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Lord Butler of Brockwell: Lord Speaker's Corner

23 October 2024

‘I'd heard bombs before, so I knew it was a bomb.’

Forty years ago this month, Robin Butler - Principle Private Secretary to Margaret Thatcher - was in the room with the prime minister when the Brighton bomb exploded nearby in their hotel.

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Lord Speaker:

Lord Butler, Robin, I'm delighted that you've agreed to come along and have a conversation on Lord Speaker's podcast.

Lord Butler:

I feel very honoured, John. Thank you for asking me.

Lord Speaker:

You've had a distinguished career, Harrow and Oxford, and I think you went into the Civil Service straight away. And you'd been in the Civil Service for 37 years, retiring in 1998.

Lord Butler:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

You've been private secretary to a number of prime ministers, including Edward Heath, and you've also been cabinet secretary. So just to get a flavour of that from you, I think, would be important. For example, why did you choose the Civil Service when you had a range of opportunities coming out of Oxford?

Lord Butler:

Well, my father, who was a great influence on me, wanted me to be a lawyer. And I was a sort of third generation. My grandfather had started a paint company. My father married into it. And by that time, it was rather crowded. So anyway, it was sort of third generation. And I think third generation, your parents like you to go into the professions, so he took me along to the law courts. And he took me into a case where there was a barrister cross-examining a woman in a contested divorce case. And it shocked me, because he was doing a very professional job, very courteous, but it was her life he was taking to bits. And I felt I can't do that. Especially in those days, there was still capital punishment. I imagined myself cross-examining somebody for their life. So I didn't do that. Now, what attracted me into the Civil Service? Well, I was an idealist young man. I wanted to do something in public service. And I'm sorry to say, I was also a competitive young man.

Lord Speaker:

Oh, you liked sport?

Lord Butler:

I liked sport. And the civil service had a competitive exam, and so I thought, "Well..."

Lord Speaker:

But you came first.

Lord Butler:

I came first, yeah. And I don't quite know how.

Lord Speaker:

Oh, yeah. 37 years later, and you come into the House of Lords in 1998, I believe.

Lord Butler:

Yes, when I retired as cabinet secretary.

Lord Speaker:

As you know, politics is in flux. It's always in flux, politics. Not any different. But the issue at the moment is change with the new government coming in. And you have seen change. And if I'm correct, that you were private secretary to Edward Heath to begin with. I think in one of your interviews you said you'd a real affection for Edward Heath. Why was that?

Lord Butler:

Well, I thought that he was a serious man. He was very reserved. He didn't have many social graces, but he was also a kind man. He'd lived through the war. He was a one nation politician. And of course, he had the ideal of getting Britain into Europe, which he succeeded in doing. And I think he had the vision during times that were difficult for industrial relations, that Britain would thrive economically if government, business, and the trade unions worked together. That's what he was aiming to achieve. And I thought that was a good objective.

Lord Speaker:

He had an incomes policy, didn't he?

Lord Butler:

Had an incomes policy and a prices policy. And of course, in the end, he couldn't get the cooperation of the NUM. He had a good relationship with the NUM general secretary, Joe Gormley. But the executive, which included Arthur Scargill and Mick McGahey, they were determined not to accept. And so in the end, the NUM strike went ahead and the coal was running out of the power stations. And so really, Heath was driven into an election, which he didn't want.

Lord Speaker:

Is it the case that both Edward Heath and Harold Wilson, regarding Europe, showed exceptional skills?

Lord Butler:

Yes, they did. But Harold Wilson perhaps particularly. Because of course, you'll recall, I mean the Labour Party was divided over Europe.

Lord Speaker:

Very familiar.

Lord Butler:

Yes. There was a pledge that they would renegotiate the terms. That was what Harold Wilson offered to the party. And he kept his cards very close to his chest so that people really didn't know whether he was in favour of staying in Europe or leaving. He was in fact in favour of staying. And I always remember, when they were getting through the end of the renegotiation of terms, he had entertained Helmut Schmidt at Chequers the weekend before. None of us were present. There were no private secretaries. They talked privately. And I'm sure that he agreed with Helmut Schmidt the deal that Helmut Schmidt was prepared to give Britain. That was on the weekend before. During the week there was a Cabinet meeting, and there were the sceptics in the Cabinet, Tony Benn, Varley, Peter Shaw. And Harold Wilson said to the Cabinet, "This is my red line. If I can get these, I will recommend that people stay. But if I can't get these, I shall recommend that in the referendum that Britain leaves." And they seem very ambitious terms.

Lord Speaker:

Do you think preparatory work had been done beforehand?

Lord Butler:

He'd fixed it with-

Lord Speaker:

Exactly.

Lord Butler:

... Helmut Schmidt. And as it happened, I was the private secretary on duty that weekend. And on the, I think it must have been the Friday night, Harold Wilson was making a speech to the Society of London Labour mayors. And he said at this speech, "If I can get these terms, I will recommend that Britain stays in." And suddenly the Euroskepticism Cabinet saw the trap that was opening up. And I was on duty and they rang me up and said, "Who authorised the prime minister to say this?" And I said, "Well, if you look at the Cabinet minutes, you'll see that he said that if he couldn't get these terms, he'd recommend we leave. And the opposite is also true." And of course, he did get the terms, recommended that Britain voted yes in the referendum. And the referendum was won by two thirds to one third.

Lord Speaker:

And you were cabinet secretary when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. You experienced many things, relationship with the trade unions, the change there, the Brighton bomb. Give us a flavour of your time and your personal engagement with Margaret Thatcher.

Lord Butler:

Well, just to say that I had the great privilege of working very closely, seeing very close at hand five prime ministers. And I admired them all. They all had different qualities. But whatever the media might suggest, there wasn't one of them who's a knave or a fool. Margaret Thatcher was the most demanding. I mean by this, that she didn't care what time she went to bed, so you sat up long into the night. And when she had a big speech coming up, those were terrible times. Because two, three, four in the morning you'd sit there, and she was arguing whether ‘would’ should be ‘could’ or ‘and’ should be ‘but’ until you wanted to die. So she was very demanding. On the other hand, her great advantage was you didn't have to ask her what she thought. That was-

Lord Speaker:

The message had clarity.

Lord Butler:

Clarity, but also steadfastness. And for somebody like me working for her, if she thought that you were doing your best for her, she would always stand by you. It wasn't true of some of her Cabinet colleagues, but certainly for us as staff. You knew where you were with her.

Lord Speaker:

In Brighton at the time, am I correct in saying that her demands led you to being in her room at about three o'clock in the morning, and you feel that had you not had that meeting, she could have been a victim?

Lord Butler:

Oh, there's no doubt of it.

Lord Speaker:

Was she moved?

Lord Butler:

She'd finished her speech unusually early for the pre-conference speech. I was there not for the politics, but because there was always Number 10 business to be done, and I also did some checking on the facts in the speech. And she'd finished the speech. The speech writers had gone, and there was a piece of paper on which the Number 10 office wanted a decision by the next morning. So I said to her, "Would you look at this overnight and let me know at breakfast what your decision is?" And she said, "If you don't mind, I'll do it now, and then I can forget about it and concentrate on thinking about the speech."

So she was sitting in her chair in her sitting room looking at this piece of paper. I was at the chair sitting like I'm sitting with you now, looking forward to getting to bed. And then there was suddenly this mighty explosion. And I'd heard bombs before, so I knew it was a bomb. I suddenly came to, and I thought, "You're alone with the prime minister. Somebody's trying to blow her up. You better do something sensible." So I said to her, "I think you should come away from the windows in case there's another bomb." She didn't hesitate for a moment. She said, "I must see if Denis is all right."

