Man: I suppose the other question for
us is, in terms of, a bit of an embarrassing question—
PS: Yes.
Woman: [Laughter] Yes.
Man: We're thinking monthly retainer,
I don't know, which, I think, is the normal way of doing these
things. Is that right?.
PS: It is, yes, yes.
Man: Just tell us—
Woman: What do you normally charge?
PS: I charge a thousand pounds a month
or ?five? hundred pounds a day.
Lord Snape Meeting page 17 of 33
Woman: Okay.
PS: That's my normal rate??
Woman: How many days do you think you
would need to dedicate to this and also that you have available
to dedicate?
PS: About one or two a month, I would
have thought. ??Not that it matters??; one probably.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: Let you know the number of hours
I've spent on it. I'm not like a solicitor, where every phone
call—
Woman: Yes, totting it up.
Man: So, for us it would be, sort of,
it would be twelve grand as a sort of, and then say you did two
days a month.
PS: Yes.
Man: That would be another twelve grand.
PS: Yes.
Man: In effect. Yes, yes.
PS: Something like this wouldn't take
me two days a month I wouldn't have thought.
Woman: Mmm.
Man: So it might be cheaper than that?
PS: Yes.
Man: Well, thank you.
PS: It certainly wouldn't be any dearer
than that.
Woman: Okay.
PS: Mind you, if it was some complicated
undertaking ...
Woman: Yeah.
Lord Snape Meeting page 18 of 33
PS: ... then I'd come back and tell
you.
Woman: [Laughter]
PS: I wouldn't just bill you [inaudible]
Man: In this case it is basically just
to get this amendment.
PS: Right, right.
Man: Favourably for our client.
PS: Yes, sure. I couldn't give any guarantees
for obvious reasons.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: I've no idea what the Government's
view is, but I mean, I'll find out and I'll sort of talk to, you
know, one or two people and see what they say. It appears to me
an eminently sensible thing. As I said to you earlier, no doubt
civil servants will find all sorts of reasons not to do it.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: They will recommend not to do it
because that's the way they work.
Woman: Is it worth speaking to the Bill
team at all, do you think?
PS: What, the civil servants?
Woman: Yeah.
PS: Yes, it is if you know anybody.
I mean—
Woman: Well no, unfortunately I don't.
[Laughter]
PS: I'm not sure whether I do. I mean,
I'd have to use some of my contacts to find out who they are.
Woman: Find out who they are first,
yeah.
PS: I mean, they are ??a little bit??
more important than the politicians in my experience.
Woman: Yeah.
Lord Snape Meeting page 19 of 33
Man: Mmm.
PS: If you can persuade them, then you
know you are half way there.
Woman: Yeah.
[35.00]
I wouldn't off the top of my head think
I'd have, you know, many direct contacts with people ... I specialise
in transport and they are the people, you know, I see behind the
scenes. But they're not normally averse to lunch somewhere, you
know. ??It's been said?? they're so poorly paid they can't
afford to eat in the places MPs eat in, I think. I can't see it
myself. But, I mean, I could find out through ... I don't again
off the top of my head know who John Healey's parliamentary private
secretary is, but he or she would be a reasonably junior MP.
Woman: Yes.
PS: That's normally the way to the civil
servants and I'll say, look, you know, this is what I want to
do. It's for a client I'm working for.
Woman: Yes
PS: Anyone I talk to who looks, you
know, in the Minister's team.
Man and Woman: Yes.
Woman: That would be good.
PS: And, you know, if it's something
reasonable then they'll look at it and take it away. As I say,
they can always think of objections that wouldn't cross anybody
else's mind, but that's the Civil Service for you.
Woman: [laughing] Yes.
PS: Well, many of them are very good.
You know, I think they're much maligned, and if they know what
Ministers want to do, they are good at implementing or drafting
the legislation that would enable them to implement what they
want to do. The trouble is, lots of Ministers don't know what
they want to do, or they've only got vague ideas. Mostly in my
experience, people say, "I want to do this". I mean,
they might say, "Well, that's courageous, Minister, which,
if you watch "Yes Minister", means you're pretty crazy
and foolhardy and [inaudible].
Man and Woman: Yes (laughing)
Lord Snape Meeting page 20 of 33
PS: But, you know, I think they are
very good at what they do. And, as I say, they are at least as
important, if not more so than the politicians. Get them on side
and, you know, they see the politicians every day. We see each
other fleetingly.
Woman: Yes.
Man: Um, well I think that sort of covers
it, doesn't it, really?.
Woman: Yes.
PS: Can you tell me more about your
company? The only Michael Johnson Associates I know of is Australian
and they're quite big in Australia. I thought maybe that's where
you got your name from.
Man: Where we're from? No, no. Michael
Johnson is actually a company that was set up by an American called
Michael Johnson. He said that he had an office in Washington and
he had an office in Brussels. He now also has an office in Hong
Kong as well. But he's now retired. He's no longer ... I mean,
he still owns the business.
PS: [Inaudible]
Man: And certainly in Europe most of
his work has been with the European Parliament in Brussels and
the European Commission, whereas he has been trying to sort of
establish ... we've been trying to establish a business here in
the UK, which initially we did as sort of corporate communications
for, um, all sorts of, er, clients. I mean people like, say, have
you ever heard of Trevor Hemmings, the man who basically owns
Blackpool. He owns Blackpool leisure parks and things like that.
