Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
620-636)
RT HON
LORD WARNER,
RT HON
RICHARD CABORN
MP AND MR
STEPHEN HADDRILL
8 MAY 2008
Q620 David Heyes: It seems that several
months into this inquiry we are further away from a definition
or agreed understanding of what lobbying is than when we started.
That has been a constant theme this morning. I think it is a big
problem for the advisory committee. We know that Lord Warner was
banned for a year. He could take up the appointments but in respect
of several of them he was banned from lobbying for a year. That
also applies to the other two witnesses. You are banned from doing
something but you do not know what it is. When you referred to
lobbying you said "whatever that means", so you know
that you cannot do it but you do not know what it is. I believe
that is a major problem. I thought I picked up from what Lord
Warner said earlier that if an official or minister approached
him during the 12-month ban to ask for advice or an opinion he
would regard it as legitimate and he would co-operate. Did I understand
that correctly?
Lord Warner: Yes. If a health
minister wanted to come and talk to me and get my views on something,
fine. Usually they are not asking me about a particular company;
they are asking me a policy question, that is, whether they should
do x or what would I think if they did y. Frankly,
that is the way Parliament works. If ministers have an idea about
something they come and talk to MPs and all sorts of people about
what the reaction to it is. That is not lobbying.
Q621 David Heyes: How do you negotiate
that transaction without falling into the trap of lobbying for
the firm which now employs you?
Lord Warner: If a minister came
to ask me now I am outside the lobbying period for my view on
some aspect of health policy I would not dream of bringing into
the conversation the name of a particular company. I do not pretend
that I am a perfect person, but it just would not occur to me
to do that. I would deal with that conversation on the basis on
which it was being conducted by that minister.
Q622 David Heyes: But nobody would
know if you did anyway because there is no policing or monitoring
of what you get up to in these private meetings; there could not
be?
Lord Warner: As a country we have
to decide how we treat parliamentarians. We have to start from
some baseline proposition about their level of integrity given
the wrap-around of rules and regulations that already exist. If
we are to start from the position that we have in Parliament a
load of rogues and charlatans who cannot be trusted to behave
in a reasonable way that is a rather sad commentary and it then
begins to become very difficult to get people to go into politics.
Q623 David Heyes: But we have seen
a breakdown of the traditional approach that all parliamentarians
are gentlemen and can be trusted. There are many examples where
that has been breached and it has resulted in all sorts of criticisms
of parliamentarians. Mr Haddrill, have you found yourself in a
similar situation where during the ban on lobbying you have been
approached for advice or an opinion from former colleagues?
Mr Haddrill: Yes, but the letter
I received was not a straight ban; it contained a paragraph which
said that if I was approached in that way I could take part in
the discussion. It seems to me that what is controlled is a process,
not an outcome. The process is: thou shalt not have these meetings,
and so on. You really do not get any measure of the outcome. The
measure is that you should not do anything that brings public
service into disrepute. That is the way I like to think about
it. It is a bit hazy as to what you can and cannot do in terms
of having conversations that you do not initiate. That was what
I had in the back of my mind. Nothing could be said as a result
of that that could bring public service or my own employer into
disrepute.
Q624 David Heyes: Lord Warner, in
your case did that understanding exist in relation to your 12-month
lobbying ban? If the approach was made to you would that be legitimate?
Was that written into your ban?
Lord Warner: The letter I received,
a copy of which I am very happy to send to the Committee, said
that I should not lobby government. That was the key sentence.
I would not have dreamt of lobbying government, but it seems absolute
nonsense to say it means that if someone in government approaches
me for my views I cannot talk to that individual for 12 months.
In that case it is not I who takes the initiative; it is they.
In those circumstances, I think that at the end of the day we
put around parliamentarians and former ministers a set of rules
about how they behave. By all means tighten up the Advisory Committee
on Business Appointments but to some extent you have to allow
people to operate on the basis that they will not let themselves
or public bodies down in the way they behave.
Q625 Kelvin Hopkins: I regard some
of the answers given this morning with a bit of scepticism, but
let that pass for a moment. Do you not make a clear distinction
in your mind as I do between actions for which you receive money
and actions you do because of altruism or because you believe
them to be right? Is there not a clear distinction between money
and something you do because you believe in it?
Mr Caborn: No. To be quite honest,
if I did not believe what I was doing was right and what I wanted
to do I would not have done it.
Q626 Kelvin Hopkins: Would you do
same without the money?
Mr Caborn: I probably would do
the same without money because I am already doing it in my constituency.
People come along and ask me to do it. I never went out to seek
that money. People came to me and offered it; they asked whether
I would give assistance in a number of areas and the answer was
yes.
Q627 Kelvin Hopkins: I would be very
suspicious if somebody offered me money for something. I do a
lot of lobbying, as we all do, but if somebody offers me money
the relationship is very different.
Mr Caborn: That is your opinion
and one that you hold very dearly, and that is fine.
Q628 Kelvin Hopkins: Another distinction
that I draw—I would like to think other Members of Parliament
agree—is between what is in the interests of commerce, business
and profit and what is in the direct interest of the citizens
which is often in conflict with commerce, business and profit.
