Examination of Witness (Questions 560-575)
Lord Truscott
13 MARCH 2009
Q560 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
That is the penultimate page.
Lord Truscott: I have got it now, thank
you.
Q561 Lord Irvine of Lairg: "Who's
in charge of sponsoring the Bill as such? Presumably the head
of the Bill Committee is— PT: No, it's the Minister. Man:
It's the Minister. So it's Hazel Blears. PT: Well, Hazel Blears
is, you know, the Secretary of State ..." The lady interposes,
"Yes, so she's got overall ..." and you say, "...
so she takes ultimate responsibility, but it will be given to
John Healey in the Commons ... and it will be given to his opposite
number in the Lords". The man says: "It was Healey who
was fielding questions in the Second Reading, wasn't it?"
You say, "I came across John ... well, I remember I helped
him in his by-election when he was elected, I think, and then
I came across him again quite a bit when I was a Minister, because
he was the Treasury's man at the time. Man: So he might listen
to the arguments, in that case? PT: Yeah." Did you understand
that the man meant he might listen to the arguments from you because
you knew him and had assisted in his by-election?
Lord Truscott: That was maybe what he
was implying but that was not what I was suggesting. This is typical
of the line that they set out.
Q562 Lord Irvine of Lairg: Let us
forget about the Sunday Times, we just want to ask—
Lord Truscott: I do not think you can
actually, Lord Irvine.
Q563 Lord Irvine of Lairg: I just
want to ask you what you meant. What was your purpose in saying
that you had been helpful to John Healey by helping him in his
by-election and then you came across him quite a bit when you
were a Minister, and then the man says, "So he might listen
to the arguments, in that case?" Did you not think that that
meant he might listen to the arguments from you as distinct from
them?
Lord Truscott: No. What I was saying
here was I had come across John Healey in the past, so therefore
my assessment of him would be that he is the sort of person who
would listen to arguments put to him. I cannot say that I know
him very well but I have come across him and my assessment of
his character would be that he is someone you can make an argument
to, that sort of thing.
Q564 Lord Irvine of Lairg: You were
not suggesting, were you, that because you had assisted him in
his by-election he would be responsive to an approach from you?
Lord Truscott: No, I do not think I was.
The by-election I cannot remember how many years ago it was, but
15 or 20 years ago.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: These are all my questions.
Chairman: Any other questions?
Q565 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
I have got one. Earlier on in this session, Lord Truscott, you
spoke some eloquent words about the need for transparency, and
that what you do is to declare it in the Register of Interests
and you felt that this was a very important principle, which I
was very pleased to hear. How do you relate that to several times
during the course of this interview with the Sunday Times
where you talked about doing things behind the scenes, doing things
with a degree of subtlety, doing things which seemed to me, at
least in principle, to raise questions about the transparency
issue. Could you talk me through your attitude to that?
Lord Truscott: Yes, the subtlety bit
was because they were trying to say they do not really know much
about this public affairs business, could I move amendments, could
I talk to, lobby people, not just talk to but could I lobby people
personally, could I line up someone to move an amendment, and
I was trying to say to them delicately there are rules, and then
I go and outline the rules in the first meeting. Putting it delicately,
you have to be subtle about these things. In other words, in my
diplomatic language they were being too crude about the whole
thing, and the behind-the-scenes business is that is my understanding
how consultancy works in the House of Lords and in the Commons
because it should not be in the forefront because that would mean
getting involved in parliamentary business. A consultant should
not be in the business of moving amendments or directly lobbying
their colleagues. They have to stand back from the business of
the House but they have to be in a position to be informed, give
advice, talk to people. All that is quite standard practice, as
far as I understand it, in the House. So I was not talking about
anything surreptitious or underhand. All my consultancies are
registered in the Register of Interests. Anyone can look them
up. I think I say at one stage all my interests are registered
in the House of Lords Register. It is all above board, it is all
transparent. In fact, one of the reasons why the press have had
such a field day over the last six weeks attacking me, it is quite
simple, they can go to the Register of Interests, look at the
companies that I am involved with and then run stories about them
or ring them up, as they have done on a number occasions.
Q566 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
Have they run a Gazprom story?
Lord Truscott: Private Eye
has run a Gazprom story, yes.
Q567 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
I missed that.
Lord Truscott: And of course it was the
Mail on Sunday that implied that both my wife and I were
KGB agents and door-stepped my 82-year-old mother and sent a reporter
over to St Petersburg to interview my wife's brother. The point
is that I do, even with all that, believe in transparency and
that you have to be above board. As I said, I have always gone
through the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments. The appointments
go through that at an initial stage. I take the advice on them
and the advice is that you have to go through them for two years
after being a Minister. You are entitled to lobby—
Q568 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
Yes, I know the rules.
Lord Truscott: And all that sort of stuff.