PS: I thought it was David Hemmings
who (inaudible).
Woman: (laughter)
PS: You have my sympathies. Fortunately
the Labour Party doesn't have to meet there any more. A meeting
every two years.
Man: We have a number of ... we have
some high-profile clients, reasonably high-profile clients like
him, and we have some businesses. We've done work for a couple
of airlines, haven't we? And, um, but we wanted to branch out
into public affairs as a new area for our business. So we're not
necessarily very, sort of, experienced in this area. Our background,
both our backgrounds, really, are not public affairs.
Woman: PR, really.
Lord Snape Meeting page 21 of 33
Man: So as much as anything, having
a relationship with a consultant in Parliament would be very useful
to us because I mean it helps us ... it shows us ... you know,
we make assumptions and they're not always as ... [inaudible]
it suits.
PS: Right.
Man: Er...
Woman: It's just important, really,
to know how it all works, I suppose, which is something, you know,
that you're very familiar with, and as outsiders, we're not. Even,
you know, identifying who people are and having a relationship
with those people.
PS: I spent my formative years in the
Whips Office in the 1970s. I don't suppose you two were born.
We discovered to our amazement in 1974 that we were elected. I
mean, we didn't expect to be elected given the whole history of
the miners' strike and all the rest of it. So I spent about a
year on the Back Benches and I was a whip for four years to the
famous vote of confidence that we managed to lose by one in 1979.
One thing about the Whips' Office is it does teach you how the
place works.
Woman: Yes.
PS: A lot of my colleagues, I mean ...
Amazing some of the people who were in the Cabinet, in Jim Callaghan's
Cabinet, and had no idea. People like Michael Foot, who was lovely
but, you know, a nice guy, but with no idea of how Parliament
worked. But he'd been here for 30 years but he'd never done any
committee work. He was one of these great broad-brush ... a great
broad-brush man and a terrific orator. But then they made him
Leader of the House of Commons and he hadn't the faintest idea
of what he was meant to do.
[40.00]
It was a fascinating time, as you can
imagine. In fact somebody just sent me Kenneth Morgan's biography
of Michael Foot, which says that his campaign against Denis Healey,
when he ran for the leadership of the Labour Party was going nowhere
until these three Back-Benchers, Neil Kinnock, Peter Snape and
Jim Marshall took over running his campaign and he won. One of
my colleagues, a man called George Howarth, who is one of the
Liverpool MPs, said to me, he'd just been reading this you see,
he said "Didn't you propose Michael Martin for the chair
before you left the Commons. I said, "I did". He said
"Michael Foot? Michael Martin? You've done more damage to
the Labour Party than the bloody Tories". A long time ago.
Man: Didn't you have the transport brief
for a while?
PS: Yes, 10 years. Yes I was going to
be Minister of Transport had we won in 1992, which we expected
to do. Either that or chief whip. I quite fancied the job of chief
whip. But I'd seen Neil Kinnock. We'd got a meeting in Birmingham
about three days before polling day when we still had a lead in
the polls. He said I haven't made my mind up yet. I know you've
Lord Snape Meeting page 22 of 33
done transport for 10 years, do you
fancy doing something else?" I said "Well, not particularly.
What have you in mind?" "We need people in the whips
office. We need a chief whip it's going to be tight and all the
rest of it." I said let's talk. We might as well wait till
after Thursday. Then of course, he resigned immediately because
we didn't win and John Smith rang me up and said, "Are you
going to carry on?" I said "I'm not, no. I've been offered
a job outside". Originally as a non-executive director for
a company called West Midlands Travel which is a stand-alone ex-municipal
bus undertaking and I was the only person. It was employee-owned
at the time. I was the only person that the trade union and management
side could agree on ... It was an employee-owned company and they
needed at least two independent non-execs and I was the one in
fact that they could agree on. So I said I can't obviously do
that and be on the front bench as the transport spokesman. He
said "Well you can for a year, he said, just don't do any
buses. The rules were a bit more lax than they are now, so I did
both jobs for about a year. Then we became part of the National
Express group. I think the Tories took ???a man on the board???
So I expected them to say goodbye anyway. Anyway, to my astonishment,
they asked me to stay on and they made me chairman of the bus
division, a job I did for four years.
Man: When did you stand down as an MP
then?
PS: 2001 [inaudible] The then
chief executive moved on, a bloke called Phil Whiting. I'd fallen
out with his successor on the Strategic Rail Authority, Richard
Bowker. They approached the chief executive ...
Man: So you were made Lord presumably
by Tony Blair, I guess?
PS: Yes yes yes. I indicated to you
earlier, I could have gone straight from the Commons to the Lords.
I was actually in Australia when the 2001 election was postponed
because of the foot and mouth thing. So I'd arranged, everybody
knew, it was no secret that it would be 3 May so I'd arranged
this trip to Australia to try and resolve some of our problems
we were having with the State Government in Victoria. Of course,
when it was postponed I said "Well I'm going anyway as I'm
not standing for re-election". So I did a couple of interviews,
radio interviews. I never told them I was in Australia because
people just ring you on your mobile
Woman: Yes, exactly.
