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HOLYROOD INQUIRY
Wednesday 29 October 2003 (Morning Session)

Rt Hon The Lord Fraser of Carmyllie QC opened the hearing at 10.00 am.

Rt Hon The Lord Fraser of Carmyllie: Mr Campbell. Good morning, Mr McLeish.

1. Mr John Campbell QC (Counsel for the Inquiry): Sir, the first witness this morning is Mr Henry McLeish. Mr McLeish, good morning, and thank you very much for coming at what I think has been comparatively short notice for you. Mr McLeish, if I crawl through this evidence you will have to forgive me. I suspect your familiarity with it might be greater than mine, but we’ll do our best. Could we start by recording that you are Henry McLeish. What is the address at which you prefer to be contacted?

2. Rt Hon Henry McLeish: 49 George Street, Cellardyke, Fife.

3. Mr Campbell QC: Thank you. You were the Deputy Spokesman on Scotland in 1992, Deputy Spokesman on transport between 1994 and 1995; deputy spokesman on health between 1995 and 1996; I think you were the campaigns director in Scotland for the Labour Party in 1997, and after that election you became the Minister of State for Home Affairs and Devolution. Is that correct?

4. Mr McLeish: That’s correct.

5. Mr Campbell QC: Going back a little bit, I think that you were one of the signatories of the Claim of Right in 1989, and in the passage of the Scotland Act I think you were the principal architect in the House of Commons. Is that right?

6. Mr McLeish: That’s correct.

7. Mr Campbell QC: How long did you spend on the House of Commons Floor with that Act?

8. Mr McLeish: I think that we spent nearly 120 hours of parliamentary time on the Floor. I think, as you quite rightly said, Mr Campbell, that these were heady days at Westminster, especially after the fact that the nation had had at the back of its mind for nearly a century, it was nearly two decades of disappointment after ’78, ’79. Then when we got to Westminster in 1997 many things happened, and of course they culminated in the passage of the Bill on the Floor, and I was just delighted, as Donald Dewar’s number two in that, to play a reasonable role in the process.

9. Mr Campbell QC: Before 1997, had you worked closely with Donald Dewar?

10. Mr McLeish: I think that in both political and party terms I had been involved with Donald Dewar. I have always made a point of saying that I think that Donald and I had a good working relationship, but I think by culture, by geography and a number of other issues we were not particularly close as friends. Nevertheless, I hugely respected his contribution to Scottish politics over a very long period, and in particular, the stature he showed after our election in 1997, especially in relation to the preparation of the White Paper.

11. Mr Campbell QC: After the passage of the Scotland Act, I think you became the Minister for Enterprise and Lifelong Learning ? is that right ? from May 1999 until October 2000? Following the premature death of Mr Dewar, you became First Minister, a post which you held for 13 months until November 2001.

12. Mr McLeish: That’s correct.

13. Mr Campbell QC: That just completes that little CV. Now Mr McLeish, I think you know already that this Inquiry is looking at the policy decisions in relation to the Holyrood Project, which is to say the building now intended to house the Scottish Parliament.

14. And so, with a slight apology at rehearsing some history, I wonder if we might go back to the time of, and leading up to, the election of 1997. How did you see in 1997 ? assuming a win ? how did you see that policy to take forward the devolution project would begin to be formulated? And by “you” there, I mean you as a collective group.

15. Mr McLeish: Well, I think that prior to the 1997 election, and going back through many personalities, there was a very significant commitment on behalf of the Labour Party in Scotland, supported by some other parties, to have a Scottish Parliament, to have devolution, and of course in the run-up to 1997 there was a great deal of discussion, both in relation to the manifesto and in relation to the Constitutional Convention’s programme, to that particular end. So I think that whilst the product really started when we got to Westminster and when the civil servants started to work with us, there had been a fair degree of discussion about a large number of issues which would remain to the Scotland project.

16. Mr Campbell QC: Before the election?

17. Mr McLeish: Before the election.

18. Mr Campbell QC: May I ask you, how significant in that run-up was the work of the Constitutional Convention, and, if you will forgive two questions in one, did you have anything to do with it?

19. Mr McLeish: Yes, I was involved with the convention, and I have to put on record my appreciation, and our appreciation, of the work that was done, because this was the first time really in recent politics that, with the notable exception of two parties, a number of people had got together ? a number of political parties had got together ? to try and look at a blueprint for the future of Scotland. In that sense, it was very positive, and of course it gave us a degree of consensus around some of the major issues. But of course some of the major issues were not settled until we got to Westminster, but nevertheless it provided a basis upon which we could build, and build very quickly, as you can see from the timetable that we had to adopt.

20. Mr Campbell QC: Just thinking about the issue with which we are concerned, was either the type of building or the location of the building an issue of any size before the election?

21. Mr McLeish: I think the answer to that is no. Let me just qualify that by saying that there was a set of presumptions, I think, or a set of ideas, a set of concepts, that had travelled with us up to 1997. One was the idea that the Old High School should be the home of the Parliament, and indeed there is a photograph in the convention’s document suggesting that. Secondly, there was a view that, if that was the case, of course it would be in Edinburgh, the capital city. But I think thirdly, measured against some of the other daunting priorities, especially the issues that would go into the White Paper, the Parliament building itself was not, in my judgement, a major consideration before 1997.

22. Mr Campbell QC: Was it part of the manifesto that you took to the electorate in 1997 in any definable form, or was it just part of the assumptions you carried forward?

23. Mr McLeish: If my memory serves me correctly it was, but alluding to the fact that the Old Royal High School had become part of the journey of devolution, and as a consequence, it became included in the commitments that we made.

24. Mr Campbell QC: I’ll return to this point, because it is something that has grown up as a bit of ? depending on where you sit ? either a myth or a truth. I wonder if any part of the thinking leading up to the election was that the use of Calton Hill and the Old High School had a particular symbolism for one part of Scottish political life, one party, or one idea in Scottish political life?

25. Mr McLeish: I think that the point that I would make is that it was very much part of the devolution debate. I mean, some people have suggested or developed a view against it because of some concern about nationalism. As far as I was personally concerned, that was not a consideration. I would like to think that because of the history, the debate about devolution, it became very much a part of the Constitutional Convention’s issue. But certainly in Government, as a practical consideration, it was only looked at, as far as I was concerned, from the point of view of the utility of the building, and how it could serve our country, if indeed that was one of the options which had been developed.

26. Mr Campbell QC: Did you sit in that building as part of the Scottish Grand Committee prior to the 1997 election?

27. Mr McLeish: Yes, I did.

28. Mr Campbell QC: Generally speaking, did you have a view about its suitability for that purpose?

29. Mr McLeish: I think in the run-up to the 1978/1979 referendum and debate on devolution, it could have been viewed with a great deal of work done to it, as a home for a Scottish Assembly. I have always had the view that the Royal High School on its own could never be the long-term basis for a Scottish Parliament. In that sense, and I think this is a flavour that has come through some of the material that you have read, and maybe some of the comments, that the debating chamber itself, whilst I found it antiquated, could have been sufficient for MSPs to debate in.

30. If you then consider the ancillary buildings, and the immediate environment, that was wholly unsuited, as far as I was concerned, to a Scottish Parliament. But of course early on, Mr Campbell, in the debate post-1997 the Old High School, St Andrew’s House, Calton Terrace and Regent Street all became part of a bigger debate, so the Royal High School would have been contributing, but would not have been the sole focus of, the Scottish Parliament endeavour.

31. Mr Campbell QC: So in so far as people were thinking about that at that time, not just focussing on the Palladian fronted centrepiece, but on a wider aggregation of buildings?

32. Mr McLeish: Yes. I put it on the record that I disliked the building as a functional parliamentary building the first time that I stepped foot in it.

33. Mr Campbell QC: Right. I wonder if I could just take you now to a couple of documents. You will have seen these before, but not recently. I want you to be comfortable that you know what you are looking at. If we could go to SE/1/86 first. What I am showing you on screen is part of chapter 10 of a draft of the White Paper, which is dated 16 April 1997, so it predates the election by about two weeks. Can you tell me, as far as you are concerned, was it quite normal to ? is your screen working?

34. Mr McLeish: No.

35. Mr Campbell QC: Forgive me, sir.

36. Mr McLeish: But I am quite glad I don’t have to operate it because my technological skills are slightly limited.

37. Mr Campbell QC: You did not know that I was an electronics engineer as well, did you? I thought, Chairman, I should have been advised to put it on before I started, but in the absence I take no responsibility whatsoever. What I’m showing you here, Mr McLeish, is a page of chapter 10, of a draft, which predated the election by about two weeks. We will ask the civil servants when we come to them about the preparation of a draft before the election has taken place and before there is a winner. But, as far as you are concerned, is that quite a normal part of the process? That there is anticipation going on about what will be said to Ministers when they come into office?

38. Mr McLeish: That is my belief. I think the process works on the basis that they use their judgement and anticipate. And, let me be totally objective, even pre-1997 they were preparing briefs for different parties depending on the outcome as far as the UK was concerned and clearly as far as the Scottish dimension was concerned.

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39. Mr Campbell QC: And, presumably, depending to a large extent on the contents of manifestos?

40. Mr McLeish: Exactly.

41. Mr Campbell QC: Now, looking at this page, if we could scroll down to the heading “Accommodation” please. Thank you, stop there. Can we read there:

42. “New Parliament House will, after refurbishment, house the chamber and committee rooms of the Scottish Parliament. The refurbishment will be extensive.”

43. and so forth. There’s nothing in here which defines where a New Parliament House is, but if you just take it from me that that is a reference to Calton Hill, for the moment. Can we see, if we scroll down a little further please,

44. “a refurbishment of St Andrew’s House will also take place, which will convert the building from the headquarters of the Scottish Office into offices for MSPs along with support staff.”

45. Can you see in the second page of this draft, the paragraph that is highlighted, that there is reference there to the assumption that there will be capital costs in bringing the matter forward?

46. Mr McLeish: Yes.

47. Mr Campbell QC: Now, I am sorry for the tedium of this detail ?

48. Mr McLeish: No, no.

49. Mr Campbell QC: If we get to a point after the election … is it within your knowledge that the White Paper evolved very quickly between May and July 1997?

50. Mr McLeish: Very quickly indeed. If you don’t mind, I think one of the interesting points about all of this debate is a bit of context, Mr Campbell. When we arrived in Westminster in 1997, as I said, it was history in the making. We were very conscious of the onerous responsibilities, but we were also conscious of the exceedingly fast timescale that we had to adopt ? roughly 18 months. In that period we not only had to look at the building; site; design; costs; prepare for two referendums; prepare a White Paper; prepare a Consultative Steering Group document and chair a committee ? that I did ? to look at the workings of the Parliament, and then of course draft a Bill and put it through the House.

51. In that sense, what you said is absolutely right. I think that in that 18 months there was an enormous amount done, and certainly the White Paper ? which I think was an astonishing document at the end of it, and probably Donald Dewar’s greatest achievement ? did illustrate that there was a lot of work taking place at Westminster during that particular period.

52. Mr Campbell QC: Can I take you on to SE/1/66 please? Now, what you are looking at here is the heading of a minute from a Miss Isobelle Low, or Mrs Isobelle Low, who I think the evidence shows was really the hub for the circulating drafts of the White Paper between May and July 1999.

53. Mr McLeish: Yes, that’s correct.

54. Mr Campbell QC: I am not clear precisely of her status, but clearly she was a senior civil service person. We can see that the first person copied into this was your private secretary.

55. Mr McLeish: Yes.

56. Mr Campbell QC: What I would like to ask you is, were you by 27 May 1997 the Minister for Devolution?

57. Mr McLeish: Yes.

58. Mr Campbell QC: And what did you understand of that brief, what did you have to deliver with that brief?

59. Mr McLeish: Well, I was Minister for Devolution and Home Affairs. The Home Affairs issue was a fairly big portfolio, but obviously separate from this. As devolution Minister ? and I think by just jumping slightly ahead, I can maybe explain and I’ll give you an answer to your question ? I was charged with looking at the details of the Bill as it would be presented to the House, so therefore oversee that. Secondly, I was really totally in control, subject eventually to Donald’s approval, of the Consultative Steering Group, which was a year long committee session looking at how the Parliament would work in terms of procedures. Thirdly, I was involved in most of the discussions and most of the issues that were related to other parts of the devolution process.

60. Mr Campbell QC: When you say “in charge of”, does that mean hands on in charge of? If we look at the devolution process as being encapsulated in the White Paper if you like, with its thirteen or fourteen chapters ?

61. Mr McLeish: Thirteen? I forget the precise number but it is of that order, yes.

62. Mr Campbell QC: Does that mean that you are expected to have a fix on the issues in each of those divisions, chapters?

63. Mr McLeish: Yes, partly because the Consultative Steering Group looking at procedures was unprecedented. We had no template, this was a new Parliament, we wanted to make it work. That was the remit. But in terms of the White Paper, it then had to be translated into legislation. Of course, that became the draft Bill. In relation to dealing with that on the Floor of the House of Commons, you really needed to be alive, at least at that point, to virtually every eventuality that could come your way in debate and, as a consequence, needed to know not just the White Paper issues, but also how these had been translated into legislation and indeed what every line in that Bill stood for. I have to say that was daunting, and posterity will judge I think, Mr Campbell, how effectively that was discharged.

64. Lord Fraser: I get the impression, Mr McLeish, that ordinarily, as Mr Campbell has been putting it to you, if you were the Minister of State with responsibility for devolution, one would have anticipated you to initiate the action, to develop ideas, improve matters where you thought, taking advice or keeping the Secretary of State advised of what you were up to. I get the impression that Donald Dewar took a rather keener interest in the detail of it than he might have done over other aspects of policy in the Scottish Office, would that be correct?

65. Mr McLeish: That would be correct, but I think I would then qualify it by saying that Donald Dewar was a remarkable figure, and I think that in your proceedings yesterday, if I can refer to them, Chairman, Brian Wilson made the point that Donald Dewar was the custodian of the project. Now, I think that is perfectly understandable, because on devolution rode a lot of important considerations for Donald, for Scotland, for the wider United Kingdom. He did take an enormous interest in that. Therefore, I think that was more inevitable than a basis for criticism.