As I say, all my interests are in the Register of Interests. I
think there is transparency there. If I had worked with this MJ
Associates, people could see. Similarly with the smart metering
consultancy, it was in the Register of Interests. When I stood
up in the second reading and said, "I am speaking on this
but I declare my energy interests ..." people could simply
go to the Register of Interests and see Landis + Gyr, smart metering
solutions. There was no attempt by me to conceal any connection
or to be underhand.
Chairman: Lord Dholakia?
Lord Dholakia: No, thank you.
Q569 Chairman: Can I ask a question.
If you look at page 3 of the first meeting, you say that the MD
client's businesses was not a particular interest of yours.
Lord Truscott: Which one is this?
Q570 Baroness Manningham-Buller:
Page 3 of the first meeting?
Lord Truscott: Whereabouts are you, Lord
Chairman?
Chairman: It is at the top? You say that the
client's business was not a particular interest of yours.
Baroness Manningham-Buller: " ... but consumer
affairs is not really my thing."
Q571 Chairman: But the fact that
you continued to negotiate and discuss fees and rates, do you
not think that came across that you were willing to be paid to
do work in an area which was not of particular interest to you?
Lord Truscott: Lord Chairman, to be frank,
I was thinking about it. I was not sure that I wanted to do it.
It would have been a new area for me. I was also an adviser previously
to a smart metering company. I am not an expert on smart meters,
I have no great technical knowledge in that field, but I did take
it on. I was thinking whether this is something that I would be
happy with. I did ask them, okay, you have got this issue, but
what other issues would I be dealing with later. The specific
thing was I thought that this was a public affairs company, and
this was one of their clients, and there would be a number of
other clients and issues over a 12-month period, so I thought
consumer affairs is not a huge area of interest for me. As you
know, I am interested in foreign affairs and geo-strategic and
political issues, and I am interested in energy matters, but it
is something that I could look at because I am a consultant, or
have been to other companies. It was something I thought I was
just considering.
Q572 Chairman: Would you say that
in your desire to win a contract which you were discussing that
you went further than you intended to in what you said you might
or might not do?
Lord Truscott: I think in retrospect,
Lord Chairman, I would have been a bit more careful about what
I said and how I expressed myself, because I think on occasions
there were words used that I would rather not have used in retrospect
and I should have been more careful with my language.
Lord Cope of Berkeley: The reference there to
further requirements after this client is right at the end of
the second meeting, in the context that you just need to draw
up a draft contract and take it from there.
Lord Irvine of Lairg: Page?
Q573 Lord Cope of Berkeley: Page
18 of the second meeting, "... hopefully ... you'll have
further requirements after this client."
Lord Truscott: Lord Cope, the way I have
dealt with these sort of approaches in the past is I have had
an exploratory meeting or two exploratory meetings, we have discussed
various issues and the role I might play, and then a draft contract
is drawn up, and I either change the draft contract or I decide
it is not something I would do, so for me it was only exploratory
at this stage, but it was clearly something I was looking at.
It is only really when you look at the draft contract after the
discussions, you look at it and see is that role appropriate or
not, is this something I really want to do? As the Lord Chairman
said, do I really want to be thinking about the Supplementary
Rate Bill and those sorts of parliamentary issues? The other point
I would make is that in doing this sort of work, I had not done
it before, I was inexperienced, I probably was feeling my way,
and I probably did express myself using the wrong words on occasions,
but I thought this was just a casual, informal couple of exploratory
meetings to decide whether I would work with this public affairs
company or not. I really thought that I had made it clear that
I would not break any rules and I had laid down the ground rules
quite extensively, especially in the first meeting, and in my
mind that carried over to the second meeting, but of course their
focus in the second meeting was to entrap me and to get me to
look as if I had broken the rules or was willing to do so.
Q574 Lord Irvine of Lairg: Does it
follow that you did not have any suspicions about them at all
during the meeting?
Lord Truscott: I did have some suspicions
about them. Even before the first meeting I Google-ed them. I
could not come up with this Michael Johnson Associates initially.
There is one company in Australia and one in the United States
that is under that name. I think I said to them in the first meeting,
"I could not really find anything on you." That is not
totally unusual if it is a small operation. They said they mainly
operated in Brussels and were just going to operate here.
Q575 Lord Irvine of Lairg:
If you were suspicious about them, even to a small extent, why
did you not express yourself more clearly?
Lord Truscott: I thought I did express
myself very clearly, especially in the first meeting, and then
later on subsequently I did check their website. They did have
a website, they did have telephone numbers, they did have an address,
they did seem to have a corporate history, so I was relatively
relaxed after the first meeting. Towards the end of the second
meeting I started to become uneasy and although I did not come
to a decision at that point, when I thought back on it, I thought
I am uncomfortable with the way it went.
Chairman: Can I say thank you very much
indeed. It has been a long session. We are grateful to you for
your time. As I said earlier, we will be sending a transcript
for you to see and correct, if necessary.
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