PS: I said, "Well I can't get to
a phone. You'll just have to do it from here. I got a lot of the
information from British newspapers pretending I was still over
there. But Australia was a disaster for us. Fortunately I'd taken
the precaution of saying, "This is not a good idea",
when the board decided they were going to run or try and get into
the Australian transport market. I've never understood the City,
you know, I look at the share price now of National Express ???
They are down to four quid. It's still the same business it
was when it was 13 quid.
Lord Snape Meeting page 23 of 33
Woman: Oh, God.
Man: Well look at the banks.
PS: Absolutely. Mind you, there's a
reason for that: I mean the banks are skint. I mean National Express
is a very good company. It might be affected by the recession
as far as ??train carriage?? But it's not going to go bump.
But the City then were urging expansion on everybody so we bought
some yellow buses in the United States, which were quite profitable,
you know, yellow school buses. But as I said, the Australian market,
when I went over there, the unions were just like they were in
Britain in the 1970s. I mean that was their general ...
Woman: I didn't know that about Australia.
PS: And of course ... I mean it's just
as well. Have either of you been to Melbourne?
Woman & Man: No
PS: It's a great city I mean I like
Australia. My wife knows lots of ??? there and we go there.
We were there last August, but they're pretty difficult to deal
with, particularly if you're a Pom. So I said, well, you know,
we can't import management from the UK [...]
[45.00]
Woman: Yeah
PS: You've got to get local people to
do it. And the State Government have done a deal to get rid of
the conductors on trams and be a one-person operation, which is
sort of normal anywhere else in the world, but it took us 18 months,
I think, you know, to buy every one of them off individually.
The whole thing's a nightmare. But interesting.
Woman: Are they, are National Express
still operating in Australia?.
PS: No, we just pulled the plug in the
end and walked away, gave them the keys back. I mean it cost National
Express I think eight million or something like that
Woman: God
PS: It was the only way. It was never
gonna work.
Woman: God. Total nightmare then for
a couple of years.
PS: Yeah, I mean I used to go two or
three times a year. The chief exec at one stage was going for
the weekend, I mean, he would fly out
Lord Snape Meeting page 24 of 33
Woman: Oh, that's horrendous, isn't
it?
PS: Yeah. take some pills so that he
could sleep on the plane.
Woman: Yeah
PS: and he was back at his desk on Monday
lunchtime. He's going to kill himself.
Woman: Yeah. It's incredibly tiring.
PS: Yes, it is, yes.
Woman: You may as well just stay there
for a month, quite frankly.
PS: Well, I never go for less than three
weeks, cos it takes, you know, two or three days to get over it,
I mean
Woman: Yeah
PS: and how people sit in the back.
You know, I mean, business class is comfortable, and you can stretch
out. I mean you see whole families going from Heathrow. I mean,
it's 26 hours [...]
Woman: Yeah, it's tough
Man: My sister lives in Australia,
PS: Oh, right.
Man: Up in Queensland, in a place called
Noosa.
PS: Noosa? Wow. Yeah. Yeah
Man: And we went
PS: I stayed in a hotel, Tingaramee,
or something it was called, right on the ... right on the main
street.
Man: I know Noosa has ... I've not,
I mean, I've just stayed with sister, so.
PS: Did you? The Sheraton is on one
side
Man: My parents have stayed in the Sheraton
Lord Snape Meeting page 25 of 33
PS: Right, lovely place Noosa. The trouble
was, last time I was there, it wasn't last year, it was the year
before, we didn't go .... I've been two or three times, there
was a jazz festival. I hate jazz, I mean, I hate jazz.
Man: There was a jazz festival on when
I was there.
PS: Were there?
Man: We went in August.
PS: It's probably an annual thing.
Woman: Yeah, probably
PS: I mean, trouble is ... it's impossible
to have a meal in any of the restaurants without someone
Woman: Without bing, bing, bing
PS: So much bloody nonsense down my
ear. I mean, my tastes in music don't extend to jazz.
Man: I did find the flying offputting.
I find just being in the air that long, so we split it up by going
to Bali.
PS: Did you?
Man: Gorgeous. Like heaven.
PS: Yeah, Yeah.
Man: If you ever get the chance, you
should.
PS: Well my wife flies Singapore, you
see. My wife has expensive taste. Shangri La hotel in Singapore.
Woman: Oh nice! Shangri Las are amazing.
PS: Yeah, they are, aren't they? And
especially there.
Woman: Yeah, I bet.
PS: the service there, terrific. We
often break that journey. About five days there last time, but
normally, I like to fly all the back and just get it over with.
Lord Snape Meeting page 26 of 33
Woman: Yeah.
PS: I mean, it's a heck of a journey,
isn't it? We got my nephew to pick us up from Heathrow to drive
us back to Birmingham. Pretty worn out.
Woman: Yeah
Man: Yeah
Woman: Yeah
Man: So, have you amended any legislation
before on behalf of clients, or?
PS: Ah. I think we are back to the bus
business there. I don't think I've got any specific amendments
I could think of. I mean, I've certainly amended legislation as
an Opposition spokesman but not on behalf of clients, so, I mean,
Man: But you don't foresee any difficulties
here?
PS: Well, I don't know whether the Government
will agree to it. I mean, you know, actually if the Government
agree to it, that sort of amendment, because they do it, you know,
for you
Woman: What, they do it kind of in draft
stages or something?
