EU Referendum: Civil Service Guidance

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Let me answer those points in turn. First, the Government are functioning perfectly well—in fact, I came to this House from a meeting with the Minister for Employment, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), on childcare policy, and it was carried out in an entirely normal way. On Friday I visited a prison with the Justice Secretary, and those two points demonstrate that things are functioning as normal.

The civil service code, and the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, makes it clear that it is the duty of civil servants to support the position of the Government of the day, and it is only because the Prime Minister is allowing Ministers to remain in government while disagreeing with a single policy—the in/out position—that this situation arises at all. The letter from the Cabinet Secretary makes it clear that factual briefing is allowed.

Finally, the 1975 guidance made it clear that no briefing or draft speeches contrary to Government consideration were allowed to be drafted by civil servants. In fact, it went further because it said that if someone wanted to oppose the Government position, they had to inform No. 10 of any invitations to appear on the radio or TV. We have not put that provision in place. On all these things, the clarity in the guidance from the Cabinet Secretary that was published on Monday last week shows the rules, and those rules are consistent with the civil service code and, indeed, the law.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I fear that the Minister is having a Jim Hacker moment. In 114 days, the country faces an important decision. The referendum will dictate how in future the UK handles exports and imports, the world of work, the new contours of the digital age, human rights, intelligence sharing, the fight against crime, and how we adapt to climate change, and here we are today discussing guidelines for civil servants and special advisers.

Sadly, I am not in the strongest of positions to lecture the poor Minister on handling splits in his party, but in the way that Opposition Front Benchers are almost duty bound to do, I would like to give him some advice. The Justice Secretary has a history of letting his special advisers off the leash. Does the Minister really think that a memorandum from a mandarin will change that?

When we have a Prime Minister who allows his spin doctors to brief that the Justice Secretary will be sacked after the referendum, or that his chum the Mayor of London has breached the old school code and that the Prime Minister is “hurt and upset”, I understand how the Minister would have been overcome with a wave of ennui at the prospect of answering an urgent question from the Chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee about the conduct of special advisers. However, answer for their conduct he must, and I wish to ask him how many special advisers have informed No. 10 of their intention to work on the no campaign. In the event of ministerial visits where a Minister and their special adviser campaign for a no vote after the event, will the cost of travel be carried by the Minister? How will that be monitored and made public? The guidelines state that special advisers are not allowed to campaign for a no vote in office hours. For the avoidance of doubt, please define “office hours”.

When the inevitable happens and special advisers to those Ministers who are defying their leader completely ignore the memorandum from the Cabinet Secretary, on a scale of one to 10 how confident is the Minister that the Prime Minister will enforce the code? Does the Minister have the confidence to admit that these attempts to dilute the freedom of rebellious Ministers will only detract from the key issues that matter to voters in the referendum? It seems that the out campaign is attacking the referee, not the captain of the opposing side, yet the Prime Minister has a simple choice: either he gives his Ministers free rein to run their Departments, or he sacks them. It cannot be fudged for the next 114 days.

[Matthew Hancock]

Unfortunately, I have had to scrap most of my proposed reply to the hon. Gentleman, given his gracious acknowledgement that he is not best placed to throw rocks on this particular subject. I will, however, agree with him on this: questions on this matter are a distraction from the main event and the main substance, which is whether Britain is better off inside or outside a reformed European Union. I strongly believe that, thanks to the deal the Prime Minister achieved, we are better off and more secure inside a reformed European Union.

