Breaking the Code (22 page)
Authors: Gyles Brandreth
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1935–2002; MP for Reigate 1974–97.
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1918–1999; MP for Penrith & the Border 1955–83; from 1983 Viscount Whitelaw KT, CH.
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MP for Finchley 1992–7.
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1932–95; a senior whip; MP for Staffordshire South East 1983–95.
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MP for Billericay 1987–2001.
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Sir Richard Scott’s ‘Report of the Inquiry into the Export of Defence Equipment and Dual-Use Goods to Iraq and Related Prosecutions’ was eventually published on 15 February 1996. The key questions were: had ministers and officials connived with exporters to enable the export of defence-related material contrary to official government policy? Had ministers modified the policy on arms exports to Iraq and misled the House on the issue? In relation to the trial of the directors of the firm Matrix Churchill charged with contravening the export ban, had ministers signed Public Interest Immunity Certificates objecting to the disclosure of documents required in the case in an attempt either to cover-up government misdemeanour or avoid embarrassment, knowing that without access to the documents innocent defendants might suffer conviction and imprisonment?
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1938–2010; MP for Hemel Hempstead 1979–83, Bedfordshire Mid since 1983; Solicitor-General 1987–92; Attorney-General 1992–7. Later Baron Lyell of Markyate.
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1st Earl of Birkenhead, 1872–1930; Attorney-General in 1915; youngest Lord Chancellor in 1919.
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1913–99; Private Secretary to Princess Elizabeth 1950–52; Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen 1952–72; Private Secretary to the Queen 1972–7; a Permanent Lord in Waiting to the Queen from 1978.
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Private Secretary to the Queen 1990–99.
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MP for Harborough since 1992.
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MP for Sutton & Cheam 1992–7.
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Parliamentary Secretary at the Office of Public Service 1992–3; MEP for Upper Thames 1979–84; MP for Wantage 1983–2005. Jackson, Waldegrave and GB were Presidents of the Oxford Union in 1967, 1968 and 1969.
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1913–94; US President 1969–74.
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US President since 1989, he had just been defeated in the presidential election by Bill Clinton.
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US President 1993–2001.
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Leader page editor on the
Daily Telegraph
1991–4.
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MP for Havant since 1992.
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Andrew Miller, Labour MP for Ellesmere Port since 1992. 1992
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MP for Stratford-upon-Avon 1983–97.
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MP for Tiverton 1992–2010; later Baroness Browning.
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Liberal Democrat MP for Rochdale 1992–7.
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Labour MP for Bassetlaw 1968–2001.
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Labour MP for Hampstead & Highgate since 1992.
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‘Gyles Brandreth has decided to do within Parliament what he does best outside it. Mr Brandreth speaks after dinner. He believes in free speech but not free speeches. For decades he has been making rather good ones, for money. As dusk fell yesterday, the House enjoyed a rare treat: a top-class after-dinner Brandreth speech – but before dinner, and free. His subject was his proposed new bill (it will never, of course, become law) to encourage the use of “plain language” in consumer contracts … If we were to judge his performance yesterday, we could do no better than quote Sir Noel Coward’s impromptu response upon unexpectedly meeting the schmaltzy American pianist, Liberace, on the
Queen Mary
. “How do you do, Mr Liberace.” (Embarrassed pause.) “I think you do” (pause) “
what
you do, very well.”’ Matthew Parris in
The Times
, 9 December 1992.
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Labour MP for Newport West since 1987.
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Ulster Unionist MP for Londonderry 1974–83, Londonderry East 1983–5 and 1986–2001.
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Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party; MEP since 1979; MP for Antrim North 1970–85 and 1986–2010.
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1934–94; Labour MP for Keighley 1974–83; MEP for Sheffield 1984–9; MP for Bradford South 1987–94.
A thousand beacons blazed across the European Community at midnight to usher in the single market: one Europe of 340 million people. Mr Major (somewhat startlingly) sees 1993 as ‘the year of charity and helping your neighbour’. This makes me a little ashamed to confess that I see 1993 as the year of looking after Number One!