66. Lord Fraser: I am not suggesting it as a criticism. I am just trying to get a sense of the relationship between a Minister of State, as Brian Wilson was also a Minister of State at the time. From his evidence and your own, I get the impression that he took a keener interest in your responsibilities than he did maybe in Brian’s.

67. Mr McLeish: Mr Chairman, can I make two points on that. One is that I have said on the Consultative Steering Group, which I largely took responsibility for coming back to discuss with the Secretary of State and then moving on. In terms of the White Paper, again in the context of my previous remarks, Donald Dewar did take a very detailed interest and maybe just for the benefit of everyone I’ll just explain why.

68. After 1997, and I describe it this way, for a long period, two days in every week, Donald Dewar would pit himself against the biggest beasts in the Westminster jungle. That was the Devolution Scotland, Wales and the Regions Committee [DSWR]. It assumed very important status in the whole of Westminster. There was Cabinet Ministers from every Department involved. As the White Paper unfolded, the White Paper would come before Ministers, and then it would be a matter for the Secretary of State to go into these committees and argue on issues like tax varying powers, Europe, and a whole range of issues that were contained in the White Paper.

69. As a consequence of that process, Donald Dewar had to know every detail. As a consequence I would say, and I could stand corrected, Mr Chairman, by later evidence, that I was not involved, nor were any of the other Ministers involved, in the detail of the White Paper to the extent that you might think looking at the nomenclature of my own description. But on the other hand, he took full responsibility, he did an incredible job in that context, and I think the final product was that on the evening we flew back up to Edinburgh Castle to launch the White Paper, a lot of people, even the deepest cynics, applauded the fact that this was a White Paper that took the spirit of devolution and also came up with a working document. Sorry I digressed there, Chair ?

70. Lord Fraser: No, it was very helpful.

71. Mr McLeish: I thought it was important to put it into context.

72. Mr Campbell QC: It might be just a point of detail, but did you ever attend the DSWR as his surrogate?

73. Mr McLeish: No.

74. Mr Campbell QC: The work of course on that committee, with the evolution of the devolution idea, would be entirely out of the public eye, wouldn’t it?

75. Mr McLeish: Yes. That was officially a Cabinet subcommittee and that was taken, as all other Cabinet subcommittees were, in private.

76. Mr Campbell QC: In private. OK. Could we look at SE/1/66, which we have in front of us. If you could turn to the next page, I just want to see where the thinking has got to by the date of this, which is 27 May. Can I have page SE/1/67 please? We can we see there, Mr McLeish, if you take it from me that this is the next following page to the one that we looked at:

77. “Ministers are not being asked at this stage to approve the detailed content of the draft White Paper, the text will go through considerable further change before we are ready to seek detailed approval.”

78. So here we are at 27 May, three or four weeks after the election. Would it be fair to say that we were at a point here where ideas were still very much evolving?

79. Mr McLeish: Yes.

80. Mr Campbell QC: I can show you countless drafts of this White Paper, but I am not going to do that, because I think it is more for completeness than anything else. But if you look with me at SE/1/009 please, we can see that this is the same style of document. It has become chapter 12 instead of chapter 10, for reasons which I don’t know and I expect are not important. Can we see that this is dealing with the steps taken to house the Scottish Parliament, the Executive, and the Secretary of State? It has been marked in square brackets, which again I think you can take from me is an indication that it’s provisional ?

81. Mr McLeish: That’s right.

82. Mr Campbell QC: But there is an expectation expressed in the first sentence that the Old Royal High School will be used as the new Parliament. Is that right?

83. Mr McLeish: That’s right.

84. Mr Campbell QC: There is a note that it is a grade A, or category A, listed building, that a refurbishment of St Andrew’s House is expected and so forth. And if we could go down to 12.6 please, and see what is said there:

85. “The Government intend that the accommodation for the Scottish Parliament and Executive will be fit for purpose and cost effective.”

86. Can I ask you please, before we turn to the next page ? which you could perhaps do, Miss Barr ? could I ask you please if there was a consideration at that time, we are midway now between the election and the publication of the White Paper ? this may be hard to answer six years on ? but was there a consideration at this time about how much this was all going to cost? Or was it the case that it was more important to keep the machinery rolling, so that you could deliver this White Paper as soon as possible?

87. Mr McLeish: It was my view then and it is my view now that there was no issue more important than the White Paper. As a consequence of that, I regarded everything else linked to devolution at that moment in time because of the short timescale, as less significant. I would confirm that, even at this period, and this was actually the figure that eventually ended up in the White Paper, the £10 million to £40 million cost, was something which was not only in the ether at that time, but actually being considered. I think at the end of the day there was a debate before the White Paper was finalised as to whether there should be a detailed cost annex submitted. That was not accepted and eventually the White Paper, changed from this course, included the £10 million to £40 million.

88. Mr Campbell QC: I am coming to that in one second ?

89. Mr McLeish: Sorry.

90. Mr Campbell QC: I am getting a picture from you of a document which was evolving both as a result of representations being made by departments within Scotland, but also the heavier hand of the DSWR perhaps imposing bigger guidelines week by week as the process went on.
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91. Mr McLeish: No, I think, again with the Chairman’s approval, just to illustrate, the DSWR was brought together to look, as it said, about devolution for Wales, Scotland and the regions. It worked on the principle that we were drafting the White Paper internally with civil servants, with special advisers, with Ministers. At a point after that the draft of a chapter or a section would be circulated to the Whitehall Departments. As a consequence of osmosis at that point it would then go to DSWR where very serious, tough, often heated debates took place but just coming back to the point at issue, Mr Campbell, not on the question of the costs of the Parliament. These were issues of the relationship with Europe, the tax-bearing powers and a whole range of other matters that eventually found a place into the White Paper.

92. Mr Campbell QC: OK, may I have the next page please? This is the next page of the document I have shown you, and again just for completeness, we can see at the top that estimated costs as set out in estimated costs — remember we are talking here about 6 June 1997 — are set out in annex E. They have stated, although with the reservation that between £24.5 million and £34 million at 13.2, running costs are dealt with in the next paragraph, and I would like to just take you to the last paragraph if you could scroll up a tiny bit. Thank you. These estimates will be refined in the light of further investigation. The Government believe that it is about £6 per head of Scottish population for both start-up and running costs. They represent excellent value for money to the people of Scotland. Where did the £6 a head come from?

93. Mr McLeish: Well, I suspect, Mr Campbell, that this is a figure that’s taken from the revenue costs added together to that range of capital cost and divided by the people of Scotland. I have to say that it didn’t make much sense at that particular point to use that, and I suppose that in the aftermath of what’s happened in the last two or three years it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

94. Mr Campbell QC: No, but I have made it clear to you that I recognise and I am sure Lord Fraser recognises, this is an evolving process.

95. Mr McLeish: Indeed.

96. Mr Campbell QC: Yes. Could we have the next page, SE/1/11? What it shows us are the component parts of necessary rebuild or new build or redevelopment on the left, notes in the middle, minimum and maximum costs on the right and totals on the bottom right. Do you recall seeing drafts with this type of annex attached?

97. Mr McLeish: I think I must have done. I mean I am saying to you in all honesty because there was so much material, but I anticipate that I would have seen that.

98. Mr Campbell QC: OK. We can see can’t we, again just for completeness, that in the middle the assumption is still that the Old Royal High School will be New Parliament House. Costs are stated at between £10 million and £13 million. We can also see in the fourth block down that an assumption is made that there will be 250 to 500 staff needed, and then there will be costs for displacing staff from St. Andrew’s House. All of that I imagine is pretty routine in the business of government.

99. Mr McLeish: Indeed.

100. Mr Campbell QC: Do you know where these early estimates came from?

101. Mr McLeish: The only way I think I can shed light… I come back to that original set of figures that was used, this £10 million to £40 million, and if you looked initially at the Old Royal High School itself, there was an acquisition cost, there was a refurbishment cost, and that actually came out just above the bottom, i.e. above the £10 million, and I think what has been used is a window of cost, largely reflecting though at that point in time what would be needed for the Old Royal High School and the consequential changes to St Andrew’s House that would be required both in terms of accommodating Members and also the displacement of staff, and I think it is around those issues that we find this level of cost — £10 million to £40 million — thus refined slightly more here in the £24 million to £34 million.

102. Mr Campbell QC: But I think the £10 million to £40 million comes a little later in the draft, and we will see that in a minute. What I’d like to know from you is if whether as a Minister you were aware whether those providing this advice were getting in turn professional advice, either within or outwith St Andrew’s House, to be able to provide these tentative stabs at figures in the first instance.

103. Mr McLeish: I assume that when a Minister gets figures from a civil servant, they are based on costs, which are developed internally but are also validated against external organisations or external costs in similar areas in similar market places. So, the question is that I assumed that these costs were in fact looked at against the wider market.

104. Mr Campbell QC: Would it have been a concern of yours at ministerial level to know that estimates had been validated?

105. Mr McLeish: If they hadn’t been, it would have been a surprise, but I think what I would also say, Mr Campbell, is that against this figure, which you quite rightly say we are going to talk about, the £10 to £40 million, if you looked at the costs that were being given to us, on my judgement, relative to what they were talking about in terms of the Old Royal High School and associated costs at Andrew’s House, they made sense at that particular point time.

106. Mr Campbell QC: They felt OK to you at that time?

107. Mr McLeish: Indeed, because it was a minimalist operation relative to existing buildings, and the costs, in my judgement, seemed reasonable.

108. Mr Campbell QC: May I take you to SE/1/12? Again, you can see this is the same type of minute. If you scroll down, please, to paragraph 2.4. Again, just for completeness, square brackets have been inserted at Cabinet Office insistence around all policy matters not yet agreed by DSWR.

109. Was the location of the Scottish Parliament, in your judgement, a matter which would have had to have been agreed by DSWR?

110. Mr McLeish: No. I would also add then that if you look at the evolution of the White Paper and the final product, where there was a discussion between the Treasury and the Secretary of State was in relation to whether or not the cost of the Parliament should come from the block, or should be extra funding from the Treasury. There was discussion and exchanges of letters on that particular subject, and, as a consequence, the Secretary of State in my mind took the right decision to not press that point because there were other bigger issues that he was seeking concessions on as part of this parliamentary exchange with both the Treasury and the DSWR.

111. Mr Campbell QC: Was the decision whether to take this out of the block or out of fresh Treasury funding something that came later than the White Paper or something that came before the White Paper?

112. Mr McLeish: No, before, because if you look at the White Paper, there is one line added before the White Paper was published, and that merely confirmed what I think the Secretary of State wanted and the Treasury wanted was that the cost of the Parliament would come from the block, and that was included in the White Paper before it was published.

113. Mr Campbell QC: Do you know whether this was a hot issue in DSWR, or perhaps, again a double question, whether it was a hot issue for Mr Dewar?

114. Mr McLeish: I don’t think it was a hot issue for either Mr Dewar or the Treasury. If I can recall, the discussions around that would be that it was always assumed, I think, within the Scottish team that it would be from the block, but in politics there’s always a temptation to want some extra cash for any particular thing you’re doing that would not come from the block. But on the other hand, I think the Secretary of State felt, as did the Treasury, that the block had been established as the reservoir for the funding, and the Secretary of State decided that he would not want to take the Treasury on over that particular item at that time.

115. Mr Campbell QC: Is that something he consulted you and Brian Wilson about?

116. Mr McLeish: Since freshened up by the minutes that I’ve seen, it could have been an issue that was discussed with us, but I am not entirely sure, but to be fair to the Secretary of State again — because I am keen that nothing I say is going to impugn that tremendous achievement of the White Paper — there were many issues related to the pre-publication of the White Paper that were not discussed in considerable detail, although they were discussed in generalities with other Ministers.

117. Mr Campbell QC: OK. Can you describe for the Chairman please the mechanism by which you and Donald Dewar and Mr Wilson — after all, there were only two under-Ministers of State — the mechanism by which you met and agreed important steps?

118. Mr McLeish: How long have I got, Mr Campbell? Unlike the situation when we arrived in Scotland when you actually have a Scottish Parliament, a Scottish Executive, you then for the first time had a Scottish Cabinet, where you had a set of an agenda, minutes and decisions, most of the decisions arrived at à la Westminster Cabinet in terms of a consensus rather than votes being taken all the time.

119. If we then jump to being in Government in Scotland post 1997, I think you had approximately six Scottish Ministers. So, therefore, you did not have a formal semi-Cabinet type operation. It was often around issues that you would meet around the Secretary of State’s table. There would be ad hoc meetings to discuss particular aspects, not only of devolution policy but every other aspect of policy we were discussing.

120. Thirdly, there could have been issues that just arose where the Secretary of State would want the view of Ministers before he embarked upon something, and then, fourthly, you would get to an issue such as the White Paper where Ministers through their private secretaries would be given material to look over and make comments if they wanted. This in turn would go to the Departments of the UK Government and in turn go to DSWR.

121. Mr Campbell QC: All right, that’s helpful. Did you have special advisers after May 97?

122. Mr McLeish: We had… The Secretary of State had two special advisers.

123. Mr Campbell QC: No, did you have special advisers?

124. Mr McLeish: No.

125. Mr Campbell QC: The Secretary of State had two special advisers, Lord Elder and Miss Alexander.

126. Mr McLeish: Yes, but again with qualification, that was the kind of situation throughout the UK Cabinet set-up, so I don’t think any Ministers of State had access on their own to a special adviser.

127. Mr Campbell QC: OK. Just to go back on track then, could you look at SE/1/019 please?

128. That’s another version of what I’ve shown you already; predates it by a few days. It’s 13 June rather than 17 June. I just wonder if you can help us with the handwriting. If you don’t recognise it, that’s fine.

129. Mr McLeish: Sorry?

130. Mr Campbell QC: Do you recognise the handwriting? Or, putting it another way, would you know Donald Dewar’s handwriting if you saw it?

131. Mr McLeish: I would, and I am not entirely convinced that’s his handwriting.

132. Mr Campbell QC: OK, I’ll leave the point.

133. Mr McLeish: But may I say that as an aside that Donald worked everywhere, you know ? on sleepers at midnight, on his lap, anywhere. He was a workaholic, so it could have been a shaky Donald Dewar’s hand but I don’t think that looks to me like his, but I could be mistaken.