So she goes to the bedroom, opens the door, bedroom in darkness. And you could hear the sounds of falling masonry through, because it was the bathroom that was collapsing. And I should have said, "Stand back, prime minister. This is a job for somebody more dispensable than you." but I had my inhibitions, so she went in. And a moment or two later, she came out with Dennis pulling his grey flannel trousers over his pyjamas. We went out into the corridor and we looked up the corridor, and amazingly the lights had stayed on despite this huge explosion in the hotel.

And when we looked up, the next suite along, we saw what looked like smoke coming out from under the door. And that was the suite that Geoffrey Howe had. So I thought the bomb must have been in there. And again, I'll never forget it, his security man was running at the door trying to kick it in so that... And luckily he failed because there had been a void the other side of the door. Geoffrey came out from the next room along, which was their bedroom, and came down. And while we were standing there, a fireman appeared because it was a very quick response. The fireman said, "Follow me," so we followed him down the corridor.

As I say, the lights were still on. The corridor was a cul-de-sac. So he said, "Follow me back," so we followed him back, went down the main stairs of the hotel. And we thought maybe the bomb had been at the reception desk, and Margaret Thatcher broke off and went to see whether the people behind the reception desk were okay, which they were. And then we were taken out of the back, and then Margaret Thatcher was taken off to Hove Police Station. Remembering that all the Number 10 papers had been left about, our clothes were all still up there... With one of her protection officers, I went back up, not realising that the hotel was hanging by a thread above my head, and packed everything up and came down and then went on and joined them at the police station.

Lord Speaker:

So it was fortuitous that she had that meeting with you in the bedroom at that time?

Lord Butler:

Well, I think so. I mean, certainly if she'd gone to the bathroom, she'd have suffered something. I mean, I don't know whether it would have been fatal. But yes, I mean it was-

Lord Speaker:

Did you try and dissuade her from speaking to the conference early the next morning?

Lord Butler:

I did. We were taken off to Lewes Police Training College, and she was given a room. I kipped down in the day room where there was a television and a telephone. And John Gummer rang up at about half past five, I suppose, and said, "It's much worse than we thought.” There were already fatalities. “And they're digging for John Wakeham and for Norman Tebbit in the wreckage of the hotel." And he said, "Television's here," so I turned on the television and watched what was happening and saw Norman Tebbit being brought out badly injured. And they still hadn't found John Wakeham. Anyway, I thought, "Well, shall I wake up Margaret Thatcher and tell her?" And then I thought, "No, I mean, best she gets some sleep."

So at eight o'clock, she appears. I rescued her clothes, so she was in her day clothes. And I said, "Prime minister, I'm afraid it's bad and we lost five people. John Wakeham, still not brought out. Norman Tebbit, badly injured." She didn't hesitate for a moment. She said, "Well, the conference is due to begin at 9:30, and we must make sure it begins on time." And I was appalled. I said to her, "This terrible thing's happened. Some of your closest colleagues have been killed and badly injured. You can't be going on with a party conference." And she said, "This is our opportunity to show that terrorism can't defeat democracy." Of course, she was right and I was wrong, and that's what she did demonstrate. And at 9:30, there she was on the platform saying, "We're shaken, but not daunted."

Lord Speaker:

Have you ever contradicted a Cabinet minister or a prime minister and had your way?

Lord Butler:

Well, I certainly advised them not to do things. I mean with Margaret Thatcher, she never yielded an inch when you advised her about something. However, next time the subject came up, you often found that she'd subtly changed her position. I mean, you would've seen it. But her instinct was if somebody had a go at her, she immediately punched back. She wouldn't concede anything. But she would think about it. Can I tell you a story about that?

Lord Speaker:

Sure.

Lord Butler:

After she ceased to be prime minister and I'd retired and I went to my college at Oxford, I invited her to come and speak. And she said, "What shall I do?" I said, "Well, if you'd confine yourself just 10 minutes, because what the students will remember is the questions they ask you." So she did, and she said, "There's two things I want to tell you. One is that more casualties were lost in the last century through wars." And she said, "So you must always stand up for freedom and justice." And then she said, "Home, when I was growing up, 5% of children were born illegitimate, and now it's more than 30% and growing." What she meant was one parent family.

And when it came to questions, a young man said to her, "Lady Thatcher, don't you think it's a little unfair to label a child illegitimate throughout its life when it's had no influence over the circumstances of its birth?" And she said, "Well, what would you call them? I can think of another word, but you'd think that even worse." So anyway, the moment passed and we had dinner. As we were about to go home, we were having a whisky in my lodgings, and we were talking about something completely different. And she suddenly said, "You know, Robin, that young man who asked me about the word illegitimate, he had a point, didn't he?" And I'll bet she never used the word illegitimate again.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. Very good, very good. You were also cabinet secretary with John Major, and you were there when the IRA bomb hit the Cabinet room as a result. But you say that John Major had a great influence on the Good Friday Agreement as it went along. Maybe he hasn't been recognised sufficiently for that. Can you give us an insight into what he did? I know he had a good relationship with Albert Reynolds. I know he said in the House of Commons, and I was there, that engagement with the IRA would turn his stomach, whilst he was engaged in that. So it took quite a bit of bravery, I would imagine, there.

Lord Butler:

It did. I think actually Tony Blair very generously recognised what John Major had done, laying the foundations for it with the Downing Street Declaration. But the moment that I remember was I was in the Cabinet room with John Major when somebody came in from the Northern Ireland office and said we've had this message, which was alleged to have come from McGuinness, saying the conflict is over and he must help us to bring it to an end. So that immediately raised the issue whether and how the government should respond. And of course, I mean, it was absolutely cardinal at that point that the government didn't negotiate with the IRA, well, until they'd given up their armed struggle. And so they had to decide what to do that.

And the Cabinet was split. Some people said, "This is a trap. Don't respond." And John Major said, "Well, maybe it is a trap. But just suppose it isn't and we can make progress, and think of all the lives that we'll save." And so a response was prepared and was sent. Then there was the Warrington bomb, which brought everything to an end. But that was a very brave thing to do. And of course it was a trap, because I suppose that must have been February, March that the message, "The conflict is over," came. I think it was probably in September that the story, I imagine by the IRA, was leaked to The Times that the government had had these exchanges. And Paddy Mayhew, who was the Northern Ireland secretary, had to go and make a statement to the House. And to their great credit, the opposition parties said, "We think you took the right decision," and they supported it. So that did lead up to the Downing Street Declaration, and that was a first step towards the Good Friday Agreement.

Lord Speaker:

You were Cabinet Secretary and head of the home Civil Service at the same time. And I think you've been asked if it's a good idea to separate them. During that time and other times of crisis, was it of assistance that you held both posts simultaneously?

Lord Butler:

Yes, I think it was of great assistance. Because with the best will in the world, prime ministers are very busy people. Somebody who is just the head of the Civil Service doesn't get great access because prime minister's has got other things to do, and manage the Civil Service. But the Cabinet Secretary does all the time. And so, I think it was in the interests of the Civil Service that through being Cabinet Secretary, I could discuss Civil Service issues with the prime minister and had very good access. So yes, I think it's much better the two posts are combined.

Lord Speaker:

Things have changed now, or purportedly changed with the Civil Service and the relationship with ministers. And we have spads coming in as well. What's your view on that? Because you've said that the Civil Service is a professional body. And irrespective of who's prime minister, the cabinet secretary, the advice is the same and the objectivity is paramount. So give us your historic reflection on that.

Lord Butler:

Well, I think that that impartiality of the Civil Service is an essential part of our system. I think it’s served Britain very well. But I think politics has changed.

Lord Speaker:

Well.