PS: Yeah, yeah. I mean, what you need
to do, I'll discuss the sort of ... draw up—whether you
do it yourself or you can get a parliamentary agent or if it is
nice and simple, I'll do it, but you know, you've got to draw
up an amendment that's properly worded in a parliamentary sense.
Woman: Yeah
Man: Yeah
PS: I mean, do you work with any parliamentary
agents at all?
Man: No, but I just assumed I would
get a parliamentary draftsman to do, to actually draw up, because
I mean it is a quite a specific task isn't it? The whole thing
PS: It is, Yeah, yeah
Man: And then we could give you the
draft and then you could give it to.
PS: Whoever
Lord Snape Meeting page 27 of 33
Man: Yeah
PS: Yeah, sure. Do you know a parliamentary
draftsman, I mean, do you have someone in mind?
Man: Yes
PS: Oh fine. Okay. I've got it, I mean
that's the best way to do it, as you know, they'll do all the
legalese. You'll find they're a lot more expensive than I am incidentally.
You can't do these things cheaply. You know, there's a whole industry
round here of parliamentary drafts—you can't call them draftsmen
any more, they've got to be draftspeople.
Woman: [laughs]
PS: Ah. So, if you, you know, if you
do that, and let me have a copy of it, then obviously I'll circulate
it to those people I think might be sympathetic, people on the
committee initially, but I'll talk to first the Minister's PPS,
I'll find out who it is ... if it's the wrong generation sort
of thing
Woman: Yeah
PS: ... put you in the picture.
[50.00]
PS: I mean what I want from you as far
as we're concerned is if you would summarise this conversation
and our agreement in a letter to me, formally requesting me to
act as a consultant on the lines financially that we have just
agreed.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: Although it is not necessary, it
is not essential, I would quite like to meet your clients, if—
Woman: Yeah.
Man: That is possible.
PS: In your office, if you like, if
you think it would impress him bring him here.
Man: He might like to, say, have lunch
in the Lords if that's—
Woman: Yeah.
Lord Snape Meeting page 28 of 33
PS: Mm. Chinese or Hong Kong Chinese
are normally fairly astute business people, aren't they, to say
the least?
Woman: Yeah.
PS: Most people like the ambience of
visiting, it indicates that you have some sort of connections
in Parliament, or—
Man: It is typical of them that they
have identified this particular piece of legislation, and I would
imagine that there might be others as well but I don't, they haven't
identified any to us at the moment.
Woman: No.
PS: Is this 2 per cent that you mentioned
is this in addition to the business rate that the—
Man: It is on top of the—
PS: I know it is a nuisance, but it's
scarcely massive ...
Man: Well no, but I think it is sort
of an irritation and when it is aggregated across many different
businesses it—
PS: They don't seem to have a business
rate in Hong Kong.
Man: And also there is going to be a
business rate renewal next year which means that—
PS: It's obviously going to go up.
Woman: There are lots of variables,
I think that is part of the problem.
Man: He just wants to sort of exclude
all the variables.
Woman: Especially because there is enough
going on with the economy at the moment isn't there? Not quite
sure what that is going to be like.
PS: It is hardly healthy, is it?
Woman: No.
PS: It is not going to get any easier
is it? I am not a betting man, but I think you'd get pretty good
odds from a bookie against a fourth term Labour government.
Woman: Yeah.
Lord Snape Meeting page 29 of 33
PS: I mean, I think—
Man: I can't see how—
PS: I can't see us winning an election
to be honest.
Man: We wondered if you were going to
go this summer?
PS: No, with a double figures deficit
in the opinion polls, you are not going to go, are you?
Man: And so therefore you leave it and
you just box yourself in.
PS: As John Major did, but I mean politics
is about "something will turn up", you know. It's the
Mr Micawber theory.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: We forget how Mrs Thatcher was the
most unpopular Prime Minister ever before the Falklands.
Man: Of course, yeah.
Woman: Hopefully something similar does
not happen!
Man: I am not saying that, but equally
John Major was massive, wasn't he?
PS: Yes he was. He won in 92, didn't
he, against the odds. If Mrs Thatcher had still been leader of
the Tory party, a fact a lot of them forget when they go on about
how wonderful she was, if we had won by a landslide in 1992 and
of course we'd have behaved in exactly the same way, because John
Smith, the shadow Chancellor at the time, was just as keen on
the European money mechanism, the ERM, whatever it was called,
as Lamont and the Conservatives.
Man: Mmm.
PS: So we would have won in 92, behaved
in exactly the same way, been expelled from the ERM would have
cemented our view of—the general view of our economic incompetence,
would have been massacred in 97 like the Tories were, so although
it stopped me from being Minister of Transport or whatever, I
think it was a good election to lose.
Woman: Yeah.
PS: The whole time for change thing
is a real killer. [inaudible]
Lord Snape Meeting page 30 of 33
Man: And the argument about competence,
which is a good argument, because clearly I think most people
would trust Gordon Brown above Cameron in terms of competence
economically is slightly defeated by the constant bad news. I
mean this week has been bad.
PS: Yeah, terrible, and it's going to
get worse. Job losses every day it is very difficult.
Woman: Yeah, it's horrible.
PS: People going bust, and it is not,
you talk about Blair, but people quite liked him. We had a media.
