Defence Responsibilities

Jim Murphy Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Fox]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

The meeting took place on the morning of 17 June, where there was a general discussion about Cellcrypt and what it might be able to do to support the MOD. At the end of the meeting, in the interests of probity, Mr Boulter mentioned that he was in a dispute with 3M alongside the MOD, and I acknowledged this. Beyond this, there was no discussion of the case or any individuals involved, nor was any classified information discussed.

That night, Mr Boulter sent e-mails claiming that he had had discussions on the issue of George Buckley’s knighthood. This correspondence later became the basis of a blackmail case in the United States. I made it clear that I was willing to testify that I had never had any such discussions. Subsequently, Porton Group has since clarified that Harvey Boulter did not in fact discuss the matter of the knighthood.

I accept that I should not have had a meeting with a potential commercial supplier without an official being present. This was entirely my fault and I take full responsibility for it. After the meeting, however, I notified my private office and asked them to prepare a brief on the subject of Cellcrypt.

Let me turn now to Mr Werritty, whom I first met in 1998. While I was in opposition, he worked as a paid intern in my House of Commons office and at this time had a parliamentary pass. He also received payments for research work undertaken during my time in opposition. Records currently show total payment of some £5,800 over the total period. He has not received any payment from me while in government. He has a very wide range of long-standing business, international relations and political links of his own. He did not receive any payment as a result of the meeting in Dubai, nor has he been involved in any defence procurement issues.

As a matter of transparency, I would like to inform the House that I have met Mr Werritty in the margins of trips of various sorts overseas, including annual leave and holidays with family and friends, on a total of 18 occasions.

As the permanent secretary points out today in her report, Mr Werritty visited me at the Ministry of Defence over 16 months, either in my office or in the refreshment facilities, on 22 occasions. The majority of these were short social meetings. In only four instances were others present. Three related to Sri Lanka and one was with Matthew Gould, known socially to both of us. It was also during one of these meetings in June that I first learned about, and told him to stop, using his business card stating that he was my adviser. Mr Werritty was never present at regular departmental meetings. During private meetings we did not discuss either commercial or defence matters. He had no access to classified documents, nor was he briefed on classified matters.

As I said yesterday, I accept, with the benefit of hindsight, that I should have taken great care to ensure a more transparent separation of Government, party political and private business and that meetings were properly recorded to protect myself and the Government from any suggestion of wrongdoing. Again, I accept my personal responsibility for this. The permanent secretary is making arrangements to ensure that such a separation of powers will exist in the future. In addition, because I do not believe that to be enough, Mr Werritty will not make private visits to the MOD in future, will not attend international conferences where I am present, and we will not meet socially abroad where I am on official business. This should ensure that no appearance of potential wrongdoing will occur in the future.

Since 1996, when I was a Foreign Office Minister, I have been involved in attempts to help resolve the conflict in Sri Lanka. As the war with the Tamil Tigers drew to a close, I worked with a number of others in business, banking and politics. It was my aim to create a mechanism that would allow reconstruction funding to occur through the private sector. This was called the Sri Lanka Development Trust, which seeks to promote post-conflict reconciliation and development in Sri Lanka. The aim was to use a proportion of profits made to fund development projects in Tamil communities. Neither myself, Mr Werritty nor others sought to receive any share of the profits for assisting the trust.

During the Shangri-La dialogue of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in 2010, I attended a bilateral meeting with the Sri Lankan Foreign Minister. This was attended by Mr Werritty and MOD officials and was minuted. The purpose of the meeting was to make it clear that although I would no longer be able to participate in the project, the others involved would continue to do so.

In December 2010, Mr Werritty and I met with the Sri Lankan President in London. This was not an official visit, hence why it was held in the Dorchester hotel. In July 2011, I gave a lecture hosted by Mrs Kadirgamar, the widow of my friend and Tamil former Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, who was assassinated by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2005, as the House will know. Mr Werritty is a personal friend of Mrs Kadirgamar and helped with the arrangements, as it was a personal not a ministerial commitment. I know that there are some in the Sri Lankan diaspora who do not want any contact with the current Sri Lankan Government, but as I said in my lecture, unless we have reconciliation based on mutual tolerance and respect for all citizens regardless of ethnic origin, we will not find peace in that island.

I have made it clear throughout this process that my desire is to be as transparent as possible, and I accept where I have been at fault, as Ministers must. Following the interim findings, the Prime Minister has asked the Cabinet Secretary to work with the permanent secretary to complete the report, addressing all the remaining questions that have been raised publicly and privately by this issue, and I shall fully and willingly co-operate with this.

[Mr Jim Murphy (East Renfrewshire) (Lab)]

I remind the House of my properly declared interest and thank the Secretary of State for his statement. I have enjoyed shadowing him in the House of Commons, and until now we have had a good working relationship. Indeed, he will know that I defended him for the first month of this case, until he started to defend himself and his answers unravelled, but this whole crisis is self-inflicted. There have been daily revelations which barely 36 hours ago he described as “baseless”, but yesterday he was forced into a partial and belated apology. It is not a partial apology we want; it is full and complete disclosure of all the issues, so today we will listen with great care to any questions that he does not fully answer.

