Official Report 215KB pdf
Good morning. Our only item of business this morning is the taking of evidence in relation to our inquiry into allegations that were reported in The Observer. We have invited the following people to attend and give evidence to the committee: Ms Christina Marshall, who is constituency secretary to Mr Jack McConnell MSP, and Mr McConnell himself, who is the Minister for Finance.
Members indicated agreement.
We agreed at our previous meeting on Monday on the particular lines of questioning that we wished to pursue with witnesses, and that witnesses should be required to give evidence on oath or to make a solemn affirmation. I remind everybody that this morning's witnesses are here by invitation, and although I expect that they will wish to co-operate as fully as possible with our inquiry, they cannot be compelled to answer any question. Only witnesses will be able to respond to questions put by committee members. However, witnesses' advisers will be able to confer with and advise witnesses. Advisers cannot address the committee directly, unless invited to do so by me. Witnesses should therefore indicate to me if their adviser requires to address the committee, on matters of procedure, for example.
Yes.
Before we start, Christina, could you introduce your adviser to the committee.
This is Mr Niall Scott from McGrigor Donald.
Would you now make your opening statement.
I am Christina Marshall and I am 22 years old. I am the constituency secretary to Jack McConnell MSP. I left school in 1995 and attended Bell College for two years, where I obtained a higher national diploma in information and office management. On graduating, I worked in Westminster for six months in the office of my father, David Marshall, MP for Glasgow Shettleston. In 1998, I worked for three months in Washington as an intern for the Financial Times.
Thank you very much, Ms Marshall. Before we start questioning I would like to say that we have to remember for everyone's benefit that your conduct is not a matter for this committee. The purpose of this investigation is to examine the conduct of MSPs and that is what we are focusing on. The questions to you this morning are to help us to establish the facts.
Thanks for your statement, Christina. It certainly clears up a number of questions that the committee had about general office procedure, so I will not have to ask you them.
I have had contact with Beattie Media on business matters on four occasions. One was the conversation with Mr Barr. Another was an invitation from a junior member of staff for Mr McConnell to attend a football game. That was on behalf of the Scottish Premier League. I then obtained the telephone number of the girl at the SPL and telephoned her to follow up the invitation. All other communication was between the SPL and me.
So you do not keep any e-mail or written contact with them, except in relation to those specific events?
Not in relation to Mr McConnell; only on a personal basis.
Thank you very much. Does anyone else have any questions on that?
When was I first contacted?
Yes.
It was some time in August. I am not sure of the date.
Did he phone you on your mobile?
Yes.
And you were in the car when you spoke to him?
Yes.
Obviously, there is some dubiety about where the conversation took place. You were in your car using a mobile, not in the constituency office.
And I did not have any correspondence relating to Mr McConnell with me.
This is a pertinent point so, just for clarification, can you take us again through exactly what you said to Mr Barr and say what commitment, if any, you gave him?
Mr Barr phoned. He asked how I was and whether I was enjoying the job and I said yes. He then asked if I had access to Mr McConnell's diary. I told him that I could be involved in arranging local constituency matters on Fridays but that anything else would have to go through his private ministerial office in Edinburgh.
The committee has to be clear about this. According to the Official Report for Friday 8 October, Mr Barr said, when I pursued him on the matter, that you had told him:
That is not what I said. I cannot comment on Mr Barr's activities. I have given you my recollection of the conversation.
So at no point did you give, in your opinion, any commitment to Mr Barr using words to the effect of:
I never said that.
Thank you.
Good morning, Christina. On that particular point, when we interviewed Alex Barr and other people from Beattie Media, they said under oath that they did not have undue influence on ministers and they denied a lot of what was in the transcripts from The Observer. The only point that they were absolutely determined on and the only point that they really held on to concerned your conversation relating to the Minister for Finance, his diary and the engagement. The people from Beattie Media continued to assert that you made the statement:
That was not my understanding of the conversation.
You said, in the information that you gave us this morning, that you wrote on a piece of paper in the car and then went back to the office and put it in the constituency diary forward planner. It seems quite strange to put an event for 25 February in the diary for 25 January. Why did you do that? I accept that that date is a month in advance, but why was nothing recorded for the date of the event itself? All that we have seen in the diary that we examined is a Tipp-Exed entry relating to Alex's dinner, which is not in the diary for that date.
The date that I had in my mind for the event was 25 January. I was not aware of the 25 February until Dean Nelson asked me about it on the telephone. That is why the note is in January; nothing was ever put down for February.
Just to clarify that, you put it in the diary for 25 January 2000, because that is when you thought that the event was taking place and you wrote in Alex's diary that you were going to speak to Mr McConnell.
That was a personal reminder.
When exactly did you tell Jack McConnell?
The day after the conversation, the Friday.
Do you know roughly when that was?
I think that it was some time near the middle to the end of August. I do not know the exact date.
You spoke to Jack at that point. What did Jack tell you to do?
He said that I should not respond to the informal inquiry and that I should wait and see whether an invitation was sent. If an invitation arrived, he said that I should forward it to his ministerial office.
I will come back to that, but there are a couple of other things that I would like to ask.
When Mr Nelson telephoned, he asked if I could confirm whether Mr McConnell would be the speaker at the event. I said that it had been put forward for his consideration and that was all. Mr Nelson then said that he had spoken to Mr Barr, who had confirmed that Mr McConnell would be the speaker. I said that Mr McConnell was not aware of that, meaning that he had not confirmed that he would be the speaker. That was the first we had heard about confirmation.
When you said that the minister was not aware of it, did you mean that he was not aware that he had been confirmed as the speaker at the dinner?
It was in relation to Mr Nelson's question as to whether it was confirmed. I said no, as Mr McConnell was not aware that he was the confirmed speaker.
Again, that is slightly different from what Dean Nelson, under oath, said to the committee. That is something that we should consider, convener.
No note of the conversation with Mr Nelson? The conversation was typed up afterwards on a separate piece of paper.
So there is nothing in the notebook?
No, there would not be, because it was to me that Dean Nelson spoke. Anything that I record in the hard copy of Mr McConnell's diary relates to Mr McConnell.
No, I am not talking about the diary, I am referring to the notebook, which our special adviser has, which relates to 13 October onwards.
No, it is 2 September.
Sorry, September. I keep getting September and October mixed up.
When Mr Nelson phoned, the conversation was totally out of the blue. I did not expect to speak to him and I was not aware of what was going on. Afterwards, I was confused and I wanted to know what was happening. Allegations had been made—as you said, serious ones—on the telephone and I immediately typed up my conversation with Mr Nelson.
Has that been destroyed?
No.
Do you still have that record of the conversation?
Yes.
Will you make that typescript available to the committee?
Certainly.
I want to ask—I do not know whether Karen has dealt with the issue—when you Tipp-Exed out the entry.
After Mr McConnell told me that I was not to follow up the inquiry?
Right.
The note was no longer relevant.
So that was on the day—
That was on the Friday.
That was on the day that you first mentioned the conversation to Mr McConnell.
Yes.
At that point, he said, "You don't need to follow it up, so you can Tipp-Ex it out".
Yes. I clean up my diary on a Friday as I have a new copy of Mr McConnell's diary faxed through from the private office. I go through my diary and make any alterations that are necessary. I was doing that—the note was no longer relevant, so I Tipp-Exed it out.
So that tidying up would be standard procedure?
Yes.
Thank you.
Is it also standard procedure to type up records of telephone conversations?
No, it is not. I thought that, given the nature of this telephone conversation, it was important that a record be kept.
Did you then phone Mr McConnell, to speak to him about the telephone conversation that you had had with Dean Nelson?
Mr McConnell had phoned the office earlier and told me that he was on his way into the office. He was in, I imagine, the ministerial car. I do not have the telephone numbers for that.
So you talked to him about the telephone conversation with Dean Nelson as soon as he came into the office?
Yes.
I have a couple of other points.
Yes. I was to send it to the ministerial office.
There is something that puzzles me. Why did you not phone Alex Barr to tell him that? By all accounts, you said that you would look into it. By all accounts, this was the first major event that someone who was your former employer—and Mr McConnell's former employer—had asked Mr McConnell to participate in. We are a bit puzzled about why you did not get back to that person to say, "Sorry, you need to send an official invitation".
Alex Barr told me that he would send further documentation and Mr McConnell told me not to follow up the telephone conversation.
Okay. I want to get this clear. You did not believe that you had given any commitment to Alex Barr in relation to this invitation.
That is correct.
You thought that Alex Barr was going to send you something in the post.
In writing.
Until Mr McConnell received that, you were not prepared to consider it. However, you did not phone Mr Barr to say, "Look, you need to send this in because Jack's diary is quite busy
No, because in my mind, something was already in the process of being typewritten and sent to us. I was informed not to follow up the telephone conversation.
You never bothered to do that. You never followed it up.
I never followed it up. I made no attempt to contact Mr Barr.
Because Mr McConnell had told you that—
He told me not to.
He told you not to and that he was
Have you finished, Karen? Do you have any other questions?
Just to clarify that you never, ever made any note in your notebook about this invitation.
The only note that was ever taken in any book was the note in the back of the forward planner—the provisional note to speak to Mr McConnell about the invitation.
I have one question about the notebook. Was it routine procedure to destroy notebooks once they were filled up?
Yes, that has been my routine procedure in the past.
Was this particular notebook filled before it was destroyed?
Yes, it was. I would not destroy a notebook unless it was completed. Any information in it that was still active would be transferred to the new notebook so that I had a record of it, as it was still on-going.
Therefore, there was nothing in that notebook that you considered current or on-going and it was your routine procedure to destroy notebooks?
Yes, it has been my routine procedure to destroy them.
There was considerable press speculation about this notebook and I want to clarify the point, so that I am clear about what happened. If something was in the notebook that had to be carried over, was it routine procedure that that would have been transcribed into the new notebook?
Yes, that was routine procedure.
I do not want to know about specific cases, but if a constituent was to phone you up with confidential and life-threatening information, would you write that somewhere else and destroy the notebook?
A rough note would be taken in the notebook, and it would then be shown to Mr McConnell, who would advise me on what he wanted the official documentation to say. That would be typed up and sent to the appropriate external body, be it the police or the council. The rough note would be destroyed, but anything—any documentation—containing factual evidence would be put in a file, which would be kept under lock and key.
So, if anything of that nature had been in the previous notebook, it would be kept by Mr McConnell in an appropriate place.
The official letter sent out, containing the information, would be, but rough notes would be destroyed.
Would the rough notes have been destroyed when you completed the official documentation?
The rough notes would be destroyed when the notebook was destroyed—once it was completed.
So, this confidential material, in rough note form, would be retained in the notebook until such time as the notebook was destroyed?
That can be seen from the A4 notebook, which I believe the external adviser has. There is information in it which is confidential, but it will remain there until the notebook is completed, and it will be destroyed. The notebook is kept locked in my top drawer, in my desk.
Can I be clear about this, Christina? If material of a confidential nature was put into the notebook, would that be rough notes only?
Yes.
After that, you would speak to Mr McConnell about it, go away and type up the documentation?
Yes.
If the material was so highly confidential, would it not make more sense to destroy that specific information at that time, rather than leave it lying around in a notebook, along with other, more mundane stuff?
It has never been the team procedure to rip pages out of notebooks.
Are there any more questions?
My version is different from Mr Barr's: I can confirm that. I have given you my recollection of the conversation with Mr Barr. I never on any occasion gave him any indication that Mr McConnell would attend the event.
Thank you, Ms Marshall.
I wish to ask one question—I think that you have already answered it, Ms Marshall. I believe that I am correct in thinking that on 19 July, you started work for Jack McConnell.
Yes.
From that date on, you were not in any way employed by Beattie Media.
I have never been employed in any way by Beattie Media.
Would this be the procedure: if someone rang up requesting Mr McConnell's attendance, or suggesting that it might be interesting for Mr McConnell to attend a particular meeting, conference, dinner or whatever, would you normally pencil that into the diary at that time? Would you respond in the way that has been suggested?
I have never before been approached in person by anyone to ask whether Mr McConnell would be interested in attending an event without an invitation. This was the first occasion on which anything like that had ever arisen.
You say in your evidence, Christina, that you receive informal invites from constituency groups. I take it that, in what you have just said, you are referring to Mr McConnell's ministerial role. You say in your evidence that you get informal invites from constituency groups all the time.
People come into the office. If it is a local organisation, they will ask whether Mr McConnell, when he is in the office on Friday, could come along, for example, to the Scottish Women's Aid project, and pay them a visit. What I ask them to do is drop a note to the office, or I write them a letter back. I would speak to Mr McConnell about it. I have never been asked before whether in principle he would consider attending an event.
You said that you would have picked up the phone or dropped those people a letter. You did not think that you should do that with Alex Barr. There is no way that you thought that you were under any obligation to get back to Beattie Media, your former employer, about the invitation.
It was clear in my mind that they would send written information to us. I was informed by Mr McConnell not to follow this up in any way until we received the information which we both thought was in the process of being sent to us.
I have one question on the notebooks that were shredded or destroyed. You said earlier, Ms Marshall, that you had been dealing with shorthand notebooks—the floppy ones. The one that you are now operating with is a hardback notebook. Is that correct?
That is correct.
Why did you switch from one type to the other?
