12
Examination of witness
Lord Young of Old Windsor.
Q28 The Chair: Welcome to this meeting of the House of Lords Constitution Committee. Today we are holding the third and fourth evidence sessions of the committee’s inquiry into the UK’s constitutional safeguards. Later on we will be joined remotely by Lord Case, but before that we are delighted to be joined by Lord Young of Old Windsor, former principal private secretary to the monarch. Lord Young, you are most welcome to the committee and I look forward to hearing what you have to say.
I remind all members to declare any interests relevant to this inquiry or today’s meeting the first time they speak. I have no relevant interests of my own to declare.
We are now in public session. Lord Young, you worked at the palace for quite a long time, for a major part of your career, which is one of the reasons why we have invited you here. How would you best describe the constitutional role of the monarch in the present-day governance of the UK? How relevant is it to the day-to-day practices of issues that come out that have constitutional significance?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Thank you for inviting me. I am very pleased to be here. I am delighted to know that this inquiry has been undertaken, particularly in these increasingly uncertain and troubling times. I do not know whether I should declare an interest, as shown in my register of interests, as occasionally a paid consultant to the Royal Household. Otherwise, I have no other relevant interests.
In order to answer your question, I wonder whether I might start by painting a bit of a narrative picture to help distinguish the theory from the actuality or the practice. I was very privileged, during my nearly 20 years working for the Royal Household, for the late Queen, to have been literally in the room during the appointment of six Prime Ministers, or seven if I stretch it to include the reappointment of Tony Blair in his final Administration.
It was remarkable, in that very privileged first-hand experience, to observe what I say is the core of that constitutional relationship, namely the weekly audience of the Prime Minister. It was almost always at Buckingham Palace—occasionally, during Covid, we held it down at Windsor—and during the 20 years I was there always on a Wednesday after PMQs. It worked very well for the PM of the day because not only were they on top of their brief but they were relieved to have got PMQs out of the way. It was usually at 6.15 pm.
Regardless of who it was, the practice would be the same. The principal private secretary, and usually in my case my two deputies, would greet the Prime Minister of the day at the garden entrance. The private secretary would then spend five or 10 minutes alone with the Prime Minister of the day before they would go in and see the Queen—at the end of my term it was the King, but for these purposes I will describe it as the late Queen—for the hour’s audience. Meanwhile, I, as principal private secretary, would spend the most useful constitutional hour of the week downstairs with the principal private secretary to the Prime Minister, two sides of the so-called golden triangle.
This was very important for me, because I saw my number one duty—and I know I speak for my predecessors, and indeed my successor, as private secretary to the sovereign in seeing this as the absolute number one duty—to make sure that there was never a gap between the two ends of the park, as it were, between Head of State and Head of Government. It was most important to avoid anything that might turn into a perception of a constitutional crisis. We would normally have an hour’s conversation over a sandwich, or sometimes a glass of wine even.
An hour later, the Prime Minister of the day would come into the private secretary’s office and give a little debrief. Sometimes they would spot the glass of wine on the table and grab for it. Sometimes they would just stick to water. The thing I observed with all those Prime Ministers, all of whom, as we know, are very different personalities in their own way, by definition, was that, without exception, they would all come in walking a bit taller. That is not really a surprise when you think about it. As a leader, which of us would not cherish the opportunity of having an hour’s conversation a week with someone who is not going to put anything out on X, not going to gossip about it, not going to put it in their memoirs and not going to give a partial political view or pursue any self-interest, but who will exercise, in the sovereign’s case—and of course we are talking about a constitution that is not written in the sense of being in one document—the accepted right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn?
In the late Queen’s case, even though those meetings were always entirely private, as they should be, encouragement might sometimes simply be, “Do you remember all those things you gave me to read out in the last Queen’s Speech? How are you getting on with them?” A warning might sometimes be a raised eyebrow, saying, “Are you sure? I remember Winston trying that and it not working”, which is always a good leveller, or sometimes, based on the fact that she was touring the country every week, saying, “The Government’s policy is this particular one on schools, but I was up visiting a school in Wigan or Arbroath last week and I heard a very different story on the ground”.
That is a way of painting a picture around what I see as the core element. We can go on to talk about prerogative powers and reserve powers, but that is how I saw it play out in practice.
The Chair: The privacy of that meeting between the Head of State and the Head of Government, it being private and there being a guarantee of it being private, was extremely important to the workings of the relationship.
