Don’t call me Sir Cover-Up, pleads Sir Cover-Up
... as he orders ministers to keep quiet about Heathrow
THE top civil servant known as Sir Cover-Up said yesterday he didn’t deserve his nickname – as he silenced ministers over the expansion of Heathrow. Sir Jeremy Heywood has been accused of presiding of a cover-up culture in Whitehall, including claims of obstructing the progress of the Iraq Inquiry by blocking the release of sensitive documents.
Yesterday it emerged that the Cabinet Secretary has ordered ministers to refrain from airing constituents’ concerns about a third runway at Heathrow until the Government has decided on the issue.
But in an interview yesterday, Sir Jeremy, 53, insisted he did not deserve his reputation as the secretive and manipulative power behind the throne. The mandarin told Civil Service World he was ‘frustrated’ by the way he was portrayed.
Sources close to the Iraq Inquiry claim it was held up for months while chair-
‘The accusations frustrate me a bit’
man Sir John Chilcot argued with Sir Jeremy about which documents could be put in the public domain.
In the end, Sir Jeremy insisted that 150 messages between Tony Blair and George Bush in the run-up to the 2003 war must be censored. Only the ‘gists’ of the messages and selected quotes will be released.
Former shadow home secretary David Davis said it was ‘wholly inappropriate’ that Sir Jeremy had been involved in decisions on the Iraq Inquiry, given his role as Mr Blair’s private secretary at the time of the war.
But Sir Jeremy yesterday insisted that he had helped, the inquiry by eventually allowing it to review documents that would normally have been kept secret for decades.
‘Ironically, even though the newspapers accuse me sometimes of trying to cover things up, or whatever phrase they use, I took the view that after a lot of deliberation... that it was right in this very exceptional case that this material should in general be published.
‘So it frustrates me a little bit, to be honest, that I’m being accused of trying to get in the way or covering things up.’
Sir Jeremy claimed there was nothing he could do to speed up the six-year inquiry, adding: ‘I can quite understand the public concern and that of families who lost loved ones in that war.
‘That said, there’s very little the Cabinet Secretary can do about it. It’s an independent inquiry.’
Sir Jeremy’s claims came as it emerged that he had written to a string of Cabinet ministers ordering them to pipe down about their concerns over a third runway at Heathrow.
International development secretary Justine Greening, Home Secretary Theresa May, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond Treasury chief secretary Greg Hands and Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers are all thought to have received warning letters.
All five have constituencies that would be affected by the expansion of Heathrow, and all five have also been left off a Cabinet subcommittee that will make the decision on airport capacity later this year.
One Cabinet minister said Sir Jeremy’s attempt to silence elected ministers was ‘unprecedented’, while Tory peer Lord True, leader of Richmond Council in London, said he had ‘overstepped the mark’. Labour MP Andy Slaughter said: ‘ Cabinet ministers have been muzzled on this. I think it’s disgraceful that they can’t speak up on behalf of their constituents.’
Sir Jeremy’s intervention in the Heathrow decision is likely to raise eyebrows given his wife Suzanne’s role as a director at management consultants McKinsey. In August, the firm produced a report warning that ‘constraints’ at Heathrow were ‘hurting’ London’s economy.
Airports Commission chairman Sir Howard Davies, who recommended Heathrow expansion, was also a McKinsey executive, as was Sir Jeremy himself.