John Major said to me, I knew Major reasonably well because he
was Whip opposite me and when they went into opposition after
97 he said the British press are merciless. They'll build him
up for two or three years then they'll turn against him, like
they turned against Brown. I think he is fortunate that Cameron
is a bit of a lightweight and Osborne is even more so. I mean,
bringing Kenneth Clarke back, providing they can get him to, keep
him quiet on Europe is a good stroke.
[55.00]
Woman: Yeah.
PS: It takes away the main problem,
Labour's attack that they're rich kids, you know.
Woman: Who are inexperienced.
Man: You know, "At a time like
this, would you trust the economy with George Osborne?" That
is a very a good line of attack.
PS: Of course it is. And, you know,
are we really going to turn the clock back to the days of the
Old Etonian magic circle? Because, you know, a dozen of the Shadow
Cabinet [were in the] Bullingdon Club or whatever it's
called.
Woman: Yes.
PS: I should imagine that Labour's election
strategists will be giving a lot of airings to that particular
photograph.
Woman: Yeah. [Laughs].
PS: So getting Clarke back's a good
stroke if they can keep him off Europe. Yeah. You never know.
I mean, politics is full of ... You know, I wouldn't write them
off completely.
Man: It's not looking good, is it?
PS: Two out of 10.
Lord Snape Meeting page 31 of 33
Woman: [Laughs]
Man: Well, look, we won't detain you
any longer. What we'll do is we'll [inaudible] is the answer.
Woman: Yep.
Man: And thank you very much.
PS: Not at all.
Woman: Yeah, thanks for your time.
PS: SW1A 0PA is the postcode of the
House of Commons if you want to write to me. Or you could e-mail
me.
Woman: Yes.
PS: Actually it would be handy if I
had it in writing.
Woman: Yes. Would you prefer it ...
Because I can send it via e-mail with, like, as an attachment.
Or would you prefer it in the post?.
PS: Er... I guess in the post.
Is that Okay?
Woman: OK, yeah, that's fine. It makes
no difference.
PS: We can communicate by email after
that.
Woman: Yeah, it makes no difference.
PS: I don't normally use the parliamentary
e-mail thing. I use my own hotmail [inaudible]
Woman: OK.
PS: Right. The parliamentary stuff is
full of junk from the Whip's office. Can you go here go there
or [inaudible]?
Woman: [inaudible]
PS: Pleasure, nice to meet you.
Woman: Have a nice lunch. Where are
you going for lunch?.
Lord Snape Meeting page 32 of 33
PS: [inaudible]
Woman: Ah, very nice.
[long stretch of inaudible, various
speaking]
PS: I came in her about a week before
we actually resumed after Christmas Recess just to do a business
thing and I said, oh, we'll go and eat at the ... [inaudible,
lift pings]. Wednesday night, neither House sitting, but it
was absolutely packed.
Woman: I wonder who was there.
PS: Well, they all looked as though
they were reasonably affluent.
Woman: Yes, I suppose they must have
been.
PS: Quite a lot of tourists as well
[inaudible] maybe it's something ... 5-star hotels.
Woman: Yeah. That's true. Saying it
would be quiet.
PS: They probably say it's full of politicians,
you know, you go in there and see the Prime Minister or something
like that.
Lift: Ground Floor. Doors opening.
PS: Right, nice to see you. Thanks again.
Woman: Yeah nice to see you. See you
later.
Woman: Hello. Just get this.
Man: He's wondering about us.
Woman: I know.
Woman: Thanks, bye.
Woman: Did you see who his, um, ??office
buddy?? was?
Man: No.
Woman: ??Woolmer??
Lord Snape Meeting page 33 of 33
Man: Oh right.
Woman: We didn't call him.
Man: [?]
Woman: Well those could be the same.
They're involved with the same consultancy.
Man: Ah, of course, yeah, I'm sorry,
now I remember.
Woman: Which way do we go? [inaudible]
Oh, this way.
Man: Yes, they would be. They both share
that same ???
Woman: Yeah.
[End.]
Telephone Call to Lady Snape ("LS")
from Michael Gillard ("MG") of the Sunday Times, Friday
23 January 2009 (1)
Telephone CD1 page 7 of 28
MG: Are we on? Okay.
Lady Snape: Hello
MG: Hello. Is Lord Snape there please?
LS: I'm afraid not. Who's that?
MG: It's Michael Gillard from the Sunday
Times.
LS: Oh, right. Okay. Well, he's, erm,
at the Lords.
MG: He's at the Lords. Sorry, are you
...?
LS: Yes, I mean he might possibly be
on his way back, um, but he certainly went in this morning.
MG: Right. Sorry, who I am talking to?
LS: Lady Snape
MG: Lady Snape. Could I leave a message
with you just in case I don't manage to get hold of him?
LS: Yes. Hang on a minute. Let me just
find a pen `cos I'm upstairs at the moment.
MG: I apologise. Do you want me to call
back?
LS: Err. No. Right, what's the message?.
MG: It's Michael Gillard at the Sunday
Times.
LS: Yeah.
MG: ... and we need to speak to him
urgently about, ern, his discussions that he's had with a company
called Michael Johnson Associates.
LS: Michael Johnson Associates. What's
your telephone number?
MG: **** *** ...
LS: *** ...
MG: ****.
LS: ****.