Lord Butler:

I mean, the way I sometimes put it, it's a bit of a sound bite, but I think today I get the impression that ministers have become more interested in politics and less interested in government. Of course, I mean, as a civil servant, I devoted my life to assisting politicians with government. Now, I am absolutely not against political advisers. During the time that I was a private secretary in Number 10, and while I was cabinet secretary, Harold Wilson had political advisers, Bernard Donoughue and Joe Haines. Not as many as there are now, certainly. And Margaret Thatcher did. But we worked terribly harmoniously together. We all felt, I think, it was a tremendous privilege to be working in this office.

And Bernard Donoughue has become one of my closest friends. Sarah Hogg from John Major's office, although she doesn't come to the House of Lords very much. And we felt like a family. So it greatly saddens me now to think that there is a sense of us and them between the political advisors and the civil servants. And I regret it. I think Number 10 has suffered from it. I think some of the things that have happened, like Partygate, I connect up with there being too many special advisors. I mean, there are other causes as well, but I think that our government is the worse for it.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely. In terms of governance, I think Tony Blair had an interview with The Observer very recently, and people were talking about reforming the Civil Service. And Blair almost said, "Look, it's no use. You can't reform the Civil Service." He wasn't doing that in a condemnatory way, but he was saying, "Look, try and get on with politics. Forget the bureaucracy as the main issue." Would you agree with that?

Lord Butler:

Well, yes, I would. I mean, actually, I think you have got to reform the Civil Service. You've got to reform it constantly. I mean, the Civil Service has got to be kept up to the mark. And the Civil Service doesn't have the spur that private enterprise often has, the profit motive and all that. The Civil Service is doing things with other people's money, with taxpayers' money. It hasn't got a motive to be at the forefront of... And so, you've got to get them to do that. But you've got to lead the Civil Service in my view, and not drive them. You've got to do a bit of driving as well. But when John Major was prime minister, we had the Next Steps Initiative and various programmes of reform like that. Now, none of them is ever the end of the story, so you've got to keep at it. But I think, as I say, leadership is the right thing.

Lord Speaker:

And you're saying that leadership is walking alongside people rather than dragging them along?

Lord Butler:

I do. I think that. And certainly not foul-mouthing them. I take as my model Field Marshall Slim, in Burma, inheriting that terrible situation when the Japanese were advancing. He was a hard taskmaster, but he was a fair taskmaster, and people respected him. So I think that you get a better response from people in those circumstances than telling them they're rubbish.

Lord Speaker:

What are the characteristics of a good minister, in general, for the Civil Service?

Lord Butler:

I think it helps if they've got clarity of mind, they know where they're going, and firm principles. But also standing by, standing on the course that they've set themselves. So I think clarity and firmness, but also the willingness to listen. We talked a little earlier in this interview about Margaret Thatcher who you didn't think you were making any impression on her, but actually she listened very carefully to what... And all the prime ministers I worked with did. So give your advisers a fair hearing. But then it's your role to decide. And then it's the role of the Civil Service, whether they think the right decision's been taken or not. As long as it's not an illegal decision or an immoral decision, then to try to implement it to the best of their ability.

Lord Speaker:

The Civil Service has very intelligent people. But some would say that a lot of them are generalists, whereas you need some with skills and experience. And they would point to government projects that have gone awry, for example, in defence with procurement. And we know there's a litany, stuff like that. We've got HS2 as a result of that. We've got tax credits which went wrong. How do we change that?

Lord Butler:

Well, I think you've got to bring in the experts. And you've also got to-

Lord Speaker:

Well, we've not been good at that to date.

Lord Butler:

No, we haven't always, I think. I think there's a long history to this.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, of course.

Lord Butler:

I mean, you're going right back to Northcote-Trevelyan. It's a extraordinary thing to remember that when I was applying for the Civil Service, there were two forms of recruitment, method one, method two. Method one was an academic exam. So they did take generalists. I was a generalist, and I knew that-

Lord Speaker:

That's no condemnation of generalists.

Lord Butler:

No. I mean, but there's a place for generalists. You help the ministers with their speeches, their advice, answering their letters and so on. But when you've got a technical borderline, then you need specialists to do that. I had quite an admiration for what Dominic Cummings said. I didn't approve of Dominic Cummings' methods, and I didn't like his style. But challenging the Civil Service and bringing in experts who can supplement the skills of the generalists is essential.

Lord Speaker:

And trust in politics, they say it's lowest now. But there's always been an issue with politicians and trust, as we know that. How do you think that could be reversed in part in terms of trust? What should government do as a result of that?

Lord Butler:

Well, I think government should behave properly. Ministers should have high standards. Members of Parliament should have high standards. The Age of Deference is gone, and that's a good thing. The other thing, of course, that would restore trust in politics, nobody would want it. A really good crisis restores trust in politics. Because if-

Lord Speaker:

That's the Civil Service at its best, isn't it?

Lord Butler:

It is. But it's also... it can be politicians at their best. They give a lead. I mean, I remember when the Falklands were invaded. And our troops went out there and they were in danger. Suddenly the whole tone of the media changed, and people cared terribly about what happened. But what the ministers said... Now, nobody wants a crisis. But if things are bad, then we depend on the politicians. And our history has been that they have lived up to what's expected of them.

Lord Speaker:

There is a mood at the moment, I think, that the state's not working anywhere. And there was a book, I think by Sam Friedman, Lawrence Friedman's son, on the issue of how we change that. Would you take such a gloomy view of that statement?

Lord Butler:

Well, I do take a bit of a gloomy view. I think that we are a country that has been very wealthy. Now, a lot of our staple industries have gone. We don't have the natural resources on which our economy was built in the past, but we're still trying to live like a country that is wealthy. We expect first-class public services. We perhaps indulge ourselves too much. I mean, there's too much regulation in the best interest. And one thinks of health and safety, which you get to a point where it's very difficult to afford that degree of interference with public services. You hear of doctors having an awful lot of paperwork, teachers having a lot of paperwork, so that some of these vital public service jobs are not fun anymore.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. And you have many GPs working three days a week. They aren't the full week on that. There is a view still, and maybe I share it in part because I live in what you would call the periphery area in Scotland, from here. And north of this is a different land as a result of that. And in relation to that, again, the view of Whitehall exceptionalism, and I think it would benefit the country if that notion could be dispelled. So how does government or Civil Service go about changing that relationship?

Lord Butler:

Well, I should say I'm a Lancastrian. I've lived most of my life in the south, but actually my family is a Lancastrian family. And I believe, and I tried to practise it in the Civil Service, in delegation. I think that decisions are best taken closest to the people who are going to be affected by them. So I called it delegation. We certainly delegated to departments. We set up agencies where people were responsible. I believe in devolution. I don't believe in independence for Scotland, but I do believe in devolution.

Lord Speaker:

Do you believe in devolution for the whole country-

Lord Butler:

I do.

Lord Speaker:

... rather than just Scotland and Wales? And how do we go about that? Because we had a referendum in the northeast, which failed during the Labour government.

Lord Butler:

I think the dilemma is that if you delegate a decision or if you devolve a decision and something goes wrong, then people say the central government has got to take it back. It's very difficult for central government to keep out when a local decision has gone wrong. It needs strong mind, strong determination to do that.

Lord Speaker:

And transparency and accountability.

Lord Butler:

And transparency and accountability. But I think that if I still had any influence on government, I would be urging them to take decisions as closest as possible to the people, but make sure that those people are accountable. A very good example of this really is the Community Charge, the poll tax. With the best of intentions, Margaret Thatcher wanted to take that to-

Lord Speaker:

And you were there right at that time.

Lord Butler:

I was there.

Lord Speaker:

And you were there when Michael Heseltine took over.

