Transcript of questioning of Lord Wilson and Peter Hennessy by Grant Shapps MP:

Q1  

Q1  Grant Shapps: Just in terms of trying to dissect what can be done about this, it seems to me, having read the Radcliffe Report which for its time, 1976, is brilliant, it is so well written, that what we should really be doing is separating out the Ministerial Code from the Civil Service Code in our minds here.  I think that it must be wrong that somebody who has been a senior civil servant can immediately betray those confidences.  That is entirely different from a minister doing it.  I would have thought there is a good case here for separating out the two a lot more.  Can you reflect on that?

Lord Wilson of Dinton: Can I comment on that?  I agree with you that the position of ministers is different from the position of civil servants in all sorts of ways.  I think that ministers are accountable publicly; they have to defend their actions publicly and are subject to quite a lot of strong criticism in public.  Therefore, the case for allowing them to come out with some kind of justification for their own actions is entirely defensible.  I think that is right and it has been going on for a long time.  Officials are protected still by ministers, though there is a tendency to make us more public figures.  I think officials do owe a duty of loyalty that requires them not to rush into print.  The interesting thing about the list that I read out to you earlier is that there are very few home civil servants over the years who have ever published anything quickly.  Try to think of how many of them have done that over the last 30 or 40 years?  In a way, I think that is quite remarkable.  If I may finish my point very briefly, in the civil service you have an enormous corpus of knowledge about what goes on inside government.  The degree to which that is not the subject of publication is, I think, impressive.  If you look at the list I gave you, you could count on the fingers of one hand the home civil servants who have published anything about what went on in government, say, within 10 years of their leaving service.

Q2  Grant Shapps: The reason I am trying to interject is that I think I am already closer to your point of view on this.  I am much more interested in Peter’s more excitable view on this matter.  Even if you take the Meyer book, really the revelations in there are not that remarkable.  He called Jack Straw a pygmy.  We can all come to a conclusion as to whether or not we think that is the case; it does not have much to do with anything.  The fact that Tony Blair walked along with his hands in his pockets when he was with the President of the United States again is really not a big revelation.  There may be some tidying up to do around the edges here but it is not really the big problem that you think it is.

Professor Hennessy: It was in the Jonathan Aitken trial in 1971, the official secrets trial under the old Official Secrets Act, when I think it was a Foreign Office witness who said that the highest classification in Whitehall is not “top secret”, all those GCHQ ones; it is “politically embarrassing”.  There is one above that which is “personally embarrassing”.  I often have to remind myself that you lot are human beings, but you are.  There is nothing more offensive to a certain Deputy Prime Minister than the fact that he cannot entirely keep the foreign policy details of the world in his head when he goes in for a session with the Vice President.  It is extremely wounding and he is bound to care more about that than an official writing about the row over the directive on dried prunes from Europe.

Q3  Grant Shapps: Yes, but this is not something that we should move to legislate on, is it, because Radcliffe already deals with these things?

Professor Hennessy: I think you should think about recommending a revamping of Radcliffe under the voluntary system.  I would go for a five-year voluntary restraint on both sides (officials, ministers and special advisers, the two and a half governing tribes) providing for a shorter period if the government changes – not a prime minister changes but a government changes – because, as Richard said, when a government changes, there is a change of party and it is different.  I think a five-year a voluntary restraint, which some people will still break, is quite reasonable these days.

Q4  Grant Shapps: Peter, what I am really interested in is the split here between ministers and civil servants.  Five years might be exactly right for civil servants, I do not know, plus the change in government.  Surely for ministers it is fair game?  The one thing this whole thing teaches me is that I should go home and starting writing a diary tonight, if only as a defensive mechanism.

Professor Hennessy: You have been corrupted, Mr Shapps!

Q5  Grant Shapps: Not at all.  We are here to look after ourselves and do not need to be molly-coddled by more rules and regulations, certainly not by laws.  Ministers and politicians should be able to take care of themselves.

Professor Hennessy: You wait until you are a minister!

Q1  Grant Shapps:  I think it has been a tremendously helpful evidence gathering session.  The two of you, if you do not mind me saying, would make a great road show at some stage, if you felt that way inclined, maybe as part your own memoirs.  I think we may have stumbled upon a couple of the solutions here, one of which came up when Peter was talking about the current situation as you perceive it amongst the Cabinet, the lack of the consensual relationship between the Prime Minister and where the power lies.  You said one of the aspects of this is that Cabinet Ministers tend to go off and write their memoirs quite early, sometimes to settle scores or get their side of the story out.  Do you not agree that that is in fact the system in the longer term working quite well because what will happen is that someone will go away and you will end up with a Blunkett book, the Blunkett book slates some other Cabinet Ministers and they are then unhappy with it?  What then happens is that the government as a whole starts to look shabby.  We saw it in the Major government, we are seeing it in this government and the electorate gets fed up.  So democracy deals with this entire issue when it comes to the ministers as opposed to the civil servants. 

Professor Hennessy:  That is an interesting thought.  The one theme that Mo’s memoir and Robin’s and Clare’s share is the lack of proper Cabinet discussion, that is their greatest beef.  Cynics might say “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?  Why did they not resign earlier?  Why did they put up with it?”  One of the most depressing phenomena is the kind of nodding parrot head phenomenon whereby when the Prime Minister says something five ministers swing in behind him loyally - the CQ or “crawling quoted” is off the Richter scale - and yet when they break loose they say, “Well, it wasn’t like that really”.  The gap between front of House and what they really think in back of House is so profound now and it leads to ever greater public distain for you lot as a profession.  Nobody is deceived, that is the other thing.  They think that we are absolutely naïve.  What an unendurable week you went through at Blackpool. 

Q2  Mr Prentice:  Why do you keep looking at me?

Professor Hennessy:  On Saturday five of them said “Gordon is the one and it will all be wonderful”.  Do they go to a training school?  They are the most unfortunate people in the world. 

Q3  Grant Shapps:  Can I keep you on the point here?  You are demonstrating the extent of the problem amongst the current Cabinet and possibly past ones but you are ignoring the solution, which is more of a medium-term solution, which is the electorate will see this, they will get fed up with it and eventually they will go for a prospective government which says, “What we are going to do is come in and have much more of a Cabinet-style government.”

Professor Hennessy:  Whether they believe you or not is another thing.

Q4  Grant Shapps:  That is absolutely true.  Governments eventually may do it.  One is reminded of the way in which, perhaps ironically now, the Bush Presidency started with this idea of a cleaner White House than had been there for a while.

Professor Hennessy:  They all say that.  The first people they have to delude are themselves.  They cannot help it. 

Q5  Grant Shapps:  You are critical of short-termism and the speed with which these memoirs come out.  I would have thought you were attracted to a more medium-term solution, which seems to me to be already there in the checks and balances of politics and democracy and eventually the lot will get thrown out simply for the fact that they have started to look too presidential in style.

Professor Hennessy:  I wish that did turn elections but I do not think it does.  Who knows what turns elections?  It would be nice if clean, decent and restrained government was a factor. 

Grant Shapps:  There is evidence that if you get sleazy enough then you get kicked out.  You only have to look at 1997 to see that.  I would suggest there is probably evidence, although we will have to wait another three or four years to find out, that if the Government continues to be this presidential base with so little collective Cabinet responsibility and so on and so forth -

Promoted by Amanda Perkins on behalf of Grant Shapps, both of Maynard House, The Common, Hatfield, AL10 0NF