134. Mr Campbell QC: Could you look at SE/1/20? You’re copied to this, or your private secretary is. The Secretary of State paid a visit to the Old Royal High School buildings on 30 May in company with Mr Robert Gordon, Dr John Gibbons and colleagues. Were you one of those colleagues that went on that visit?

135. Mr McLeish: No.

136. Mr Campbell QC: It records, this letter, that he subsequently discussed this matter with you and officials in Bute House on 1 June. Do you have a recollection of that meeting?

137. Mr McLeish: I don’t, but I think what is important to add is that this was a very important visit the Secretary of State had to the Old Royal High School.

138. Mr Campbell QC: Yes, why was that?

139. Mr McLeish: Well, I think it’s reflected further in the comments that the Secretary of State, which are attributed to him, about him not being impressed by ORHS as the permanent home for the Scottish Parliament. Now, in terms of the evolution of thought and the process at Westminster, that was quite pivotal because whilst many of us had doubts about the ORHS, this was an official visit after which I think the Secretary of State was keen to widen out the chapter in the White Paper, which actually then left the door open for consideration of further options.

140. Mr Campbell QC: Donald Dewar would have participated in Grand Committee meetings in the ORHS before the election?

141. Mr McLeish: Yes.

142. Mr Campbell QC: So he would know something of the building?.

143. Mr McLeish: Indeed.

144. Mr Campbell QC: Why is it significant that it was an official visit rather than a casual visit? After all, he was only across the road. He could have made a casual visit at any time.

145. Mr McLeish: Indeed. I think the importance of it is that in terms of the process you’ve already gone through, and, I suspect, the process you are about to continue to go through, after this meeting, then it was natural that privately first and then publicly, the net was being widened for other options to be considered along with the ORHS, and maybe I am slightly dramatising it, Mr Campbell, for effect, but I do think that whilst we’d all visited in Grand Committees, this was a visit — maybe the first one that he had since the election — and as a consequence of that, certain thought processes and certain ideas were then put into train, which may have existed but were not put in memos and then talked up to become part of the White Paper.

146. Mr Campbell QC: If I could put to you first the extreme point of view expressed elsewhere, which is that the ORHS was never really a candidate and that it was only here as a cosmetic cover for what came later, is that a view that you could accept or do you think it’s too extreme?

10.45am

147. Mr McLeish: I think it’s too extreme, because I have made my view clear that the ORHS on its own did not match up to my aspiration for a Scottish Parliament, but then discussions started to take place around a wider area about a far more comprehensive refurbishment for example of St Andrew’s House, so the whole Calton Hill, Regent Road, ORHS, St Andrew’s House became part of a bigger debate, a bigger discussion, a bigger option. So, therefore, I saw relevance then, but I personally had never seen the High School as the future site, on its own, for the Scottish Parliament.

148. Mr Campbell QC: And that no doubt was a view that you expressed to Donald from time to time?

149. Mr McLeish: Yes, I mean because part of the process you talked about earlier or asked me about earlier was one… Apart from any formal sit-down meetings, there were occasions in tearooms in the offices that we had where informal discussions took place, and it wouldn’t be a secret that a lot of people had concerns about the physical fabric of the ORHS.

150. Mr Campbell QC: You say it wouldn’t be a secret. It wouldn’t be a secret amongst Ministers. Would it be a secret amongst officials? Is that something that would have been private to Ministers?

151. Mr McLeish: No.

152. Mr Campbell QC: Can we see from this document, if you would scroll down a wee bit please, that the Secretary of State recognises — the middle of the paragraph — that there might be formidable difficulties about an alternative location, but he said that Ministers would find it helpful to have a paper apprasing various alternatives including the ORHS and the location in Leith.

153. I am sorry if I am taxing your memory, Mr McLeish, but is various alternatives just two alternatives at this stage, or were other sites being talked about?

154. Mr McLeish: No, I think there was more than just two alternatives, but only two alternatives is right at that point at that particular time, but for example we were being inundated with requests, ideas from, you know, everybody. You know, here’s a good site, here’s a good site and eventually, as the process goes on, Edinburgh City Council came up with 20 sites they were looking at. So, whilst there would be two mentioned, I think we weren’t far away from looking at just sites generally, and partly occasioned by the Secretary of State’s unhappiness with ORHS but partly because of — pressure’s the wrong word — but debate around us that other alternatives should be looked at.

155. Mr Campbell QC: Debate in the newspapers and on television or debate in the office, as it were, amongst you and the officials?

156. Mr McLeish: Both, and others.

157. Mr Campbell QC: We see that the paper — this is a memo written by Mr Lugton, who was the Private Secretary to Donald Dewar at the time. This might examine timescales as well as capital and running costs, taking account of the need for the accommodation to be flexible, and so forth. And you are being asked, amongst others, to take this forward. Now, clearly as Minister for Devolution, you probably had your hands quite full at that particular time. What did you do to take the matter forward?

158. Mr McLeish: Well, I think if my memory serves me right that this was just a few weeks before a paper submitted by Mr Brown on 11 June, which occasioned me to write a memo in response to that. So, I think that at that point, if you look at the top of this memo, it was sent, I think, to Ministers. Sorry, Mr McLeish appears. So, I think what I would have done there is absolutely noted it because I wouldn’t have been involved then in the preparation of the paper until Mr Brown, I think, had delivered the paper. Then we would have had a discussion about it.

159. Mr Campbell QC: OK. Can I just take you to that on SE/2/141 if I may? They’re all the same shape these memos, Mr McLeish, so it is quite difficult to distinguish one from another. Just scroll down a little bit please. The heading there, “Accommodation Aspects of the Scottish Parliament” and Mr Brown goes into assumptions. If you take the next page please. Thank you. There he considers option one and that goes on to option two, option three, option four. I’m not going to look at the options just now, Mr McLeish, but what I would like to take you to is your response to that, which was a six-page memo. Could you turn to SE/2/146, please, and scroll down?

160. This appears to be a document signed on behalf of your Private Secretary, Mr Johnston. You say that Mr McLeish has seen Mr Brown’s undated minute e-mailed on 6 June. He commented the following might be the sensible way forward: minimum expenditure on the ORHS option, making a virtue out of that and to leave open the possibility of the new Parliament deciding its own future. Now, I’d like to be clear whether this was a seminal memo in the process or whether it’s a simply off-the-cuff comment by you. Can you remember?

161. Mr McLeish: No, nor do I think it was a breathtaking flash of inspiration, but let me just try and explain because this is important, Mr Campbell. Let me just try and explain my thinking. I said earlier that of all the challenges we had at Westminster, I was not moved to think that the Scottish Parliament site design and costs was the most important. I, therefore, believed that we had such a formidable timetable of priorities to deal with, especially the White Paper and getting the bill through the House, that I felt that this issue of the site for the Scottish Parliament was going to be fairly gargantuan both in terms of time applied to it but in terms of the considerations that we would have to enter into.

162. Secondly, I did have a feel that here was I at Westminster with five colleagues and a Secretary of State. We, understandably, had been charged by the people of Scotland through the ballot box legitimately of implementing devolution and doing everything necessary to get it done as quickly as possible. I, therefore, felt at that stage there would be a disconnect. Let me explain what I mean, that eventually when the site of the Parliament and the costings of the Parliament were eventually handed over to the Parliament, there would be an awful lot of people would feel that there was no sense of ownership.

163. I also had a feel that we could do a great deal in the time we had available, and I think the package handed over, at £109 million, to the Parliament was a robust package. I nevertheless felt that with a new Parliament, a new era dawning, new ideas, a new civil Scotland, a new more hungry media that things would dramatically change once the package came up to Scotland. So, my thinking was to say in view of the timescale, in view of the capacity that we would need to do all of this, what went through my mind was to say two things.

164. One: the Old Royal High School had been considered for a long time not to be a permanent home, but, in view of the fact at this stage we hadn’t decided on a temporary venue, why not make that the temporary home? There was two options then: one, we could have worked up some ideas in some schemes and given it to the Parliament as a work-in-progress. Or, we could have left the process and then when we arrived in Scotland, which was supposed to be January 2000, eventually 1 July 1999, we could have said that is an important task for the Parliament to undertake. Now, the timescales have slipped so much that that actually makes some sense, but can I also say the final point that interested me was the two issues of having a building and having a working template were the two important issues. I was asked to chair a committee, which sought consensus —

165. Mr Campbell QC: Can I just interrupt you for a moment for clarification purposes. I understand, of course, what you mean by a building. What do you mean by a working template? Do you mean procedures and things for the Parliament?

166. Mr McLeish: Yes. Sorry. Let me just clarify. The two issues: one was to have a building, which is you know the concrete expression of a Parliament, but secondly what was crucial was to what went on within the Parliament. So, I chaired a committee for a year, which had all-party and no-party, we had civil Scotland represented, we had universities represented, and this was a group that was there to draw up the template for how the Scottish Parliament would work — I think, quite successfully, on reflection, over the last four years.

167. Mr Campbell QC: This is the CSG [Consultative Steering Group]?

168. Mr McLeish: The CSG. But then at the point when we had finished, we gave it to the Scottish Parliament to make their own decisions. So, I maybe got slightly criticised in the early days because I had a concern about consensus, and I think if you’re breaking new political ground…

169. So, to come back, all of these ideas were fusing in my mind to say, well, is it out of the question to ask that in view of our work commitment, in view of the importance of this, in view of the fact this Parliament will not take ownership of a great deal, and it’s only two years away … that led me, I think, to write those words, and as you’ve probably seen, Mr Campbell, from other documentation, I don’t write a lot of memos.

170. Lord Fraser: You did write this one. I think you’re being unduly modest, Mr McLeish. This would seem to me to be a seminal moment, and you’ve begun for the first time to ask questions that seem to be absolutely key. And while I can’t claim that we’ve researched matters yet to look at every new Parliament or Lander that’s been established around the world since 1997, the course of action that you’re proposing as early as 11 June 1997 seems to be more or less the standard practice.

171. Mr McLeish: Well, that may be unduly flattering, Mr Chairman, but I did think that even after a short space of time … because I was daunted by what we were going to have to do anyway, and that’s why I think I had to get my comments in early, because this was really not far from the election.

172. Mr Campbell QC: OK, we’re at a point now, we’re six weeks from the election and about six weeks to go.

173. Mr McLeish: It does seem like six years from the election at this stage.

174. Mr Campbell QC: Yes, I’m sure it does. I’ll leave this memo in a minute, but it’s just a single line, Mr McLeish. We can see who were the recipients of the memo: the key civil servants, the Secretary of State himself, Under-Secretary of State, Mr Gordon, Dr Gibbons, Mr Grice, Mr Brown — the key people involved here. What happened to the thought, which is expressed in this memo?

175. Mr McLeish: Well, I think in written material, unless your access is greater than mine – I haven’t seen a written response – I only know that in informal discussions with a number of people, to use the phrase, “they didn’t think that was a runner”.

176. Mr Campbell QC: Did you have any sense at this time that a commitment to a new building post-White Paper, post-referendum, an early commitment to a new building might be a hostage to fortune, a financial hostage to fortune?

177. Mr McLeish: No, I have to say that I’ve given you some of the more wider considerations. I mean it’s part of the daunting task. I just assumed that you had a split process here because our challenge eventually was to get a Parliament started virtually by the time we’d passed it over. And to me for the recipients of that, that would be very awkward, and whilst a lot of the constructive criticism there has been, there has been a lot of criticism, I think, based on the fact that there was no ownership. So, I wasn’t looking into the crystal ball about what site x would cost and as a consequence that this might create problems, but I did believe that the scale of the task was so significant that that should have been a warning to all of us that we maybe needed to proceed more cautiously and at the end of it give some kind of sharing or ownership to the Parliament.

11.00am

178. Mr Campbell QC: I’ve got a picture of Donald Dewar looking at the big picture, the overview, the mighty beast of Whitehall and DSWR, and a picture of Henry McLeish dealing — through the CSG and in other ways — with the minutiae of how it was actually going to work once the electorate had said yes, if they were going to say yes. I mean, is that a fair way of describing the division of your responsibilities?

179. Mr McLeish: I think so. I mean, Donald was a formidable boss, but I do think… I add the caveat that for the White Paper, it required somebody of his stature, his Cabinet rank to deal with some of the people that I have merely hinted at. As a consequence, I was more than happy to do some of the consensus work, which was, in the main, the CSG document.

180. Mr Campbell QC: It’s not really fair to call it the fine-print work, but it is the mechanics, isn’t it, of how it was going to operate?

181. Mr McLeish: Yes, and to be fair, that is what happened. I mean, eventually, when the Bill came before the House, Donald did the Second Reading. I was left to do the weary hours, and that’s what number twos do. But that does not mean that that was an unfair distribution of spoils. Again, he’s ultimately responsible, but I think in the day-to-day work, I was asked to apply myself.

182. Mr Campbell QC: I would just like to stick with 146 for a minute. You said… I asked you a question a minute or two ago, “What happened to the idea?”, and you said, “Well, it was thought not to be a runner.” Who did not think it was a runner?

183. Mr McLeish: Well, I couldn’t be specific, but in a sense, if you are talking about Ministers, if you are talking about the Secretary of State who gets the memo direct, if you are talking about the special advisers, then I know that on two or three occasions, just in general discussions, I had made the point that it is premature, a bit early, workload is substantial, why don’t we? But it was not regarded in some people’s eyes as a serious option.

184. Mr Campbell QC: Are you talking about Ministers here, or are you talking about officials?

185. Mr McLeish: Both.

186. Mr Campbell QC: Are you referring also to special advisers?

187. Mr McLeish: Well, I cannot pinpoint a special adviser thinking back and saying they— just to say, “Well, look, there are problems here”. So I am not going to… because I think the momentum of things would be taking other people forward. I had never been totally enthralled with the challenges of the Parliament and its site, which is very, very, very challenging.

188. Mr Campbell QC: We have had a picture from elsewhere of Mr Dewar of being keen to take things forward at some speed, and the White Paper is a good example of that. I wonder if you can tell us what his thinking was in terms of the physical side of the Parliament. Let’s move on a little bit in time just to take you —

189. Lord Fraser: Just before you do Mr Campbell, can I just look at this a bit more closely Mr McLeish, because it seems to me that you have been remarkably prescient in this because once the Parliament building was transferred to the authority of the Corporate Body, and as I understand it was then under the chairmanship of Lord Steel, Sir David Steel, as is recorded in Robert Black, the Auditor General for Scotland’s ‘September 2000 Report ‘The New Scottish Parliament Building’, in, which doubtless you recall, he points out that once that happened, there was a 43% increase in net space and 47% increase in gross space because the Parliament, once it was established, looked at its own procedures, building on what you had established in the CSG but decided the way it wanted to work was not what had been anticipated originally by the Secretary of State, Donald Dewar, or by you. Now, it seems to me that that is why it was remarkably prescient of you to see that, that a new Parliament will wish to determine its own practices and procedures. The practice and procedures that it adopts will reflect on the amount of space that it requires to undertake that task.

190. Mr McLeish: Yes, well, I think… that’s why I use the term “disconnect” because I thought that if we had produced the most amazing building, on the most amazing site, in the most amazing location in Edinburgh at the lowest cost, and we were getting compliments all over the place — which clearly is the antithesis of where we are — it would have still been a disconnect with the new Parliament, because you had 129 people. Of course, at that time, we didn’t know, Donald, myself, Sam, or anyone else if we were actually going to be there, which was a decision that was taken later. So, my concern was that there was always going to be this disconnect between the aspirations of a group pf people, a body corporate in Edinburgh, the City Council, a whole range of new issues, which were not intimately involved in the work of six Ministers at Westminster. Therefore Chairman, I just did feel that no matter what we were going to be doing at Westminster, once the handover took place then whether it be space, whether it be the creativity of Miralles, whether it be, you know, the need for a proper entrance, post-9/11 extra security — you know, you can’t see the future, but you can look at the present and think, “It looks complex”. Sorry.

191. Mr Campbell QC: No, no. My question was in fact going to be directed to what happened to this memo, and you have given me a couple of answers about that. Can I just ask you to look at SE/1/21, please, which is again a memo from Mr Brown, which you are copied into?

192. Another internal document — scroll it down, please — you can see it starts with Mr Brown. You can see it records a meeting with Mr Dewar in Victoria Quay on 13 June, so it is all about this time, and he says: “We met”, but I guess that is Mr Brown; certain other officials were there. Now, it goes on to a discussion of options. Mr McLeish, I can’t see in this discussion of options, which goes on for three pages — two and a half pages — any reflection of an idea that what might happen is the ORHS [Old Royal High School] might be reconditioned to an acceptable but temporary standard and the matter left. So did the idea just die there?

193. Mr McLeish: Yes.

194. Mr Campbell QC: OK. Thank you.

195. Now, I’d like to take us forward, if I may, to… because we have actually made quite slow progress in terms of these few weeks after the election. I’d like to take us forward over a whole sequence of memos to SE/1/049, please.

196. Again, this is an extract from the accommodation chapter of the same draft White Paper. It’s dated, if you’ll take it from me, 3 July 97, and, if you scroll down, you’ll find a passage in italics: ‘A home fit for the Scottish Parliament’. There’s a chapter about quality; there’s a chapter about symbolism; there’s a chapter about work efficiency at 10.4; and then we get to — if you go down again, please — location. Can I just read this with you?

197. “Scotland’s Parliament will be in its capital city. Edinburgh is the natural centre of Government in Scotland. The bulk of the staff, who will transfer to the Executive and be answerable, already work there.”

198. And SE/1/050, please. No, that’s not the next page. I’m looking for. Thank you.

199. “The Government are looking carefully at options available in Edinburgh which could best meet the criteria set out above. These will include new buildings, as well as the conversion of existing ones. One of the options will be the ORHS on Calton Hill. It is an existing building, which has been widely regarded as the inevitable choice since it was prepared. There are, however, serious disadvantages associated with the ORHS. Public accessibility is poor, particularly for people with disabilities. There is little suitable space within the main building for people to meet their representatives. Space is so limited that MSPs and their support staff would need to have their offices elsewhere, and there is an inherent lack of flexibility.”

200. So, Mr McLeish, we have got to 3 July, and now we are looking much wider. Were you seeing papers coming in from civil servants at this time, before the White Paper with, as it were, assessments or work-ups of other sites?

201. Mr McLeish: Well, I think there was a considerable amount of material within the Scottish Office relating to this. Now, whether or not, at that point, there were details of worked-up versions, I’m not sure.

202. Mr Campbell QC: OK. If you scroll down, please, to funding, we can see here that the Government are considering a range of funding options.

203. “The objective will be to secure a suitable accommodation at a reasonable cost. The options include traditional funding from public funds, using the PFI or some other form of joint public/private sector venture, where the Parliament will be publicly owned.”

204. And so forth.

205. Were you thinking about funding that before the White Paper was published?

206. Mr McLeish: Yes. I mean there had been discussions. In a sense it was between the points that were made here about the PFI, which is an initiative which has been fraught with difficulties, or just direct public funding. But, again, if my memory serves me right, Chairman and to Mr Campbell, not a great deal of detailed discussion about how this would be done, suffice to say at that time you were talking about modest levels, relative to where we are now, and also relative to the Scottish block, so, in that sense, if it was a decision about public funding, then it was not going to be a major problem relative to the scale of finance required. So that might have prevented a great deal of detailed discussion at that particular point.

207. Mr Campbell QC: If we could go to SE/1/051, please, and scroll down to the chapter headed ‘Running Costs’. A little further, please; stop there. Thank you. ‘Running Costs’. Ignore the editing for the moment. The author says:

208. “It is not possible…”

209. And now we are on the 3 July still.

210. “…to say how much the accommodation would cost until a final decision is made on where to locate.”

211. You’ll see the range then expressed as between £10 million and £40 million. Is that consistent with your recollection?

212. Mr McLeish: Yes.

213. Mr Campbell QC: So what’s happened here to the idea that it should be possible to pin down indicative cost for the Old Royal High School in the period between mid-June or early July?

214. Mr McLeish: Well, obviously when we get to the final draft of the White Paper we open up the options. But I think — just to share some of my thinking with you — this £10 million to £40 million has travelled through the drafts, travelled through the debate, even though there was no real idea of what a maximum cost would be, or indeed, a minimum cost. But I think it is all predicated on the Old Royal High School and the adjacent changes that would be required. So I think that has been very much a fixed feature in the financial debate.

11.15am

215. Now when it got to the White Paper, I can tell you that some of the discussions that took place were, first of all, not to have a detailed annex of the course in the White Paper. That was in, as you have shown earlier, then it was out. Secondly, there was some debate about whether, between those figures, or around those figures, there should have been more precise commitment. But after taking the detailed cost out of the annex, it was felt there was little need for that. That’s why I think they reverted back to just using that £10 million to £40 million, which had been, as I said, travelling with us virtually from election day.

216. Mr Campbell QC: You are quite right; the annex disappears between early July and the date of publication. Why do you think that happened?

217. Mr McLeish: For two reasons: one is, that I think that, in a White Paper, which was going to, for the first time, really publicly widen out the debate about options, it would not have made too much sense merely to have a detailed annex costing that option and saying nothing about looking wider. So I think that was one of the reasons. Secondly, to be absolutely fair to the Secretary of State and all of us, is that it wasn’t known what the likelihood of these other options would be in terms of throwing up a cost. If you look further in terms of how the cost rose, when you get in to look at Victoria Quay, when you look at the Haymarket, when you look at the bigger project on Calton Hill, then the costs are still varying 40, 50, then it slips up to 60, 70.

218. There is a logical progression here, but I think to answer your specific question on this, it was felt before the White Paper that this would be a convenient bringing together of the finance, no more and no less, and that’s why the annex disappeared.

219. Mr Campbell QC: We can see in the same paragraph — can’t we? — that at that time the Scottish block was 14,000 million pounds.

220. Mr McLeish: Yes.

221. Mr Campbell QC: So we would have to think about what was intended to be spending as a portion of that — as a proportion of that. You gave evidence earlier on about Mr Dewar conceding the point about the Scottish block.

222. Mr McLeish: Yes.

223. Mr Campbell QC: That is the figure we are talking about.

224. Mr McLeish: To be fair, he conceded, quite rightly, in my view, because it was assumed, I think, always by the Treasury and by the Scottish Office that it would be borne by the block; that there was a temptation to think, “Well, hang on, let’s see whether we should go back to the Treasury.” I don’t think the Treasury were for that, but certainly, I think, Donald Dewar’s instincts were right, because there were other issues with the DSWR that required us maybe to trade rather on this particular issue.

225. Mr Campbell QC: Could you turn to document SE/1/052, please? And I’ll need 053 next. This is a letter from Mrs Low to Private Secretary to the Secretary of State, and others, including yourself or your own Private Secretary, in which she bears to enclose a briefing for the DSWR meeting on 1 July — one of many, you said.

226. Mr McLeish: Yes.

227. Mr Campbell QC: What is meant at 1.1 by “speaking notes”?

228. Mr McLeish: Well, what you will have is the particular draft of the chapter at that point in the process, and with it you would have notes prepared by the civil servants, possibly with the special advisers just taking you through the chapter, explaining maybe any differences from the previous chapter, just that — an aide memoire.

229. Mr Campbell QC: Could we look at 53 — 053, please? If you would scroll down a little bit. “Line to take” — see that? Is that a formulation you are familiar with?

230. Mr McLeish: Yes.

231. Mr Campbell QC: So this is help to the Minister — I just want to understand the process.

232. Mr McLeish: No, no.

233. Mr Campbell QC: This is just help to the Minister at a meeting, whatever the meeting is.

234. Mr McLeish: No. The reason I was smiling, Mr Campbell, was I’m just…the assembled throng that’s here, it’s often a line to take with them — the media. But on the other hand, what it is, is a situation where if asked on that this is the line to take. So the civil servants could give you a line, you can use it if you wish, you could adapt it to something else, you could say nothing, but it’s just part again of this speaking notes, line to take, the civil servants being at their most helpful.

235. Mr Campbell QC: Can we see paragraphs 10.2 to 10.5 — ‘A Home fit for the Parliament’:

236. “This section will be completely rewritten in the light of recent discussions with the Secretary of State. Colleagues will see a revised form of words in the next draft of the White Paper.”

237. Now, that passage is about the accommodation for the Parliament; if you take that from me. Can you recall those discussions, which appear to have generated a… which appear to have provoked a rewrite of the section?

238. Mr McLeish: No, I don’t recall discussions around that, and I’m not sure whether there would be discussions. I think what you have there is now the acceptance that Old Royal High School is to be one of a number of options. Secondly, there is to be an insertion that the block will pay, which was suggested by the Treasury. I think thirdly, you have the annex removed in terms of the costs. And I think fourthly, it was after earlier discussions to have £10 million to £40 million included, and not any other more specific figure. So, in light of all of that, because it’s not a large part of the White Paper, that could end up being a substantial rewrite, bringing together that first two or three months of discussion.

239. Mr Campbell QC: OK; thank you. Could we drop on the same page, please, to the penultimate line? Can you see there paragraphs 10.15 to 10.17:

240. “We are currently working up our best estimates for capital and running cost expenditure. These are likely to be expressed as ranges and we are inclined to drop annex C…”

241. which is what I showed you before :

242. “…as a table of this nature might give the impression of spurious accuracy.”

243. Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, and we can all smile at it. I just wonder, though, in terms of promoting the White Paper as part of the political process, was it thought safer to try to give a range to the public, or was there some apprehension that, in giving a range, you might be giving yourselves a hostage to fortune?

244. Mr McLeish: I’m sorry, I’m laughing at the “spurious accuracy” bit in this. I mean, no, I think… First of all, there was a genuine concern that, because of the options that were going to be looked at now, there would be little point in specifying a specific figure. I think, secondly, in the absence of anything more illuminating, this £10 million to £40 million was decided to have included in the White Paper. But I think that some criticism has been made of the fact that the Secretary of State was looking for a cost-effective Parliament. He wasn’t looking for the least cost-effective option; he always was a prudent man, but he wanted value for money. So I think there was just… understandably I think I agree with him entirely — a lot of caution being shown as to what we would do in terms of finance.

245. I’m not sure I remember the environment completely with the media and others at that particular point. If it had been specific, it had been larger, would there have been some kind of come back on the White Paper? I just think it was natural caution which decided on the wording of that particular chapter.

246. Mr Campbell QC: OK. So annex C disappears, and what we get instead is a re-draft of the White Paper with a range of estimated costs and an undertaking to look at a number of options. Did you have anything to do with Mr Dewar’s speech to the House on 24 July 1997, which was the introduction of the White Paper?

247. Mr McLeish: Only to the point that we, as usual, would be circulated with the draft of the speech from the special advisers, be given a chance to comment, be given a chance to acknowledge, and that was really the way that papers were done. There was no particular onus on the Secretary of State to have any closer relationship in preparing what would be, for him, the main text.

248. Mr Campbell QC: Is it important for us to understand that the arrangement among Ministers at that time was not quite the same as a Cabinet arrangement, but more of a pyramid structure with Donald Dewar at the top of it?

249. Mr McLeish: Yes, and, I mean, that was just a fact of… because obviously Scotland, maybe except in Wales, was completely different from any other Department — in a sense it was carrying a territory, it was a country that was involved. But, as I said earlier, there was no formal Cabinet of Scotland in the Scottish Office: it was the Secretary of State, two Ministers of State, Junior Ministers who met in the ways that I have described on particular issues.

250. Mr Campbell QC: I’m trying to get to the bottom of whether there was any reasonable expectation on your part that at the publication of this White Paper, which was clearly an important moment — the phrase “defining moment” is often misused, but I think we would probably agree that it was one such moment — whether at this defining moment, every word that Donald Dewar was to utter to the House would be the subject of, if you like, consensus among you.

251. Mr McLeish: No.

252. Mr Campbell QC: You think not?

253. Mr McLeish: That’s just not the way that Government in that case worked, and I’m sure that it would be illustrative of Government generally in terms of the Cabinet Minister, the Secretary of State, making a particular contribution. Discussion, dialogue, comment, acknowledgements, but no line-by-line — no, that was not the way it worked.