Lord Young of Old Windsor: This is absolutely the crux of the matter. This is where there is an inevitable risk of friction between an understandable desire, especially in the 21st century, for openness and transparency and, at the same time, a requirement for the system I have described. Some could argue that they prefer a different system, but, if we are to have this constitutional system, there is an absolute requirement for privacy in those conversations.
The principle can be extended more broadly. I had quite a lot to do on the receiving end with the Freedom of Information Act, even though the Royal Household was not officially party to the Freedom of Information Act. We were adjacently party to it. There is a principle established in the Freedom of Information Act, and in other similar pieces of legislation, which respects the formulation of policy, as opposed to the resultant policy, as being protected. It is something that is not open to scrutiny, because otherwise how could people express views openly and candidly? Yes, the confidentiality, I agree, is absolutely core to the smooth working of that system.
Q29 Lord Murphy of Torfaen: A Wednesday evening hour’s conversation, where encouragement and warnings can be given, is hugely significant in the everyday running of government. However, there could be occasions when the monarch should or would act as a constitutional restraint on a Government beyond that hour. Can you imagine any circumstances like that?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Yes, I can. We have the intellectual challenge of having to work through a constitutional document that does not exist in a pure form. A great deal of what we are discussing has come up through centuries of common law. Not only is there evolution in its development but sometimes these things can get tested only in the moment. There are only so many scenarios you can work through, because ultimately it all boils down to personalities.
On the one hand, it is now broadly accepted that the sovereign certainly is entitled to be consulted—and I must say, incidentally, that every Government, of whatever political colour, continuing to this very day, have always taken that duty very seriously indeed—and has the right to encourage and warn. Equally, I would argue, the Prime Minister of the day has a right to say, “Thank you very much, Your Majesty. I have taken your counsel very seriously but, at the end of the day, on reflection, I am choosing to do something different”. That is the compact, as it were.
However, to answer your question specifically, Lord Murphy, there are occasions when the discretionary reserve powers could be exercised. For example, the appointment of a Prime Minister primarily is arguably a prerogative power, in that usually a sovereign would be appointing a Prime Minister based, at least in part, on the advice of the outgoing Prime Minister, and the outgoing Prime Minister would be giving advice based on who he or she believes is most capable of forming a Government commanding the confidence of the House. There might be occasions when it is not obvious who the next Prime Minister should be, or perhaps a Prime Minister has given a piece of advice—I find this very unlikely, but it is possible—where there is actually a counterfactual, where the sovereign could use their discretionary powers, at the very least, to take broader counsel. By definition, in that scenario an outgoing Prime Minister is no longer fully authorised to give prime ministerial advice.
The Chair: Would advice be given by the private secretary to the monarch?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: In those circumstances, the private secretary’s role is more to take soundings of the Cabinet Secretary, to a lesser extent in this particular example of the principal private secretary to the Prime Minister, and, quite possibly, of political leaders, though my preference would be that that would be done via the Cabinet Secretary. That would certainly be a role for the principal private secretary.
Another example would be the question of whether it would be constitutionally possible for a sovereign to decline a request for a Prorogation when it is apparent that a Government are about to fall. It could be that there has been a vote of no confidence—that would be very obvious—there is about to be a vote of no confidence, or the Cabinet has evidently lost confidence in its own Prime Minister and perhaps a great number of resignations are going on. If, in those circumstances, a Prime Minister came to the sovereign and said, “I would like to call a general election”, you could see a scenario where a sovereign might decline that request. Of course, it is really a request rather than advice, because it is a reserve power.
My argument is that, if things are working well, it should never come to that point. A bit like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has “Don’t panic” on the front cover, if there were a similar guide to the constitution, it would be “No sudden moves”, “No surprises” or something similar. When the system is working well, all these conversations should be being had in advance. I would argue that one great power of the sovereign is the perception of power. It is the fear that they might say no and, from a political point of view, that is not a good look.
Q30 Lord Burnett of Maldon: Lord Young, good morning. You have just used a phrase that certainly strikes me, “if things are working well”. The context of a lot of debate around the constitution at the moment is a concern that things might not always work well. My question of you is whether you think it is actually rather beneficial for the sovereign to have residual powers, as you put it, that are shrouded in opacity and therefore can develop in response to novel situations.