What are my hopes/ambitions/resolutions for the year? Mundane.
1. I need to get the office organised. Jenny is a joy, always has been. She is my ideal PA – she does everything I ask of her and asks absolutely nothing of me. I couldn’t tell you a thing about her private life, the date of her birthday, the colour of her eyes. All I know is that she’s never late, she’s never sick, she’s brilliant on the telephone and she hoovers up the work. I have the perfect PA; what I now need is a good constituency secretary. I’m glad Angela moved on. I think I was seduced by the fact she was American and had once worked for Bob Dole! Joy looks the part: middle-aged, mousey, spinster-like and, at least this time, I got Michèle and Jenny to meet her too. We shall see.
2. I need to get on top of the correspondence. Sir Jack Temple told me that when he was the Chester MP he could manage a week’s correspondence in a single morning in the Library, replying personally to each letter by hand. Now we all get hundreds of letters every week and I have discovered that it’s not the quality of the reply that seems to count but its promptness. Fail to answer the letter within a fortnight and in week three there’s a complaint in the local paper. ‘I wrote to Mr Brandreth on December. I still haven’t even had the courtesy of a reply…’ Bah. Peter Tapsell told me of the colleague of the old school who dealt with his correspondence on the terrace every morning at eleven with a massive G&T. As he opened the mail,
he filed it immediately – straight over the parapet into the Thames. I can’t be that cavalier (though I sense several are), but I can aim to achieve what most of my colleagues achieve: let the secretary draft the bulk of the replies and only look at complicated cases myself.
3. I need to keep the constituency happy – that means keeping the Association activists happy (difficult, as they’re insatiable) and ensuring I get sufficient local press coverage to give the broader constituency the impression I’m ‘busy’ on their behalf. (God knows, I am busy, but to how much real effect? ‘Don’t tell me how hard you work; tell me how much you get done.’)
4. I need to become a PPS. I am embarrassed to confess that when Stephen [Milligan] became a PPS before Christmas I was irritated. Why should he be the first of our intake to get his foot on the ladder, and not me? The truth is because he’s better at it: better informed, more intellectually focused, braver in the Chamber, more robust in debate. He deserves his success, he’s earned it, he’s my friend and I should be pleased … and yet, and yet … (‘I must keep aiming higher and higher – even though I know how silly it is.’ – Aristotle Onassis.)
5. I need to earn more money. Michèle says Grey Gowrie
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was right: you can’t lead a middle-class lifestyle on a parliamentary salary. We have a large house in London, we’re buying somewhere in the constituency, we have three children in private education – it’s a frigging nightmare! I know I shall never be seriously rich because, while I find money necessary I don’t find it
interesting
. On the financial front in 1993 ‘something must be done’.
6. I need to be a better husband and father. Not easy, given 1 to 5 above!
Revised New Year message from the PM. Yesterday we were heralding the year of loving our neighbour. Today he’s forecasting the dawning of a new era of Thatcherite prosperity.
Clearly, there’s going to be something for everyone in 1993…
We’re off to Kensal Green cemetery with Theo and Lee,
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in search of Thackeray’s and Trollope’s graves. I am reading
Can You Forgive Her?
It is the highest and most legitimate pride of an Englishman to have the letters MP written after his name. No selection from the alphabet, no doctorship, no fellowship, be it of ever so learned or royal a society, no knightship – not though it be of the Garter – confers so fair an honour.
The benighted John Major and the newly knighted David Frost got together on the box this morning and the PM admitted that perhaps he hadn’t offered sufficient clarity as to what his government is all about – and then proceeded to devote most of the interview to talking about the Prince of Wales’ marriage and the Citizen’s Charter! Maastricht, Mellor, the ERM, unemployment, the pits, we judder from shambles to catastrophe to disaster and
still
our leader speaks of the Citizen’s Charter. This morning Gladstone was even prayed in aid: ‘Gladstone said you make a candle by picking up candle ends. That’s how you make proper public service, by dealing with people’s small frustrations.’ Um.