Some will question the loyalty of a friend who abuses his contacts in that way, and many will doubt the judgment of a Secretary of State who willingly allows himself to be professionally compromised in that manner. But this is not just about the Secretary of State’s judgment; it is also about his conduct and breaches of the ministerial code. The code is clear. Paragraph 7.1 says:

“Ministers must ensure that no conflict arises, or could reasonably be perceived to arise, between their public duties and their private interests”.

Yesterday the Defence Secretary apologised for the “misleading impression” that his actions may have given. His apology in itself is an admission of a breach of the code. So it is beyond doubt that he has breached the ministerial code; the only issue is on how many grounds and on how many occasions?

Paragraph 5.2 of the code says:

“Ministers have a duty to give fair consideration and due weight to informed and impartial advice from civil servants”.

The Secretary of State claims that the infamous meeting in Dubai happened by chance. Today we have another version of events: he has told the House that he did not discuss defence or classified matters with Mr Werritty. How then did Mr Werritty know his diary and how he was travelling back from Afghanistan? Why did the Secretary of State exclude civil servants from that meeting? Did he ask for advice and briefing before the Dubai meeting? Did he seek civil service advice in advance of any of the 22 meetings with Mr Werritty? If so, will the Secretary of State publish all such advice, together with a full list of topics discussed and those who attended, and any actions taken by his private office or his special advisers following those meetings?

The Secretary of State has admitted that distinctions between his professional responsibilities and personal loyalties have been blurred. Again, the ministerial code is clear on this. Paragraph 7.3 says:

“On appointment to each new office, Ministers must provide their Permanent Secretary with a full list in writing of all interests which might be thought to give rise to a conflict.”

Paragraph 7.4 continues:

“Where appropriate, the Minister will meet the Permanent Secretary and the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests to agree action on the handling of interests.”

So on their first day in a new job every Minister has to make a declaration. Under paragraph 7.5 of the code, statements of ministerial interests are published every six months, and the Secretary of State’s entry makes interesting reading. There are mentions of good organisations such as the Strawberry Line project in his constituency, but there is no mention of his adviser who ran a defence consultancy, arranged his meetings and handed out his business cards across the world.

Did the Secretary of State provide full and complete disclosure to his permanent secretary about his links to Adam Werritty and his defence consultancy, Security Futures? What advice did the permanent secretary give him and what was agreed on the handling of this interest? Will the Secretary of State now publish the record of the information that he supplied to his permanent secretary when he took up this job? In the media this morning, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, is reported as saying that he raised his concerns with the Secretary of State for Defence’s office. Is this true, and has the current or any previous permanent secretary ever raised their concerns about his professional proximity to Mr Werritty with him or his office?

Looking at the ministerial code, it is clear that, on paragraphs 5.2, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, 7.4 and 7.5, the Secretary of State has driven a coach and horses through the rules. He cannot believe that today’s partial apology gives him a free pass round breaches of the ministerial code. Our forces look to him for leadership. When they step out of line, when they break the rules, they take responsibility and accept the consequences. They, and we, expect no less of the Defence Secretary. We all hope that he has done nothing wrong, but the only way to clear his name is total transparency, which is why this case should now be referred to the independent adviser on Ministers’ interests.

In conclusion, we might never know what got the Secretary of State into this crisis—whether it was arrogance, naivety or hubris. The British people

“expect the highest standards of conduct…We must be...transparent about what we do and how we do it. Determined to act in the national interest, above improper influence”.

[Interruption.] Government Members might shout about that, but those are not my words; they are the words of the Prime Minister in the foreword to the ministerial code of conduct. The Prime Minster must now apply those standards to the Secretary of State, otherwise the ministerial code will not be worth the paper it is written on.

[Dr Fox]

I am not entirely sure what questions arise from that. The right hon. Gentleman asked why no civil service advice was sought before social and private meetings. The answer is that civil service advice is not sought before social and private meetings. He asked when the permanent secretary raised concerns. The permanent secretary raised the matter of the business cards with me in August. I told her that I had dealt with that in June when I first saw them. I demanded that they should not be used again and that any subsequent cards should not display either the portcullis or a reference to me as Secretary of State. The right hon. Gentleman has spent most of his time over the last few days focusing on the meeting in Dubai with Cellcrypt. I have set out how the meeting came about, what the conversations were during the meeting, what conversations did not take place, what Mr Boulter said did take place and the action I took as a consequence, which was to ask my private office for a full briefing. No commercial contracts were made and no financial gain was made as a result of any of those discussions. When a man who was involved in a blackmail case is feeding information to the media, which is often taken without question, it is rather difficult to take the shadow Secretary of State beginning his statement without telling us the specifics of the declaration he was making, which is that his Front Bench team took £10,000 from Cellcrypt, the company at the centre of all this, to visit the United States. I hope that today I have answered as many questions as I can; perhaps the shadow Secretary of State might want to answer some that arise for him.