254. Mr Campbell QC: Could we look at SE/1/103? Now, if you take it from me that this is a first draft of the speech of 24 July, and you scroll down to the paragraph heading ‘Make it Happen’ — ‘Making it Happen’ — let’s see the rest of that page. And can we go to the next page:

255. “The Old Royal High School…”

256. he says there:

257. “…is a wonderful traditional building, but it may not be the best solution, particularly in terms of public accessibility. The Government are…”

258. turn the page please:

259. “…determined to secure the best possible home for our Scottish Parliament. Depending on the site and funding method chosen, the cost can only be estimated at a range of £10 million to £40 million.”

260. So there is the figure again.

261. This is the final draft, Mr McLeish. By the time we get to the final speech, delivered I think, the next day, or a day or two later — SE/1/117 — even that range of figures has disappeared, although it stayed in the White Paper. What I’d like to ask you is: did you know that that was going to happen in the speech?

262. Mr McLeish: No. But I… it’s part of the debate that we’ve had this morning and it’s what I’ve tried to explain: the evolution of the financial thinking, then it would have been linked to that — a bit uneasy with the figures. They are going to be in the White Paper, but if it was omitted from the speech, it would merely be just to try and lessen the impact of finance in that contribution to the House.

263. Lord Fraser: Mr McLeish, if you are an insider, as you clearly were, prior to the Secretary of State making this statement — drawing it to the House of Commons on the day. If you were an outsider, this would be the first time, would it be, that if you were not an insider that you would be advised:

264. “It is for that reason that a number of possible sites in Edinburgh, including the Old Royal High School are being considered.?”

265. Would the Secretary of State…neither the Secretary of State or you, prior to that date, would have been hinting to anybody that there might be a change in contemplation?

266. Mr McLeish: In terms of the preparation of the speech, but in terms of the logic of the process, I think, that visit that was made to the Old Royal High School, became, in my judgement only, quite pivotal, because at that point there was a very significant signal sent out to Ministers and to civil servants that the nature of the game was changing. Then it had to be constructively done privately, and then of course when the White Paper came out, there was public… there was press statements. So I think it was a well-managed process to get to a point where a lot of people were going to be very unhappy about the Old Royal High School.

267. To be fair to the Secretary of State, there was a lot of criticism that this was just going to be discarded. For that type of criticism, you know, the realities don’t match up. And so, therefore, he was conscious that the building had significance, but he accepted the limitations of that, and that’s why he was keen to move on.

268. Lord Fraser: I was lumping you and Ministers and officials together as insiders. But if, for example, you were the leader of another political party in Scotland, like the Scottish National Party, who wanted to have a Parliament on the Calton Hill, this would be the first occasion which you had got any clue that maybe the thinking of Government was that there was a switch underway. And you might read that in a way as seeing that the Old Royal High School was still top of the list.

269. Mr McLeish: I’m trying to disengage from being an insider because that would not be my perception at that time, but, on the other hand, that would have been a logical interpretation by someone just looking or listening to these comments being made.

270. Lord Fraser: Thank you.

271. Mr Campbell QC: Sir, I wonder if this would be a convenient moment for a five-minute break. It’s quite warm, and I’m sure Mr McLeish — although he is looking very fresh — would perhaps welcome five or 10 minutes just to walk around.

272. Lord Fraser: Thank you. It might be suitable just to take a brief adjournment at this stage, Mr McLeish. Thank you very much. We will resume in 5 or 10 minutes.

Hearing adjourned at 11.30 am.

Hearing resumed at 11.43 am.

273. Mr Campbell QC: Thank you for staying with us, Mr McLeish.

274. I’d like to move now, if I may to a chapter of the evidence which deals with the firmer question of site selection and not to take time up with the issues around the referendum and so forth, except in one way. We know that there was discussion about whether there should be a one-question referendum or a two-question referendum. Ultimately, it went out in the latter form. Can you recall in the work up to that time whether—that’s from the White Paper on to September—whether there was a current an issue about what the cost of a new Parliament might be?

275. Mr McLeish: I imagine Mr Campbell, there would be ongoing discussions, discontinuing the discussions before the White Paper, but I cannot accurately reflect in my mind anything which is noteworthy.

276. Mr Campbell QC: OK. Could I ask you to look at SE/2/141 please? Going back a little bit to 6 June… Sorry, just bear with me. Here we have Mr Brown, from whom we’ll hear later — if you scroll down a little bit — talking about accommodation aspects of a Scottish Parliament. He talks about assumptions; he then goes to consider alternatives, and in this paper — if you could just take it a page at a time Miss Barr please — he talks about a variety of options. The first he calls the “Regent Road option”, which is the Old Royal High School in St Andrew’s House, which you have discussed with me. The second, a new building on a greenfield site. I am sorry. The second, St Andrew’s House entirely. The third, a new building on a greenfield site, and the fourth, a new debating chamber only on a site near Victoria Quay. And then he goes on to talk about funding options and timetabling, and the possibility of temporary accommodation. Can you recall by the time of the referendum, whether it was in any way settled that there would have to be temporary accommodation before there would be permanent accommodation?

11.45am

277. Mr McLeish: I think that is the case because, as we got more into the discussions about the permanent site and the length that this would take, I think that matter had been discussed.

278. Mr Campbell QC: I am getting a picture of a sort of dawning realisation that this was a bigger problem than it might, at first, have occurred.

279. Mr McLeish: You use the word “problem”. I think that it is maybe just… I mean, one of the great difficulties on looking back into this after such a long time is that, you know, for example, we are talking about a remarkably short period of time into which there was just an immense amount of activity, so I think the actual process of evolution here was dawning, that yes, this is a very substantial project, and there could just be the possibility that we won’t need temporary accommodation because any realistic look at a timetable would lead you beyond the time that we were going to be handing over, of 1 July 1999.

280. Mr Campbell QC: By the time of the referendum, was there any idea of where temporary accommodation might be?

281. Mr McLeish: Well again, I’m not sure to what extent the discussions had taken place, but I think there was a view that there weren’t many, and, of course, we had, I think , the Strathclyde issue, but of course the building on the Mound was clearly very accessible, and I am not sure whether by then or shortly afterwards there were discussions on more specific aspects of that move.

282. Mr Campbell QC: Thank you. Look at SE/2/309 would you? I’m avoiding taking you through each and every one of the formulations of various options and progress reports. If you could scroll down, we can see this is called ‘Scottish Parliament Building: Progress Report’, and the purpose of the minute is to bring Minsiters up to date with current work to find a site. Even at the date of this memo, which is 25 August, the author is saying:

283. “No decisions are required right now, but views would be welcome.”

284. And then he talks about current position and site selection:

285. “Following the Secretary of State’s decision to invite suggestions for accommodation for a Parliament in Edinburgh, over 20 proposals have been submitted. In co-operation with the City of Edinburgh council officials, we have reduced this long list to a shortlist of three feasible options, plus the fall-back of using the Old Royal High School and its debating chamber.”

286. I wonder if you were part of that culling operation which cut down the City of Edinburgh’s list to a list of three?

287. Mr McLeish: No, I wasn’t. I think the list had been submitted by the city council, and I cannot recall many other sites other than the ones that are being fully discussed here this afternoon.

288. Mr Campbell QC: Thank you. We can see that the author says that he’s looking at Calton Hill, Regent Road. He is looking at a new build on—this is at the foot of the page—a new build near Victoria Quay and a new build on a vacant site at Haymarket. We have kept the ORHS option — now we need to go to the next page please. We have kept the ORHS option in play simply because the Secretary of State himself has not ruled it out, and because it could deliver accommodation, albeit not very suitable accommodation, comparatively quickly. So I see here, we are here at 25 August, a bit of a change of emphasis so far as the Old Royal High School is concerned. It is no longer being regarded as, if you like, the received wisdom or the baggage that was carried forward from earlier, but rather downgraded. Is that fair?

289. Mr McLeish: It is fair, although I would say that because of comments I have made and the views of the Secretary of State, that I suspect that the Old Royal High School was receding much earlier than that. You know, that could be interpreted from the comments that are contained in this document.

290. Mr Campbell QC: What I can’t see here, and this is one official of course writing to others, what I can’t see here is any sense at all that there was a need to wait for consultation with the Parliament, either its Presiding Officer—its Speaker—or with its Members. I can’t see anything in this memo of any sense that there should be…a hand should go up and say: “Just hold on. Lets get the Parliament up and running first.” Is that fair?

291. Mr McLeish: Yes it is fair, but, again, I think a lot of people understand they were caught up in the momentum of all of this, and I think once it got to a point where sites were being looked at, then it takes on a momentum of its own. I mean, I just think that the process that’s unfolding is illustrative of the fact that this is very complex, very difficult, very time-consuming, and, of course, at the back of my mind all the time was, well, in two years or even less now, a new Parliament, a new group of parliamentarians will meet in Edinburgh, and then we’re running faster and faster to provide them with a fait acompli, and, for me, you know, we had a lot more important things in my judgement to do at that time.

292. Mr Campbell QC: Yes. Where was the imperative for speed coming from?

293. Mr McLeish: Well, again, it’s… I just have to set the context again for being elected in 1997. There was this huge momentum, you know, huge expectations about what was going to happen, and I think you then get caught between that particular point after we worked out when can the Parliament first meet and start to do business. We had talked about a handover period, we had talked about January of 2000. Eventually, we stuck on May for the elections in 1999, June for the handing over of the Parliament, although that wasn’t agreed at that point — and 1 July for Her Majesty The Queen to open. So, once we had done that, you had actually set very formidable parameters within which a huge amount of legislative, financial, political work had to be done, and I think that once you were onto that process, it was very very difficult then to see an exit point, and I think my conclusion is that we did an enormous amount in that period, but, on the other hand, after we had imposed the 1999 handover, you know, everything else then had to be shaped into that particular mould.

294. Mr Campbell QC: Yes, I understand why in that answer, you take the big picture because you were sitting really very near the top of the tree and looking at the big picture, but if I could just focus it a little more, it wasn’t part of that accelerated programme to 1999, was it, that you must deliver a completed Parliament building by the time of the handover?

295. Mr McLeish: No, I mean, there were certain things we had to achieve like the White Paper, like the people of Scotland making their judgements in two referendums, and we had to get a Bill drafted, we had to get it through the House, and we had to have a Scotland Act, which said there will be a Parliament. Now, as far as I was concerned, that was a lot of work. That had to fit a preordained time schedule, especially after we had identified 1 July 1999. You could argue that the Parliament didn’t need to be part of that early period but, of course, it was.

296. Mr Campbell QC: We can see that Alistair Brown, here in paragraph 4, says:

297. “We are working to draw up a comprehensive assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of the three sites. We aim to provide the site assessment to Ministers early in September, with a view to reaching a decision by the middle of the month.”

298. And then in 5:

299. “In parallel with the site assessment, we are working up a draft design brief, setting up requirements.”

300. I’m getting a feeling all the time that the officials are caught up in this snowball, this momentum, which is moving forward in the time frame that you have described to the Inquiry. Why was that? Why was it felt to be necessary in this particular issue — that’s to say location and a building — why not wait?

301. Mr McLeish: Yes. Well I mean I think the import of your question would suggest that there was something…some ulterior motive or something specific that I could identify. If I could, I would, because you’ve asked me the question, but what I would come back to is that we were just in a very fevered situation in that two years. A great deal had to be done, and I think you could maybe understand yourself, Mr Campbell, that once you are working with special advisers, civil servants, Ministers, a lot of people in Scotland as well, that this expectation didn’t diminish, and once you’d committed yourself to something, actually you just deepened your difficulties because it just meant you had to move on quickly to the next destination. So I am afraid that that is what I think was happening, and I’m not sure there’s any other material consideration that I could throw into you that would pinpoint it in any other more precise way.

302. Mr Campbell QC: I’m sorry to stay with it, but I would, if you don’t mind, just for one more question. I completely understand the political momentum towards electing a Parliament and handing over, if you like, Scottish civic life to that Parliament. I completely understand that because it was, after all, the number one feature of the manifesto, the White Paper had been got out, contained promises, we moved forward to the referendum. I completely understand all that. Why was it though, or on whose instructions was it that officials were working so hard behind the scenes to put together the nuts and bolts of the building, the design of the building, the location of the building, the extent of the building, when after all, 1999 wasn’t that far away? Do you understand my question?

303. Mr McLeish: Oh, I do understand your question, and I understand the import of what you’re saying. Let me answer it by saying that the whole—I think the Secretary of State considered—the whole package is the important one to be got through, and if you accept that as the premise then I believe that everyone was working to that specific set of deadlines or that specific deadline of, eventually July, 1999.

304. It’s difficult in a kind of cold light of an inquiry to explain what happens in the day-to-day activities of Government, especially when you’ve got these huge expectations, huge commitment, but it just seemed then to become quite remorseless, and to be fair to the civil servants, who are often much-maligned in many activities, they just were working round the clock on a variety of issues, including the Parliament, and all I can say is that I have made my comments clearer this morning. I also have that memo. I did not see it as a priority in comparison with the other ones I’ve described. I think the Secretary of State did, and to be fair to him, that is his right to look at the whole package and then decide he wanted to have the Parliament working with procedures, he wanted the Parliament at least with the knowledge they were moving into a building that we had developed, thought about, funded, costed, passed over. He had a White Paper behind him, and so therefore there was really true momentum to get the complete package. I did not share the fact that the Parliament itself was a priority, at least not at that stage.

305. Mr Campbell QC: Did you express those reservations in a meaningful way, so as to cause any sort of review or reconsideration of the momentum that was moving forward?

306. Mr McLeish: You asked “in a meaningful way”. I think you mean in written form, no. After I had written the memo, I, on a number of occasions, informally, had often made the point that, you know, to me this didn’t make a great deal of sense, but, on the other hand, he’s the boss, and he’s got a wonderful oversight and perspective and a very, very sharp eye for the detail and realities, unlike some other Cabinet Ministers that I could name. So, therefore, I would speak informally, but at the end of the day I felt that maybe I was too much of a consensual politician, seeing this as a new venture, thinking that maybe people in Scotland might be out of joint in that Parliament by not having something to be deciding upon which is their destiny, as well as ours. That’s just not a view that was shared.

307. Lord Fraser: I knew the late Donald Dewar, having sat on a Select Committee with him for a number of years, and, if I had to give a description of his character, about his character, it would be thrawn, rather than vain. Now, I don’t think I yet have seen anything that indicates to me that Donald Dewar was in a sort of Christopher Wren mood, and wanted to say: “Look around if you want… a monument, to look at my monument”. But he could be very thrawn.

308. Mr McLeish: Yes, but I think that’s the important distinction, with respect Chairman, to Mr Campbell’s question because this was not a process — because that’s not the character of self-aggrandisement — for the Secretary of State for Scotland at that moment in time. He could be thrawn, to use that good Scottish word.

12.00 pm

309. Lord Fraser: He would have.

310. Mr McLeish: And I’ve seen him as many times thrawn as anybody. But, on the other hand, this was an issue where he believed passionately, especially as the site selection moved on, that this was something that he wanted to achieve, and in that sense, he could be criticised for many things, but not in terms of his commitment to Scotland, his passion for that Parliament to be completed, and to complete a package of measures that he felt in 1997 the Scottish people had vested an awful lot of confidence. And he took that very, very much to heart, as he should have done.

311. Lord Fraser: I can understand, given the commitments in the manifesto, given his high ranking in Cabinet, it was for him, and effectively, for him alone, to deliver what would be the powers of this Parliament, what would be reserved, what would be devolved, and he would have to battle that one. I’m fairly confident he battled as vigorously as he could to have matters devolved, but the way the Parliament actually works dictates what it needs as a parliament building, and I still have to ask myself the question, why wasn’t that left to the Parliament to determine that matter? And that seems to have been an intellectual process that you have addressed, and I can’t find anywhere in the minutes that while the Secretary of State is dismissive of the Old Royal High School, that he doesn’t seem to have made that distinction. I mean, what it was absolutely imperative for him to deliver if this Parliament was to work, and what could legitimately be left to them to decide.

312. Mr McLeish: Well, sadly Mr Chairman, I cannot look into Donald’s mind, I mean, I had awesome admiration for what he was achieving at that time — I was working with him. He may know what he was trying to do in terms of the Parliament. Maybe some other people will give you interpretations in this Inquiry, but I have genuinely attempted to explain some of the momentum, explain some of the interests, and you’ve quite rightly expressed your views of the man, and this was not someone who wanted, you know, a building that would be forever his achievement in Edinburgh. That was just not the nature of Donald Dewar, and I’m sorry I can’t be any more helpful at giving you insights into areas which I have not trodden.

313. Mr Campbell QC: Can I just pick up Lord Fraser’s point, and look at paragraph 5 of this document, which, let’s remind ourselves, was SE/2/310? This is Mr Brown again addressing by way of memo, your own private secretary and Mr Dewar’s, so this would have come across your desk at least in metaphorical sense:

314. “We are working up a draft design brief setting out requirements for a Parliament building. Information is being gathered from within the Scottish Office, in consultation with the House authorities at Westminster, and from visits to comparable Parliament buildings in Europe.”

315. And there is evidence elsewhere that those visits took place:

316. “Key issues influencing the size and design of the building, and therefore being included in the draft brief, include numbers of permanent staff, facilities for the media, number of committee rooms, provision for public access, education facilities, security, catering facilities, and the issue of separate provision for MSPs and…”

317. A very hot issue in Edinburgh —

318. “…car parking. The extent to which the various sites listed in paragraph 3 can accommodate the functional requirements of the building set out in the brief will be a key issue, which will be fed into the site assessment.”

319. So what I’ve got here is a picture of a senior civil servant working hard to design at least the requirements for a Parliament, without actually knowing what those requirements would be. Now, my question is this: is that just part of the impetus which Donald Dewar created in rolling forward to the creation of the Parliament in 1999, or something more?

320. Mr McLeish: Well, I wouldn’t preface it by saying this was the impetus that Donald Dewar created. I think there was a lot of impetus around, a lot of momentum. The question I think that has to be posed — and I’m not necessarily the best person to answer it — is whether or not, in a situation like this, any one official, set of officials, group of officials, could actually detail the requirements of a Parliament which was not yet in existence, the membership of which had not been elected, and the views of which were not tabulated. I think that to me is the important issue here, and as a consequence, a lot of the things that we can see and hear now, you would have to take soundings of people who were appreciating what was going on, before you can actually do them. So if that’s the import of the question, then it becomes extraordinarily difficult not only to conjure up what would be there, but as a consequence then, cost that for different sites, some sites unknown at that particular point.

321. Mr Campbell QC: Well, I’m coming to costing, but the Parliament was not only without all of the things you’ve listed, but it was also without any officials. It existed in the truest sense on paper, didn’t it?

322. Mr McLeish: Yes.

323. Mr Campbell QC: So that Mr Brown, however perceptive and far-thinking he was, couldn’t have known at this stage what the Parliament would actually require.

324. Mr McLeish: But I think, Mr Campbell, there’s two ways you can look. If you accept the notion that this has to be done by the time the Parliament is formed, and has had time for us to pass on the scheme, if you accept that, then quite frankly, you don’t worry about the issue of a Parliament not being there, people to inform this because the civil servants have been asked to detail what can happen. If you, on the other hand, assume that you would like the Parliament, the new Parliament, the new parliamentarians to have an insight and contribute to this, then you don’t do the Parliament at Westminster. So, I mean, once you’ve adopted a position on this, then it is inevitable that consequences flow to a design brief, or to any other piece of advice.

325. Mr Campbell QC: Yes. Mr Brown, in writing further, says:

326. “In working up the brief, we are being guided by the Secretary of State’s general intent that the Parliament should be open and accessible, and should support efficient and effective working. We are therefore designing in…”

327. And so forth, and so on. Is it fair to take from that that Donald Dewar was driving the characteristics of the building which would eventually emerge?

328. Mr McLeish: Well, I mean, let’s be fair about this. When we’re talking about open and accessible, efficient and effective, transparent, these are all words that we have, in my consultative steering group, these are the kind of benchmark words that we use for development of that. It was also part of the rhetoric before the election of the kind of Parliament we wanted. So when you’re saying that these are the Secretary of State’s impetus again, or driving it forward, no, these are common aspirations of the administration relative to everything about the Parliament. So, not necessarily in this case. I mean, the phrase:

329. “The Secretary of State’s general intent that the Parliament should be open and accessible”.

330. I mean, it would have been interesting if it hadn’t been the Secretary of State’s general intent to have it open and accessible. I mean, the wording is very peculiar.

331. Mr Campbell QC: Well, I take that from you, but this is not a public document. This is a privately circulated memorandum. It doesn’t say Henry McLeish’s general intent, the Minister for Devolution. It says the Secretary of State’s general intent.

332. Mr McLeish: Yes, but again, if I can just qualify, in trying to again explain the processes of Government. In a situation of Cabinet Government at Westminster, the Secretary of State is not just above Ministers of State, but is a very special position in the whole hierarchy at Westminster. So it is not unusual for the Secretary of State…for someone to say: “It is the Secretary of State’s view; it is the Secretary of State’s intention”, because, at the end of the day, what I think, or what Brian Wilson thinks, or Sam Galbraith thinks, often is what the Secretary of State thinks, and, in turn, his Minsiters are doing something, he will take responsibility for…So there is an interchangeability here, so I wouldn’t like to think some of the wording in a lot of these memos is because it’s the Secretary of State, that it’s necessarily Donald Dewar, full stop.

333. Mr Campbell QC: It’s the team, you’re saying. OK.

334. At the end of this paragraph, he says:

335. “In terms of physical spaces, we are being guided more by recent European experience and design than by the Westminster model.”

336. Did you have reflected in submissions to you the results of investigations into more recent European experience?

337. Mr McLeish: Not to any great extent. I mean, I know that there were visits made and clearly there would be a culling of experiences elsewhere, but that — and these reports would be prepared — but I’m not sure a lot of the details of that were given to Ministers.

338. Mr Campbell QC: OK. Could I scroll down please? In paragraph 7, the Secretary of State envisages that the building should be the subject of a design competition, and Mr Brown says:

339. “We aim to advertise the design competition in October, by which time a site will have been selected.”

340. We are still in 1997, so we know that in fact didn’t happen by then, selection being in January 1998, finally. Was there a premature secret selection as early as October 97?

341. Mr McLeish: No. I think it was merely the process just catching up.

342. Mr Campbell QC: OK. Next page please. I just want to take you through this so you fully understand the sequence, but not at huge length. He says:

343. “We will need to come back to Ministers on questions relating to the design competition in early September.”

344. He notes the requirement to comply with EC procurement rules, and the rules for competitions, and then in timetable, at 9, he says:

345. “We are still working towards having a building ready by spring 2000.”

346. Which might raise a chuckle nowadays, but there it is.

347. “This is a challenging target”,

348. says Mr Brown:

349. “Achieving it depends on all of the constituent elements going like clockwork. There is no realistic possibility of having permanent accommodation for January 2000, unless we were simply to select a site now, and go ahead without a design competition. The target may well slip; all we need is some problems with the statutory planning process, and a wet winter”.

350. Lord Fraser: The spring target.

351. Mr Campbell QC: Sorry:

352. “The Spring 2000 target may well slip; all we all we need is some problems with the statutory planning process, and a wet winter. We will therefore be preparing plans for interim accommodation for the Parliament on the basis that his may have to be used until later in 2000.”

353. So, are you quite happy that it was accepted by the time of the referendum that there would have to be temporary accommodation?

354. Mr McLeish: Yes, because it was entirely logical and it also reflected some of the difficulties around moving towards site selection and moving the process on. And, I think at this point, I mean, one of the interesting things about all Governments with building projects is that it’s been shown over many years that Governments are not particularly good with building projects, and it may, in my judgement, be something to do with just the capacity of — and this is not a criticism of the civil service, because they’re not builders, and few people build a Parliament in their lifetimes, or in a number of lifetimes, so I think this point, what you were saying is maybe a capacity issue in the sense that here we are now faced with targets slipping, some people thought that this was just common sense that they would slip, that’s the nature of the building process, but on the other hand, at least the civil servants were now saying, “Look, this is the reality, and we need to have contingencies to cope with it”.

355. Mr Campbell QC: He deals with costs and financing here in a very general way, but in his last sentence, he says:

356. “Once Ministers are in a position to make a decision on site selection, we will press to see what firm financial commitments might be offered by private-sector interests.”

357. Can I ask you if you recall discussion around a lottery contribution to the Parliament building, or, indeed, a public/private partnership arrangement?

358. Mr McLeish: There were discussions around both.

359. Mr Campbell QC: Both, as possible means of funding.

360. Mr McLeish: As possible additional sources of funding, yes.

361. Mr Campbell QC: Did you take to do with the consideration of the sites submitted by Edinburgh Council . . . and the rejection of the quite large number of sites that were put forward initially?

362. Mr McLeish: As I recall, Mr Campbell, I don’t think I was involved in the 20 sites that were submitted, although I wouldn’t be absolutely firm on that. I think when the process started to move again was when some of the ideas that came up from the city council were then enshrined in the three or four options.

12.15pm

363. Mr Campbell QC: Did you have any views, or did you express any views, about the estimated size of building which was being contemplated in these exchanges with Mr Brown? Numbers of — I don’t expect you to be precise, but the sort of indication — 15,000, 17,000, 20,000 square metres? Can you recall around that?

364. Mr McLeish: I think there had been — again, it was acknowledged from the start that the early figures were 16,000, 17,000 and maybe just slightly above that, square metres. That was, again, just part of the discussion, and I didn’t have any particular views or competence to question detailed square metres. But I did know throughout the whole process that once you add square metres you add cost, and there’s a very direct relationship, as you will see from other papers, in the kind of costs that eventually came relative to a significant increase in the square metreage.

365. Mr Campbell QC: Can you help the Inquiry set in context the juxtaposition between the referendum and the passing of the Scotland Act? Because with the passing of the Scotland Act I suggest some of your intensive, your labour-intensive duties on the House of Commons Floor might have passed on, passed by, and you would be looking at other minutiae of the devolution process.

366. Mr McLeish: I think that’s largely true. I think, if I can recall, maybe you can correct my information, that we had to get the Bill through and this would take from the autumn of 1997 through to the eventual October of 1998, because including the Lords process and whatever. So that was a fairly long period, and I think once that had been taken care of you then had preparations for the handover, preparations for the new Parliament, so one didn’t have to go without work in relation to other priorities that were existing, but certainly that was out of the way and you could then ostensibly get involved in other things.

367. Mr Campbell QC: Can I ask you if you recall the emergence of Holyrood as a candidate site?

368. Mr McLeish: Well, from my recollection this was one of the . . . either a site or a consideration by the City Council that was flagged up as one of the 20, but it was not recognised as a serious site, partly because of constraints, partly because of the size of the site which was available at that particular point, and I think that would probably be in the latter part of 1997, and I think eventually it came into the public arena in January-February of 1998. So it had been flagged up early. I think secondly, then, there was, from what I can recall, a letter that was sent by possibly an estate agent or — sorry, I don’t understand the hierarchy of estate agents — maybe somebody more senior than an estate agent writing to the department, saying that they appreciate the site was available, in terms of the brewery site, and then thirdly they reached a point where I think the Secretary of State asked for some work to be done on that in tandem with the other options that were further down the line. And then I think that they got wedded into the consideration of the sites and this moved I think then to maybe February 9 or January 9, when the public announcement was made that this was happening. So, that’s my recollection of the process.

369. Mr Campbell QC: I think January 9. I’d like to ask you, post-referendum, September, leading up to Christmas. You obviously had your hands full with the Scotland Act and you were in London a lot. The minutes show that your own private secretary was being kept abreast of not only developing considerations in relation to sites, but also the assessments that were going on, both internally and using outside professional help. To what extent were you kept au fait with the developing thinking in relation to the suitability of sites?

