United Kingdom’s Ambassador to the United States: Leaked Messages

Baroness Quin Excerpts

Thursday 25th July 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Quin]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the leaking of confidential messages from Sir Kim Darroch and their subsequent publication.

[Baroness Quin (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to raise this issue. I should perhaps apologise to the Minister and other Front-Bench spokespeople for bringing them to the Chamber at the end of a busy time when the summer is beckoning, but I hope that he and others agree that this is an important issue which we must not lose sight of. I am glad that many colleagues have been keen to contribute to this Question for Short Debate.

I want to begin with my own brief tribute to Sir Kim Darroch. I know how highly he was regarded in the Foreign Office during my own time as a Minister there. I also know what great service he has given over a long and successful career.

The circumstances of his departure from his post have caused great concern across both Houses of Parliament, throughout our embassies abroad and the whole of our Diplomatic Service. Included in the excellent briefing prepared for us by the House of Lords Library is an article by our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, who I know regrets that he is unable to be with us today. He wrote:

“The scandal surrounding the reporting from British ambassador Kim Darroch … is not that he was sending home his unvarnished analysis: that’s what good ambassadors have done for centuries. It’s that someone inside the British system deliberately amassed a stash of his assessments, then chose the moment of maximum impact to leak it. This was not a spontaneous decision to make public a single document: it required premeditation and therefore an agenda”.


What that agenda might have been I will come to shortly. 

The Government responded quite properly to the leak by setting up an immediate inquiry and stating their full confidence in Sir Kim. They also said that the inquiry would investigate whether criminality had occurred and expressed their fear that such a leak undermined the professionalism of the Diplomatic Service as a whole and risked making ambassadors wary of giving honest assessments of situations in the countries in which they serve—not all of which are friendly, and some are even dangerous to operate in. The Minister who is responding today said in this House that the inquiry would be concluded in the shortest possible timescale. I would be interested if he could give us any further clues about that timescale today.

As the Minister will know, the Foreign Affairs Committee in the other place is conducting its own inquiry. On 8 July, the chairman of that committee, Tom Tugendhat, wrote a number of letters, respectively to Jeremy Hunt, who was then Foreign Secretary, to Theresa May, who was then Prime Minister, and to Cressida Dick, the head of the Metropolitan Police, requesting some detailed information. Have any replies been sent to the committee as a result of those inquiries?

We know that the leak coincided—surely deliberately —with the Conservative Party’s leadership election. The failure of Boris Johnson, now Prime Minister, to defend our ambassador when asked to do so in one of the TV leadership debates caused deep alarm and much comment. Sir Alan Duncan, the former Europe Minister, accused him of throwing the ambassador under a bus, and comments from former ambassadors and others subsequently indicated that one factor which led Sir Kim to resign his post, despite the Government’s initial reaction in his defence, was that he felt he could not rely on the support of the likely future Prime Minister.

I was interested to see the evidence of the noble Lord, Lord Hague, to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee in the other place last week, where he was asked by the honourable Member for Edinburgh South, Ian Murray, whether the resignation had set a dangerous precedent if people thought that leaking could get rid of someone whom they did not like. The noble Lord replied:

“I certainly think it has set a dangerous precedent … I think it was most unfortunate that not all former Foreign Secretaries could give robust and unequivocal support, but there is an opportunity to put that right. As I say, there will be, in some form, a new Cabinet next week. Again, I would suggest that that is a good moment to make it clear how the British Government will approach these things”.


Can the Minister tell us today whether the Government will make a Statement about how they will support our professional Diplomatic Service in future? Will the Prime Minister take a different approach now that he is in 10 Downing Street?

The newspaper that published the leak claims that it was in the public interest. I assume the Minister does not agree, but can he confirm that this is the Government’s view as a whole? As many colleagues across Parliament have pointed out, the assessments of Sir Kim Darroch were very similar to much that had already been published both here and throughout the United States over a long period, so, in that sense, publishing the assessments did not provide us with new information. However, the effect of the leak was to harm UK relations with our close ally at a difficult and challenging time for our country as well as to make our ambassadors throughout the world nervous about doing their job objectively and honestly. Is that in the public interest? I think not.

In any case, who should judge the public interest? I am sure that some newspapers are responsible in approaching these issues, but they also want to sell newspapers by publishing juicy stories. Is there an agreed view of what constitutes the public interest?

The journalist who claims that he was the author of the article has said that his “trusted source” neither asked for nor received any payment. Does the Minister have any information about this or is the inquiry still looking into that aspect?

Different Ministers have said different things about whether the newspaper was right to publish. For example, Amber Rudd said that she supported the paper’s decision to disclose the information, adding that we have very precious freedom of press information here.

There was also controversy surrounding the statement of Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, who said that publication of leaked communications when the damage they are likely to cause is known may be a criminal matter. This provoked an outburst from George Osborne, editor of the Evening Standard, who said that Cressida Dick, the head of the Met, should distance herself from this stupid and ill-advised statement from a junior officer who did not appear to understand much about press freedom. However, I thought that, if the Official Secrets Act has been breached, the law as it stands means that criminal prosecution is possible. Was not the Act amended in 1989 to revoke the public interest defence previously in place, so that Neil Basu was simply saying what the current law is? If I am correct, for him to be lambasted and criticised is quite unjustified. I am not aware of any further reaction by Cressida Dick, but perhaps the Minister could let us know if such further statements have been made.

None of us should be above the law and all should be equal before it, and if the law itself is at fault then it should be changed, but the police’s duty is surely to uphold the law as it is. Incidentally, the organisation Hacked Off, for which I have much respect, has been in favour of a such a change in the law so as not to hamper investigative journalism, but, again, it quite rightly stresses that no one should be above the law. It also calls for the Leveson recommendations to be implemented in full, which I support—although I realise that it is not an issue I can deal with in this debate.

Our democracy would be much the poorer without investigative journalism, but I am not convinced that publication of the leaked messages was in the public interest and am concerned that it undermined the work of our Diplomatic Service as well as bringing an end to the career of one of our most able ambassadors. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, that Sir Kim should be replaced by another professional and that those with political agendas and those who want to see ambassadors appointed on the basis of their political views—including whether those views coincide with those of the Governments of friendly countries—should not prevail.

This remains a serious situation which I hope the Government will act effectively to address once the inquiry into who leaked the information is concluded. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.