We’re back and it’s business as usual. On Monday night we were still voting at midnight. Last night I got away at half past twelve, and today we’re resuming our line by line consideration of the European Communities (Amendment) Bill – and we all know what that means.
I have just dozed through the National Heritage Select Committee’s grilling (well, gentle toasting) of Peter Brooke (amiable, courteous, concerned and waffly) because I was up at 5.30 a.m. to offer my two cents’ worth on the breaking scandal from Down Under: tapes of an embarrassingly intimate telephone conversation between Prince Charles and his mistress, Camilla Parker-Bowles. Our papers have only hinted at the content. At GMTV they had faxed versions of the complete transcript, but because I’d been rather po-faced on air, condemning the monstrous invasion of privacy that these tapes represent, I didn’t then have the nerve to sneak off with a copy of the offending material. It was a mixture of the lurid and the juvenile: goonish nicknames and HRH fantasising about life as one of Camilla’s tampons…
Coming up with a workable framework of legislation that won’t infringe press freedom but will protect the privacy of the innocent isn’t going to be easy. Peter Brooke seems ready to back a privacy law, but No. 10 is sending out the signal that Mr Major is set to reject Sir David Calcutt’s proposal for a statutory press complaints tribunal, headed by a judge, with powers to impose hefty fines and impose full and proper corrections. Gerald [Kaufman] is determined that we come up with an answer that works and that everyone will accept. He wants his footnote in history – and who shall blame him?
Fiona Miller came to interview me for the
House
magazine and made me smile. She said, ‘They say you’re going to be the first of your intake to get a job.’ I want to say, ‘Wow! Who are “they”? And tell me more!’ Instead, I say, ‘Oh really, that’s nice,’ and burble on about the joys of the backbencher’s lot and how my predecessor but three (Sir Basil Nield) remained on the backbenches throughout his career but changed the lives of tens of thousands of his fellow citizens with his private member’s bill that became the 1950 Adoption Act.
I went to another of Jonathan Aitken’s ‘thinking people’s soirées’. He made me smile too, told me a story of how Hilaire Belloc, when he was an MP, was asked by an old boy at his club what he did for a living. ‘I’m a Member of Parliament,’ said Belloc. ‘Good God,’ spluttered the old boy, ‘is that still going on?’
I returned from Chester (where the highlight of my weekend was a lengthy session with the Chester ME Group, all looking as listless as I felt) to find Simon [Cadell] in the Harley Street Clinic (which doesn’t sound good, but he was very airy about it) and George Bush using his last weekend in the White House to fire off forty Cruise missiles in the direction of Baghdad’s nuclear weapons sites. The Chancellor is equally gung-ho: as employment nears three million, the outlook, apparently, has rarely been rosier. I must tell him, that’s not how it seems on the streets of Chester.
Audrey Hepburn has died. President Clinton has been inaugurated – and he looks good. And I have just come down from the committee corridor where, with colleagues from
the National Heritage Select Committee, we have been taking evidence from Kelvin MacKenzie, bovver boy editor of
The Sun
– and we looked terrible. We
were
terrible. It was
The Sun
who won it. We may have thought we were going to give the terror of the tabloids a grilling. The truth is, from start to finish, Kelvin had us well and truly kebabed. It was very funny really.
This is the mother of parliaments. Gerald is one of Her Majesty’s Privy Counsellors. When witnesses appear before us we expect a touch of deference, a bit of forelock-tugging, a certain becoming modesty. We don’t expect what we got just now: a cocky Jack-the-lad, bruiser, joker, champion of the working man. He came on strong and walked off triumphant.
