Cabinet Secretary Report (Government Response)

David Anderson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I thank the Leader of the House for his statement, but what a condemnation it was of the way in which government is being run in this country. It is a matter of deep regret that the Prime Minister has chosen not to deal with this statement himself. It is the Prime Minister and not the Leader of the House who is the guardian of the ministerial code, and who has the final say on who is fit to be in his Government. Today, he has ducked those responsibilities.

When news of the potential wrongdoing at the Ministry of Defence first surfaced, the former Secretary of State for Defence announced an inquiry into himself, but only after he had called the allegations “baseless”. As the revelations mounted daily, the Prime Minister belatedly announced this limited inquiry by the Cabinet Secretary. By then, it was apparent to everyone that the ministerial code had been breached. The Secretary of State admitted as much. Why then did the Prime Minister not refer this case to the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests, Sir Philip Mawer?

What we have today is a far cry from such a full, independent, external inquiry. The Cabinet Secretary has been forced to rely on the word of Adam Werritty and the former Defence Secretary, whose explanations have repeatedly unravelled at the first hint of scrutiny. This report merely scratches the surface of potential misconduct in government. Consequently, it raises more questions than it answers.

Even in its narrow and limited form, the Cabinet Secretary’s report is damning. It finds the former Defence Secretary’s conduct

“not appropriate and not acceptable”.

It reveals, in stark detail, multiple breaches of the ministerial code. The former Defence Secretary has knowingly circumvented the long-established rules that are in place to prevent conflicts of interest from arising. The report shows that wealthy individuals funded Adam Werritty. He was, in effect, a privately funded special adviser. The former Secretary of State’s shadow political operation routinely undermined our civil service structures and their accountability. The report fails to expose the full facts about the money trail. There is no investigation into the benefits that Adam Werritty received. There is no full disclosure of his funders and the purpose behind the donations. Given the Prime Minister’s failure to answer this question earlier today, can the Leader of the House give the House a categorical assurance that no similar practices are taking place anywhere else in this Government?

I turn now to the details of the report. We need answers on the following issues. The role of the Sri Lanka Development Trust is not considered in the report. Mr Werritty’s presence in Iran, Washington and Israel remains unexplained. We do not know whether Mr Werritty profited from his association with the former Defence Secretary, although we do know about the five-star nature of his taste in flights and hotels. We do not know what those secretive donors, who were in effect Mr Werritty’s paymasters, were promised for their money, nor indeed if they got it. We do not know whether the former Defence Secretary commissioned any work from the MOD as a result of the offline and irregular meetings brokered by Mr Werritty. We do not know which other Ministers and senior staff have met Mr Werritty, because the Prime Minister has refused to publish a full list. That is totally unacceptable. A full list must be published. In order to deal with all those issues, will the Leader of the House agree that further investigation is both essential and urgent?

Will the Leader of the House also tell the House whether he has initiated an inquiry into the use by the former Defence Secretary of his parliamentary office to run Atlantic Bridge as a charity, and whether he is satisfied that that was proper under parliamentary rules? Some of the key funders of Atlantic Bridge were the key funders of Adam Werritty. They are also the key funders of the Conservative party. The links are complex, but they are deep and well-established.

We learned yesterday of the meeting between Adam Werritty and two members of the existing Defence team. They must give the House a full explanation of the details of those meetings and their connections to Adam Werritty.

We also learned in the report that the risks of the former Defence Secretary’s association with Mr Werritty were raised with him by his private office, the permanent secretary, a former permanent secretary and a former Chief of the Defence Staff. He chose to ignore those warnings. Why was he allowed to make that choice? What did the permanent secretary at the MOD then do? Were any of those concerns raised with the Cabinet Secretary and, if so, did the Cabinet Secretary raise them with the Prime Minister? Why was this situation allowed to continue for so long? Why was the former Defence Secretary allowed to treat the ministerial code as if it was an optional extra?

The report recommends that senior civil servants have greater oversight of ministerial behaviour. Yet the fact remains that it is Ministers who are responsible for their own conduct and the Prime Minister who is the guardian of the ministerial code. He is expected to enforce it, not allow it to be broken multiple times.

Before the last election, the Prime Minister promised to end the

“cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money”.

That promise has now been broken. This scandal has only damaged public confidence in the Government further. Meetings without civil servants; money off the books; luxury social visits in between visits to our brave servicemen and women; and today, the Prime Minister’s contempt on the matter was revealed. Simply saying that the Defence Secretary has resigned is not good enough. The Government need to take responsibility for this self-inflicted crisis. The House needs answers to the unanswered questions, or people will only conclude that this Government have something to hide.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We do not take points of order in the middle of statements, or at any time in statements, only afterwards.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir George Young]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We have commissioned a report, we have found out what went wrong, we have made recommendations to put it right and we have learned the lessons. I agree that we should now move on.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Both in questions to the Prime Minister and during this statement today, the question of whether other Ministers have behaved in a similar manner has been raised. The Leader of the House has made it clear that anyone who wants to make allegations should do so. I do not think that people are making allegations—they are raising the general worry that the rest of the population of this country feels. If someone as experienced as the former Secretary of State allowed this to go on, thinking that it was reasonable, surely it is possible that other Ministers, equally unwittingly, might be doing the same thing. Would it not benefit us all if the Cabinet Secretary were to look into all these things to ensure that there is not any other concern?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, but in the last Parliament a number of Ministers from his party had to resign. We never made any suggestion that because one Minister had broken the code, all Ministers had broken the code, and it is important that similar accusations should not be made in this Parliament.