I am reminded of one of your predecessor’s letters to the Times. I cannot now remember; it was before I was born.
Lord Beith: It was 1950.
Lord Burnett of Maldon: Long before I was born. It used the Times to set out constitutional principles, which have stood the test of time. I am wondering, if we, constitutionally, were facing something very novel as a nation, whether the uncertainty about the boundaries of the powers is actually a very good thing.
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Yes, I agree. It is always worth, when debating these issues, looking at the alternative. I suppose the alternative would be, arguably, a written constitution, but even then how do you spell out every eventuality? I think of an example, which I have Boris Johnson’s permission to mention; I have mentioned it in the past. It is a real worked example of how I saw at first hand what used to be called the “good chap” theory of government. I prefer the “good faith” theory, because it takes out the slightly dated and possibly sexist context.
We all recall the time at the start of Covid when Prime Minister Boris Johnson was taken to hospital. There was a time for a few hours when it was believed that he was going to have to go on to a ventilator. In fact, I was walking home in the pouring rain from Buckingham Palace. The Queen was about to go down to Windsor for, as it would turn out, the duration of Covid, but had not quite left. She had just done her broadcast to the nation, I think. Actually, I have got that wrong. I think that she had just gone down, but I had not.
I remember reaching a bus shelter—it was pouring with rain—and taking a call on my mobile. It might have been from Lord Case, as Deputy Cabinet Secretary at the time, or Mark Sedwill, or the Prime Minister’s principal private secretary. The reason for the call was to say, in a very British way, that the protection officers had overheard the consultants working out how to tell Carrie that her husband, as I think he was then, might have to go on to a ventilator and there was a 50/50 chance of survival.
This was a real constitutional test. There were all these constitutional books that surrounded my very grand office at the palace, but none of them described what to do in that event. It is fine—I do not mean fine for the individual—if a Prime Minister dies; there is precedent for that. You think back to Spencer Perceval. You think of Bonar Law dying in office. In a way, there is plenty of precedent for that, but the question was what happens if a Prime Minister who has been legitimately appointed is suddenly incommunicado for an indefinite amount of time during a national crisis, which there undoubtedly was, and there is no Deputy Prime Minister, which there was not at the time.
I remember sitting on that bus shelter bench in Battersea as more and more people joined the call, working out what the answer was. What would we advise the sovereign to do if this event turned out? As it happened, it did not, but we did not know that at the time. In the event, we worked out—and I think I am representing my friend and colleague Mark Sedwill’s views accurately, or at least the recollection accurately—that, in that circumstance, the Cabinet Secretary would summon the Cabinet and say, “I’m exercising my duty to summon the Cabinet”. I am not quite sure whether it was actually formally his duty, but that is what he would say. He would not let them leave the room until they decided who should be recommended to the Queen as a Prime Minister to appoint, perhaps on the understanding that that Prime Minister would stay in place only for a set period of time, until either Boris Johnson recovered or a proper leadership election could be conducted. While we were on this call, through the usual channels someone was getting hold of Jeremy Corbyn’s office, which, as I understand it, signalled that it would be happy to sign up to this plan.
It never happened, but that is quite a good worked example of how everyone coming together in a moment of potential constitutional crisis and working it through worked quite effectively. A lot of the reason it worked quite effectively was because of the amount of effort we collectively all put in every time there was a change of one of those members of the so-called golden triangle—I do not really like that phrase, but those three senior advisers. We all went to great lengths to make sure that that understanding, rapport and trust were quickly built.
It is always the case that that relies on the holders of those roles caring, understanding this rather specialist, niche topic and the consequences of what happens if it goes wrong, not being partisan, not being in any way spad-like or pursuing one’s own agenda and having an understanding of the constitutional back story and ramifications as well. In my experience, to date that has always happened, but of course there is a risk that in the future there may be a time when that does not happen.
Q31 Lord Jones of Penybont: Good morning, Lord Young. I was going to ask you what powers you think the monarch has to constrain a Prime Minister who risks undermining the constitution. You said, quite rightly, that we live in uncertain and troubling times. Let me put a scenario to you. This is something that would have been outlandish a decade ago, I suppose, but is something we might face in the future. A Government lose a vote of no confidence in Parliament but refuse to resign; there is no request for a Prorogation of Parliament; there is no alternative figure who can command a majority in the House of Commons and there is deadlock. What happens then?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: One of the joys and challenges of this constitution that we have is that it is a pleasant exercise to theorise about events, but of course it depends so much on the personalities and political mood of the time. We have seen previous occasions where, ultimately, there has been an attempt to involve the courts. That can go only so far in a parliamentary system where Parliament has primacy.