370. Mr McLeish: Maybe I can help the Inquiry by saying that — again, this is instincts being reflected on six years down the line — the Old Royal High School was, for many people, I think including the Secretary of State, not a serious long-term . . . I think, secondly, then there was an invitation to the city council and others to come up with some other options to be considered. There was the Victoria Quay offices plus debating chamber, then there was, you know, a greenfield site down there, there was the Haymarket option, there was Old Royal High School and then there was the amalgam with St Andrew’s House. But thirdly, I think that there was a view that maybe those options were not going to be . . . you know . . . none of them would house the future Parliament of Scotland. It is around that point that Holyrood emerges and, to be fair to all concerned, Holyrood presented, in the eyes of some, which I partly share, a magical quality in terms of it being a UN heritage site at the bottom of one of the most important streets in the world in one of the most beautiful cities that we have. And, all of a sudden, that became immediately quite an attractive option. The downside was that, environmentally, in terms of site, size, in terms of transport, were huge problems, and I think at that point there was also the view that a site of this significance would create further pressures and demands, especially on the aesthetic side, especially in the demands for quality, but I would have to say at that point it did, relative to other considerations, look like a site that was worth travelling with. And that’s my recollections of timing and some of the thinking that went with that.

371. Mr Campbell QC: I wonder if the emergence of Holyrood as a possible location, and its juxtaposition with Arthur’s Seat and Holyrood Palace and so forth, I wonder if that, to some extent, might have eclipsed the environmental and traffic and other considerations which are really obvious to anyone, looking at where it is. Were they sublimated in the thinking, to the opportunity . . .?

372. Mr McLeish: No, I think the attractions of the site were very, very obvious. The downsides were also very obvious, but, on the other hand, problems are there to be overcome, and it seemed — even at that early point — that people were arguing that, environmentally and in transport terms and a whole range of other ways, these were problems that could be tackled. However, the caveat is the more complex the site the likelihood that it could be more expensive. But to be again, to be fair, at the end of the day, Chairman, when the Inquiry’s finished, when the Parliament’s finished, this could be, you know, one of the greatest assets Scotland has ever had, and I think it all threads back to the fact that when this came on the scene it did look like, you know, a centre of parliamentary excellence to a lot of people. So, whilst the Secretary of State was very supportive of this it was a view shared by a great many people around, relative to the sites that had gone before.

373. Mr Campbell QC: It’s part of Lord Fraser’s remit to review the policy decisions and just to understand them, so I may just stick with this for a minute. Perhaps we could look, could we, Miss Barr, at SE/2/657, if we may, to see if this jogs Mr McLeish’s memory. Now this is a letter from a firm of estate agents, chartered surveyors, DM Hall, to Dr Gibbons, and you’ll see that it’s dated 3 October, and as we scroll down through it we can see that Mr Clement, who’s the author, refers to a conversation he’s had with Dr Gibbons, in which he seeks to discuss briefly, as he puts it, the opportunity which may be available on Holyrood Road. I wonder if you can recall being shown this by your private secretary or other advisers. Just scroll through it, please, if you would, so we can all take it on board. There is, he says, a potential four-acre site in a very accessible position within the city centre. He describes its assets, he looks at car-parking. He describes his clients, who have been looking for other sites, and on the next page, if we may, SE/2/658, he underlines that their strategy — that’s the brewers’ strategy — is based on the fact that they will not vacate until the future use of the site has been secured because they do not wish, they say, to leave derelict property in front of Holyrood House. A little plug for Scottish and Newcastle in donating money to the Dynamic Earth, and he finishes up by saying

374. “ . . .it is four acres, there’s additional land in the vicinity which has already been cleared”

375. and so forth.

376. “This is why I would ask if, in your opinion, there is any merit in the site as a possible location for a new Parliament complex and whether you would wish it to be put forward for further consideration.”

377. I am sorry about the rather long introduction. Did you see that at or about the time it came in?

378. Mr McLeish: I think it’s information that may have crossed my desk. I can’t be clear one way or other, but I couldn’t rule that out, Mr Campbell. Because I did know that, I referred earlier to a submission that had been made by . . . chartered surveyors. Sorry, I got it wrong.

379. Mr Campbell QC: By then, which was early October 1997, it appears from documentation that quite a lot of work-up had been done on other sites, not excluding the Royal High School.

380. Mr McLeish: Correct.

381. Mr Campbell QC: Certainly on Leith and certainly on Haymarket. Can you recall . ... concern or unhappiness on the part of the Secretary of State that the list of, the shortlist he was left with, excluding Holyrood for the moment, was not a satisfactory list as far as he was concerned?

382. Mr McLeish: I think that was a view, but I think it was a view shared by other Ministers as well, because — just again for help for the Inquiry — in this letter it makes a very important point that when this had been first mooted that the site might be available, I think by Edinburgh City Council, it didn’t include the hospital site. This letter then states that, by the way, not only do you get the brewery but you can get the hospital site. And I think, for the Secretary of State and ourselves, that was significant because it did, it was going to be tight on space if that hadn’t been forthcoming. But I do think there was a jelling of views that the sites that had been identified, the sites that had been worked up to a certain level, were not sites that were capturing the imagination of Ministers.

383. Mr Campbell QC: They might have been technically adequate, but not politically acceptable. Is that a fair balance?

384. Mr McLeish: I think, take, all of the sites, I think, I can see where it could be technically, I don’t think it was so much politically. I mean, I think one of the things that the Holyrood site did was for the first time to capture in the heart of your capital city, in a strategic, historically, politically, way the idea that the Parliament could be there. And I think, to be fair to the Secretary of State, he was much taken by that notion and, as a consequence, it got more involved in the more detailed site assessments before a decision was made.

385. Mr Campbell QC: But in, relatively speaking, a short time? Because they’d been looking at Leith, Haymarket and the Royal High School for fully six months, hadn’t they, by October?

386. Mr McLeish: Yes, but again in the context of the timetable we were working to and the dynamic that was involved, that, you know, it was a short timescale by most standards, but by the standards that we were working to, you know, it didn’t seem to have that significance at that time.

387. Mr Campbell QC: Who decided to include it in the shortlist from the time of its emergence?

388. Mr McLeish: The Secretary of State decided, but with the support of, I think, all of the Ministers.

389. Mr Campbell QC: Including yourself.

390. Mr McLeish: Yes.

391. Mc Campbell QC: What was it about the emergence of — leaving aside the technical difficulty which you were clearly aware of — what was it about the location there at Holyrood which appeared attractive to a politician?

392. Mr McLeish: Well, sometimes I like to think, Mr Campbell, that as politicians we’re also kind of human beings and we have other interests, and — just to make the point — one of the great things about the Secretary of State was he was a very aesthetic person. Now I did five years of urban planning. I’m not sure I was in the same aesthetic league as the Secretary of State, but interestingly for Holyrood, and setting other options aside, it did have what I thought, and this is, I think, some of the views that the Secretary of State had, it was different, it was challenging, it had the magic of history, it had the magic of politics, it was a UN heritage site, it was at the bottom of the Royal Mile, it was in the centre of Edinburgh, the capital city. All of these things, I think, were very attractive because none of the other sites, with the possible exception of the Old Royal High School, in terms of sentiment, could be worked up to that degree of interest and imagination. That was one issue. But secondly, because of this dynamic and the momentum, here was a letter coming in and saying “it’s got all these qualities and, by the way, it’s available.” Point two. And then thirdly, the same kind of initial cost estimates for Holyrood didn’t look too dissimilar to the cost estimates that had been developed for some of the other sites. So I think you can understand that very quickly that moves from non-appearance to kind of front-line appearance.

12.30 pm

393. Mr Campbell QC: We have to understand, don’t we, that any cost estimates at this stage were not predicated on any design?

394. Mr McLeish: No. Sorry.

395. Mr Campbell QC: No, no. Don’t apologise. You’ve been very helpful to the Inquiry so far. Could I just say to you that I am trying to ask you straightforward neutral questions, not with an overtone or an implication. But in relation to Holyrood ... it comes forward, I think you’re telling us, are you, that it caught the imagination principally because of its location. Is that fair?

396. Mr McLeish: I think that’s fair, with all the characteristics I’ve described around that location.

397. Mr Campbell QC: All the characteristics you described.

398. Lord Fraser: One thing that slightly puzzles me, Mr McLeish, is, as I recollect, the Labour Party in Scotland and the Scottish National Party [SNP] campaigned on a common platform during the referendum campaign, and did so with some considerable success. But all along, Mr Alex Salmond, as the then leader of the Scottish National Party, had been indicating his preference for the Calton Hill. Then, as I understand that he is likely to tell this Inquiry, in about December of 1997 he gets a phone call from the Secretary of State, indicating that the Holyrood site is going to be included in the shortlist, at which point he and the Secretary of State have a somewhat explosive conversation and relations are damaged almost irretrievably when the announcement of the Holyrood site is made in January 1998. What slightly puzzles me is if this Holyrood site was seen as politically acceptable when a very significant political party in Scotland was already signalling its disagreement with that selection, why it was this relatively cautious Secretary of State, who had been campaigning very successfully alongside the SNP, took the risk of alienating them.

399. Mr McLeish: Can I first of all say, Chairman, that falling out with Alex Salmond is maybe something I don’t want to comment on, because I’ve done that myself. But I’d like to defend the Secretary of State on this issue because, whilst the Royal High School was part of the thinking for a very long period, the Secretary of State, I think, accepted that, it was the popular will of sentiment, the popular will of the Constitutional Convention, the popular will of the SNP, and generally people thought it was something that could be projected. In my knowing of the Secretary of State, he never, in my view, said that that was definitely going to be the site and everything else would be excluded forever. And so in that sense — he is nothing if not pragmatic — he looked very closely, and that’s why I think it has to be fair to him to say he did not give up on that site easily. Apart from the sentiment that surrounded it, he was willing to look very carefully at the inclusion of that along with modifications and buildings and developments around the top of Calton Hill and St Andrew’s House. But then it seemed to me that, as the process developed over a short space of time, he was not, he had never been enamoured with that site. He was not enamoured with the other options that had come before, and I think that something just sparked with Holyrood, which again I say that’s not unique or exclusive to Donald Dewar, and as a consequence that flowed into the options and then eventually it flowed in to be the successful site. Now I’m not trying to be glib, Chairman, because I do appreciate in politics that you say things, you agree things, but I just wonder why the Secretary of State was not keeping a lot of his options open, and obviously I didn’t have an insight into that conversation.

400. Lord Fraser: I think what I’m trying to discover is; was there a sort of, just an honest disagreement between Mr Salmond and the Secretary of State about which was to be the preferred site? Or were you in any way privy to any notion that this was a calculated decision by the Secretary of State that this was time to part company with the SNP?

401. Mr McLeish: As I said, I cannot read Donald Dewar’s mind all the time, but I wouldn’t think it had anything to do with the latter point you made, you know, this was just going to be a political division that he had created and that conversation was going to just kill off that relationship and assert that the Royal High School was out the window. I think it had been a process that had been evolving in his mind and, to be fair to the Secretary of State, I mean I’ve been on the sharp end of his tongue as well as being a Minister and he says what he thinks and he could be thran, but on the other hand it was often the issue when you thought about it was a point in principle, not just a cheap political point-scoring exercise.

402. Mr Campbell QC: Thank you. The emergence of Holyrood more or less coincided with presentations on other sites by other developers, would-be developers, professional teams who had an interest in seeing the developments in Leith or Haymarket or, indeed, on the High School, and some of these had been commissioned by civil servants, no doubt on the Minister’s instructions. Did you take part in looking at those demonstrations, those exhibitions, presentations?

403. Mr McLeish: I think I participated in some of them, yes.

404. Mr Campbell QC: I don’t want to dwell on them at the moment because, apart from anything else, we’re a little short of time, but did you regard those as part of the decision-making process or simply as information-gathering at that stage?

405. Mr McLeish: Information-gathering. Well, certainly not as part of the decision-making process.

406. Mr Campbell QC: Was there an expectation on your part, Mr McLeish, that, once that part of the process had been gone through, that you would eventually come to a point where you and your team, Donald Dewar and his team — I’m sorry — would come together to take a decision?

407. Mr McLeish: Yes, I mean, but in saying that it’s not in the sense that the Secretary of State says “tomorrow morning you’ll all be there and we’ll make a decision”. I mean it ebbs and flows, there are discussions, there are consultations, and then you might get a meeting around it. I mean, that’s the way the Government works in the absence of any formal mechanism for meetings.

408. Mr Campbell QC: Now the press was very active in speculating as to what decision would be reached at around this time, the tail end of 1997, and it wasn’t a secret that these presentations were going on to Ministers; indeed, some of them were made public at about the time they were presented to Ministers, no doubt with a view to extolling their various virtues. How important to Donald Dewar was it to know what the public was thinking and press were thinking about the various presentations that had come forward?

409. Mr McLeish: I can answer by saying that Donald Dewar was always very concerned about what the public was thinking and what the press were thinking, because it . . . we’ve a nation with a big heart here, but it’s a very small, intimate community and I think Donald Dewar was always concerned about what was written. That may come as a surprise to some members of the media; but on the other hand he was very, very sensitive to the kinds of things that were going on.

410. Mr Campbell QC: Do you recall a decision to hold off, or hold back, on the making of an announcement until Holyrood had been assessed further?

411. Mr McLeish: Well, only to the extent that I’ve read through some of the documentation, Mr Campbell, that that was the case. But clearly, once — I think the point I have to make, and I think the point that you’ve acknowledged, is that once Holyrood was seriously in the frame my judgement was that, all other things being equal, than that was going to be the successful site.

412. Mr Campbell QC: That you would date from when? Mr Clement’s letter which we’ve looked at, Miss Barr, if we could look at the previous page just to get the date again. I think 6 October 1997. Just bear with us a second . . . yes, there we are — my fault — 3 October.

413. Mr McLeish: I think once there was an insight into both parts of the site being available, once there had been some further evaluative studies of some of the emerging problems, as well as potential of that site, and before it got actually into detailed evaluation of the site, then it looked like that was going to be the likely — in my judgement; this is only my judgement I’m making — that was likely to be the winner.

414. Mr Campbell QC: In your mind at that time how was this decision going to be taken? By the Secretary of State in a darkened room? By a Committee? By a circle of Ministers? A circle of Ministers and officials? Consultations with the Queen? What was the likely scenario?