The hon. Gentleman asked some specific questions. First, on the efficacy of the guidance, the guidance is for civil servants to follow. Civil servants do follow guidance of that sort and I have every confidence that they will do so. On what constitutes office hours, I will merely say that office hours means the normal working day. I hope that clears that one up. On the broader question of whether this is necessary, and his point that Ministers need both to run their Departments and be able to differ on this one question, this is why the guidance is very specifically and solely about the in/out question, not other EU business or other business. After all, we have Departments to run.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Wednesday 27th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Great training is available for people once they are in, but I want to broaden the number of people from different backgrounds coming into the civil service right at the start, which means people from all over the United Kingdom: from all parts, from all groups, from all ethnic backgrounds, men and women, to make sure that we make the very best use of the talent that is available.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I see that the Minister’s right hon. Friend the Chancellor has his own mission critical approach to social mobility. His closest adviser got a 42% pay rise while most public servants got a pay freeze; he has five times the usual number of special advisers while 80,000 jobs have been cut in the civil service; and this week it was revealed by The Sunday Times that the permanent secretary in his Department has used a loophole to avoid paying tax on his pension pot. Is it the Minister’s view that that is an appropriate leadership approach in the civil service, and is it not true that when it comes to tax, the Chancellor’s friends in Google get special treatment, and when it comes to social mobility in the civil service it helps to be a friend of the Chancellor?

[Matthew Hancock]

It is disappointing that we do not have a cross-party approach to improving access to the civil service—who comes into it—to make sure that we have the very best people working for the common aim of delivering the Government’s agenda to improve the lives of citizens whom we serve, because that is the job that we focus on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

The transparency of Government information is absolutely aided by a combination of our open data and the use of press officers and communication teams to explain to the public what is going on. Making sure that that happens in an orderly and organised way, subject to Ministers’ wishes, is a very important part of it running effectively.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I make a genuine offer to the Minister: we would like to build on the progress of the past decade in opening up government to more scrutiny. But we are very concerned that the commission on freedom of information may roll back the FOI Act. It is not subject to the FOI Act and it has recently held a secret briefing to invited-only journalists, off the record. It is not very transparent, is it? Is there a reason for that?

[Matthew Hancock]

First, may I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his post and congratulate him on his resounding victory in the deputy leadership election? On this question, I also welcome his tone. I am a great supporter of the Act, but 10 years after its introduction it is reasonable to see how it is operating and to make sure, as the Justice Committee said in the last Parliament, that there is a “safe space” for policymaking, so that people can be confident about giving frank advice to powerful people safe in the knowledge that that will remain private. It is about how this operates; it is not about the principle of having freedom of information in the first place.

Tributes to Charles Kennedy

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I knew Charles through Sarah Gurling and got to see beyond the public figure and party leader. He was shy, but always polite. He was kind, engaging and a good dad. I enjoyed his wry humour. He used to joke about how we shared the same private investigator from the News of the World. He had an ability to bring levity to the dark corners of British political life that made the bad days at the office easier to cope with, yet as many Members all too painfully know, politics often takes a toll on the lives of our loved ones in a way that we never properly know or understand. Through you, Mr Speaker, I would like to direct my words at Donald, son of Charles and Sarah.

Your father was a very great man; he stood up for what he believed in. He led a party of the centre-left with dignity and compassion. When you are older, you will know that your mum and dad believed in a cause greater than themselves and you will be proud.

Bilderberg Conference

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Clarke]

Nowadays we get accused of plots to establish a Government of the world, to poison the local watercourses, and to plan an invasion of the United States of America. Ten years ago, I was told I was attending a plot to hand over Britain to Brussels and to subordinate us to a “United States of Europe”, and the next instalment of the plot will come later. I cite that example in order to point out that a fellow member of the steering committee was Mr Conrad Black, and in private, as in public, Mr Conrad Black was not in favour of handing anything over to Brussels and was not in any way furthering that cause. I regret to say that Mr Black is, as I recall, the only member who ever attended who has since had the misfortune to be sentenced to a term of imprisonment, whereupon he withdrew from the Bilderberg meetings.

Seriously, however, I assure my right hon. Friend that the full range of opinion from left to right from across western Europe is pretty well represented at Bilderberg. That in itself shows that the idea that we are furthering any kind of agenda is absolute nonsense. If I were plotting to do anything, I would not assemble that particular group of people, because we would never agree on an objective.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

Can the Minister confirm that he declared his trusteeship of the body that funds the conference to his permanent secretary when he was appointed by the Prime Minister?

