ANOTHER VOICE
Never mind Access, Mr Lamont's political credit-rating is nil
CHARLES MOORE
Mr Major's government is keen on 'contracting out'. It is part of the Citizen's Charter that public services need not nec- essarily be provided by public servants. But one object of the exercise is that the service offered by the private contractor is cheap- er. Perhaps it was for this reason that the Government did not publicise its decision to contract out the handling of the Chan- cellor's difficulties with the News of the World in April last year to Mr Peter Carter- Ruck. For Mr Carter-Ruck is expensive. The Treasury had to find £4,700 for his advice to Mr Lamont.
The claim is that it had little choice. It was a weekend, you see, and the Treasury solicitors and Treasury press, completely unprepared for the fact that the News of the World appears on a Sunday, could not pos- sibly cope with rebutting the story about the 'sex therapist' to whom the Chancellor had let his house. Mr Carter-Ruck could. But it is quaint of the Treasury to say that Mr Carter-Ruck was brought in 'to handle press inquiries'. If you are the press, and your inquiry is referred to Mr Carter-Ruck, you know that he is not present to provide government information. That is not the historic role of libel lawyers. This was not an exercise in open government.
It is hard to follow the argument that the retaining of Mr Carter-Ruck was essential to the Chancellor's performance of his pub- lic duties. Mr Lamont was very unlucky in having Miss Whiplash as a tenant, but it was surely a private matter for him to sort out. (Or is he suggesting that if he had been an ordinary citizen he would happily have kept her on, whipping away in his base- ment?) A parallel might be: suppose Mr Lamont has gall-stones. The gall-stones debilitate him and so he does his job less well. He wants to have them out, but if he does so on the National Health he will have to wait ten months. He therefore has them removed privately at once. That certainly helps him do his job better. But would any- one suggest that the Treasury pay the medi- cal bill?
On the Carter-Ruck affair, then, Mr Lamont and the Treasury look weaker than has generally been said. On the matter of the Access card, he looks stronger. Three days after the Chancellor used his card to buy three bottles of wine at Thresher's I received a Telemessage from 200 Priory Crescent, Southend-on-Sea. It told me to ring a number at once and to 'make no fur- ther use of my credit-card facility'. Like Mr Lamont, I had spent over my credit limit, which is very easy to do unless one is pm- dent and numerate enough to add up as one goes along. My monthly cheque gen- uinely was in the post and the use of the card was returned to me as soon as it was cleared. I am biased, of course, but I don't think I or Mr Lamont behaved badly, and I do think Mr Lamont was cruelly treated by the leaking of his Access details. 'The inno- cent have nothing to fear' would be one reply. It is the reply always made by police- men and officials trying to take more power over our lives. The story does not show that Mr Lamont is incompetent at running the economy. The only political point to be made is that when credit was fashionable this sort of thing seldom happened. When- ever I accidentally overspent my limit four or five years ago I used to receive a letter from Access saying, 'Your application for an increase in your credit limit has been approved.' Today, when borrowing is bad, you get the peremptory Telemessage.
Anyway, the details of these arguments are not really relevant since it is blindingly obvious that Mr Lamont must go, as it has been since 16 September. Because his poli- cy failed, his political credit-rating is nil. From that fact flow all the other embarrass- ments. He could spend every evening in the Thresher of his choice, and no one would mind, if he had an economic policy that people could believe in. As it is, he is reduced to rowing about whether or not he bought a packet of Raffles cigarettes. There is another respect, however, in which the Carter-Ruck and the Access affairs are interesting. They relate to the poverty of Cabinet ministers. Mr Lamont earns £63,047 a year and nothing else, including nothing from Mrs Lamont. This makes him much richer than most people, but much poorer than most people with whom he has to deal, such as senior jour- nalists, foreign politicians, City business- men and Mr Carter-Ruck. He has been a minister since 1979 and so has had no chance to recoup. He has two children at boarding school. As he and Mrs Lamont struggle to keep up appearances, they get pretty desperate. Hence the disputed bill at the Grand Hotel, Brighton, hence every- thing else. Hence David Mellor's chauffeur and David Mellor's holiday with Mona Bauwens and David Mellor's use of a rich man's flat. Hence the stream of memoirs that pours from ex-ministerial pens. Hence Mr Douglas Hurd's thrillers and Sir Edward Heath advertising Lymeswold and Lord Lawson being a director of Guinness Part Aviation. Hence Mrs John Patten earning squillions as a management consul- tant and Mrs Michael Portillo doing ditto as a head-hunter. It is quite expensive being a Cabinet minister — particularly being a Tory Cabinet minister, because you tend to move in a swankier social circle — and very tiring and often irksome because of the press; and if you cannot afford the comfort and protection which money pro- vides, you get in a bad temper. You also come to believe, after so long in office, that you are somehow entitled to a better life than is provided, and to holding on to office at the same time. It is not so much the arrogance of power, more the self-pity of it. It says something for the probity of our hard-pressed ministers, or possibly for our lack of open government, that there has not been a serious financial scandal involving a Cabinet minister since 1979.
It would obviously be nice if all ministers just stopped worrying and lived quietly within their means. But it is too much to ask. Virtually everyone in politics nowadays is a professional politician and has been one almost all their adult life. That is sad, but it is a fact. So if politics is to attract good professionals, it must employ the usual methods, the chief of which is more money. If Cabinet ministers were paid £120,000 a year, many good people who at present prefer the comfort of being a lawyer or doctor or banker would consider becoming a Cabinet minister, and the coun- try might then be better governed. Greed and power-lust would not be abolished, of course, but they would be more decently cloaked.
This will not happen because of the pub- lic hatred of paying money to politicians. And so one must predict more scandals and more work for Mr Carter-Ruck. I am told that among those cases whose legal costs were being 'taxed' by the courts last week was that of Too Good Ltd v. Rent-a- Minister.
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