Telephone CD1 page 8 of 28
MG: Or ****
LS: Right. Okay. Sorry, could you say
your name again?
MG: Michael Gillard.
LS: Michael Gillard.
MG: We're running a story this weekend,
so anything you can do to expedite him getting in touch with us,
we would be very grateful.
LS: Okay. Can I just check your number
again? It's **** ...
MG: ****.
LS: Oh, sorry. **** ** ...
MG: No, ***.
LS: Sorry, it's this pen. It's not really
...
MG: ****.
LS: Yeah. ***.
MG: ***.
LS: *.
MG: **.
LS: Double * *.
MG: Yeah, or ****.
LS: Okay. Thank you. I've got that [inaudible]
MG: Thank you very much.
LS: Thank you very much. Bye bye
[call ends]
Failed Telephone Call to Lord Snape ("PS")
from Michael Gillard ("MG") of the Sunday Times, Friday
23 January 2009
Telephone CD1 page 8 of 28
[new call]
PS: Hello, I'm unable to take your call
at the moment. If you'd like to leave your number, I'll ring you
back as soon as I can. Thank you.
Electronic voice: When you have finished
recording please hang up or press the hash key for more options.
Telephone CD1 page 9 of 28
MG: This is a message for Lord Snape
from Michael Gillard at the Sunday Times newspaper in London.
Lord Snape, I'm ringing to speak to you about discussions that
you've had very recently with a company called Michael Johnson
Associates and the client they represent, a Mr Jiang, and I understand
that they're interested in having some legislation around business
rates, a bill that is going both Houses, amended and they had,
er, meetings with you very recently, I think, yesterday. Anyway,
I'd like to talk to you about those discussions, erm, because
we're running a story this weekend and, erm, there are some, um,
allegations that I'd like to discuss with you. My numbers are
***** ****** or ***** ******. It's now 11.45 on Friday. Once again,
it's quite urgent that we speak to you so that I can run through
what it is that we understand you discussed with Michael Johnson
Associates. Many thanks. Bye for now.
[call ends]
Telephone Call to Lord Snape ("PS")
from Michael Gillard ("MG") of the Sunday Times, Friday
23 January 2009
Telephone CD1 page 9 of 28
[new call]
MG: ... running
Operator: House of Lords.
MG: Hello. Could you put me through
to Lord Snape's office please?
[Ringing for a long time]
MG: It's ringing out.
[Phone picked up]
MG: Hello?.
PS: Michael Gillard?
MG: Speaking
PS: Hi, it's Peter Snape.
MG: Oh, hello Lord Snape. Thanks for
getting back to me. What it is is, erm, I understand you had some,
a meeting, yesterday with a company called Michael Johnson Associates.
PS: Yeah.
MG: I also understand that they were
representing a Chinese businessman called Li Jiang and that they
wanted to have legislation amended in relation to the business
rates bill that's going through the two Houses.
PS: That's right.
MG: And I wanted to talk to you about
what it was that you were prepared to do for them.
Telephone CD1 page 10 of 28
PS: Eh?
MG: Can you help me with that?
PS: Yes. I'm on a train so bear in mind
that reception is not too clever. Can you speak up a bit?
MG8: Can you hear me now?
PS: Yes, I can, yes, yes.
MG: Sorry, I'll try and speak louder.
PS: Okay.
MG: So what was it that you agreed to
do for them?
PS: [crackle] the, er, question
they put to me was, er, they said they had a client from Hong
Kong who wanted to start up a business in the United Kingdom,
er, and obviously was concerned about the supplementary rate and
the legislation that is going through the House of Commons at
the moment.
MG: Yeah.
PS: I said to them that the rules are
that I could not attempt to amend any legislation on behalf of
an individual client or an individual company but I was quite
happy to look at the possibility of the Government exempting any
new companies throughout the United Kingdom from this supplementary
business rate, perhaps for a limited period.
MG: And how would you go about doing
that?.
PS: I [inaudible] I think that's
between me and them, isn't it?
MG: Right. Well, I mean, what I am saying
is is what you did within the rules?
PS: Of course, I mean, I just had a
conversation with them, and I said...
MG: What you agreed to do, was that
within the rules of what Lords are allowed to do for outside interests?
Hello? Can you hear me?
PS: Can you still hear me?
MG: I can hear you. Sorry, we cut out
briefly.
PS: Yeah, We just went through a tunnel
[inaudible].
MG: There you go. That would explain
...
Telephone CD1 page 11 of 28
PS: What were we saying?
MG: Well I was going to ask is whether
you would be willing to talk to me about what it is that you agreed
to do for them and whether money was involved.
PS: Yes, of course.
MG: Sorry, briefly, just before you
entered the tunnel, I thought you said you wouldn't tell me what
[inaudible].
PS: No, I, look, I said I wouldn't do
anything on their behalf, on behalf of an individual client ...
MG: Yes.
PS: ... because that would be outside
the rules of the House. I said I was quite prepared to discuss
with them how legislation could be changed which would benefit
businesses throughout the United Kingdom, and if they wanted to
take me on as a consultant to their company, my usual fees were,
which I went through. I asked them to confirm in writing and I
said I would confirm back to them in writing that I would only
act on their behalf, er, on behalf of businesses throughout the
UK and not on behalf of individual clients, as within the rules
of House.