[Mr Clarke]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman. I am looking that up, because I had forgotten. Actually, I am a member of the steering committee. When we were hosting at Watford, I discovered that I am, among other things, a trustee of the British steering group, so I am checking, with the aid of my constituency office, whether I ever put that in. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I had completely forgotten that it was set up on that basis, long before the rules were established. The trustees have never met as trustees. All I actually do is sit as a member of a committee and play my part in helping with the organisation of a meeting, and that is all I have ever done.

Royal Charter on Press Conduct

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

For every one of the five years that I have been worrying this bone, people have been telling me to leave it. They have been some very dark years—though latterly rather euphoric, I suppose. Most of the time it has been quite lonely and bleak. We have learnt some pretty dark things about ourselves. By “ourselves,” I do not just mean politicians and the media; I mean the whole of what used to be called the establishment—the quiet cabal that runs the country, all within five miles of where we sit tonight. I am talking about not just politicians, but prosecutors; not just journalists, but judges, industrialists and editors; policemen, commentators and publicists; the bold with the meek; and the guilty and the damned. We were all part of this. This was not a conspiracy that no one knew about—not in the establishment anyway. Among the people I am talking about—the few thousand most powerful people in the land, in whose collective charge are the freedoms of everybody else—in that wealthy, privileged powerful group with so much to lose, everybody knew.

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Watson]

In a minute. They did not all perhaps appreciate the scale of what went on, but everybody knew that a crucial part of our nation’s body politic was rotten. We did not know that they were hacking Milly Dowler’s phone, but we knew that that was the kind of thing they did. We knew that there were virtually no limits to the kind of things they did, and we did nothing. For years, perhaps decades, we collectively looked the other way. To be candid, even now we have let families such as the Dowlers shoulder a heavy load. They should not have been put in a position to mediate on these proposals, but they were and they did so—they had to—under great duress, but with customary dignity. They did so because while the most atrocious things were being done by people charged with upholding the highest standards, we averted our eyes—or we actively conspired. We joined in with what they did to other people because it made it less likely—we thought—that they would do it to us.

At the root of all this was fear: an abject, dark-hours-of-the-morning screaming terror that they would turn the lights of hatred on us, destroy us and humiliate us—with pure lies or half truth, it did not matter which—deliberately and viciously, for no reason other than because they can, it makes money and it is just what they do. The effect was that the lives of the not-rich and the not-powerful—the utterly innocent, so much less able to defend themselves—were laid equally bare to the random acts of malice that we came to believe were inevitable.

That was the dark hour of our parliamentary democracy, whose lessons we must not forget as we congratulate ourselves today. But we can also take heart from having finally fought back. Parliament showed its strength where Governments failed. Brave journalists showed that the profession itself is a proud one. Honest police—more than any in the person of Sue Akers—showed that the long arm of the law, once unshackled, can still reach where it should.

Today’s agreement is a good one; it is more than just a moral victory. It took patience and strength to see it through. It almost feels like a kind of closure—but I do mean almost. We have a responsibility to give something back to journalism with strengthened freedom of information laws, a proper public interest defence and imaginative ways to support investigative journalism through the disruption of digital transition. At this late hour, I hear that the charter extends its remit to internet publishing. I hope that we can make the distinction between self-publishing for pleasure and digital news reporting for profit.

The central characters in this tragedy are Rupert Murdoch and his News Corporation. He still sits at the head of the most powerful media conglomerate the world has ever seen and he still has politicians in his pocket. They still will not change the media ownership rules because they are frightened of him and they curry his favour. Amid it all, the Prime Minister looks over his shoulder as Murdoch’s people start to replace the current generation of leaders with the next. It is most naked on the Conservative Benches, but let us not avert our eyes again and pretend that it is not happening on the Labour and Liberal Democrat Benches, too.