Lord Butler:

Exactly. And-

Lord Speaker:

And destroyed it.

Lord Butler:

But the poll tax was misconceived. But what Margaret Thatcher wanted to do was to try to make sure that local politicians had to take the rap if there were high local taxes. But first of all, actual Community Charge was misconceived. But also, there was tremendous demand that it was got rid of and the... And so it all came back into central government. And that, I think, doesn't work.

Lord Speaker:

I was on the Parliamentary Commission for Banking Standards with Nigel Lawson, and we had a good number of social chats. He was very good to work with. But he said to me at the time that he wasn't at the first meeting of the poll tax, and he was very much against it. But it had taken legs and he couldn't do anything about that. So how do you have a think-again approach there?

Lord Butler:

Well, I mean, I remember that vividly, really. Nigel didn't make any pretence of his opposition-

Lord Speaker:

Never.

Lord Butler:

... to the poll tax. Margaret Thatcher, by this time it was late on in her prime ministership, and she had lost the ability to argue really. Actually, I mean this would be a criticism of Nigel, he gave up. He said, "Well, if you're going to hell in a cart, you better go." And so he didn't continue to argue and oppose it as I think he should have done. It might not have been any use because Margaret Thatcher was determined. I mean, he saw the problems of the poll tax, and they turned out to be the thing really that contributed to bringing Margaret Thatcher down. It wasn't the only thing.

Lord Speaker:

And I've read his autobiography when it's purported that he shadowed the Deutschmark without informing Mrs. Thatcher. Give us an insight into that.

Lord Butler:

Yeah. Well, I mean Nigel Lawson was certainly a pretty sole operator. There is a long history of tensions growing between the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer. They live next door to each other. And Margaret Thatcher always liked to remind people that she was the first lord of the treasury. So I think that that was part of it. I mean, same thing happened between Tony Blair and-

Lord Speaker:

Gordon Brown.

Lord Butler:

... and Gordon Brown. And it is very damaging for a government. Because if those two leading ministers at the top of government aren't getting on well together and working in perfect harmony, then a house divided against itself in the end will fall.

Lord Speaker:

You're intimate with the affairs of the Treasury. Is it the case then that the Treasury is too powerful and the prime minister's office itself is too weak?

Lord Butler:

Well, it's certainly the case that whoever controls the purse strings controls the world, really. And I think that's what leads, to a great extent, to the tension between the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer. I'm not in favour actually of a very strong 10 Downing Street, or least, because I don't think we should be like the Americans are where you have a White House and the White House is more powerful than the... Again, I think Margaret Thatcher had it more or less right. She was a very strong person. She held her secretaries of state to account. But really, the secretaries of state have got to do it. Again, it's a question of delegation. So I don't think Number 10 should try to do the department's job for them. And certainly when I worked there, I was very careful not to use my position of direct access to the prime minister to cry down what secretaries of state and the departments were trying to do.

Lord Speaker:

You came into the House of Lords in 1998, I believe. And you've been involved in quite a number of debates. I'd like you to give me your views in reforming the House of Lords and how far we should go on that.

Lord Butler:

Well, I have a view about the constitutional role of the House of Lords. And I think we've got a marvellous system if we would allow it to work. Because we've got, on the one hand, the elected house where people have got their constituency responsibilities. And these days they're very much taken up by that, and they don't give as much attention to legislation as they do. And in the House of Lords, you've got people with experience and expertise who can contribute that and challenge the House of Commons. And if the two Houses work constructively together, you get a very good result.

There'll always be political differences, obviously, but I think that that's what the House of Lords should try to do. Now, there are things about the House of Lords, I think, that certainly need reform. And I very much supported the conclusion of the Lord Speaker's Committee and Lord Burns that said that in the end, this comes down to how many people you appoint. And he recommended that we should get down to 600. There should be two out for one in. And Theresa May operated with that.

Lord Speaker:

She was very good on that.

Lord Butler:

Yeah. But subsequent prime ministers haven't. In the end, I mean, the size of the House of Lords doesn't matter all that much. Because actually, the people who do all the work are actually only about half the-

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. On average attend, 430 to 450 a day.

Lord Butler:

That's right. And then there are people who just attend when they've got something to contribute. And that's good, but it isn't good for the public image of the House of Lords. I think some of the people who are appointed are only appointed because of patronage. And that brings the House of Lords into an element of-

Lord Speaker:

So you could limit the prime minister's discretion here.

Lord Butler:

Yeah. Well, I think that one does need to do that. And so I would see a limit on the flow of appointments into the House of Lords governed by legislation, which is the only way I think of controlling the prime minister. Now, I'm sorry to say, you may think this is a cynical view. It's very difficult to do that. Neither party wants it. When they're in government, they want the power of patronage. But I think it would be in the public interest to have legislation which constrains the prime minister's ability to appoint. And the point which Terry Burns made is a very good one, I think. If the prime minister has a limited number of appointments that he or she can make, he will make sure that these are appointments that are going to be valuable and who are going to do the work. And so that will be another advantage of constraining the prime minister's ability to appoint.

Lord Speaker:

In your participation of House of Lords, you have been articulate in terms of social issues, for instance, gambling. You were very vociferous in that. But also, you have chaired committees like the intelligence in Iraq as a result. Give me a flavour of your approach to those.

Lord Butler:

Well, I just think I've been extremely lucky in the jobs I've been given. I mean, I was put on the select committee on gambling. I knew nothing whatever about gambling really. But there were experts who were advising us. And then I became conscious that it was a big social problem. So during the time I've been in the House of Lords, I think pretty well all the time I've been on one committee or another. The committee of inquiry into Iraq, the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, that was a one-off as a result of, and that was absolutely fascinating.

I'm glad to say that the intelligence services cooperated, because they were as embarrassed as anybody else about the fact they'd said Iraq had got weapons of mass destruction. Once we had access to the country, there weren't any. We couldn't find them. So they cooperated with it. We did it in five months, which is unlike most committees. It helped in doing that by the fact that because it was intelligence, we took evidence in private. We didn't have any lawyers involved. And we were able to make recommendations which have made a real difference and I think are still being implemented. So I've had a lot of satisfaction from the things that I've been asked to do as a member of the House of Lords. And I've regarded it as a privilege.

Lord Speaker:

Well, I've had a lot of satisfaction today chatting to you, Lord Butler, and getting your experience. So could I sum it up by saying that you're for change? You're for change in the House of Lords, you're for change in the Civil Service, you're for change in the relationships around the country. Devolution is important. But you've got to go about it in a very measured and intelligent way. Is that...

Lord Butler:

I think that sums it up very well. I'm for constant improvement. You will never reach the perfect state. The world changes, times change, attitudes change. You've got to be prepared to change with them. There was a civil servant I always remember. Somebody was saying... They were opposing a decision and said, "If you do this, the world will never be the same again. "And so my friend said, "Yes, yes. He said, life does change. That's what distinguishes it from death."

Lord Speaker:

Did Heraclitus not tell us that many, many centuries ago when he said, "Change is the only reality"?

Lord Butler:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

And you know that as a classicist. Lord Butler, it was a pleasure to talk to you this morning, and I've gained a lot and I'm sure the listeners will gain as well. So it's a privilege to speak to you and engage in conversation. Thank you very much.

Lord Butler:

Thank you, Lord Speaker.

 

In this episode

‘This is our opportunity to show that terrorism can't defeat democracy’

Lord Butler of Brockwell tells the Lord Speaker about his experience, from their initial reaction to the blast, to going back to retrieve the prime minister’s papers, and shares Margaret Thatcher’s response to his suggestion she postpone the start of the Conservative Party Conference the next morning.

