| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Michael Howard (Folkestone and Hythe): I am grateful to the Foreign Secretary for the access to the report that he gave me this morning, and for the slightly less generous access that he gave me to the statement that he has just made.
This report, although no one would ever have guessed it from the complacency of the Foreign Secretary's statement, discloses a dire state of affairs in one of our great Departments of State. It is severely critical both of Ministers and of officials, and Ministers directly bear responsibility for the most serious failures.
When the Foreign Secretary first came to the House to deal with this matter in response to my private notice question on 6 May, he said that it was a serious matter that should be treated "with great gravity". When Sir Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary, was first fully briefed on the matter, he minuted:
The picture painted by this report is of a Foreign Office in shambles. We already knew that Ministers contradicted each other and themselves, that officials contradicted Ministers and themselves and that telegrams were lost and faxes destroyed, but the detailed evidence in the report is almost beyond belief. Letters from the high commissioner go missing, reports from the military liaison officer in Sierra Leone are destroyed, officials are asked to attend meetings to take a note because they
In all, the report contains an amazing 30 specific criticisms of the Foreign Office. It attributes those failures to what it describes as "systemic and cultural factors". We do not have to look very far to identify the source of those factors. In a television programme entitled "How To Be Foreign Secretary", the Foreign Secretary made the following boast:
The report is not exhaustive. It does not, for example, comment explicitly on the protestations of the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who has responsibility for Africa, the hon. Member for Manchester, Central (Mr. Lloyd), and of the Foreign Secretary on his behalf that the Minister of State saw papers merely for noting in mid-April and was not fully informed of the allegations made by Sandline until 1 May; but is it not crystal clear from paragraphs 9.50 to 9.56 of the report that the Minister of State knew all the essentials of those allegations in mid-April, considered them in detail and did nothing?
The Foreign Secretary told the House that those papers gave rise to
Most damning of all, the report explains very clearly what in essence went wrong and why. The Foreign Secretary said that the report failed to uncover any political scandal. That is characteristic of the right hon. Gentleman's culture of complacency. In fact, the report concludes that the Foreign Office should have explained both the arms embargo imposed by the United Nations resolution and the Order in Council more widely and effectively. The report states that their failure to do so created a hazard for all who were affected. The nature of that hazard is clear: it is that British citizens might commit a criminal offence under the Order in Council and risk imprisonment for seven years in consequence.
The cause of the failure to explain the arms embargo more effectively is equally clear. Devastatingly, the report concludes that, although the British framers of the United Nations resolution that imposed the arms embargo on Sierra Leone intended that embargo to be comprehensive in its coverage and had no doubt that it was, British officials and Ministers--and Ministers--played the report down, not accidentally but deliberately. That is the report's finding, and the reason, at least in part, was that Ministers knew that there were those on the ground in west Africa who, in the words of the report, explicitly contemplated the use of force. Paragraph 3.29 of the report states:
Mr. Cook:
I have to report to the House that the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe had six hours in which to prepare that response, in the course of which he could find only five questions. That is despite the fact that his six hours to study one volume was twice as long as the time that I had to study the five volumes of the Scott inquiry. I am bound to say that I came back with more than five questions.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman's reading of the report does not seem to have been complete. He quoted paragraph 9.55 as showing that my hon. Friend the Minister of State did not closely consider the documents that were given to him because, as it stated in the paragraph "their allegations were sensitive"--[Interruption.] That is what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said. He read that paragraph. I shall read to the House the rest of the paragraph. It states that the documents:
The right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe says that the report is severely critical of Ministers. He has the opportunity to speak again at the end of this exchange. I challenge him to find one single paragraph in
the hundred-odd pages of the report which is severely critical of Ministers. Of course he complained that this was not a public inquiry, but a private, independent inquiry not held in public. That is a bit rich from a right hon. and learned Member who as Home Secretary never once ordered a public inquiry into the 17 times that he lost cases in the courts. For that matter, he never once ordered an independent Legg-type inquiry either. In reality, he wanted a public inquiry because it would have taken another two years to finish, in the course of which he could have gone around every studio peddling his conspiracy theories without their being knocked on the head as they have been today.
Having found nothing of substance in the report, the right hon. and learned Gentleman fell back on the device of playing the man rather than playing the ball. His attacks on me would be offensive if his own record did not make them comic. After all, he was the Home Secretary who explained that he was not responsible when the IRA escaped from prisons, because that was an operational matter. He was responsible for the policy, which was to keep them inside.
I am glad to have the right hon. and learned Gentleman as a partner and I am glad that events today have confirmed that we will be together for another year. He is very helpful to me. However, in fairness to everybody else, it is time that he started to show some interest in serious foreign policy questions, instead of making mountains out of molehills, as he has done on this issue.
Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East):
I thank my right hon. Friend for allowing me to see the Legg report in advance, which I commend to other Ministers as an excellent precedent in dealing with Chairmen of Select Committees. Having read the report over some seven hours this morning, I do not recognise the description given by the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard).
"This could be very serious."
27 Jul 1998 : Column 23
Both he and the Foreign Secretary were right, as is made clear by the report. Their attitude is in sharp contrast with that of the Prime Minister, who described it all as "overblown hoo-hah".
The inquiry that led to this report was not the inquiry that we asked for. It should have been held in public. If the Foreign Secretary had meant what he said about the need for an open investigation, it would have been held in public. The notes of evidence taken by the inquiry have not been published. Will the Foreign Secretary now undertake to publish them in the interests of open government, so that everyone can reach his own judgment, and will he publish the documents that are listed in the appendices to the report?
"should be on their guard",
but no note is taken.
"I have found that you can be a successful Foreign Secretary if you focus on the big questions and not necessarily finish the paperwork."
If officials know that the Foreign Secretary is not going to finish the paperwork, what incentive do they have to take care of it? The Foreign Secretary has told us about all the things that he intends to do to sort out the Foreign Office. Does he not accept that the cultural factors that are referred to in the report are a direct result of his own attitude and of the approach that he boasts that he takes?
"no ground for apprehension or concern".--[Official Report, 12 May 1998; Vol. 312, c. 160.]
The report describes those same papers as "sensitive and potentially troublesome". Given the complete inconsistency between the account of events in the report and the account given to the House and its Select Committee by the
Foreign Secretary and the Minister of State, does the Foreign Secretary now accept that his earlier account was completely inaccurate, and will he now withdraw it?
"Government has a responsibility to give citizens, and its own officials, reasonable publicity and explanation of the laws it makes under delegated powers, especially laws creating criminal offences."
That was not done in this case. Given that failure and the report's finding that it was the result of a deliberate attempt by Ministers to deceive, how can the Foreign Secretary remain in office?
"were also misleading, since they appeared to be saying that the FCO had no prior knowledge of any shipment of arms. In the absence of reference to the full facts . . . they were substantially incomplete."
My hon. Friend the Minister of State was entirely justified in coming to the conclusion that he reached in mid-April.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |