Speeches by Norman.

“Obviously. No one is thinking that, but the civil service would not be the civil service if it were not a lot more subtle about such questions.”

“You and your team have certain professional institutional affiliations. What steps did you take to satisfy yourself that those were supporting the aims of the inquiry and not necessarily narrowing the range of evidence that you looked at?”

“Were you aware that it would be quite convenient if the report that you put in was able to support closing the resettlement schemes and lifting the injunction?”

“I would have assumed that you would draft the whole thing.”

“No—and you are also flying the flag for responsible leadership in the civil service.”

“Yes—thank you. Can we just go on for a second? Given what you know, and what Mr Lincoln knows, imagine that we had the same crisis tomorrow, or something similar: a resettlement scheme needs to be set up in very short order. What do you now know that would make things different from what was done at the time, and how s…”

“But you have said that officials and Ministers did get a chance to review your emerging findings, because they pressed you on how good the evidence was and how strong the view was. Is that right?”

“There was a party political aspect to this, wasn’t there? It was not inconvenient to the new Government to try to show that the previous Government had acted precipitately or heavy-handedly.”

“So you are taking institutional accountability, as the perm sec at the time, but that leaves open the possibility that there may have been actual decisions made by your subordinates that were themselves questionable. In a sense, you are trying to deflect some of the pressure from those people by taking responsibility o…”

“The need for clarity and tough choices is one that works itself out across Departments among permanent secretaries, but also in relation to Government Ministers and, potentially, No. 10. If you are moving to a Cabinet Office-led model, presumably it is more that it is in order to get more central direction.”

“Well, a lot of money was at stake, apart from anything else—so the Treasury and every affected Department.”

“And to protect the discussions under the legal framework, which was the cause of the super-injunction, presumably.”

“When you think about accountability, how would that clarity of purpose relate to Ministers?”

“You briefed Ministers and you did a cross-Whitehall meeting.”

“How long was it after officials at a lower level heard about the breach that the information was communicated upward to private offices and Ministers?”

“Were there any areas that Ministers and officials paid particular attention to, more than others, in the report?”

“Were there any other updates to Ministers, such as written communications or verbal briefings, in the course of your work before—”

“Obviously it was convenient, as it proved, and you were to some extent aware of that—I think that is what you just said. It did not necessarily shade your judgment, but you were aware of that.”

“No, I mean official criticism, within Government or by Ministers.”

“Will the Leader of the House give us the forthcoming business?”