When I started working for Mr McConnell, I did not have any stationery—there was nothing in the office. The office is shared with Mr Roy. There was a shorthand notebook, which was made available for my use until stationery was allocated.
Are there any other questions?
Members indicated agreement.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
I call Mr Jack McConnell. I remind you, Mr McConnell, that you are required to give evidence under oath. I understand that you wish to make a solemn affirmation.
Do you have an opening statement to make?
Yes, I do. I am pleased to be here today to rebut the unfounded allegations that have been repeated frequently over recent weeks. Within hours of hearing of those false claims, I referred the matter to the Standards Committee, because I firmly believed that the allegations should be investigated openly by the committee. I welcome this opportunity to lay the facts before you.
Before we start the questions, I would like to thank you for that opening statement and your willingness to come before the committee to air all those issues.
First, I would like to thank you both for your letter of 14 October and for the statement, which may cover some of the questions that I wish to ask. It would be useful to clarify the facts with you.
It would be useful if I talked about what I did 11 months ago, rather than six. From the moment that I was selected as a candidate for the Labour party, I began to put distance between myself and both Beattie Media and Maclay Murray & Spens, which had also been my employer.
In your statement, you said that you had spoken to Gordon Beattie twice since the election. In his evidence, he said that he had spoken to you three times:
Two were informal, non-business, phone calls. I do not recall the other occasion, but my wife remembered it after I read the Official Report of the committee meeting. I cannot say that I remember the meeting, which was obviously a fleeting one.
One or two points arise out of the transcript of the video that was filmed by subterfuge.
It was clear, from the first approach to me by Gordon Beattie and the managing partner of Maclay Murray & Spens, that they were not suggesting that I should act improperly in the job or that their offer was linked to any future employment that I might have. It would have suited them better if I did not intend to become a candidate. I think that they would have preferred to have a chief executive who was more likely to stay with them for a longer time. However, I made it a condition of my employment that I would be able, during the summer and autumn of 1998, to seek selection as a Labour party candidate. They agreed to that. The condition was suggested by me but regretted by them, even at an early stage.
Mr McConnell, you said earlier that you had taken great pains to put distance between yourself and Beattie Media once you were selected as a candidate. However, you have just told us that you sought permission to pursue the selection process as a condition of your employment. You were already an approved candidate by the time you went to Beattie Media—
No. I was interviewed by the Labour party's selection panel in April 1998, I think. I accepted the offer of a job with Public Affairs Europe about three days before the Scottish Labour party conference in March 1998. The outcome of the selection interviews was not confirmed until the second week of June, which was after I had left my position as general secretary of the Scottish Labour party.
So you were actively pursuing the possibility of being a candidate at that time?
Yes.
As part of your employment contract, you had to secure permission to seek selection. Do you think, with hindsight, that that was wise?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I do not regret the job that I did for those six or seven months in 1998, nor do I have any difficulty with anything I did in that position. I never, at any time—as I have stated before—carried out any activities that could be described as having to do with access to politicians or to confidential political information.
I want to ask a further question at this point. You say that you have not had regular contact with Beattie Media. However, your constituency secretary, Christina Marshall, said that, since she took up her appointment in July, there had been four official approaches from Beattie Media. What would you consider to be regular contact with your office or yourself?
I think that it is important to differentiate between the two. The Observer's original claim on 26 September was that—presumably by implication—not just Kevin Reid and Alex Barr but other members of staff at Beattie Media were in regular contact with me. They have subsequently made it clear that that was not the case. Before The Observer even printed the story, I made it clear that that was not the case, and I have confirmed that again today. I personally have not had that regular contact with the company.
But four official approaches in two months suggests to me that there is regular contact.
I would not describe that as regular contact compared with the level of contact that I have with many other organisations. I can think of a variety of organisations—for example, Scottish Financial Enterprise—that I and both my ministerial office and my constituency office in their different capacities have spoken to or received correspondence from on perhaps 15, 16, 17 or 18 occasions over the summer. In terms of the level of contact that I have with other bodies, I do not find that unusual.
Have you e-mailed anybody at Beattie Media since the election?
Not since the election, but I did after I left the company. I had friendships with one or two individuals who worked there—junior members of staff rather than partners or account managers. We kept in contact—or, I suppose, they kept in contact with me, rather than my keeping in contact with them. But I would get e-mails from them occasionally to wish me well, or to keep me up to date with news or gossip about what was happening to others we knew. But I have never had any electronic communication from Beattie Media of an official nature at all.
