Operation Conifer

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Lords Chamber

Finally, I put one small request to my noble friend the Minister. Will she please put before the Home Secretary the Hansard of this debate, so that he can read the strength of feeling in this House?

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I too have to declare an interest: it is through Ted Heath that I met and married my wife. She worked for him and knew him extremely well. She too was interviewed in the course of this inquiry. The questions that were asked showed specifically what nonsense it was. Did she know of occasions in which young men came secretly to 10 Downing Street? Anyone who knows anything about the way in which a Prime Minister operates and is protected—even in those days—would know what a ridiculous question that was in the first place. I could go through many of them, but I want first to say that although I welcome my noble friend Lady Barran to the Front Bench, I think she has been ill-done-by in being asked to do this, because this is a situation in which the real guilt is with the Government, who have failed to take action, and that is a scandal. May I dare to suggest what would have happened if a Conservative Government had failed to do this about a Labour Prime Minister? Or a Labour Government had failed to take action about a Conservative Prime Minister?

It is a scandal because the Government have failed to understand what their duty is and have shuffled it off to a local area, which knows perfectly well that it would have to pay the cost—the very considerable cost, if it did it properly—and which itself had to be subsidised for the original inquiry that took place under Operation Conifer. The Home Office knows that, and knows perfectly well that only the Government could ensure that there was the kind of inquiry of a national sort which is necessary on this occasion. So why will the Government not do it? They should do so, first, out of loyalty to Britain and to a Prime Minister, leave alone their politics. But secondly, they need to do so because of the actions of the police.

I am a great defender of the police but the Wiltshire Police, and Mr Veale in particular, have let down all the police forces of this country. People say that he went off to Cleveland but just remember that he left at the point at which he was not reappointed, and when it became clear that he might well not be reappointed. He went to Cleveland and has since been found guilty of what was clearly straight lying, which he has admitted. We need to recover the reputation of the police, and the only way to do so is to make sure that they know that they too are subject to the kind of inquiry which we should have here. The tendency to be sceptical about our willingness to look into the misdoings of the police will otherwise be justified.

The third reason why this inquiry must take place is because of all of us. This has happened to Ted Heath but I say to my noble friend the Minister: it could happen to you. It could happen to any of us because it is a tissue of lies, invented either by the malevolent or by the fundamentally ill. As the noble Lord, Lord Campbell-Savours, pointed out, any of us who have dealt with these cases before—the sort of people I had to talk to when we were trying to recover the reputation of Lord Brittan—will have realised that we were dealing with some of the saddest people there were. They had become totally convinced that things had happened which could not have happened, because that was not possible.

I say to my noble friend that there is a very important lesson here. I have no doubt that she has a document in front of her. I could almost have written it myself but I will restrain myself. She will read from that but I want her to say also that this House will not rest. If the Government want to go on with this farce, then again and again we will bring it here until they accept that they have a duty—moral, political and, frankly, out of decent humanity—to take this case up and reveal the truth.

I am not going to argue about whether Ted Heath was in any way guilty; I think it is so obvious that he was not, but that is not what this argument is about. In a sense, we have spent too much time talking about the impossibility of the case in the first place. What we need to do is to say that if we believe in justice, it is justice not just for the poorest or for those who cannot defend themselves but justice for all—justice for the reputation of a man who was our Prime Minister.

Frankly, I ask my noble friend not to tell us that it is an unfortunate precedent or that it is inappropriate, because we are not having it any more. We are going to go on, as my noble friend Lord Lexden has led us again tonight, until the Government accept that it is their duty to all of us to investigate this properly and not to allow the reputation of a great man to be besmirched because they are frightened of the fall out—for there can be no other reason.

I say this to my noble friend: one thing that she could do tonight to is give us a real reason. If she cannot, I hope she will go back, as my noble friend suggested, and say to the Home Secretary that we cannot do this again. We cannot manage it again. The House will not have it again. The Government have got to change their mind.

[Lord Cope of Berkeley (Con)]

My Lords, first, I welcome my noble friend to the Dispatch Box and express my sympathy. She will never have a more difficult speech to make or case to defend.

I have not spoken on this matter before, but I have followed what has been said by others on previous occasions and admire the persistence of my noble friend Lord Lexden, the noble Lords, Lord Campbell-Savours, Lord Armstrong and Lord Thomas of Gresford, and others. I listened carefully to the detail which has been spelled out today and on previous occasions on all this and I shall not repeat it or add to it. I had hoped that, given the strength of the case that was made on previous occasions, this would all have been put right—but it has not been and it will not be until there is an inquiry. So I add my words in calling for an inquiry.

I worked for Ted Heath when he was the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1965. As a young chartered accountant interested in politics, I was hired by the Conservative Research Department—rather to my surprise and its too, I think—and found myself working night and day to assist him and the team of MPs that he had assembled to debate the extensive tax reforms of the 1965 Finance Bill. It turned out to be the start of my political career.

Sir Edward had a distinguished record, first as a soldier in World War II, then as an MP for more than 50 years and a Minister in successive Governments under four Prime Ministers, and then of course as Prime Minister himself. He earned the right, even above the right of ordinary citizens, not to be unfairly traduced after his death by the police and by those responsible for law and order—but that is what has happened, as was spelled out again today.

The police were of course right to investigate the accusations in the first place—nobody is disputing that, I think—but it is not justice to give up and leave the seven accusations hanging in the air at this stage for a person of his record, or indeed for any other person. We need an investigation, an inquiry, to clear the names of those involved, particularly Sir Edward. But I also think that my noble friend Lord Deben was right that we need an investigation for the sake of the police and their reputation for fairness and straight dealing. That should be important to the Home Office as well as to the police themselves. The way that the particular policemen involved behaved in this case has been set out by others. It left a scar on the reputation of the Wiltshire Police in particular and, by extension, the police as a whole. That should concern even those who do not care about the reputation of the individuals accused. We need to be reassured that the behaviour in this case was an aberration that will not be repeated in other cases.

The police and crime commissioner has failed to use his powers—although he seemed to be about to at one point—perhaps because of the reputation that my noble friend suggested, and the police themselves do not seem prepared to salvage their reputation, so the Home Office, the Government, must set up an inquiry—and the sooner, the better. I add my voice to those calling for a proper resolution to the outstanding accusations.