And so for a brief period before conference season, parliament returned to pick up where it left off in the summer, completely navel-gazing about the referendum result and its fallout.
The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee (PACAC) – which sounds more like a South American camelid than a vital committee in the mother of parliaments – had before it none other than Sir Jeremy Heywood, cabinet secretary, and following this appearance, surely a contender for a “most even-tempered person on the planet” award.
The session was principally concerned with the Chilcot Inquiry. The Alpacas are a bit thin on the ground just now given the turnover in ministerial and shadow ministerial positions, and it appears that it’s mainly Brexiteers who are left, so they couldn’t help indulge in a bit of post-result gloating to finish the session off.
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The Chilcot element of the session focused mainly on delay. Were there any lessons to be learnt and could it have been done differently? Jeremy wasn’t cabinet secretary when the inquiry was set up and almost everyone who was responsible for it has now left the main stage.
Not to be deterred, the MPs repeatedly asked the same question about delay in as many different ways as they could imagine. It was like they were filling time, worried that it would reflect badly on them if it finished early.
I don’t how SJH maintained that calm, settled demeanour. If I had been there I would have stood on the table, trembling with rage and shouted “for the love of God and for the 37th time, if you wanted a quicker inquiry you should have changed the terms of reference at the beginning”. This is one of the many reasons why I’m not cabinet secretary.
Maybe one of the reasons Jeremy seems so popular with prime ministers is that calm, unruffled exterior. His voice is quiet and almost monotone, so low in fact they kept asking him to speak up. On the referendum they were on home territory. They asked if he felt the civil service has been damaged by the accusations of bias. An interesting one that, as most of the accusations of bias came from the assembled parliamentarians in front of him.
The honourable member for Vauxhall, Kate Hoey – last seen on a boat on the Thames with Farage shouting at Bob Geldof – really needs to mug up on constitutional governance. She kept asking SJH for his views on how David Cameron conducted himself during the referendum. I loved this particular exchange.
Kate Hoey: “Did you ever advise the previous prime minister, David Cameron, that perhaps he was being slightly over the top on some of the things that he was saying and the way he was campaigning, and that maybe he should be looking more to the example of previous prime ministers, like Harold Wilson who... did not get so obsessed about it?”
SJH: “To be honest, my advice to prime ministers is a confidential matter. I am responsible for the civil service, and I am very happy to answer any questions on that.”
Kate Hoey: “You could have discussed it with him, but obviously you would not want to tell us about secret conversations. I understand.” (I’m not sure she did.)
SJH: “Yes. I hear the committee has a longstanding record of believing in the confidentiality of civil service advice.” This is the point I would have said “Boom!” and dropped the mic (see, I should never be CabSec).
The big reveal was yet to come though. SJH and senior colleagues had contingency-planned for Brexit at an “away-day” during purdah. This included the idea of a separate department for international trade. Oh how the Alpacas loved this.
So, despite the threat from David Cameron that any civil servant caught contingency planning would be locked in a room and forced to listen to Michael Gove’s 2012 conference speech on loop, they had, in fact defied this instruction.
Of course, that’s not how SJH described it. In his trademark monotone it sounded like Brexit planning was item three on the away day agenda, just after fire instructions and before “telling everyone around the table one fact about themselves that no-one would guess”.
Cheryl Gillan MP pressed him on this. “I think that is what people want to know, that our British civil service is continuing to do absolutely what is necessary to make sure that the UK is in a good position, no matter what the outcome is”.
“We did very useful background work, some of which had been requested by parliament, some of which we did off our own bat. There was nothing in what the prime minister told me that prevented me from doing that,” SJH replied.
Or, if I were CabSec, that response would have been: “Yes, while the children were out play-fighting during the holidays, the adults were planning for what do if it rained.”