Byers resignation: 'Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a liar'

Byers gained his reputation as 'New Labour's very own Pinocchio' after a succession of crises

Barrie Clement,Michael Harrison
Wednesday 29 May 2002 00:00 BST
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For all his reputation as a master of spin, Stephen Byers' stints at the Department of Education, the Department of Trade and Industry, and latterly at the Department of Transport have been characterised more by cock-up than by carefully controlled news management.

At education, Mr Byers was the minister who replied that seven times eight equalled 54 when asked the question on a BBC radio programme.

At the DTI he is remembered, amongst other things, as the minister who presented a 12-point plan for rescuing the British textile industry wearing a suit made in South Africa – and then later admitted that he had known in advance that the question of his attire was likely to come up.

But the greatest folly of Mr Byers' period as a cabinet minister was undoubtedly his insistence on retaining the services of Jo Moore, his erstwhile spin doctor, already deeply unpopular in the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions, after she sent out her infamous e-mail on 11 September declaring that it was a good day to "bury" bad news.

THE COLLAPSE OF ROVER

The chairman of Rover, Werner Samann maintains that just before BMW pulled the plug on the British car maker in 1999, he warned Mr Byers that it was "five minutes to midnight" for the company. Mr Byers denies the remark was ever made to him.

Indeed, he remained in denial right to the end. On the very night that the BMW board agreed to sell or close Rover, Mr Byers was still insisting that the German car maker was "fully committed" to its British subsidiary.

HUMILIATION OVER CORUS

Rover was not Mr Byers' only banana skin while at the DTI. He fell out so badly with the steelmaker Corus that it refused to brief him in advance on its plans to cut 6,000 jobs and end steelmaking at Llanwern in South Wales, on the ground that he was likely to leak the story. When Mr Byers then tried to railroad Corus into helping fund a £200m government initiative to save the 6,000 jobs, its chairman, Sir Brian Moffat, wrote to the minister expressing his "despair, dismay and disappointment" at Mr Byers' behaviour and accused him of playing a "cruel hoax" on the workforce.

RIP-OFF BRITAIN

Mr Byers was also the minister who coined the phrase "rip-off Britain" but was then unable to make the charge stick. A lengthy inquiry by the Monopolies and Mergers Commission cleared the big supermarket chains of profiteering and Mr Byers was forced to drop quietly plans for the DTI to publish regular lists "naming and shaming" British suppliers for over-charging their customers.

BIG BUSINESS

During his first 10 months in the DTI job he overruled the advice of the competition authorities on six occasions. The most controversial instance involved Mr Byers' decision to order an inquiry into the £8.5bn merger of Cable & Wireless's cable television business division with NTL against the advice of the Office of Fair Trading. Mr Byers denied that the move was an olive branch to BSkyB which had been blocked earlier from buying Manchester United. The Monopolies and Mergers Commission, which subsequently approved the NTL merger, was so puzzled at being asked to investigate that it called in a group of journalists and City analysts to find out what questions it should be asking.

THE MOORE MEMO

Jo Moore's infamous 11 September e-mail was sent to senior civil servants at the Department for Transport and to its communications department as thousands of people lay buried under the rubble of the World Trade Centre. After the the existence of the memo was revealed, Ms Moore was forced to appear on television to apologise, but it did not escape notice that she could not resist a smirk as she walked away from the camera.

Under enormous pressure to dismiss her, Mr Byers and the Prime Minister insisted that the media could not be allowed to choose who should be employed at senior levels of the Government. The decision was fatal for the Transport Secretary, and indeed his resignation can be traced back directly to Ms Moore's cynical act.

THE NATS FIASCO, PART ONE

Despite Mr Byers' insistence yesterday that he is not a liar, Simon Kelner, the editor-in-chief of The Independent, can testify personally to his penchant for dissembling.