MG: So you wouldn't have acted on behalf
of the Chinese client, even though you knew that it was a Chinese
client that was wanting this done [inaudible] of the lobbyists.
PS: I'm sorry, can you just say that
again? I'm not being difficult about this but [inaudible]
MG: No, no, I can understand that.
PS: ... on trains.
MG: No, I've had conversations on trains.
They're quite ...
PS: Yeah. [inaudible]
MG: If you'd like, if you're going to
stop at some point, I could, maybe, call you when there's less
tunnels and interference.
PS: Well, well, I'm actually going to,
on my way home so, er ...
MG: Are you way off from landing?
PS: I'm quite a way from Birmingham,
yeah. I'm somewhere between Leighton Buzzard and Bletchley at
the moment.
MG: Oh, right, okay, so you've got about
half an hour at least.
Telephone CD1 page 12 of 28
PS: 40 minutes, I would have thought,
yes, yeah.
MG: Shall I call you in Birmingham?
PS: Yes, well, why don't you ring me
on this number at, say, 12.40, something like that.
MG: 12.40. Speak to you then. All right.
[call ends]
Failed Telephone Calls to Lord Snape ("PS")
from Michael Gillard ("MG") of the Sunday Times, Friday
23 January 2009
Telephone CD1 page 12 of 28
[Dialling]
PS: Hello. I'm unable to take your call
at the moment. If you'd like to leave your number, I'll ring you
back as soon as I can. Thank you.
Recorded voice: When you've finished
recording please hang up or press the hash key for more options.
MG: Lord Snape, it's Michael Gillard
from the Sunday Times. It's 12.40. Hopefully you've arrived at
Birmingham and we can now have a proper conversation. If you'd
like to give me a call, I'm on ***** ******. If that line is engaged
or no one answers, try ***** ******, which is the news desk, and
ask for me and they'll come and find me. Otherwise I'll give you
a call shortly. Thanks very much. Bye.
[call ends]
[new call]
PS: Hello. I'm unable to take your call
at the moment. If you'd like to leave your number, I'll ring you
back as soon as I can. Thank you.
Recorded voice: When you've finished
recording please hang up or press the hash key for more options.
MG: Oh, hello. It's Michael Gillard
again from the Sunday Times. Clearly you're still on the phone.
Anyway, very keen to speak. It's now, erm, almost quarter to one.
Bye bye.
[call ends]
Telephone Call to Lord Snape ("PS")
from Michael Gillard ("Man") of the Sunday Times, Friday
23 January 2009 (2)
Telephone CD2 page 12 of 29
[New call] 18.25
PS: Hello.
Man: Hi, it's Michael Gillard from the
Sunday Times.
PS: Hi.
Man: Can you talk now?
PS: Yeah, yeah, I'm at home now, yes.
Man: Oh wonderful. So shall we start
again?
PS: Yeah.
Man: Right. What I'm interested in is
this company, Michael Johnson Associates and their client, this
Chinese businessman, who I understand engaged your services.
PS: Er, Michael Johnson Associates.
Man: Yeah.
PS: Not the Chinese client.
Man: Well, that's their client, isn't
it, as I understand.
PS: It's what?
Man: The Chinese man is their client.
PS: He's one of their clients, I presume.
Man: Yeah, but as I understand it, what
they're engaging you to do is on his behalf.
PS: No, no it is not, and if you understand
that then whatever transcript you've got isn't true.
Man: Whatever what?
PS: Whatever transcript of the conversation
you might have just isn't true.
Man: Right. Um, so what exactly did
you think you were doing for them?
PS: Well actually I'm in this [inaudible]
if you like [inaudible] okay. Er, following a telephone
call from a Clare Taylor from Michael Johnson Associates.
Telephone CD2 page 13 of 29
Man: Mm.
PS: Er, regarding a possible consultancy
agreement between us.
Man: Mm.
PS: She asked for a meeting which took
place in my office this week.
Man: Mm.
PS: Her colleague told me the company
had a Hong Kong client, so.
Man: Sorry, could you go a bit slower?
PS: Oh sorry, yes sure. I thought you
had shorthand, don't you, shorthand [inaudible] Sunday
Times [inaudible].
Man: No no. This took place, a meeting
which took place this week.
PS: In my office this week.
Man: Yeah.
PS: Her colleague, and I'm afraid I
left his business card in the office. I can't remember his name.
Man: Yeah, sure.
PS: ... might be David Thompson, yes,
told me that the company had a client based in Hong Kong.
Man: Yeah.
PS: Er, who was anxious to open over
100 retail outlets in the UK.
Man: Mm.
PS: And was therefore [inaudible]
seeking exemption from what he called supplementary business
rate.
Man: Mm.
PS: This legislation currently before
the House of Commons.
Man: Mm.
PS: I said it's, under the rules of
the House I was unable to initiate any legislation on behalf of
an individual or company.
Man: Mm.
Telephone CD2 page 14 of 29
PS: Er.
Man: What did he say?
PS: [inaudible]
Man: Well then you wouldn't be initiating
it, would you, you'd be amending it?
PS: Well okay, then initiate—I'll
amend my own statement then, if I may—initiate or amend—
Man: Right.
PS: Er any legislation on behalf of
an individual or company.
Man: Mm.
PS: However I did state, following discussion,
er, that such an exemption—
Man: Yep.
