Sir Michael Grylls (Continued)

  2586.  June, July and September. We saw the records from Ian Greer's cash book, payments of apparently £5,000 related to a quarter plus VAT, and really we have not been able to identify what that was for and it does not seem to have been reflected in your own accounts or in your book.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Indeed not, that is true.

  2587.  I wondered if there was any other documentation which you have, whether you could reflect on this and see if you can help us on it, whether there is some other explanation? Not now, but when you go back and look at your records?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  I will certainly do my best, of course.

  2588.  That would be helpful.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  All I can say is, again just to make absolutely clear, whatever it may be, the fact I cannot give you an absolute precise answer, whether it was a referral payment or supplementary work for UTC, the one thing I can be absolutely sure about, because I am not likely to forget it, is that it had nothing whatsoever to do with Harrods.

  2589.  No, but if it was a supplementary payment or a referral payment, those were normally recorded in your account books.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Exactly.

  2590.  Because they were collected for tax purposes?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Absolutely, but not with a sub-heading.

  2591.  What I do not understand is why, if the payments were made in July and September, there was no record of it even for tax purposes and it was relatively unidentified. It definitely came from Ian Greer?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  I can only go by my VAT book, which is also my tax book, which is photocopied to go to my accountants every year, and tell you what is in that. I will certainly look into it, of course, but there is certainly no greater explanation than that, except that there was probably greater activity then.

  2592.  But then you would have recorded it, or not?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  No, not at all. Actually, unfortunately - -

  2593.  If you received payments you would have recorded those payments?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Well, no, not really, no. I do not have very many, only half a dozen in a month. I do the invoice but I do not put a sort of tick when I have had the payment. What I would normally do - depending how they are paid, Ian Greer's were not because they were not like a salary, automatically coming in through a banking system - I would know they had been paid by checking my bank statement at the end of the month. My accountants may well have, it is true, checked that they were in my bank statement when they did the accounts for the following year, but I knew they were paid. If one was missing, I would know. But your question really is, and I do understand this, and it sort of sticks out a bit like a pimple, why there are these three in June, July and September.

  2594.  Which are not reflected in the records you were collecting for tax purposes.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Yes, they are. I have them here.

  2595.  Not all three though. You have identified one.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  I have got two in June, one of which would have been a direct UTC payment, so leave that out. There is one in June therefore.

  2596.  We are looking for three from Ian Greer in June, July and September.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Yes, there is one in June, one in July.

  2597.  There is one in July?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  One in July and one in September.

  2598.  So we should amend this list to include one in July and one in September, should we?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  What did I put on it? I amended one, did I not, in my recent letter?

  2599.  That was September.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  The September one?

  2600.  Yes.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  You see, I do not know. The July one, I think I assumed was - - because I just put down Unitary Tax normally, I think I assumed that was a Unitary Tax Campaign direct one.

  2601.  I see, so you have a record of a payment - -

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Of all three.

  2602.   - - received in July but you may have assumed that was nothing to do with Ian Greer?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Absolutely.

  2603.  Whereas the records from Ian Greer suggest it did come through Ian Greer?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Did they? There was a payment on 1st July which I thought referred to the June invoice.

  2604.  We have three items from the cash book payments. One was 1st June, one was 1st July and one was 28th September.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  1st June could have been a prompt payment for June, it is possible.

  2605.  That one I think - -

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  The July one could have been a direct one and the September one was one I added when I wrote over the weekend.

  2606.  Would it help us, and would you mind so we can try and match up your records with whatever we have got from Ian Greer, to have a photocopy of your relevant pages?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  You are welcome to them.

  2607.  Would that be all right?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Those three months - June, July - -

  2608.  1989 is the one we have had difficulty matching up, I think.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Right. Yes, sure, absolutely. I will send that.

  2609.  The other point I was going to ask you - you said that the group was a natural one because it came together as the officers of the Conservative back-bench committee - was this particular activity, whether on behalf of or at least in support of the House of Fraser, regarded as an issue which was representing the views of the Conservative back-benchers generally?

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  It is a funny - -

  2610.  I would rather have expected this was something which would probably have divided the party down the centre.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  You mean the Lonrho/Harrods row?