This paper published an account of how the Civil Aviation Authority(CAA) had warned him about the inadequacy of the financial structure drawn up last year in preparation for the part-privatisation of Britain's air traffic control system. The authority advised the department that the organisation's business plan was insufficiently robust to withstand a big shock. Within weeks of 46 per cent of the shares in National Air Traffic Services (Nats) being sold to seven British airlines, terrorists struck in New York. Air travel, particularly on transatlantic routes – 40 per cent of Nats' income – collapsed.

In a telephone conversation, Mr Byers told Mr Kelner that neither he nor his officials could find any document in which the CAA had warned about the new company's finances. He requested that a correction be published, but this was rebuffed by Mr Kelner.

Earlier this month, at a session of the Commons Transport Select Committee, a senior official at the Department finally conceded that the CAA's written warning did exist, as did David Jamieson, one of Mr Byers' junior ministers.

THE NATS FIASCO, PART TWO

The Independent reported on 19 February that the finances of the newly-privatised Nats were in such a state that its banks were threatening it with administration unless there was additional investment from the Government of tens of millions of pounds. The next day Mr Byers issued a carefully worded "denial" of the report in The Independent. The statement, however, was misleading in a number of ways.

RAILTRACK

One of the more popular – and courageous – acts of Mr Byers' tenure at the Department for Transport was his decision to put the ailing Railtrack into administration in October 2001. However, even that resulted in a huge row over whether John Robinson, the new chief executive of the company, had said in a meeting at the end of June that the company was near bankruptcy.

The Transport Secretary claimed Mr Robinson had said that without enormous quantities of additional government money, he would not be able to declare that the business was a "going concern" when he presented the half-yearly results in November. Mr Robinson denied saying this.

When the minutes of the meeting were published there was no record of the warning. Mr Byers then sought to explain this anomaly by stating that Railtrack's chief executive had asked civil servants to stop recording the meeting before he made the comment. Mr Robinson also denied that this had happened.

THE SIXSMITH AFFAIR

In February, Martin Sixsmith, the newly appointed communications chief at the Department for Transport, allegedly sent Ms Moore an e-mail warning her not to attempt to "bury" any bad news on the day of Princess Margaret's funeral. He was immediately accused of leaking the memo.

In a conversation between Mr Byers and Sir Richard Mottram, the permanent secretary at the Department for Transport, Mr Sixsmith was said to have resigned – something he vehemently denied when news of his "resignation", along with that of Jo Moore, had been announced on 16 February. However, Mr Byers was still telling the Commons two weeks later that Mr Sixsmith had agreed to go. The hapless Transport Secretary was forced to retract part of his statement. Then, following protracted negotiations with Mr Sixsmith over the terms of his departure, a communiqué from the Department for Transport stated that he had not resigned after all.

On 10 May, Mr Byers refused to apologise and told the Commons he had acted "in good faith". It is rare for any newspapers to call a politician a liar, but by this point Mr Byers was routinely labelled as such in the Daily Mirror and other titles. Indeed, the Mirror took to referring to him as "New Labour's very own Pinocchio".

THE DESMOND DONATION

The revelation that Labour had accepted a £100,000 donation from Richard Desmond, the owner of Express Newspapers and publisher of a sheaf of porn magazines, provided yet another opportunity for accusations of dissembling and spin to be heaped upon Mr Byers.

His decision as the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to accept the advice of the Office of Fair Trading about Mr Desmond's proposed purchase of the Express group was intended to prevent allegations of misconduct and political interference in trade. However, when news of the donation broke last month, attention was quickly focused on the role played by Mr Byers in agreeing the deal, and whether there was any question of "cash for favours".

TRANSPORT SELECT COMMITTEE REPORT

In what may have proven the final straw for Mr Byers' tenure at the Department for Transport, the all-party transport select committee of MPs produced a coruscating analysis last weekend of the failings of the Government's 10-year transport plans. It described the reform blueprint as incoherent, ill-balanced and incomprehensible.

The committee accused the department of failing to get to grips with congestion because of fears over a motorists' backlash and predicted the Government would miss half of its targets because of delays or cost overruns.

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