Customarily our witnesses are awed by the surroundings. Most look nervous: frequently they shake with nerves. Not Kelvin. He plonked himself down: ‘Can I say what a pleasure this is?’ he beamed. Working on the premise that attack is the best form of defence (and perhaps assuming, erroneously, that we were armed with a carefully crafted line of argument that we planned to deploy to devastating effect), he struck first: ‘Frankly, I believe you are hostile to the press and hostile to ordinary people knowing what is going on in public life.’ He rejected Calcutt’s statutory tribunal out of hand. He told us we didn’t know what we were talking about. ‘All this stuff and nonsense about wanting US-style privacy laws – you guys must be nuts.’ He taunted. He teased. It was crude but masterly. ‘Now, Miss Lindi St Clair, a woman known – or not known – to some of you. She kept a little list. There are some extraordinary names on that list. If we had the American privacy laws here we could publish the name of every single MP named in the list, all their alleged sexual peccadilloes, and you couldn’t claim a single penny.’
I said MPs were one thing, but what about Mrs Parker-Bowles? Wasn’t she a private citizen? ‘When you sleep with the next king of England you move into rather a different stratosphere.’ He thought the British papers should be able to publish the Camillagate tapes in full. ‘Prince Charles is the next defender of the faith and he’s cuckolding someone else’s husband.’
When Joe Ashton (who is usually quite good) got going, Kelvin turned the tables
effortlessly
: ‘After many years of taking the tabloid shilling yourself, Joe…’ Joe had given what we all thought was a good example of
The Sun
humiliating a private citizen when the paper reported the case of man who had glued his buttocks together, mistaking a tube of superglue for the ointment for his haemorrhoids. ‘Our John’s gone potty and glued up his botty’ was the
Sun
headline. According to Kelvin, the man had approached the newspaper himself with the story. Collapse of argument.
When it was over, Kelvin left the conquering hero. John Gorst
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(who is deaf) thought
we had done rather well. Gerald knew the truth. We were lambs to the slaughter – and in large part it was our own fault. We hadn’t prepared a considered line of argument. We hadn’t done our homework. Complacency and laziness leading inexorably to humiliation.
From 3.30 to 10.00 p.m. I sat patiently in the Chamber of the House of Commons, speech in hand, awaiting my turn. It never came. I wasn’t called. It is so frustrating, but there we are. The National Lottery etc. Bill has achieved its second reading without benefit of Brandreth wisdom. The contributions we did have were pretty lacklustre. The only memorable diversion was Andrew Hargreaves,
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sitting near me also waiting to get in, speculating as to the most fanciable Member of Parliament on the opposition benches. ‘I’d say Jane Kennedy,
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wouldn’t you? Good figure. And she’s nice.’ From the whips’ end of the front bench, we heard a low voice grunting, ‘Nice be damned, what’s she like as a lay?’
I have just been talking to Judith Chaplin, sharing with her this morning’s experience. I went to Elvetham Hall in Fleet to take part in a ‘Cabinet Office Top Management Seminar’. I was the token ‘new MP’. My set piece seemed to go okay, but what was alarming was the discussion, both in the formal sessions and over coffee. These people were senior management, middle-ranking to senior civil servants, and their message was clear and uncompromising: this government’s run out of steam. Worse, it’s hit the buffers. It’s come to the end of the line. It’s got nothing to offer because it appears to have nothing it wants to offer. No ideas, no vision, no purpose.
Judith seemed personally affronted. ‘Civil servants shouldn’t be speaking like that.’
‘But they are.’
‘It’s so unfair on John.’
‘Is it?’
‘Yes, it is. But you’re right. We should do something about it.’
We have agreed to meet and talk it through. I like Judith. She knows her way around the system. She has the ear, and I imagine the trust, of the PM.
This place is a village. The corridors (there are two miles of them) are streets and alleys, Central Lobby is the market place, Members’ Lobby the village green. Gossip travels from one watering hole to the next in moments. There was a buzz in the Library earlier, the crackle of electricity suggesting ‘something’ was in the air. I went in search of further and better particulars and the first person I came across was Emma Nicholson.
‘What’s up?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’
(How one hates admitting one hasn’t heard!) ‘No. What is it?’
‘It’s John. And his catering lady, Clare Latimer.’
‘What? Having an affair?’
‘So they say.’
‘Is it true?’
Emma gives her barking laugh. ‘John has always had an eye for the ladies. I know…’