CONFIDENTIAL
From:
HKB 010/4
RECE
The Legal Adviser
"ISTRY
Date:
INVER
~A
REGISTRY Action Taken
Yr Marris
し
Maris
za
Cc:
18 June 1993
PS/PUS
Sir J Coles
Mr Chamberlain
Mr Hum
Mr Ricketts, HKD
18
PS/PUS
SIR P CRADOCK
1. Let me add the briefest of supplements to Mr Chamberlain's advice of yesterday, which I endorse. I would not however repeat the almost apologetic tone of his paragraph 5, since the object of the exercise is to state the law as it is, and I am far from convinced that it would even be desirable to think in terms of enforcing Sir P Cradock's obligations in the sense of taking proceedings.
2.
What seems to me to arise as one of the essential factors out of Mr Chamberlain's advice is that Sir P Cradock's engagement at No. 10 was made on Home Civil Service terms, and by the Cabinet Office. I cannot see therefore that the FCO carries the direct responsibility for ensuring that he holds to the terms of his engagement, even if it is an FCO interest that would in part be injured by his breach.
3. The paragraphs from the HCS code which Mr Chamberlain analyses are of course the very passages which were revised, after much agony and on the advice of counsel, after the conclusion of the Peter Wright Spycatcher affair.
F D Berman
CONFIDENTIAL