Since you resigned from Beattie Media, have you had any other formal contact—in terms of your constituency Labour party—with the company?
Do you mean me as a candidate, or the constituency party as a body?
The constituency party as a body, in particular.
I do not know whether there has been any formal contact. I would imagine that there would have been contact between the constituency party and Beattie Media in the course of the winter last year, when the constituency party, without my involvement, organised a fund-raising dinner. A number of local companies took tables at that dinner, and I think that people from Beattie Media may have been there. However, that was a matter for the constituency party and not for me.
I wanted to ask you about your contact with The Observer, to tidy things up. Having read the transcript, you will probably know that your pager number was the subject of considerable interest from Alex Barr. On 8 October, I asked both Alex Barr and Kevin Reid about your pager number. They gave me different numbers, neither of which was your current pager number. However, I was interested in the notes that Dean Nelson gave us. You volunteered to Dean Nelson on 25 September that you found it interesting that Kevin Reid and Alex Barr did not have your new pager number. How did you know that they did not have your new pager number?
I do not recall that part of the transcript.
An e-mail from Dean Nelson states:
I am sorry—I have never seen the notes of Mr Nelson's conversations with Ms Marshall, me or anyone else over the past four or five weeks. Given the fairly selective way in which they have been quoted from time to time, I look forward to seeing them at some stage, to ensure that they are clear and accurate. We have already heard—and I heard sitting in the gallery this morning—of one case in which it was important to clarify a phrase that he had taken from a conversation without giving a full explanation of it.
Can you clarify that?
I can certainly clarify that point. The point that I was making to Mr Nelson at that point in the conversation was that I thought that it would be interesting for him that I had a new pager number and that neither Kevin Reid nor Alex Barr had that pager number. That was me illustrating the point that they were not in contact with me. I was trying to get over to him—I suspect, on the day, unsuccessfully—that we were not in contact, and I was trying to reinforce that fact to him before he printed his story.
Did you decide to get a new pager number because you did not want Alex Barr, Kevin Reid and Dean Nelson to know that they had your number, or was it routine for the Labour party group, of which you were a part, to have new pager numbers?
Neither Alex Barr nor Kevin Reid used my pager number, my mobile phone number, my home number, my work number or my constituency office number—any of those numbers—from the day that I was elected. To be frank, I had not thought about either of them until all this happened and I certainly would not have used either of them as a reason to change any of my phone numbers. I can think of other people who phone me regularly who might give me that reason, but the pager number was changed as a result of the Labour party group in the Parliament deciding to move to a new pager system. At that stage, my pager number was changed; that was the sole reason for that to happen.
I apologise for that.
That is all right.
On the subject of telephone numbers, our adviser looked at Alex Barr's contact book. It contained three telephone numbers for you, one of which was for your constituency office. Ms Marshall took up her position as your constituency secretary on 19 July. Presumably the constituency office was set up after May—
This is a very important point. I cannot be absolutely certain of the clarity of the previous relationship—that is the wrong word, I should say knowledge of each other. I share a constituency office with Frank Roy, the MP for Motherwell and Wishaw. I think Frank Roy and Alex Barr went to school together; they certainly grew up in the same area, so they know each other. They are not in regular contact either, I can assure you, but as Frank Roy is an MP for a Lanarkshire constituency, Alex Barr and presumably other local agencies—PR and otherwise—would have had his constituency office telephone number. My current constituency telephone number is the same one as Frank Roy MP has had for the past two and a half years. It would not have been outwith Mr Barr's wit to take a note from the Frank Roy part of his contacts book and transpose that telephone number to the section of the book that referred to me. I presume that that is where he got the number from, because I do not think that the telephone number of my constituency office is particularly well advertised, apart from in the local constituency. Mr Barr does not live or work there.
Are you aware of whether any of the numbers that Mr Barr in particular, or Mr Reid, had were private numbers that were not available in the public domain? Is your home number in the telephone book?
I have not seen Mr Barr's contacts book, so I cannot judge that entirely. However, from what I have read of the independent adviser's report to this committee, if I remember rightly Mr Barr had three numbers for me in that book. One of those is my published home telephone number; that means that he does not have my other home telephone number, which is an ex-directory number for family. He has the constituency office number; I have just explained to Tricia Marwick where I suspect he got that number, although it is known locally as the office is public. He also has a mobile telephone number, which has not changed since I worked for Public Affairs Europe last year. I would have expected him to have that number.
May I return to where I left off? What was the nature of your work for Beattie Media's joint venture? Was it substantial?