I give an example. Recently, I took organisations including Age
Concern to ministers to lobby for the human rights of care home
residents. This would make life more and not less difficult for
private care home owners. I thought it was the right thing to
do. I did not receive anything. When they came to see me I bought
the tea. Is that not very different from lobbying for a private
company, especially one that seeks massive contracts from government?
Mr Caborn: You predicate the whole
of your argument on the fact that I am a consultant to AMEC because
it is about lobbying. It is not about lobbying at all; it is about
the fact that I am an engineer and I have had a lot of experience
in Europe and have been a trade union official. It is nothing
to do with my ministerial career and therefore I am advising on
a whole series of things which have nothing to do with my ministerial
career. I emerged as a sports minister after six years. You could
well argue: why do we pay ministers? Is that against their duty
as Members of Parliament? Why do they not serve without payment?
On the purity of your argument, do not pay ministers; they are
Members of Parliament who happen to be in the Executive and now
they are ministers, so they should not be paid.
Lord Warner: Your first question
was whether my view was conditioned by the fact I was receiving
payment.
Q629 Kelvin Hopkins: Is there not
a clear distinction between acting for payment and acting according
to one's own views?
Lord Warner: I do not change the
quality of my advice whether I am giving it to a voluntary, public
or private sector organisation with which I am working. I do not
tailor my advice on the basis that I am being paid by one and
not the other. I also start from a different position from you
in that I know—it is a fact—that, as Oxford Economics
showed in a report published last December, about £44 billion
of public services are provided in this country by the private
sector. The private sector is already, whether anyone likes it
or not, providing a very large amount of the public services in
this country, and I do not simply mean building capital plants.
Because I care about public services I believe it is important
that the private sector like others understands how public services
and government work.
Q630 Kelvin Hopkins: You may recall
a conference organised by UNISON at which you spoke and I asked
some fairly sharp questions. You were a minister central to Mr
Blair's determination to drive a lot of health services into the
private sector. He was absolutely determined to secure private
involvement in the NHS. You were a minister centrally involved
in that process.
Lord Warner: I was the minister
centrally involved in delivering the 2005 Labour Party manifesto
commitment, on which many Members here were elected, on contestability
in the health service.
Q631 Kelvin Hopkins: I do not want
to go too far down that road. I refer to the Advisory Committee
on Business Appointments. Is it not a toothless waste of time?
The Committee has had before it the chairman, Lord Mayhew, who
is a nice man. Essentially, it is cosy, cuddly and toothless.
Is that not the reality?
Lord Warner: Toughen up the Advisory
Committee on Business Appointments, bring in some independent
people and ask individuals to appear before them to explain what
they will do. If you want to, ask us to come back after a period
of time to say what we have been doing. I do not object to that.
Q632 Kelvin Hopkins: Are not the
rules pathetic? You took up a whole series of appointments in
October and November 2007. You could take up those appointments
forthwith, so you could take the money but not lobby ministers
for a year.
Mr Caborn: You predicate the whole
of the question on the basis of money. It is not. We have a life
outside ministerial office, to be quite honest.
Q633 Kelvin Hopkins: Take away the
money in that case.
Mr Caborn: Take away the question.
Q634 Chairman: I want to pick up
a point made by Mr Haddrill a little while ago. He said there
was now far greater interchange between government and the private
and other sectors and this was a good thing. But what does that
mean in the context of the point in which we are interested, namely
what is meant by lobbying? It could mean either that we must therefore
make the interchange mechanisms easier and be more relaxed about
them or that because it highlights the problems of the revolving
door we should tighten them up and make them more stringent. In
a nutshell which of those approaches is it?
Mr Caborn: It could be either
of them. Broadly speaking, the system is fairly rigorous. It can
be made more transparent, as Lord Warner said, in terms of public
appointments. It is then a matter of making sure that people out
there know what the system is. I am bound to say that some of
the questioning today has not been as sharp as it ought to be;
it has been ill-informed in some areas. If that is the public
perception of what MPs are asking people like ourselves then you
have to start to question it. It is just a simple question. I
am not necessarily having a go at Mr Prentice here, but to say
that it is the Government that is making these contracts is wrong;
it is the NDA. That is absolutely fundamental.
Q635 Mr Prentice: Mr Caborn, come
on: that is just my shorthand.
Mr Caborn: The very point I make
is that it is shorthand in the context of public perception. You
want to rubbish that part of it but you do not do it. You have
to be factually correct if you are to ask questions about the
integrity of the system we are operating.
Q636 Chairman: I think that should
be continued outside.
Lord Warner: If you believe there
is public concern and you want to toughen up the system in the
way I suggest I have no problems with that. All I would say is
that you should think very carefully before you impose a set of
rules whose outcome is that ministers and government are less
exposed to a wide range of views particularly from the private
sector in terms of its ability to develop public policy.
Mr Haddrill: I agree that it could
be more transparent and consistent. At the moment it is a bit
too subjective.
Chairman: We have had a bracing session.
Some of us are about to go to Gwyneth Dunwoody's funeral and she
would have approved of such a session. The session has been lively,
interesting and useful. Thank you very much for coming along.
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