‘I devoted my life to assisting politicians with government.’

Lord Butler worked closely with five prime ministers, from Edward Heath to Tony Blair. In this episode he shares his experience of working with each of them either as private secretary or cabinet secretary. He speaks about later work of prime ministers on Northern Ireland, negotiations with Europe, why he joined the civil service and the growing role of special advisers. He also shares his thoughts on reforming the Civil Service, arguing that ‘you’ve got to reform it constantly… But you've got to lead the Civil Service in my view, and not drive them’

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Transcript

Lord Speaker:

Lord Butler, Robin, I'm delighted that you've agreed to come along and have a conversation on Lord Speaker's podcast.

Lord Butler:

I feel very honoured, John. Thank you for asking me.

Lord Speaker:

You've had a distinguished career, Harrow and Oxford, and I think you went into the Civil Service straight away. And you'd been in the Civil Service for 37 years, retiring in 1998.

Lord Butler:

Yes.

Lord Speaker:

You've been private secretary to a number of prime ministers, including Edward Heath, and you've also been cabinet secretary. So just to get a flavour of that from you, I think, would be important. For example, why did you choose the Civil Service when you had a range of opportunities coming out of Oxford?

Lord Butler:

Well, my father, who was a great influence on me, wanted me to be a lawyer. And I was a sort of third generation. My grandfather had started a paint company. My father married into it. And by that time, it was rather crowded. So anyway, it was sort of third generation. And I think third generation, your parents like you to go into the professions, so he took me along to the law courts. And he took me into a case where there was a barrister cross-examining a woman in a contested divorce case. And it shocked me, because he was doing a very professional job, very courteous, but it was her life he was taking to bits. And I felt I can't do that. Especially in those days, there was still capital punishment. I imagined myself cross-examining somebody for their life. So I didn't do that. Now, what attracted me into the Civil Service? Well, I was an idealist young man. I wanted to do something in public service. And I'm sorry to say, I was also a competitive young man.

Lord Speaker:

Oh, you liked sport?

Lord Butler:

I liked sport. And the civil service had a competitive exam, and so I thought, "Well..."

Lord Speaker:

But you came first.

Lord Butler:

I came first, yeah. And I don't quite know how.

Lord Speaker:

Oh, yeah. 37 years later, and you come into the House of Lords in 1998, I believe.

Lord Butler:

Yes, when I retired as cabinet secretary.

Lord Speaker:

As you know, politics is in flux. It's always in flux, politics. Not any different. But the issue at the moment is change with the new government coming in. And you have seen change. And if I'm correct, that you were private secretary to Edward Heath to begin with. I think in one of your interviews you said you'd a real affection for Edward Heath. Why was that?

Lord Butler:

Well, I thought that he was a serious man. He was very reserved. He didn't have many social graces, but he was also a kind man. He'd lived through the war. He was a one nation politician. And of course, he had the ideal of getting Britain into Europe, which he succeeded in doing. And I think he had the vision during times that were difficult for industrial relations, that Britain would thrive economically if government, business, and the trade unions worked together. That's what he was aiming to achieve. And I thought that was a good objective.

Lord Speaker:

He had an incomes policy, didn't he?

Lord Butler:

Had an incomes policy and a prices policy. And of course, in the end, he couldn't get the cooperation of the NUM. He had a good relationship with the NUM general secretary, Joe Gormley. But the executive, which included Arthur Scargill and Mick McGahey, they were determined not to accept. And so in the end, the NUM strike went ahead and the coal was running out of the power stations. And so really, Heath was driven into an election, which he didn't want.

Lord Speaker:

Is it the case that both Edward Heath and Harold Wilson, regarding Europe, showed exceptional skills?

Lord Butler:

Yes, they did. But Harold Wilson perhaps particularly. Because of course, you'll recall, I mean the Labour Party was divided over Europe.

Lord Speaker:

Very familiar.

Lord Butler:

Yes. There was a pledge that they would renegotiate the terms. That was what Harold Wilson offered to the party. And he kept his cards very close to his chest so that people really didn't know whether he was in favour of staying in Europe or leaving. He was in fact in favour of staying. And I always remember, when they were getting through the end of the renegotiation of terms, he had entertained Helmut Schmidt at Chequers the weekend before. None of us were present. There were no private secretaries. They talked privately. And I'm sure that he agreed with Helmut Schmidt the deal that Helmut Schmidt was prepared to give Britain. That was on the weekend before. During the week there was a Cabinet meeting, and there were the sceptics in the Cabinet, Tony Benn, Varley, Peter Shaw. And Harold Wilson said to the Cabinet, "This is my red line. If I can get these, I will recommend that people stay. But if I can't get these, I shall recommend that in the referendum that Britain leaves." And they seem very ambitious terms.

Lord Speaker:

Do you think preparatory work had been done beforehand?

Lord Butler:

He'd fixed it with-

Lord Speaker:

Exactly.

Lord Butler:

... Helmut Schmidt. And as it happened, I was the private secretary on duty that weekend. And on the, I think it must have been the Friday night, Harold Wilson was making a speech to the Society of London Labour mayors. And he said at this speech, "If I can get these terms, I will recommend that Britain stays in." And suddenly the Euroskepticism Cabinet saw the trap that was opening up. And I was on duty and they rang me up and said, "Who authorised the prime minister to say this?" And I said, "Well, if you look at the Cabinet minutes, you'll see that he said that if he couldn't get these terms, he'd recommend we leave. And the opposite is also true." And of course, he did get the terms, recommended that Britain voted yes in the referendum. And the referendum was won by two thirds to one third.

Lord Speaker:

And you were cabinet secretary when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister. You experienced many things, relationship with the trade unions, the change there, the Brighton bomb. Give us a flavour of your time and your personal engagement with Margaret Thatcher.

Lord Butler:

Well, just to say that I had the great privilege of working very closely, seeing very close at hand five prime ministers. And I admired them all. They all had different qualities. But whatever the media might suggest, there wasn't one of them who's a knave or a fool. Margaret Thatcher was the most demanding. I mean by this, that she didn't care what time she went to bed, so you sat up long into the night. And when she had a big speech coming up, those were terrible times. Because two, three, four in the morning you'd sit there, and she was arguing whether ‘would’ should be ‘could’ or ‘and’ should be ‘but’ until you wanted to die. So she was very demanding. On the other hand, her great advantage was you didn't have to ask her what she thought. That was-

Lord Speaker:

The message had clarity.

Lord Butler:

Clarity, but also steadfastness. And for somebody like me working for her, if she thought that you were doing your best for her, she would always stand by you. It wasn't true of some of her Cabinet colleagues, but certainly for us as staff. You knew where you were with her.

Lord Speaker:

In Brighton at the time, am I correct in saying that her demands led you to being in her room at about three o'clock in the morning, and you feel that had you not had that meeting, she could have been a victim?

Lord Butler:

Oh, there's no doubt of it.

Lord Speaker:

Was she moved?

Lord Butler:

She'd finished her speech unusually early for the pre-conference speech. I was there not for the politics, but because there was always Number 10 business to be done, and I also did some checking on the facts in the speech. And she'd finished the speech. The speech writers had gone, and there was a piece of paper on which the Number 10 office wanted a decision by the next morning. So I said to her, "Would you look at this overnight and let me know at breakfast what your decision is?" And she said, "If you don't mind, I'll do it now, and then I can forget about it and concentrate on thinking about the speech."

So she was sitting in her chair in her sitting room looking at this piece of paper. I was at the chair sitting like I'm sitting with you now, looking forward to getting to bed. And then there was suddenly this mighty explosion. And I'd heard bombs before, so I knew it was a bomb. I suddenly came to, and I thought, "You're alone with the prime minister. Somebody's trying to blow her up. You better do something sensible." So I said to her, "I think you should come away from the windows in case there's another bomb." She didn't hesitate for a moment. She said, "I must see if Dennis is all right."