It would have been substantial if we had been more successful in acquiring clients. Initially, the work was to set up the new company called Public Affairs Europe. The company was based in the offices of Maclay Murray & Spens, not in the Beattie Media offices, although I occasionally worked from there on the basis of maybe one day per week. The office was registered at the headquarters of Maclay Murray & Spens in Edinburgh and my pay and contract were with Maclay, Murray & Spens, not with Beattie Media. That was administered by that company, which took the position very seriously indeed.
Thank you. I refer to the transcript of the original interview. On page 11, Alex Barr says:
I have already made it clear—and I understand from the transcript that Alex Barr has made it clear—that that reference not only to regular contact, but to any contact between me and him is untrue.
In his evidence to this committee on 8 October, Alex Barr was cross-examined by the convener, who asked:
I have explained this very clearly, and not only to the committee this morning; I have explained very clearly, from the first occasion on which I heard about the whole story, that the only contact that I have had with Beattie Media since May, has been—in addition to an application from a member of staff of Beattie Media for the post of my constituency assistant—the personal telephone conversations that I have had with Mr Gordon Beattie and one written approach for me to visit Motherwell College, which I accepted and handled myself as it concerned sensitive constituency business and had nothing to do with any outside body.
Am I correct in thinking that, on 19 July, Christina Marshall started working for you?
Yes.
After that date she was not employed, in any respect, by Beattie Media?
It is to her credit that she stopped working for Beattie Media 10 days before she started working for me. I suspect that that was, on her part, to ensure that there was a clean break between the two forms of employment.
Yes. You have made your position on that quite clear. However, I want to be absolutely clear. On page 3 of the transcript, Alex Barr said:
I want to make this absolutely clear to the committee. When I worked for Public Affairs Europe, I was the sole employee. Even in her capacity as a secretary at Beattie Media, Christina Marshall did not work for me. She has accurately recalled that, in her role as the assistant secretary or personal assistant to Mr Beattie himself, she perhaps typed five or six letters for me on one occasion when she had spare time and I was looking for somebody to do some work.
Alex Barr said in the transcript that
Absolutely. I employ a very professional constituency assistant. It would be very wrong to suggest anything else.
With regard to the awards ceremony for finance director of the year, Alex Barr claimed on page 11 of the transcript:
No, not even constituency appointments, never mind ministerial appointments.
When did you first know about the proposed invitation?
I believe that Ms Marshall raised it with me the day after her telephone conversation with Mr Barr.
Was that on or about 26 September?
No, the first conversation that I had with Christina Marshall about her telephone conversation with Mr Barr was some time in the second half of August. I was on holiday in the first half of August, and the conversation took place shortly after I came back from my holiday.
When did you discuss this with Christina?
On a Friday afternoon, in keeping with normal practice. I should explain that on Fridays the ministerial office—which, as I have said, holds the only authoritative copy of my diary—faxes a copy of that diary to Christina for her to transcribe into her diary on either Friday morning or Friday afternoon. If I am in the office at the time, we go through any requests from constituency bodies or individuals in the constituency to see whether we can fit them in during the coming weeks. That is standard practice for us on a Friday. It is a way for me to organise my business and it allows both Christina and I to have a standard procedure.
In your letter to the committee of 14 October, you wrote:
The matter was pending. The impression that I was given that day was that it was pending written confirmation from the company. I took the view that we should wait for the company to send us that information before Christina took any further action. In the meantime, as I was not inclined to accept the invitation, even once we had received the written information—although I thought that it was fair to wait for it—I said that she should not follow up the conversation that she had had.
I think that I am correct in saying that the year-ahead planner contained a note that was Tipp-Exed out. Why was that? Can you enlighten us on that point?
I presume that Ms Marshall Tipp-Exed out the note because I had said not to do anything about it. I presume that that is her normal practice in notebooks and diaries. However, I do not handle her diaries—I do not write in them, never mind adjust them in any way.
When the page is held up to the light, the words "Alex's dinner" can be read under the Tipp-Ex. You were not aware of that?
I cannot remember exactly what was in front of me, but I remember having the conversation across the desk in my office, Ms Marshall asking me about the conversation that she had had, my saying clearly that I thought that we should wait for written information to arrive, and her clearly being under the impression that she would receive written information. That was the end of the matter as far as I was concerned. I did not even think about the event, or the conversation, again until Mr Nelson started telephoning people on Friday 24 September.
Lord James, may I bring in Richard at this point?
I wish to ask two questions about receiving that informal notification of an invitation. You say that you decided at that point not to accept the invitation.