As we reflect on the terrible cost of failures today, let us not leave the lessons half learned. Our children will not thank us for leaving the hydra with one head.

Ministerial Code (Culture Secretary)

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend puts it well. The point is this: I am perfectly prepared to admit that the relationship between politicians and media proprietors got too close. What is interesting about the Labour party is that it has not revealed any of the meetings that it had while it was in government, whereas we have been completely transparent.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

The Prime Minister has insisted on the Leveson process to decide the fate of the Secretary of State, and he will be judged by that. May I ask that he assist the inquiry by providing the Leveson team with the private texts and e-mails of Treasury special advisers to Mr Frederic Michel and Graham McWilliam of BSkyB?

[The Prime Minister]

The point about the Leveson inquiry is that it is a judge-led inquiry. He is able to ask for any papers or material that he wants and this Government will provide it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney-General]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we share his view that the Court has been of immense benefit in member states across the European continent in improving human rights standards. In that context, as I have indicated, there can be no suggestion that the right of personal petition, for example, should be removed. Although we need to ensure that the Court keeps its autonomy, there is widespread acknowledgment that there must be reform if it is to continue doing its work properly.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

5. What recent discussions he has had with the Crown Prosecution Service on the progress made by the Leveson inquiry.

[The Solicitor-General (Mr Edward Garnier)]

None, save that the Director of Public Prosecutions has informed me recently that he has been asked to give evidence to the inquiry.

[Mr Watson]

Eighteen months ago, Alison Levitt, QC, was tasked with a review of the previous evidence from the 2006 hacking case. Will her conclusions be shared with Lord Leveson, and can they also be shared, maybe in a redacted form, with members of the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, who are conducting an inquiry on the matter at the moment?

Public Disorder

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

After the riot in West Bromwich, local traders told me that they feared the emergence of a new class of criminal consumer: BlackBerry-enabled, self-organised groups, whose new-found collectivism had diminished their fear of the police and increased their contempt for the law. Their clarion cry to the Prime Minister was: “Please reverse the planned reduction in police in the west midlands by 1,000 uniformed police officers.” [Interruption.] I am sorry he does not like to hear that. If he is going to give them the answer no, would he at least agree to keep the matter under review?

[The Prime Minister]

The first half of the hon. Gentleman’s question, which was all about the new technology that the criminal is using, bore no relation to the second half of the question, which was about resources. What matters is whether we are going to give the police the technology to trace people on Twitter or BlackBerry Messenger or, as I said in my statement, on occasion to close them down. That is the step that we should be taking, rather than immediately launching into a discussion of resources in four years’ time.

Public Confidence in the Media and Police

Lord Watson of Wyre Forest Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. We have to keep the victims of the hacking scandal at the absolute heart of this. Those are the people who have suffered appallingly already and were made to suffer all over again. The key thing here is the extent and scale of the judicial inquiry. An inquiry such as this— into the media, into malpractice, into the police and, yes, into politicians too—has not been held for many, many years. It has been talked about and debated, but it is now going to get under way and I want it to get on with its work as rapidly as possible.

[Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)]

I must challenge the Prime Minister on the accuracy of one of his assertions. He said that nobody raised Andy Coulson’s conduct with him while he worked for the Prime Minister. I did, in a letter on 4 October last year, after new allegations that he had listened to tapes of intercepted voicemail messages came through. I said in the letter that this cast doubt on the accuracy of Mr Coulson’s statement. I am still waiting for a reply.

[The Prime Minister]

Let me pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman, to what he has done and his role in this. The point I am making is simply this: the time that Andy Coulson spent at No. 10 Downing Street and the work that he did for the Government, no one has made a complaint against. That seems to me to be important, because I have said that I gave him a second chance after he had resigned from the News of the World because of what happened under his watch. No one has raised with me any of his conduct at No. 10 while he carried out that job.