Sir Edward Heath: Operation Conifer

Lord Berkeley of Knighton Excerpts

Wednesday 17th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to be allowed to speak briefly in the gap.

Ted Heath was a family friend for a reason that we have not mentioned so far—his passionate love of music. He became a good friend of my father and would come to dinner. I was always struck by his behaviour and his sweetness.

I want to put one thing on the record, because it is very important. Many years later, when she was in her 90s, I interviewed Barbara Hosking on “Private Passions”. Many noble Lords will remember that she was a very distinguished civil servant who looked after Ted for many years. She told me that the principal thing that she managed to do for him was to save him from wearing an appalling cardigan when he was about to conduct the LSO. She said, “What are you going to wear?” He came up with a tattered thing with a hole in it and she said, “You can’t possibly wear that”.

I asked her about these allegations and said, “Would you agree with me? From my experience, Ted was if anything asexual”. She said, “Absolutely”. In all the years that she worked intimately for him, she never saw a hint of anything else. This is important, and I think she would want me to say this, because she is of course now dead. Given that we have to reconsider this man in the light of these appalling, outrageous allegations, it is important to take on evidence like that. She thought that he was probably asexual and certainly that he had nothing to do with behaviour of this sort.