I was inclined not to. The event in question was described to me as an event that might take place in the early part of 2000. Some members of the committee will be aware that I have to see the budget bill through the Parliament in January and February of next year for the first time. As I understand it, it is standard practice for ministers at the Treasury in London not to accept invitations around the time that the chancellor presents his budget, which is a much more serious occasion than my budget bill. I thought that it would be unwise to accept invitations for that period. For example, at this time I have not accepted any invitations to Burns suppers or any events of that kind in January or February next year because I want to be clear about the timetable for the bill before I put anything else in my diary. I think that that is only right and proper. I take my position as Minister for Finance very seriously and it always has to have priority at those times of the year.
Mr McConnell, you mentioned that you did not know in detail what Christina did with diaries, notebooks and such like. However—and this is an important point—in your conversation with Dean Nelson, you indicated to him that she had pencilled the proposed invitation, or whatever you would like to call it, in her notebook. That is what stimulated this committee to ask for the notebook, which gained some notoriety, shall we say, over the weekend. However, in your letter to us, you indicated that the invitation was not put in the notebook and that it was pencilled into the diary. That is an obvious discrepancy. Would you like to explain that?
I will pick up on two things that you said. First, I would not describe what she did as pencilling it into the diary, because I think, as your independent adviser will have seen, that there is no pencil, pen or Tipp-Ex reference to the event in any diary page or diary section, either electronically or on the desk. There is a note in the wrong column of the forward planner. It is important to note what she said yet again this morning about pencilling it in for consideration, which is an accurate reflection of what she did.
Your colleagues in the Executive have already conducted some form of investigation into this. What did you tell them about this scenario?
Exactly what I have told the committee this morning. On Friday 24 September, the day that Ms Marshall took the first telephone call—the day on which Government staff first had telephone conversations with The Observer about this story—I produced for the First Minister a question and answer presentation on the contacts with Beattie Media and on the specific allegations that had been mentioned on that day. I am perfectly happy to furnish that to the independent adviser to the committee—there would be no difficulty with that whatever. There is only one thing missing from it, which is the reference to the Motherwell College correspondence from back in May. That was because, at that time, I forgot about it and it took me two or three days to remember it, as Beattie Media had never been involved in the meeting with Motherwell College, which was a constituency, rather than a ministerial, event in any case. I had forgotten about that contact. However, everything else is in that question and answer presentation.
Christina Marshall stated this morning that the old notebooks were routinely destroyed. Is that the normal working practice?
That is what she tells me that she does.
Your evidence is clear—Beattie Media had no control over your diary, and any inference that it did is totally and absolutely wrong.
Neither Beattie Media, nor anyone else, has any undue influence over my diary. I want that to be absolutely crystal clear. I was approached on three occasions over the summer by public affairs companies—none of them Beattie Media—to have meetings with their clients. On all three occasions, I asked the companies to ensure that their clients wrote to me directly, not through them. I made it clear that only on that basis would I even consider the possibility of meeting their clients. I do not organise meetings through third parties, either in my constituency or in my ministerial office. I want that to be put on the record.
I want to clear up one other matter. On page 10 of The Observer's transcript, it is stated that Kevin Reid said
For five weeks, I have been resisting the temptation to comment on other people involved in this whole episode and I will do so again this morning. However, I would be surprised if any Scottish journalist was not aware that we were in the first year of a three-year comprehensive spending review, as figures had already been published for all three of those years. In the same week, if I remember rightly, as the conversation between the supposed company and the representatives of Beattie Media was recorded on video, we published in Parliament the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Bill, which sets out the procedures for the annual budget of the Parliament and the Executive. The bill makes it absolutely crystal clear that the main focus of the autumn financial statement and the budget bill in January each year is a one-year budget for the following year. It is not outwith the bounds of possibility that anyone involved in public life in Scotland had not noticed that there were two years of the comprehensive spending review still to run, but it is clear that the main purpose of the financial statement and of my activities in September as Minister for Finance were to resolve the budget for one year—next year. That became clear in the financial statement on 6 October.
Let me return to the issue of invitations. If an invitation is issued by an official body to you in your capacity as Minister for Finance, would not it be normal and appropriate to send that invitation to your ministerial office so that it could be properly processed along with other invitations and be considered on its merits?
That is the normal process. I have to say that, as I understand it, there is a considerable amount of correspondence each day that arrives in Edinburgh but is for my constituency. A lesser amount arrives in the constituency that is actually for me as a minister, but both my offices are instructed to send the inappropriate correspondence to the other office the same day, and they carry out that instruction to the letter. That happens consistently and I am confident that the staff in my private office and the staff in my constituency office abide by those instructions to ensure that proper procedures are followed.