In a system that had broken down to the extent that the Prime Minister was refusing to play ball, I see that there would be a scenario where the sovereign might want to exercise greater power. Whether that would ever come to, as it were, a Gough Whitlam scenario, where the sovereign would actually dismiss a Prime Minister, would rather depend on the events, but there is that reserve power there.
As I was indicating earlier, the fear of that eventuality, up to this point, has been in itself quite a restrainer on government behaviour. I have seen plenty of evidence of that, even at ministerial level. The concern about even a headline implying that a particular Minister had incurred the wrath of the Palace was enough to ensure that that did not happen. Yes, there are scenarios where the exercise of those discretionary reserve powers in what would be regarded as a national emergency could, in extremis, be considered.
Q32 Baroness Hamwee: You have made me wonder whether we have missed a trick in not putting on our list of witnesses protection officers, drivers and doorkeepers. They always know everything before the rest of us do.
You have been very helpful in describing how the weekly audience operates. I wanted to ask whether you can talk a little more about transparency as the public require it today. We have inevitably heard the word “trust” quite a lot already. How does one encourage trust in the establishment? I use that word quite deliberately. In a society that is becoming more divided than I would like to see it, the establishment is on one side and the people are on the other, as some people would characterise it. Would you like to say something around encouraging trust in a situation that is, by definition, very dependent on discretion and confidentiality?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Herein lies a paradox, there is no doubt: how can you have trust if you do not know what is going on? How can you have discretion and confidentiality if you are putting everything out on social media as it happens? I would argue that the advantage of our system of monarchy—and this was something that my late boss, the late Queen, used to regard as a real core point—is that, whereas government is about, in old language, tomorrow’s headlines, the next by-election, the Budget, party conferences, getting through, as it were, the mid-terms and so on, monarchy and state are about the next year, five years or 10 years and planning for the succession.
It is about finding ways of convening groups that might not otherwise come together, recognising service, ensuring that a broad cross-section of people, demographically and geographically, have an interaction with the Head of State, and, of course, representing the UK on a global stage. Even though that is almost head-of-nation activity rather than Head of State, over time that feeds into the feeling that this is a King now, or a Queen previously, who is acting in a way that is in the national interest and is not partial. The only way of squaring the circle of that paradox that you rightly identify is through other actions, especially in the role of head of nation and representative of the nation, and doing that consistently over months, years and decades, in the way that a politician just cannot do, by definition.
Baroness Hamwee: In a way, it is a bit about visibility.
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Yes, certainly.
The Chair: Lord Young, we are going to have to speed up your answers, if we may—otherwise, we are not going to get through this.
Q33 Lord Griffiths of Burry Port: I will speed up my question. We have a monarch who has had a long time to prepare for becoming monarch, during which time he has publicly and openly championed a number of causes. He has not, on those causes, been neutral. How is that managed when his change of status makes it necessary for him to be neutral, when everybody knows that he is on the record on climate change, architecture or the Commonwealth, with policies of immigration, for example? How does the bit of the operation that you come from deal with the likely tensions in all that?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: It has been broadly accepted, especially during the long tenure of the now King’s time as Prince of Wales, that, as heir to the Throne, you can pursue interests, as long as there is a very clear understanding that, when you take the top job, those interests are put to one side. Indeed, the then Prince of Wales, now the King, made that very clear in an interview some years ago.
It is easy to forget it now, but we will all remember that there were years when the King was Prince of Wales when there was this drum beat of a narrative: “He’ll be an interventionist King. He’ll be rejecting bits of legislation. There’ll be a mini-revolution”. None of that has happened. I have a parochial view, but certainly my view is that the transition was as smooth as it could possibly have been expected or hoped to be.