  2611.  Yes.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  I think undoubtedly there probably were some people who would have favoured Lonrho, shall we say. I could not say there were not, and there probably were therefore. I think at that stage, and this is prior to the DTI report, he was seen then, Fayed, as a good thing, he was bringing in money, spending a lot of money in Harrods, doing a lot of charitable work for the children's hospital, he was seen to be a good egg and seen to be in this interminable sort of drama with Lonrho. I could not give a balance of the views of the parliamentary party - maybe you are right, it was divided probably - but I took the view, rightly or wrongly, I did not want to get involved in the actual merits of who actually did the right thing or the wrong thing in the Lonrho drama, but on the basis of here was somebody investing heavily in our country and who seemed to be getting the muddy end of the stick. That was the basis of our doing it. I think, as you say, if you look at the minutes of that meeting with the Minister which are in the papers, the one point I personally raised was the question of the inward investment which I felt was a very important issue.

  2612.  We have no more questions, Sir Michael. Is there anything else you would like to say to us? You said at the beginning you had a two-paragraph statement, but I suspect that we have probably covered much of the ground.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  I think so. I feel very happy, very relaxed, not perhaps about the detail of my account books, which as Mr Pleming said could have been better kept if I had known what they were going to be subjected to, but that is in the past, but I do feel very relaxed about the Fayed thing. I was in a financial relationship with Ian Greer through the Unitary Tax Campaign and also it could be interpreted through the referral payments, and that was registered well or not so well, and we have been through that, and I amended it accordingly. But there was no other financial relationship with Ian Greer whatsoever. I was never at any time under any obligation to Ian Greer or his company or to Harrods to do anything on their behalf, and I believe my record of relative parliamentary inactivity, as it were, compared to other things which were going on, proves that. The only activity I took, like the meetings and the letter in 1988, were on issues that I believed, as chairman, were important to be aired - partly important to be aired, partly for my own education, because, as I have said, part of the role of the chairman of the back-bench committee is to keep himself informed because I had that title, chairman of the Trade & Industry Committee, and if I did not know what was going on I would have looked a fool. So it was important to keep informed. We had heard what Fayed was concerned about, we went to talk to ministers about it who probably I think took a slightly different point of view, so to that extent we learnt a little, and that was the object of it. There was no obligation to Ian Greer or his company or to Harrods to do anything; it was entirely, as far as I am concerned, and I can only speak for myself, my own decision and for no other purposes whatsoever. I really cannot drum this in too much. There was no, and I believe he has confirmed this, financial connection directly or indirectly with Fayed. I think I explained in my earlier letter the fact that a certain friendship developed between our families, which was coincidental, and I think frankly if he had wanted to retain me he would have done it direct. It was not as if we were strangers, I probably knew him in the earlier days better than anybody because we had a friendship between our wives and his wife is a most charming lady, and our children got on very well, and that developed. I cannot conceive if he had thought he wanted to retain somebody else and he wanted me, he would not have done it direct. I cannot see the slightest reason for doing it through Ian Greer. I think that is self-evident. The second point is that really, certainly in 1989, I was doing next to nothing for him. I have been through all the parliamentary questions and there is not a single question that I could find anyway, and I am sure I did not ask a question on the issue. I think I had a sort of feeling as chairman that probably was the right thing to do, that my role was to go and look and listen, not to be an advocate but to listen and ask questions and raise points, not to do a lot of parliamentary activity like questions and early day motions and adjournment debates and that type of thing, and I did not do that.

  2613.  Thank you, Sir Michael.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  It is a pleasure. I am very happy to come.

  2614.  If you could let us have the photocopies of those pages, it will be helpful.

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  I will photocopy them tonight. There was one other thing I brought which I would be happy to leave with you, which Mr Pleming will understand, as you will, Sir Gordon. It is about the degree of work for Unitary Tax and how this was escalating, and I have brought as an example, when I went and gave evidence in California, an extract of my evidence. It does not make very exciting reading but - -

  2615.   - - there is a lot of it!

  (Sir Michael Grylls)  Yes! If I may leave this with you. If I had the benefit of a legal training, the fees I was paid would not have been very adequate, but I did not anyway! Anyway, thank you very much. If, on reflection, looking or thinking about what I have said, you would like me to come back, I am only down the road.

Sir Gordon Downey:  Thank you.