If an invitation to the finance director of the year award were to come your way from the right source, would not you be free to accept it and would not it be normal and natural for you, as Minister for Finance, to attend such a function?
It is the kind of event that I would probably like to be involved in. However, as I said earlier, because of the apparent timing of the event, it is probably not an invitation that I would accept, particularly in the first year of my role as Minister for Finance and for budgeting for the Parliament. I think that it is important that, in the early part of 2000, I concentrate on the most important duty that I have in this Parliament, which is to see the annual budget through on time to a stage at which the Executive members and officials can spend money on 1 April next year without finding ourselves in any difficulties.
I have just a couple of points to tidy things up. You will understand that there has been a lot of conversation about a notebook. Obviously, that has caused some concern for you and for this committee. Earlier, Ms Marshall indicated that rough notes about confidential and, as you called them, life-threatening incidents in your constituency would be held. Can you confirm whether, if that were the case, you would pass life-threatening allegations on to the police?
Absolutely. Of course. It is important to reiterate this morning a point that I made in my letter to the independent adviser. I assume that it has been drawn to the attention of the committee but I would like to do so formally myself. One of the notebooks that you have in your possession contains an entry that I regard as potentially dangerous to some of the people that are mentioned. I am very keen that that notebook does not openly enter the public domain without me being aware of it in advance.
I have one final point. When Ms Marshall's notebooks are destroyed, I take it that they are destroyed thoroughly and without any trace being left, so that none of that confidential information could fall into the wrong hands.
That is my understanding.
Are there any other questions?
There is a ministerial code of conduct and it says that ministers will want to order their affairs so that no conflict arises, or might be thought to arise, between their private interests, financial or otherwise, and their public duties. Will Mr McConnell comment on that? Does he have any concerns relating to that?
I do not want to expand too much on what I said in my earlier statement, but I can, perhaps, reflect on one or two points.
I would like to make a final point. I am curious about a point that you made earlier. We have a copy of the special adviser's report in front of us. Mr Duncan said in that report—and I referred to this on Monday—that there were three telephone numbers listed for you. The report says:
That is my home number, I presume. I have never seen that contacts book.
I do not know what that number is, I have never asked what that number is and I do not think that anyone else from the committee has asked what that number is. You clearly said earlier that it is funny that Alex Barr does not have your private number. How do you know that Alex Barr did not have your private number? It was the private number that was given to the special adviser, so why did you assume that it was your home number that we were talking about when you have clearly not seen the number that Mr Barr has? You have not, and neither have we, seen Mr Duncan's report. The chief executive is, as far as I know, the only person who knows what those numbers are.
I cannot remember exactly, but Mr Barr, in his evidence to the committee, made reference to the fact that my home telephone number was in the Beattie Media records at the time that I was working for Public Affairs Europe. It is safe to assume that if he had my home telephone number at that stage, he will not have deleted it from his contacts book. I know for a fact that he does not have my private home telephone number because the line with that number has just been installed.
Are there any other questions?
No.
Thank you very much, Jack, for your responses.
Thank you.
That concludes the evidence that we will receive today. I would like to remind everyone that both witnesses have the opportunity to comment on the draft record of the evidence that they have given, and they may, if so advised, submit further comments to me in writing. It would be appreciated if that information could come to us quickly so that we can progress with our investigation. We will have a short suspension so that we can consult our advisers.
Meeting suspended.
On resuming—
Committee members have asked for a couple of pieces of evidence that we wish to consider before we come to any conclusions on this issue. I suggest that we ask for that evidence and reconvene at 2.30 on Friday afternoon to consider the evidence and examine the matter further.
Is everybody happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Do committee members agree that we do not want to seek any new evidence or witnesses? Apart from the evidence that Karen has already mentioned, which we have asked for and must examine, we wish to see no other additional evidence or witnesses.
If I may clarify, we are going to meet on Friday at 2.30 in the afternoon, and we will meet to consider the further written evidence, of which there is not a lot.
I wish to clarify that we will be meeting in public.
Yes, I was just about to say that. We will be meeting in public because we will be considering evidence. As soon as we have done that, the investigation will be complete. Hopefully, the investigation will be concluded on Friday, and we will then get the officials to produce a draft report as soon as possible. We will certainly meet in public on Friday to conclude our investigation. Are we happy with that?
Members indicated agreement.
Are there any other points? As there are none, I close the meeting.
Meeting closed at 12:05.