Q72 Grant
Shapps: You write that the Foreign
Secretary is a pygmy; the Deputy Prime Minister thinks the Falklands are the
Balklands; and you write that “Cook was having difficulty with a constituent
who had a child abduction problem with the United States. If we could help
on that, Cook would raise Catherine’s case with the German Foreign Minister
… This was, Catherine and I thought, as ethical as a £7 note. But needs
must when the devil drives.” Do you think your reputation has been damaged
by this publication?
Sir
Christopher Meyer: I do not think my
reputation has been damaged by this publication at all. There are some
people obviously who do not like it, who disagree with it. I have to say on
the basis of emails and postbags and doing book tours around the country,
the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. On the pygmy point, if I
may, I do not think a single politician is identified in the book as a
pygmy, or, indeed, as a Masai warrior.
Q73 Grant
Shapps: You do feel a tinge of
embarrassment about this book now, as you revealed in your opening comments,
I think.
Sir
Christopher Meyer: The sort of “red-sock
fop thing”, I mean, you know ….
Q74 Grant
Shapps: Did it surprise you?
Sir
Christopher Meyer: That? Yes, I think so.
Q75 Grant
Shapps: The amount of pressure that you
have come under from this publication. You are surprised by that.
Sir
Christopher Meyer: Well, the amount of
pressure that has come from certain quarters has caught me by surprise,
because, in spite of what the Chairman says, I believe I played this by the
rules, put it into the system and got clearance.
Q76 Grant
Shapps: By “certain quarters” do you mean
the Cabinet Secretary? When you say “by certain quarters” who are you
talking about?
Sir
Christopher Meyer: Well, all kinds of
stuff has appeared in the press. There has been the red-socked fop
business. This is the most salient, if you like.
Q77 Grant
Shapps: So you are surprised by the press
reaction, even though ----
Sir
Christopher Meyer: I am surprised by the
political reaction, I am surprised by some of the press reaction. But, I
mean, for God’s sake, this is a democracy.
Q78 Grant
Shapps: You are the Chairman of the PCC.
You are surprised by the reaction of the press? As if you do not know the
way the press might react.
Sir
Christopher Meyer: My job is not to
represent the press. That is not my business.
Q79 Grant
Shapps: No, but you know them inside out,
do you not?
Sir
Christopher Meyer: Yes, I suppose so. I
would not claim knowledge quite as deep as that.
Q80 Grant
Shapps: In publishing -----
Sir Christopher Meyer:
But there have been things
that have surprised me, let me put it that way, obviously.
Q81 Grant
Shapps: This
Committee has spent a lot of time looking at the Radcliffe Rules, which, we
have said before, for the time seemed to be very well written, brilliantly
crafted and, in fact, have stood the test of time and essentially these
rules work because people go along with them. You have pressed, though, I
think the “good chaps theory” to the limit, to breaking point, have you not?
Sir Christopher Meyer: There
are two things to be said here. Radcliffe and his three criteria are still
relevant. The Foreign Secretary refers to them in his written answer to
Mr Prentice. My point is that my book appears to have been judged on only
two out of the three Radcliffe criteria, because if there are the objections
that there are to the book, then I should have heard from the Cabinet Office
who should have said to me, “Oi”, but they did not.
Q82 Grant
Shapps: Your
defence, if you do not mind me saying, seems to be something along the lines
of saying, “I was slightly ignorant of the rules”, or, “They did not put the
rules into place sufficiently robustly in the Cabinet Office.” That is your
defence: “It is not, my fault, guv, I did not know”?
Sir Christopher Meyer: My
deduction from this is that the system is not working or was not working in
my case, because - I keep on having to come back to this - if there is an
objection about breach of confidence then under the Radcliffe Rules, which I
take it are still pertinent, I should have been contacted by the Cabinet
Office and told, “We think you breach those rules”, and then there would
have been a discussion.
Q83 Grant
Shapps: Do
you know what this is like? This is like going to a restaurant. You go out
for dinner; you have a lovely meal; they forget to charge you for the main
course. Do you walk out or do you tell them?” You walked out of the
restaurant.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I
do not quite get the culinary analogy.
Q84 Grant
Shapps: It
is not to do with food, it is to do with the principle, and it is as simple
as this. You wrote a book which you thought was going to be challenged. It
was not challenged. Somehow it slipped through the Cabinet Office with less
challenge than you thought it was going to achieve. When they did not pick
anything up. Rather than, perhaps as you might have done, going to them and
saying, “I think perhaps we ought to have a meeting. I know there are some
things in here which must cause concern”, you said, “Oh, that is all right,
guv, they have left if off the bill. I will just walk out and publish this
now”?
Sir Christopher Meyer: It
is an imaginative analogy, but I do not think I will buy it: because if we
are going to have rules they have got to be clear.
Q85 Grant
Shapps: The
Radcliffe Rules have been around a very long time?
Sir Christopher Meyer: The Radcliffe
Rules are extremely clear.
Q86 Grant
Shapps: You
have named the three criteria.
Sir Christopher Meyer: Yes.
Q87 Grant
Shapps: Do
you accept you broke them?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No,
I do not.
Q88 Grant
Shapps: You
do not?
Sir Christopher Meyer: No,
because it appears now that the book, having been cleared, is now being
uncleared after the process.
Q89 Grant
Shapps: You
think they broke the rules really. That is your accusation.
Sir Christopher Meyer:
Do not put words into
my mouth, but the system did not work. If this is the case, the system did
not work.
Q90 Grant
Shapps: You
present somebody like me with a huge problem. I do not want us to make laws
to make this more complicated. I am not really even that keen on tightening
up the rules that much. I want it to be a fairly liberal system where “the
good chap theory” still works, but you stretch that to the limit. You make
it difficult for people like me, who have read this massive documentation. I
read your memoirs and looked for a reason that I could defend you, but you
are making it almost impossible for somebody like me who thinks this way to
defend your memoirs.
Sir Christopher Meyer: I
am very sorry to hear that. Believe it or not, I am in your camp on the
matter of regulation, because I think actually the answer is fairly simple.
You basically stick with the present rules, I think you do have to make some
practical distinctions between people who are in the service and people who
have retired - that may be a matter only for the diplomatic service, I do
not know - and my answer to you is it is not that we need the new laws or
draconian rules or statute or anything like that, it is just make the
blinking system that we have work - it did not work - if these accusations
have a basis.
Q91 Grant
Shapps: So
you sort of accept that you have suffered reputational damage, not through
your own fault but through the system’s fault?
Sir Christopher Meyer:
Travelling around the country talking to people about this book, book shops
and literary festivals and all kinds of funny places, one of the things you
discover is how many different ways people read a book. That is one of the
things that surprised me, going back to your earlier question, the
extraordinarily diverse way in which books are read, and some people will
think I am a charlatan.
Mr Prentice: Hear,
hear.
