TRANSCRIPT
Lord Patrick Neill
and John Humphrys.
John Humphrys
The affair of the Hinduja brothers passport has claimed the scalp of Peter Mandelson; threatens perhaps the future of another Minister, Keith Vaz; it's also brought to the fore, yet again, the whole question of how politician's should behave, especially when they become ministers. The body in charge of keeping an eye on them is the Committee on Standards in Public Life. It's Chairman, soon to retire (he's done his three years) is Lord Neill. Good morning Lord Neill.
Lord Neill
Good morning.
John Humphrys
The first thing, Tony Blair, one of the first thing's Tony Blair's said about all this is that he saw no need to look again at the Ministerial code, what's your view on that?
Lord Neill
Well, essentially, there is a slight difference of opinion between us, my Committee and the Prime Minister, on that. We think the code does need a very clear statement in it that the Prime Minister is to be the judge of the requirements of the code and of what the consequences should be for breach of it. Now we think a clear statement to that effect would be very useful because, if you recall, the Prime Minister has issued this very much as his own document, put his own imprimatur on it, and that would be an appropriate thing to say, that transgressions are dealt with by him. But if I could add a qualification, there should be serious matters that he has to look at. People make complaints on bogus and frivolous grounds and the Prime Minister really can't be expected to spend all his time looking at really false charges, some of which are brought for political motivations/motives.
John Humphrys
Indeed. If that were to be the case, those more serious cases were to be dealt with, should be dealt, with by the Prime Minister what would that leave for you, the Committee on Standards in Public Life?
Lord Neill
Well, I think in your opening statement you didn't quite put our position totally accurately, if I may say so, because we don't look at individual cases. We advise on general principals, we, in the report we issued a year or so ago, we made various comments about the ministerial code. And we deal with matters of policy for example funding of political parties another recent report, we don't get into individual transgressions, that's not for us.
John Humphrys
So you say this is the way we believe, broadly speaking, politician's ought to behave?
Lord Neill
Absolutely.
John Humphrys
And what you are telling me this morning is that you believe that it is the Prime Minister who should then adjudicate?
Lord Neill
Yes, and I think he accepts that. I mean, we issued our report, the Government issued a response which didn't go all the way with us and I then wrote to the Prime Minister on this very point and I've had a response in which he has said that he personally is involved in major allegations of misconduct where questions of confidence in his colleagues is called into question. So in these, what you might call the serious cases, he becomes directly involved and perhaps we have seen some recent evidence about that. But he has, I think, to be protected and my Committee wouldn't expect him to deal with every trivial allegation.
John Humphrys
In this particular case we have seen two things happen, well obviously Peter Mandelson has gone, we've also seen him set up an inquiry behind which, in a sense, Keith Vaz is sheltering, not that… I don't use that necessarily in any pejorative sense… I mean he's saying the inquiry has been set up so now I need not answer any questions. Do you thinks that's an appropriate thing to have happened?
Lord Neill
Well I do really. It seems to me that there should be great flexibility left with the Prime Minister to decide what sort of investigation should be made in a particular case. Cases come in all shapes and sizes and it's for him, the Prime Minister, to choose what is the best way of getting it investigated. Here he's picked on a retired treasury solicitor who is Queen's Counsel and he will investigate and find the facts. That seems to me a perfectly appropriate method of proceeding.
John Humphrys
In general, and I don't know whether this is a fair question to ask you, but I think it has to do with the broad standards so I think you probably would be able to answer it, I hope you would anyway. In general, can a minister say, should a minister be able to say, because of my particular standing as a prominent Asian for instance, I should be seen or I might be seen as the MP for that entire constituency of people, wherever they may live.
Lord Neill
Well, I think that's quite a difficult question to answer. I think some MPs or Ministers might feel they had a broader remit than just their own constituency. I don't think I would comment on that particular point.
John Humphrys
Can I also ask you this, and again you may not be able to comment on it, it is said that Mr Vaz is going to be called before the Standards and Privileges Committee to answer questions about other matters, allegedly, trying to block the publication of an inquiry into whether he took payments from businessmen and so on. Can you tell me whether that is the case?
Lord Neill
No I can't tell you whether that is the case. That is an entirely different Committee, that's the House of Commons Committee which Robert Sheldon is the Chairman and, as you know, the Parliamentary Commissioner on Standards, Elizabeth Filkin, she reports to that Committee and prepares the reports on what's happened. So that is in the House of Commons scene, that's the investigation of conduct by Members of Parliament, as such. What we've been talking about earlier is the Prime Minister's code for ministers.
John Humphrys
I understand that and that code broadly you are now happy with? Given that you've explained how you would like it to be adjudicated, as it were, are you happy with the code?
Lord Neill
Basically we're happy. We felt it should be rewritten it's a rather turgid document, it's not very clear and I think the whole thing could be restructured but that's sort of, rather, a point of detail. The main thing is that it's pretty good but could be improved in the way I indicated.
John Humphrys
Lord Neill thank you very much indeed. Lets put some of that to our political Editor Andrew Marr. Interesting what he has to say about the Prime Minister's actions from now on Andy.
Andrew Marr
It certainly is. I mean the key thing here is who in the end makes the decision, who is the person who wades in and says 'right this code I believe to have been breached - out' or 'not out' and if it's anybody else other than the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister can always push it off and says 'well it's… you know… there's Committees, there's inquiries, it's really not up to me.' In the end however he leads the government, these are his ministers and he has to take the decision and I thought that the position being put out there was very important. It's a significant shift, I think, towards genuine Prime Ministerial responsibility on this matter.
John Humphrys
How do you think Tony Blair will respond to that?
Andrew Marr
Well I think he'll be well advised to listen to what Lord Neill was saying and respond positively because the crucial thing here is the growing suspicion is there's all these inquiries. There's Elizabeth Filkin's inquiry, there's perhaps in due course the Standards and Privileges Committee itself and there's the inquiry of the Hinduja passport applications itself by Antony Hammond. All these inquiries and the election is relatively close we think. Will they all report in plenty of time? Will all the facts come out? Now, the Government has produced a long list of other Ministers who've had connections with the Hinduja's, I think, I hope suggesting that they realise that the days of endless cover-ups just make things worse.
John Humphrys
As far as the facts coming out as you know we've been trying, along with many other people, to get hold of that conversation between Mr Mandelson and Mr O'Brien. I don't know whether you heard the ombudsman… the parliamentary ombudsman this morning say that he might be able to make his own inquiries if an MP interceded. Well we've had, would you believe, I don't suppose it would surprise you, a certain MP ringing up this morning. He didn't want his name used at this stage but he said he's very happy to
Andrew Marr
…happy to pursue this…
John Humphrys
…yes, quite so. What do you make of all this, where do you think it's all going to go?
Andrew Marr
Well, there is no reason for this conversation not to be made public, now, or no innocent reason. Peter Mandelson has said 'I am happy for it to be made public.' We know what the issue was. We know that it was about a Hinduja passport application which was then granted. I can think of no good reason why a government which says that it is committed to freedom of information, which says it's committed to openness, which says that it wants to do things in a different way should not know publish this.
John Humphrys
Well, who knows. Andrew Marr many thanks.
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Please Note:
This transcript was typed from an on-air broadcast and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ cannot vouch for its accuracy.
