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CABINET OFFICE
70 Whitehall London SW1A 2AS
01-270 0101
From the Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of the Home Civil Service
Sir Robin Butler KCB CVO
Ref. A089/914
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11 April 1989
for Richard SAD
Hadippa Gaday
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APS/PUS, HE
Departmental Select Committees: Defence Committee Report on the Future of the Gurkhas
(159)
Thank you for your letter of 7 March, drawing my attention to paragraphs 11 to 15 of the Defence Committee's Report on the Gurkhas.
It is, of course, not unprecedented in other fields for a Select Committee to conduct an inquiry into matters which the Government is simultaneously considering. The Treasury and Civil Service Committee have done so on options for the Budget, and were at one time positively encouraged to do so by the Government's publishing a "green budget" at the time of the public expenditure decisions. The Committee received pretty guarded answers to its questions. But I do not think that we can argue that such inquiries are unprecedented or outside Select Committees' terms of reference.
The
Such inquiries clearly pose difficulties for witnesses giving evidence, especially oral evidence, to committees. key points here are, as is well-established by convention, for officials to avoid revealing the nature of the advice they give to Ministers; and for officials and Ministers to avoid prejudicing the outcome of collective discussion. The position, set out more fully for officials in the well-known "Memorandum of Guidance for Officials appearing before Select Committees", and for Ministers in C(P) (87) 4 will be familiar to you.
What the conventions do not rule out as a matter of principle is all discussion of "policy options", as the Defence Committee correctly states in paragraph 13 of its report. Some generalised discussion of possible policy options is commonplace, and indeed I understand occurred in the present case. On the other hand, this is an area where questioning is often more appropriately addressed to Ministers than to
Sir Michael Quinlan KCB Ministry of Defence
/officials
CONFIDENTIAL