So she goes to the bedroom, opens the door, bedroom in darkness. And you could hear the sounds of falling masonry through, because it was the bathroom that was collapsing. And I should have said, "Stand back, prime minister. This is a job for somebody more dispensable than you." but I had my inhibitions, so she went in. And a moment or two later, she came out with Denis pulling his grey flannel trousers over his pyjamas. We went out into the corridor and we looked up the corridor, and amazingly the lights had stayed on despite this huge explosion in the hotel.

And when we looked up, the next suite along, we saw what looked like smoke coming out from under the door. And that was the suite that Geoffrey Howe had. So I thought the bomb must have been in there. And again, I'll never forget it, his security man was running at the door trying to kick it in so that... And luckily he failed because there had been a void the other side of the door. Geoffrey came out from the next room along, which was their bedroom, and came down. And while we were standing there, a fireman appeared because it was a very quick response. The fireman said, "Follow me," so we followed him down the corridor.

As I say, the lights were still on. The corridor was a cul-de-sac. So he said, "Follow me back," so we followed him back, went down the main stairs of the hotel. And we thought maybe the bomb had been at the reception desk, and Margaret Thatcher broke off and went to see whether the people behind the reception desk were okay, which they were. And then we were taken out of the back, and then Margaret Thatcher was taken off to Hove Police Station. Remembering that all the Number 10 papers had been left about, our clothes were all still up there... With one of her protection officers, I went back up, not realising that the hotel was hanging by a thread above my head, and packed everything up and came down and then went on and joined them at the police station.

Lord Speaker:

So it was fortuitous that she had that meeting with you in the bedroom at that time?

Lord Butler:

Well, I think so. I mean, certainly if she'd gone to the bathroom, she'd have suffered something. I mean, I don't know whether it would have been fatal. But yes, I mean it was-

Lord Speaker:

Did you try and dissuade her from speaking to the conference early the next morning?

Lord Butler:

I did. We were taken off to Lewes Police Training College, and she was given a room. I kipped down in the day room where there was a television and a telephone. And John Gummer rang up at about half past five, I suppose, and said, "It's much worse than we thought.” There were already fatalities. “And they're digging for John Wakeham and for Norman Tebbit in the wreckage of the hotel." And he said, "Television's here," so I turned on the television and watched what was happening and saw Norman Tebbit being brought out badly injured. And they still hadn't found John Wakeham. Anyway, I thought, "Well, shall I wake up Margaret Thatcher and tell her?" And then I thought, "No, I mean, best she gets some sleep."

So at eight o'clock, she appears. I rescued her clothes, so she was in her day clothes. And I said, "Prime minister, I'm afraid it's bad and we lost five people. John Wakeham, still not brought out. Norman Tebbit, badly injured." She didn't hesitate for a moment. She said, "Well, the conference is due to begin at 9:30, and we must make sure it begins on time." And I was appalled. I said to her, "This terrible thing's happened. Some of your closest colleagues have been killed and badly injured. You can't be going on with a party conference." And she said, "This is our opportunity to show that terrorism can't defeat democracy." Of course, she was right and I was wrong, and that's what she did demonstrate. And at 9:30, there she was on the platform saying, "We're shaken, but not daunted."

Lord Speaker:

Have you ever contradicted a Cabinet minister or a prime minister and had your way?

Lord Butler:

Well, I certainly advised them not to do things. I mean with Margaret Thatcher, she never yielded an inch when you advised her about something. However, next time the subject came up, you often found that she'd subtly changed her position. I mean, you would've seen it. But her instinct was if somebody had a go at her, she immediately punched back. She wouldn't concede anything. But she would think about it. Can I tell you a story about that?

Lord Speaker:

Sure.

Lord Butler:

After she ceased to be prime minister and I'd retired and I went to my college at Oxford, I invited her to come and speak. And she said, "What shall I do?" I said, "Well, if you'd confine yourself just 10 minutes, because what the students will remember is the questions they ask you." So she did, and she said, "There's two things I want to tell you. One is that more casualties were lost in the last century through wars." And she said, "So you must always stand up for freedom and justice." And then she said, "Home, when I was growing up, 5% of children were born illegitimate, and now it's more than 30% and growing." What she meant was one parent family.

And when it came to questions, a young man said to her, "Lady Thatcher, don't you think it's a little unfair to label a child illegitimate throughout its life when it's had no influence over the circumstances of its birth?" And she said, "Well, what would you call them? I can think of another word, but you'd think that even worse." So anyway, the moment passed and we had dinner. As we were about to go home, we were having a whisky in my lodgings, and we were talking about something completely different. And she suddenly said, "You know, Robin, that young man who asked me about the word illegitimate, he had a point, didn't he?" And I'll bet she never used the word illegitimate again.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. Very good, very good. You were also cabinet secretary with John Major, and you were there when the IRA bomb hit the Cabinet room as a result. But you say that John Major had a great influence on the Good Friday Agreement as it went along. Maybe he hasn't been recognised sufficiently for that. Can you give us an insight into what he did? I know he had a good relationship with Albert Reynolds. I know he said in the House of Commons, and I was there, that engagement with the IRA would turn his stomach, whilst he was engaged in that. So it took quite a bit of bravery, I would imagine, there.

Lord Butler:

It did. I think actually Tony Blair very generously recognised what John Major had done, laying the foundations for it with the Downing Street Declaration. But the moment that I remember was I was in the Cabinet room with John Major when somebody came in from the Northern Ireland office and said we've had this message, which was alleged to have come from McGuinness, saying the conflict is over and he must help us to bring it to an end. So that immediately raised the issue whether and how the government should respond. And of course, I mean, it was absolutely cardinal at that point that the government didn't negotiate with the IRA, well, until they'd given up their armed struggle. And so they had to decide what to do that.

And the Cabinet was split. Some people said, "This is a trap. Don't respond." And John Major said, "Well, maybe it is a trap. But just suppose it isn't and we can make progress, and think of all the lives that we'll save." And so a response was prepared and was sent. Then there was the Warrington bomb, which brought everything to an end. But that was a very brave thing to do. And of course it was a trap, because I suppose that must have been February, March that the message, "The conflict is over," came. I think it was probably in September that the story, I imagine by the IRA, was leaked to The Times that the government had had these exchanges. And Paddy Mayhew, who was the Northern Ireland secretary, had to go and make a statement to the House. And to their great credit, the opposition parties said, "We think you took the right decision," and they supported it. So that did lead up to the Downing Street Declaration, and that was a first step towards the Good Friday Agreement.

Lord Speaker:

You were Cabinet Secretary and head of the home Civil Service at the same time. And I think you've been asked if it's a good idea to separate them. During that time and other times of crisis, was it of assistance that you held both posts simultaneously?

Lord Butler:

Yes, I think it was of great assistance. Because with the best will in the world, prime ministers are very busy people. Somebody who is just the head of the Civil Service doesn't get great access because prime minister's has got other things to do, and manage the Civil Service. But the Cabinet Secretary does all the time. And so, I think it was in the interests of the Civil Service that through being Cabinet Secretary, I could discuss Civil Service issues with the prime minister and had very good access. So yes, I think it's much better the two posts are combined.

Lord Speaker:

Things have changed now, or purportedly changed with the Civil Service and the relationship with ministers. And we have spads coming in as well. What's your view on that? Because you've said that the Civil Service is a professional body. And irrespective of who's prime minister, the cabinet secretary, the advice is the same and the objectivity is paramount. So give us your historic reflection on that.

