Brexit: Civil Service Impartiality

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Armstrong of Ilminster

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am grateful to my noble friend. Like him, I worked with Sir Jeremy. I sat round the Cabinet table for a number of years with him and worked with him when I was Chief Whip and Leader of the House. One of his successes was building on the work of his predecessors and creating a more open, diverse, plural Civil Service that was also more professional but never lost sight of the basic principles of the Civil Service: honesty, openness, impartiality and integrity.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, speaking for all his predecessors as Cabinet Secretary, I share and express our regret that Sir Jeremy Heywood has felt obliged to retire on health grounds. Sir Jeremy served many Prime Ministers and, as we have just heard, many Chancellors of the Exchequer. He served with great skill, unremitting hard work, distinction, impartiality and integrity. He has given the state some service and is well deserving of the gratitude and approval of the Government, Ministers, his colleagues in the Civil Service and both Houses of Parliament.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I agree with the noble Lord’s every word and gently suggest that there will now be so many former Cabinet Secretaries in this House that perhaps they should form their own group.

Historical Allegations:Operation Conifer

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Armstrong of Ilminster

Thursday 18th October 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the replies by Baroness Williams of Trafford on 11 October (HL Deb, cols 177–9), what steps they are taking to ensure that investigations into historical allegations do not damage the reputations of the people against whom the allegations are made in cases where such investigations are not resolved conclusively.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, decisions on how to conduct investigations are the responsibility of the force concerned following guidance issued by the College of Policing. The college’s recently updated guidance makes it clear that the names of suspects, including those who are deceased, should be released only where there is a legitimate policing purpose. Operational advice to senior officers investigating allegations of more recent child sexual abuse involving institutions or people of public prominence is also being updated.

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, as the Government persist in refusing to commission an independent review of Operation Conifer, perhaps they will muster the courage to express a considered view themselves. Operation Conifer produced not a single shred of credible evidence that Sir Edward Heath might have been guilty of child abuse, and a lot of credible evidence to show that he was not. Of the 42 allegations investigated by Wiltshire Police, 35 were dismissed. Of the remaining seven unresolved allegations, four can be shown to be without foundation. The other three are probably equally baseless, the product of a conspiracy to create and disseminate false allegations of child abuse by national figures such as Lord Bramall, Lord Brittan and Sir Edward Heath. Does the Minister agree that Operation Conifer’s report falls far short of the standards of probability required to justify the institution of a criminal prosecution, if Sir Edward Heath had still been alive to be prosecuted? Does justice not require us to accept that Sir Edward Heath was not a child abuser and to consign Operation Conifer to the dustbin of history?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

No one could have done more to safeguard and defend the integrity and reputation of Sir Edward Heath than the noble Lord. On the Government’s role, the noble Lord, together with my noble friends Lord Hunt and Lord MacGregor, went to see the Home Secretary on 10 September. Their meeting lasted 40 minutes and they deployed, with all the force and eloquence at their disposal, their concerns and proposals for the Government to intervene. The Home Secretary said that he would reflect on it; he has previously overturned the decisions of his predecessors where he felt that the case was made. In this case, a month after that meeting and having taken advice, he wrote to the noble Lord on 10 October. He said: “I do not think there are grounds to justify review or intervention by Government”. He then set out his reasons. Unless something has happened in the past month, I do not believe that the Home Secretary will change his decision.

On the broader issues, I find it compelling that those who knew Sir Edward personally do not believe that there is one scintilla of truth in the accusations that were made. The noble Lord asked me to state from the Dispatch Box that in my view, had Sir Edward lived, the case would not have reached the level at which the CPS would institute a case. I hope that he, as a former Cabinet Secretary, will understand that it would not be right for a Minister to make such a pronouncement.