415. Mr McLeish: No, the Secretary of State would make the decision, but he would sound out the key players, the key participants in the process, and by I think a process of osmosis he would arrive at that outcome. It doesn’t sound particularly scientific, but a lot of politics isn’t.

416. Mr Campbell QC: Look at SE/2/796. I am showing Mr McLeish a minute from Mr Thompson, who was by then the Secretary of State’s Private Secretary, dated 8 December 1997, and that records Mr Gordon writing to, among other people, your own Private Secretary, saying that he, you and Mr Dewar had met with certain officials to discuss whether to undertake detailed feasibility studies of the Holyrood site for the Scottish Parliament. Now I would ask you to note the date of that as 8 December; so that’s two months and a week since DM Hall had written in to commend the Holyrood site. If you turn the page, you will find a media briefing of the 8th, or notes for a media briefing of 8 December and, if you turn the page again, a draft news release in which the Secretary of State goes public for the first time on the inclusion of Holyrood as a candidate site. I wonder if you can account to me for the quite substantial gap in time between October and 8 December before going public on Holyrood as a candidate site.

417. Mr McLeish: Well, I think obviously the coincidence of the letter coming in from the chartered surveyors is one issue which is the start of the process; and then I think there was internal work done on looking at Holyrood in the run-up to that, so I cannot shed any more light on why the imputation of what you’re saying is there was such a delay between the October and the December acceptance of that as one of the sites.

418. Mr Campbell QC: One of the points in the briefing which was made is that when studies are presented — that’s the studies of the site — on 15 December we’ll be looking at four sites: Leith, St Andrew’s House, Haymarket and Holyrood, and if you just take it from me that’s reflected in the news briefing.

419. Now, what happened, Mr McLeish, between 15 December 1997 and 9 January 1998? What process was then — if I can just remind you, we had now four candidate sites; we had presentations from professional people and internal work-ups. There were some attempts at costing, but based on a conventional basis that we’ve already discussed, and we have no doubt a good deal of public interest, because there had been a media briefing. Can you recall for me what, in ministerial circles, was going on in relation to the final decision?

420. Mr McLeish: Well, I think, if we’re talking about 15 December through 8 January I think, without being too flippant, Mr Campbell, that I think I and some others would be on holiday for most of that particular period. So I don’t think a lot would be happening, other than continuing work being done by the civil servants, but I certainly cannot recall — that doesn’t mean to say that something might not have happened in that period, because it’s a traditional vacation period, and that would be roughly the time when we were doing some odd things.

421. Mr Campbell QC: Just a couple more documents, if I may, and I’m watching the clock.

12.45 pm

422. As I understand the position, the Secretary of State looked at all four options on 15 December at a presentation which was given to him and Ministers. As I understand the position, he took a view that he wasn’t yet in a position to make a final decision. Does that accord with your recollection?

423. Mr McLeish: Yes.

424. Mr Campbell QC: Do you recall what instructions he gave so that he could put himself in a position to take a final decision?

425. Mr McLeish: I can’t recall what instructions, if any, were given.

426. Mr Campbell QC: Now, clearly, we are getting into holiday periods, and so forth, although it does appear that civil servants worked right through on this matter. What I’m interested to try and pin down is we know that a decision was made in the early days of January 1998. Why was it felt important, at that time, to get to a decision so quickly?

427. Mr McLeish: I’m probably in danger of repeating myself, but once the process was started — I mean we were actually just less than seven months away from the election campaign itself by then, and if you consider what has happened up to that point, then this desire to keep the dynamic running is clearly evident.

428. Mr Campbell QC: Including a desire to make this very important decisions?

429. Mr McLeish: Well, I think so, because in a sense the Chairman has referred to some discussions that Mr Salmond had with Mr Dewar. I think the Secretary of State was aware that it is OK to extend options; it is OK to include their Old Royal High School when people still think that that’s maybe one of the favourites. It is an entirely different thing to then move to a point where you are going to be saying very publicly that that is not going to be an option, and, of course, Holyrood has, at the end of the day, made it through and is likely to be the preferred option. So, I think, reading between the lines even, it would be clear and evident. So, I think the Secretary of State was just characteristically exercising the caution he has; the political concerns that were surrounding that; and to make absolutely sure that at that point in the option process, that if this was coming up just after a letter from chartered surveyors, he needed to look at it very carefully, and make sure there were no hidden traps or any extraordinary problems that couldn’t be overcome by technicalities and finance.

430. Mr Campbell QC: I’d like to put to your point of view, which has been expressed by one of your political opponents, which is that once Holyrood came forward — because of the imaginative location and all the assets that you’ve described earlier — that it was really a forgone conclusion from then.

431. Mr McLeish: I think I’ve explained to you that I would share that sentiment, but for a lot of very positive reasons. I don’t think, for example, if the political opponents you’re talking about were nationalist, that Mr Donald Dewar elaborately contrived this so that we could bump the Old Royal High School. That was never a consideration, and I think, if anything, Holyrood appeared as a very imaginative and challenging opportunity, which the Secretary of State, I think — and I think it says somewhere in the documentation — was very taken by.

432. Mr Campbell QC: I mean, you might describe it as a godsend.

433. Mr McLeish: You might, but I think in terms of…

434. Mr Campbell QC: Would you?

435. Mr McLeish: No. I think in terms of the process — I think, I come back to this point, and I’m sorry it’s laborious, but, you know, you’re looking at a situation where you’re looking at sites. All of a sudden, in a moment in time, a site comes up. It would be difficult to say what would have happened if it hadn’t come up, because you can’t rewrite history, but when it did come up, fortuitously, I think it was a site that was certainly worthy of consideration, certainly worthy of a Parliament, and I hope that when it’s finished, it will reinforce that central message. But I don’t think it was for any other reason, and whether it was fortuitous or not is by the way. It was a good site, a site worthy of consideration, and that’s why I think the Secretary of State was so taken by it.

436. Mr Campbell QC: Was there ever an acceptance amongst Ministers that the Old Royal High School and the St Andrew’s House conversion would have been a worthy site, absent any other more attractive candidates?

437. Mr McLeish: I think so, because it had some of the sentiment, some of the significance, some of the qualities that were eventually found at Holyrood. I don’t think the other sites that were essentially greenfield, essentially would have been pristine buildings — a very modern approach to Scotland’s future — but I think Calton Hill did have that, although it would’ve been the Old Royal High School playing a very small part of it, and I would’ve preferred the complex with St Andrew’s House, Calton Hill, Regent Road being conceived as — I think the phrase was — as a “parliamentary campus”. On a good location, looking over many of the areas that Holyrood does open up to, and as a consequence, I think that would have been a good site.

438. Mr Campbell QC: Absent Holyrood, might that have been a successful candidate?

439. Mr McLeish: I’d like to have thought so.

440. Mr Campbell QC: Can you recall from new year 1997, through to the date of decision, whether you were part of a consultation of any kind leading up to the Secretary of State taking a decision?

441. Mr McLeish: Yes, I would be part of that, although I think Mr Galbraith said that he might have just been involved in formal discussions. That may have been true. But I recall the Ministers were involved to a certain extent, informally and formally, before the Secretary of State would make a decision.

442. Mr Campbell QC: If I could just backtrack a little, since you mentioned Mr Galbraith — it’s jogged my memory.

443. Mr McLeish: I knew there was going to be a downside to that.

444. Mr Campbell QC: Well, there may not be a downside. A view was expressed yesterday, which I think I need to put to you, which is this: it was important to make progress with the nuts and bolts of a Parliament, because to have handed it over — to use Mr Galbriath’s expression — an immature young Parliament — I don’t think he meant that in a pejorative way at all — to have handed it over to new Members, new officials, a new building, a new legislation, would’ve been a recipe for in-fighting, self-destruction, squabbling, and so forth. Was that any part of your thinking?

445. Mr McLeish: No. I choose my words carefully here. I mean it is very distinctively Sam. He speaks his mind. And the point about being pejorative, I think the relaxed laughter from the audience suggested that might not be the case. No. I just disagree fundamentally with the point that was made.

446. Mr Campbell QC: Well, I mean I see the humorous side of it, of course, because I’m not immune to humour. I also see the serious side of it — his point — which I think he meant us to take on board, which is that you were giving to completely untested recipients a huge thing to achieve, and because they were of a variety of political dimensions, elected in a different way from the “first past the post” system, and so forth, you were handing over the job to a completely untested and untried group of people. Wasn’t that part of Mr Dewar’s thinking too — part of the need for the impetus and momentum?

447. Mr McLeish: Well, I’m not sure. I wouldn’t like to implant some of Sam’s thoughts into anyone. But let’s just maybe, if I can respond by saying that we did eventually pass this over to the Parliament, immature as Sam thought they might be, in June 1999. But, you know, in politics and in a new democracy, we may not want to give them responsibility for their own Parliament, but we do allow them to spend £22 billion on behalf of the people of Scotland, allow them then to pass 30 pieces of legislation, set up a select committee system which is the envy of most regional governments in Europe, and to get involved with areas of public policy that Westminster could not match, and, indeed, have very distinctive policies, if you don’t mind me saying so, like free personal care and tuition fees, which were the hallmark — maybe, in Sam’s eyes, not of maturity — but, certainly, in terms of making Scotland different. So I just don’t think that wears, and if, at the end of the day we had thought that, with all our other activities at Westminster, we could have left this, that I don’t think the question of newness was going to matter, because eventually, two years later, that’s what we’ve actually done, and I’d like to have more faith in the new Parliament than Sam could have.

448. Mr Campbell QC: But the points you make, although strong, are all points which you have developed with the benefit of hindsight. You’ve seen what the Parliament has achieved over time. Put yourself in the position — let me finish the question — of somebody who was a decision-maker in 1997. Was it not part of that matrix of fact coming into the decision that you were potentially going to hand this over to a gaggle of people? You had no idea who they were, or what they were going to be, or what their make-up was.

449. Mr McLeish: There is a legitimacy in Sam’s argument that we were elected at Westminster. We were elected with a manifesto. We had tasks to be doing, so, therefore, it was absolutely right to do that. But, on the other hand, I’m just not convinced that if the Parliament had been…if we’d decided to either work up options, leave decisions, or not work up options, but leave it all to the Parliament, the timescale would not have been immensely different. Ownership would’ve been acquired by the parliamentarians, and then they would have been subject to the wrath of the media, and the Scottish people, if they…and what has happened is, some people suggest that we have the worst of both worlds — a situation where we did develop a scheme, pass it over £109 million in June 1999, and then what has actually happened is it’s now £400 million. So, a debate in Scotland, with the parliamentarians in Scotland responsible, might’ve actually been one solution. However, that is history being rewritten.

450. Mr Campbell QC: I’ll take that from you. Mr McLeish, it’s five to one, and I’m going to have to ask you, on another occasion, to return to discuss with me the question of the architectural competition, and I’m sorry about that. I’m grateful to you for your forthrightness and helpfulness this morning. I’d like to finish this session, if I may, by referring you back to the Inquiry’s remit — part of which is the review of policy decisions, in relation to the Holyrood project, taken prior to its transfer to the corporate body. You’ve told us of your distinguished career as Devolution Minister, Scottish Office Minister, First Minister, and Member of the Scottish Parliament. From that experience, up to the point we’ve got, what do you think are the main lessons that the inquiry should learn in relation to the procurement of major public buildings?

451. Mr McLeish: Well, I shouldn’t really be so presumptuous at this early stage of the inquiry to be saying anything, but for what it’s worth, what I’d like to say is that at ministerial level, in both Westminster and Edinburgh, I don’t think there is — and I use the word advisedly — sufficient capacity in government to handle some of the projects that we currently handle. The Scottish Parliament will be a unique project. It may never be replicated in this country again. But, on the other hand, I do think, Chairman, that what we want to be looking at in terms of the inquiry is how we handle big projects, what capacity exists within the Civil Service and at ministerial level to do that, and whether or not one of the great myths of Scotland should be overcome and we do engage the private sector, the rest of Scotland, in a much more significant way. I think the civil servants do a fantastic job. I have nothing but respect for the work that they’ve done on everything I’ve been involved in, but it becomes a question of competence and capacity, and that is one of the areas I think, Chairman, that we should look at.

1.00pm

452. The second point I think which I would stress is that I would hope that we look for lessons to be learned, because in public policy-making it is not a perfect process, but I do believe that what we need to do is to make sure that we have a consensus around symbolic, big issues that affect our country more than most, and I touch on the Consultative Steering Group how the Parliament was. I think the same argument could’ve been made for the Scottish Parliament. I don’t mean designed by Committee, decision by Committee, but just saying to the Alex Salmonds of the world, to the Jim Wallaces of the world, to the back benchers involved; “yes, it is your Parliament, it is Scotland’s Parliament, but maybe you deserve to have a bigger say in it.” It’s a consensual approach that regional government should have. We should not ape or mirror the Westminster model, which is still too adversarial.

453. And a third point, if this is a point I could conclude on, which is not really part of my brief today, but I am seriously perplexed about how we could bring a package to Scotland, costing £109 million. The Auditor General, a few months later, looks at £195 million, and thinks that a Parliament could be built for that, and then between mid-2000 and now, the cost has gone up to £400 million. I think there has to be some searching, some searchlights aimed, at project management, cost control and whether or not the SPCB [Scottish Parliamentary Corporate Body] had the right level of support for them to control key decisions; for example, we are going to have a security system, I believe, at the Parliament, which may not have any parallels in the developed world. After September 11, I know the need for security, but how much? Who decided? So, these are the kind of issues, Chairman — forgive me for digressing slightly. Can I also say that, because I was in America, and because I was in Cambridge, I haven’t been able to spend as much time on this, but I’d be very pleased to help in any further way I can with the Inquiry.

454. Mr Campbell QC: Thank you, Mr McLeish. I’m much obliged.

455. Lord Fraser: I’m very much obliged to you. I regret that time has run out, but I’m sure that all those who’ve been participating in it are very appreciative of the time and the work that you’ve done in preparation for it. Thank you very much. I should say that we now have this afternoon the two Special Advisers to the late Secretary of State, Ms Wendy Alexander and Lord Elder. We are hoping to conclude their evidence this afternoon, and accordingly we’ll begin at 1.45pm, concluding sharply though at 4.00pm.

Hearing adjourned at 1.01 pm.