Lord Butler:

Well, I think that that impartiality of the Civil Service is an essential part of our system. I think it’s served Britain very well. But I think politics has changed.

Lord Speaker:

Well.

Lord Butler:

I mean, the way I sometimes put it, it's a bit of a sound bite, but I think today I get the impression that ministers have become more interested in politics and less interested in government. Of course, I mean, as a civil servant, I devoted my life to assisting politicians with government. Now, I am absolutely not against political advisers. During the time that I was a private secretary in Number 10, and while I was cabinet secretary, Harold Wilson had political advisers, Bernard Donoughue and Joe Haines. Not as many as there are now, certainly. And Margaret Thatcher did. But we worked terribly harmoniously together. We all felt, I think, it was a tremendous privilege to be working in this office.

And Bernard Donoughue has become one of my closest friends. Sarah Hogg from John Major's office, although she doesn't come to the House of Lords very much. And we felt like a family. So it greatly saddens me now to think that there is a sense of us and them between the political advisors and the civil servants. And I regret it. I think Number 10 has suffered from it. I think some of the things that have happened, like Partygate, I connect up with there being too many special advisors. I mean, there are other causes as well, but I think that our government is the worse for it.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, absolutely. In terms of governance, I think Tony Blair had an interview with The Observer very recently, and people were talking about reforming the Civil Service. And Blair almost said, "Look, it's no use. You can't reform the Civil Service." He wasn't doing that in a condemnatory way, but he was saying, "Look, try and get on with politics. Forget the bureaucracy as the main issue." Would you agree with that?

Lord Butler:

Well, yes, I would. I mean, actually, I think you have got to reform the Civil Service. You've got to reform it constantly. I mean, the Civil Service has got to be kept up to the mark. And the Civil Service doesn't have the spur that private enterprise often has, the profit motive and all that. The Civil Service is doing things with other people's money, with taxpayers' money. It hasn't got a motive to be at the forefront of... And so, you've got to get them to do that. But you've got to lead the Civil Service in my view, and not drive them. You've got to do a bit of driving as well. But when John Major was prime minister, we had the Next Steps Initiative and various programmes of reform like that. Now, none of them is ever the end of the story, so you've got to keep at it. But I think, as I say, leadership is the right thing.

Lord Speaker:

And you're saying that leadership is walking alongside people rather than dragging them along?

Lord Butler:

I do. I think that. And certainly not foul-mouthing them. I take as my model Field Marshall Slim, in Burma, inheriting that terrible situation when the Japanese were advancing. He was a hard taskmaster, but he was a fair taskmaster, and people respected him. So I think that you get a better response from people in those circumstances than telling them they're rubbish.

Lord Speaker:

What are the characteristics of a good minister, in general, for the Civil Service?

Lord Butler:

I think it helps if they've got clarity of mind, they know where they're going, and firm principles. But also standing by, standing on the course that they've set themselves. So I think clarity and firmness, but also the willingness to listen. We talked a little earlier in this interview about Margaret Thatcher who you didn't think you were making any impression on her, but actually she listened very carefully to what... And all the prime ministers I worked with did. So give your advisers a fair hearing. But then it's your role to decide. And then it's the role of the Civil Service, whether they think the right decision's been taken or not. As long as it's not an illegal decision or an immoral decision, then to try to implement it to the best of their ability.

Lord Speaker:

The Civil Service has very intelligent people. But some would say that a lot of them are generalists, whereas you need some with skills and experience. And they would point to government projects that have gone awry, for example, in defence with procurement. And we know there's a litany, stuff like that. We've got HS2 as a result of that. We've got tax credits which went wrong. How do we change that?

Lord Butler:

Well, I think you've got to bring in the experts. And you've also got to-

Lord Speaker:

Well, we've not been good at that to date.

Lord Butler:

No, we haven't always, I think. I think there's a long history to this.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah, of course.

Lord Butler:

I mean, you're going right back to Northcote-Trevelyan. It's a extraordinary thing to remember that when I was applying for the Civil Service, there were two forms of recruitment, method one, method two. Method one was an academic exam. So they did take generalists. I was a generalist, and I knew that-

Lord Speaker:

That's no condemnation of generalists.

Lord Butler:

No. I mean, but there's a place for generalists. You help the ministers with their speeches, their advice, answering their letters and so on. But when you've got a technical borderline, then you need specialists to do that. I had quite an admiration for what Dominic Cummings said. I didn't approve of Dominic Cummings' methods, and I didn't like his style. But challenging the Civil Service and bringing in experts who can supplement the skills of the generalists is essential.

Lord Speaker:

And trust in politics, they say it's lowest now. But there's always been an issue with politicians and trust, as we know that. How do you think that could be reversed in part in terms of trust? What should government do as a result of that?

Lord Butler:

Well, I think government should behave properly. Ministers should have high standards. Members of Parliament should have high standards. The Age of Deference is gone, and that's a good thing. The other thing, of course, that would restore trust in politics, nobody would want it. A really good crisis restores trust in politics. Because if-

Lord Speaker:

That's the Civil Service at its best, isn't it?

Lord Butler:

It is. But it's also... it can be politicians at their best. They give a lead. I mean, I remember when the Falklands were invaded. And our troops went out there and they were in danger. Suddenly the whole tone of the media changed, and people cared terribly about what happened. But what the ministers said... Now, nobody wants a crisis. But if things are bad, then we depend on the politicians. And our history has been that they have lived up to what's expected of them.

Lord Speaker:

There is a mood at the moment, I think, that the state's not working anywhere. And there was a book, I think by Sam Friedman, Lawrence Friedman's son, on the issue of how we change that. Would you take such a gloomy view of that statement?

Lord Butler:

Well, I do take a bit of a gloomy view. I think that we are a country that has been very wealthy. Now, a lot of our staple industries have gone. We don't have the natural resources on which our economy was built in the past, but we're still trying to live like a country that is wealthy. We expect first-class public services. We perhaps indulge ourselves too much. I mean, there's too much regulation in the best interest. And one thinks of health and safety, which you get to a point where it's very difficult to afford that degree of interference with public services. You hear of doctors having an awful lot of paperwork, teachers having a lot of paperwork, so that some of these vital public service jobs are not fun anymore.

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. Yeah. And you have many GPs working three days a week. They aren't the full week on that. There is a view still, and maybe I share it in part because I live in what you would call the periphery area in Scotland, from here. And north of this is a different land as a result of that. And in relation to that, again, the view of Whitehall exceptionalism, and I think it would benefit the country if that notion could be dispelled. So how does government or Civil Service go about changing that relationship?

Lord Butler:

Well, I should say I'm a Lancastrian. I've lived most of my life in the south, but actually my family is a Lancastrian family. And I believe, and I tried to practise it in the Civil Service, in delegation. I think that decisions are best taken closest to the people who are going to be affected by them. So I called it delegation. We certainly delegated to departments. We set up agencies where people were responsible. I believe in devolution. I don't believe in independence for Scotland, but I do believe in devolution.

Lord Speaker:

Do you believe in devolution for the whole country-

Lord Butler:

I do.

Lord Speaker:

... rather than just Scotland and Wales? And how do we go about that? Because we had a referendum in the northeast, which failed during the Labour government.

Lord Butler:

I think the dilemma is that if you delegate a decision or if you devolve a decision and something goes wrong, then people say the central government has got to take it back. It's very difficult for central government to keep out when a local decision has gone wrong. It needs strong mind, strong determination to do that.

Lord Speaker:

And transparency and accountability.