PS: Er, [inaudible] time-limited
for all new start-up businesses—
Man: Mm.
PS: ... may be beneficial given the
current economic circumstances.
Man: Mm.
PS: Er, and undertook to investigate
such a possibility further.
Man: Mm.
PS: I went on to explain to Mr Johnson
and his colleague parliamentary procedures in both Houses, through
which any legislation would pass.
Man: Mm.
PS: I was then asked if I was interested
in accepting a consultancy with Michael Johnson Associates—
Man: Mm.
PS: For my normal fees, er my normal
scale of fees.
Man: Mm.
PS: And asked them to forward a, forward
a formal letter to me—
Telephone CD2 page 15 of 29
Man: Mm.
PS: When I would consider it.
Man: Right.
PS: That's about what I've got to say
on that.
Man: Okay. Um, what, um, what I was
interested in knowing is, is it the case, or isn't it the case,
that you said you'd draw up an amendment for, for David Thompson
to give to someone to put down in a committee?
PS: No, that isn't the case. I said
I would assist him, er, I said the best people to draw up such
an amendment would be parliamentary agents who are the real experts.
Mr Thompson said they had a, er people in mind.
Man: And you didn't offer to draft the
amendment.
PS: I wouldn't know how to draft an
amendment. I mean, you know, parliamentary procedures are fairly
technical.
Man: Right. And you didn't offer to
approach the Minister in charge behind the scenes?
PS: I said that er, er, it would be
as well if, er, soundings were taken of the likely government
reaction, er, to such an exemption for all businesses. For, I'm
sorry, all new start-up businesses.
Man: My point is, did you offer to approach
the Minister in charge behind the scenes?
PS: I offered to look into the best
way of, er, sounding out the government, er, sounding out, er,
the possibility of such a piece of legislation. Don't specifically,
I didn't specifically name the Minister or anybody else.
Man: Sorry, my question isn't whether
you named him. The question is whether you offered to approach
the Minister in charge.
PS: I, I, I didn't know, I don't even
know who the Minister in charge is. I mean—
Man: Well, you could find out, wouldn't
you?
PS: Well, er, if I was—
Man: [inaudible] thousand pounds
a year. I mean it wouldn't be much of a—
PS: Well indeed. In this case, if I
were to be paid £24,000 a year I might do just that, but—
Man: Yeah.
Telephone CD2 page 16 of 29
PS: But at that stage, that stage, we're
discussing the legislation.
Man: But that was your fee structure,
wasn't it?
PS: My normal fee structure is £1,000
a month for retainer and £500 a day.
Man: Right. So 24 a year was the discussed
fee structure.
PS: I said if I took more than two days
a month, erm, then I would ask if I were going to charge for two
days a month I would come back to them. At the moment that was
about the average fee that I charged.
Man: Right. And is it your case, Lord
Snape, that you were willing to help MJA amend the legislation?
PS: I was willing initially to help
MJA to see what the reaction would be, and I was willing, er,
to give them advice as to how the legislation might be amended.
Man: Right.
PS: Particularly by the use of the parliamentary
agent. [inaudible] Chamber legislation, but I mean, if
you try and do it yourself, you find out it means [inaudible]
exactly the opposite to what you thought it meant.
Man: Which is why, um, the phrase they
used, I'm told, is "behind the scenes" is where your
influence would work in parliamentary—
PS: Not quite, as far as the drafting
is concerned. I mean, I emphasise [inaudible] drafted professionally
by a parliamentary agent.
Man: But you're categoric on the fact
that you didn't say that you would draw up, um, um, that they
should draw up, um, an amendment for you to give to someone to
put down in a committee?
PS: They couldn't draft an amendment.
They wouldn't have the expertise.
Man: Right. And you're categoric that
you didn't say that you would offer to draft it for them.
PS: No, I wouldn't know how to draft
it for them.
Man: Right. Okay. Um. And that obviously
I have said to you that the phone, the meeting conversations were
taped.
PS: Yes, well there's no doubt about
that. Yes.
Man: I mean, the people that you met
were undercover reporters.
PS: [inaudible] I guessed that
too.
Telephone CD2 page 17 of 29
Man: Right. When did you guess that?
PS: Well, I had my suspicions beforehand—
Man: Right.
PS: The way it was done.
Man: Right. Okay. And did you report
that to anyone?
PS: Well, I didn't have any occasion
to, any cause to, did I? I mean, I emphasise that I laid down
very strictly that I, in fact they asked me the question, have
I ever amended legislation on behalf of anybody. I said I've amended
quite a bit of legislation—
Man: Mm.
PS: But only from the Front Bench on
behalf of the party. I've never done it for any individual. It
would be against the rules of the House.
Man: Right. Okay, well I think I've
covered everything that I need to cover. Is there anything else
you want to ask me?
PS: Well, you will use my statements,
er, will you, because I—
Man: Sure. I mean I'll check it back
with you if, um, I haven't got it down properly.
PS: All right.
Man: Are you going to be on this number
for, for, the duration of, er, the weekend?
PS: [inaudible] at home. It might
be a better line.
Man: All right. What's your home number?
PS: You know it because [inaudible]
my wife.
Man: Oh of course I do. The ***** ******.
PS: That's the one.
Man: All right. Many thanks for your
time. Bye.
PS: Thank you. Bye.
[call ends]
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