Committee Member: Constitutional issues. It seems to me that one key constitutional duty of the Cabinet Office is the duty of Government, to govern according to law, and it is the duty of the Cabinet Office to advise ministers from the Prime Minister downwards, if they are going to break the law.
Tony Wright, Chairman, House of Commons Public Administration Select Committee: And there are one or two examples, for example Tony Blair's comments on British aerospace case were absolutely contrary to the legal obligation which he had taken this country into in relation to the OECD. And why didn't the Cabinet Office flag it up? Or did they? And then there is the misleading use of intelligence in Iraq, that is slightly more murky still. There is the arrest of Damien Green, who is arrested, unless there was some national security thing, for offences that were decriminalised by Douglas Herd in 1989. Why didn't the Cabinet Office know and flag it up? Isn't this a central constitutional point?
Well can I simply, can I hate to dissent from Peter in any way, who I simple adore. I mean Peter is a great romantic and in some ways a traditionalist in these things, I think there is an issue here, that you have to get hold of. Can I just quote, just very briefly, Andrew Trunball, his valedictory speech when he left the Office of Cabinet Secretary in 2005. And he said this, he said:
"When Mr Blair became Prime Minister in 1997, he found in the Cabinet Office; the traditional secretariats responsible for managing and co-ordinating Government business; a number of units responsible for propriety and ethics; plus an HR function still vested in administration, rather than development. In Number 10 he found a small private office and a small communications function, but one dealing only with news and the national media. The leader of a large organisation would expect to find far more than this at it's centre. He was entitled to ask, is that it?"
Now all I am saying to you is, I don't want to be on the side of the agreement that says that there is a corruption of a traditional model going on here. I think there is a development of a model going on all the time but there is a problem, which is what should the centre of Government do? And how should it be organised? And what is this corporate centre in Britain? It is disaggregated amongst different institutions. The Cabinet Office is one player in it. Peter asked the question should we clarify whether it has become the Prime Minister's Department?
I remember John Prescott gave evidence to us, when it had become of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, saying that it had become the Prime Minister's Office. But of course he hadn't really thought that through, as to what it meant. But I think there are questions as to whether we think we need a Prime Minister's Office, and what it would contain, and what it would leave for the Cabinet Office to do as the collective arm of Government. These are all the question's that I think you have got to get your head around, which are different to, well yes, there has been a corruption of traditional arrangements.