Leveson Inquiry

Lord Davies of Stamford Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

The noble Lord asked a number of questions. I was in the Chamber during Prime Minister’s Questions and while the Secretary of State was making his Statement. On his point about the Secretary of State being accountable to the House, I say that my right honourable friend was doing just that in coming to the House to take questions in great detail for well over an hour from Members of the House. I hope that he proved himself accountable to the House on that front.

The noble Lord asked about the role of spads and whether they have a code of conduct. My understanding is that they do. They perform an incredibly useful function, as successive Governments have discovered—but obviously, if something has gone wrong, that needs to be looked into on an individual basis. He also mentioned some of the evidence that we saw in the media today. We need to be somewhat cautious about taking at face value all the reports that appear in the media. This is the very aspect that we are discussing today, and it might be wiser in some respects to wait until the evidence has been fully investigated so that we know which parts of the reports of the media are true and which are somewhat creative.

[Lord Davies of Stamford]

For the avoidance of doubt, will the noble Baroness confirm to the House that what the Government are asking us and the country to believe is that a special adviser, whose office was no doubt next door to that of the Secretary of State, who saw him several times a day, who worked in close collaboration with him and had been appointed by him as a person of trust, without any instruction from the Secretary of State, without any encouragement, without any connivance, took it upon himself to become deeply complicit with one particular party to a highly controversial decision that the Secretary of State was going to have to make, got into the business of leaking documents, talking about tactics and substance, exchanging views, and never thought to tell his Secretary of State what was going on, to check with him that he was happy with that or to report to him on any of the content of those exchanges? Is that actually the story that the Government is inviting the House and the country to believe?

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

Once again, the noble Lord is fielding reports from the media that have not necessarily been substantiated, and it would be wise to wait to see which of them are true. All I can say on the question of Adam Smith’s role is to refer to his letter of resignation in which he states that,

“the content and extent of my contact was done without authorisation from the Secretary of State”.