Lord Butler:

And transparency and accountability. But I think that if I still had any influence on government, I would be urging them to take decisions as closest as possible to the people, but make sure that those people are accountable. A very good example of this really is the Community Charge, the poll tax. With the best of intentions, Margaret Thatcher wanted to take that to-

Lord Speaker:

And you were there right at that time.

Lord Butler:

I was there.

Lord Speaker:

And you were there when Michael Heseltine took over.

Lord Butler:

Exactly. And-

Lord Speaker:

And destroyed it.

Lord Butler:

But the poll tax was misconceived. But what Margaret Thatcher wanted to do was to try to make sure that local politicians had to take the rap if there were high local taxes. But first of all, actual Community Charge was misconceived. But also, there was tremendous demand that it was got rid of and the... And so it all came back into central government. And that, I think, doesn't work.

Lord Speaker:

I was on the Parliamentary Commission for Banking Standards with Nigel Lawson, and we had a good number of social chats. He was very good to work with. But he said to me at the time that he wasn't at the first meeting of the poll tax, and he was very much against it. But it had taken legs and he couldn't do anything about that. So how do you have a think-again approach there?

Lord Butler:

Well, I mean, I remember that vividly, really. Nigel didn't make any pretence of his opposition-

Lord Speaker:

Never.

Lord Butler:

... to the poll tax. Margaret Thatcher, by this time it was late on in her prime ministership, and she had lost the ability to argue really. Actually, I mean this would be a criticism of Nigel, he gave up. He said, "Well, if you're going to hell in a cart, you better go." And so he didn't continue to argue and oppose it as I think he should have done. It might not have been any use because Margaret Thatcher was determined. I mean, he saw the problems of the poll tax, and they turned out to be the thing really that contributed to bringing Margaret Thatcher down. It wasn't the only thing.

Lord Speaker:

And I've read his autobiography when it's purported that he shadowed the Deutschmark without informing Mrs. Thatcher. Give us an insight into that.

Lord Butler:

Yeah. Well, I mean Nigel Lawson was certainly a pretty sole operator. There is a long history of tensions growing between the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer. They live next door to each other. And Margaret Thatcher always liked to remind people that she was the first lord of the treasury. So I think that that was part of it. I mean, same thing happened between Tony Blair and-

Lord Speaker:

Gordon Brown.

Lord Butler:

... and Gordon Brown. And it is very damaging for a government. Because if those two leading ministers at the top of government aren't getting on well together and working in perfect harmony, then a house divided against itself in the end will fall.

Lord Speaker:

You're intimate with the affairs of the Treasury. Is it the case then that the Treasury is too powerful and the prime minister's office itself is too weak?

Lord Butler:

Well, it's certainly the case that whoever controls the purse strings controls the world, really. And I think that's what leads, to a great extent, to the tension between the prime minister and the chancellor of the exchequer. I'm not in favour actually of a very strong 10 Downing Street, or least, because I don't think we should be like the Americans are where you have a White House and the White House is more powerful than the... Again, I think Margaret Thatcher had it more or less right. She was a very strong person. She held her secretaries of state to account. But really, the secretaries of state have got to do it. Again, it's a question of delegation. So I don't think Number 10 should try to do the department's job for them. And certainly when I worked there, I was very careful not to use my position of direct access to the prime minister to cry down what secretaries of state and the departments were trying to do.

Lord Speaker:

You came into the House of Lords in 1998, I believe. And you've been involved in quite a number of debates. I'd like you to give me your views in reforming the House of Lords and how far we should go on that.

Lord Butler:

Well, I have a view about the constitutional role of the House of Lords. And I think we've got a marvellous system if we would allow it to work. Because we've got, on the one hand, the elected house where people have got their constituency responsibilities. And these days they're very much taken up by that, and they don't give as much attention to legislation as they do. And in the House of Lords, you've got people with experience and expertise who can contribute that and challenge the House of Commons. And if the two Houses work constructively together, you get a very good result.

There'll always be political differences, obviously, but I think that that's what the House of Lords should try to do. Now, there are things about the House of Lords, I think, that certainly need reform. And I very much supported the conclusion of the Lord Speaker's Committee and Lord Burns that said that in the end, this comes down to how many people you appoint. And he recommended that we should get down to 600. There should be two out for one in. And Theresa May operated with that.

Lord Speaker:

She was very good on that.

Lord Butler:

Yeah. But subsequent prime ministers haven't. In the end, I mean, the size of the House of Lords doesn't matter all that much. Because actually, the people who do all the work are actually only about half the-

Lord Speaker:

Yeah. On average attend, 430 to 450 a day.

Lord Butler:

That's right. And then there are people who just attend when they've got something to contribute. And that's good, but it isn't good for the public image of the House of Lords. I think some of the people who are appointed are only appointed because of patronage. And that brings the House of Lords into an element of-

Lord Speaker:

So you could limit the prime minister's discretion here.

Lord Butler:

Yeah. Well, I think that one does need to do that. And so I would see a limit on the flow of appointments into the House of Lords governed by legislation, which is the only way I think of controlling the prime minister. Now, I'm sorry to say, you may think this is a cynical view. It's very difficult to do that. Neither party wants it. When they're in government, they want the power of patronage. But I think it would be in the public interest to have legislation which constrains the prime minister's ability to appoint. And the point which Terry Burns made is a very good one, I think. If the prime minister has a limited number of appointments that he or she can make, he will make sure that these are appointments that are going to be valuable and who are going to do the work. And so that will be another advantage of constraining the prime minister's ability to appoint.

Lord Speaker:

In your participation of House of Lords, you have been articulate in terms of social issues, for instance, gambling. You were very vociferous in that. But also, you have chaired committees like the intelligence in Iraq as a result. Give me a flavour of your approach to those.

Lord Butler:

Well, I just think I've been extremely lucky in the jobs I've been given. I mean, I was put on the select committee on gambling. I knew nothing whatever about gambling really. But there were experts who were advising us. And then I became conscious that it was a big social problem. So during the time I've been in the House of Lords, I think pretty well all the time I've been on one committee or another. The committee of inquiry into Iraq, the intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, that was a one-off as a result of, and that was absolutely fascinating.

I'm glad to say that the intelligence services cooperated, because they were as embarrassed as anybody else about the fact they'd said Iraq had got weapons of mass destruction. Once we had access to the country, there weren't any. We couldn't find them. So they cooperated with it. We did it in five months, which is unlike most committees. It helped in doing that by the fact that because it was intelligence, we took evidence in private. We didn't have any lawyers involved. And we were able to make recommendations which have made a real difference and I think are still being implemented. So I've had a lot of satisfaction from the things that I've been asked to do as a member of the House of Lords. And I've regarded it as a privilege.

Lord Speaker:

Well, I've had a lot of satisfaction today chatting to you, Lord Butler, and getting your experience. So could I sum it up by saying that you're for change? You're for change in the House of Lords, you're for change in the Civil Service, you're for change in the relationships around the country. Devolution is important. But you've got to go about it in a very measured and intelligent way. Is that...

Lord Butler:

I think that sums it up very well. I'm for constant improvement. You will never reach the perfect state. The world changes, times change, attitudes change. You've got to be prepared to change with them. There was a civil servant I always remember. Somebody was saying... They were opposing a decision and said, "If you do this, the world will never be the same again. "And so my friend said, "Yes, yes. He said, life does change. That's what distinguishes it from death."

Lord Speaker:

Did Heraclitus not tell us that many, many centuries ago when he said, "Change is the only reality"?

Lord Butler:

Yeah.

Lord Speaker:

And you know that as a classicist. Lord Butler, it was a pleasure to talk to you this morning, and I've gained a lot and I'm sure the listeners will gain as well. So it's a privilege to speak to you and engage in conversation. Thank you very much.

Lord Butler:

Thank you, Lord Speaker.

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