Q34 Lord Bellamy: Good morning, Lord Young. We are theoretically trying to discuss a situation where things are not working as they should. Supposing, for argument’s sake, that it is an unwritten principle of the constitution that we have freedom of speech and an elected Government introduce censorship of the press and want to close down newspapers and television and radio stations. In such a situation, what is the role or position of the monarchy? Some commentators have described the monarchy as the ultimate constitutional backstop. Others have said that, in a constitutional crisis in a democracy, the monarchy would prove to be a broken reed, because you simply cannot, as the monarch, interfere with the democratic process. Do you have any reflections on that kind of admittedly extreme and theoretical situation?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: I am trying to work out how to answer the question succinctly but helpfully. In that scenario, it would be dependent on a few other factors. For example, is this a Government who were elected on a manifesto commitment to censor the press? That would be quite something. Is this something that was legislated and went through both Houses? That seems even less plausible, but we never know. In the modern age, if a democratically elected Government with a majority were pursuing a manifesto commitment and that became law, it would be very difficult for a sovereign as Head of State, or any Head of State in the Westminster system as we know it, or indeed—this is outside my realm of experience—quite possibly the courts, to be in a position to overturn that.
Q35 Baroness Laing of Elderslie: Good morning. One aspect that we are looking at is who or what the constitutional guardians are. Who guards the constitution? Would you consider that the private secretary to the monarch is, in fact, a guardian of the constitution?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Yes, I would, among many others, including those I have mentioned. Yes, I see that as part of the role of that postholder.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie: Has it changed over time? Are we in a dynamic situation?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Do you mean in regard to that particular question?
Baroness Laing of Elderslie: Yes.
Lord Young of Old Windsor: No. I had the pleasure of speaking to many of my predecessors, some of whom, sadly, inevitably are no longer with us. The principles are remarkably consistent, certainly going back to the 1950s and 1960s.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie: That is very helpful. Thank you.
Q36 Lord Beith: It could be said that your predecessor, Sir Alan Lascelles, wrote part of the constitution in the slightly bizarre form of an anonymous letter to the Times in 1950, which my colleague referred to earlier. That is quite a serious role, which suggests that he, at least, thought he had a role to clarify what the constitution was and what it meant in circumstances where a request for Dissolution was being pursued. Is that not evidence that, unless it has changed, the role of principal private secretary is a constitutional guardianship role?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Yes, I would agree. Part of the role of many of these constitutional guardians is to do their best to work out what is the other side of the mountain. Alan Lascelles in 1950 was setting out a set of principles to protect against a situation that in the end did not arise, but might have arisen. Always to attempt to get ahead of what might end up being a constitutional difficulty or crisis is certainly part of that role.
Lord Beith: During recent arguments about Prorogation, bearing in mind the difference between Prorogation and Dissolution, the 1950 letter became significant and was frequently quoted in the discussions. Have you written any letters that might have such an effect?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: I am not sure that writing an anonymous letter to the Times these days would quite do the trick, in that I suspect it would turn into a headline. There might have to be more subtle methods. We all know that one of the arts of getting anything done is to make someone else think it was their idea, so that is probably a slightly better way of doing it these days.
Lord Beith: There are subtler methods. Can I clarify a point about prerogative powers? There is not much public understanding around how prerogative powers work and not much recognition that the monarch exercises very few such powers, other than on the advice of Ministers. There are very few indeed. Do you think it is necessary for that to be better understood, or is the ambiguity that surrounds it, in some circumstances, helpful?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Both things can be true at the same time. I feel a little depressed at times when I talk to Australians, for example, about the famous dismissal. Often I hear the phrase, “Oh, every constitutional lecturer and tutor in Australia knows these events off by heart and can quote the speech”, and so on. There is not really such a thing, certainly in mainstream schooling, as a constitutional teacher in this country. It would do the country a lot of good if there was a greater understanding at an earlier age of our unique constitutional set-up.
The Chair: I was very interested in Lord Jones’s intervention and his example of a Prime Minister not resigning when he or she had lost a vote of confidence in the House of Commons, which I have always regarded as one of the firmest constitutional conventions that we have, but I suppose it is a convention. Do you think these conventions are too lax? Is there enough understanding about how conventions work in practice? Should we know more? Is there a significant weakness here that one might point to?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: The conventions in this country have the advantage, as has been noted, of being able to evolve over time. In the scenario we are discussing, it is very hard to see how a Prime Minister who has lost the confidence of the House and is refusing to go would have any of his or her Cabinet left. The whole thing would start to crumble. Even though it is an interesting intellectual question, in practice a Prime Minister who could get no legislation through and did not have a Cabinet would not really be lasting that long, regardless of the sovereign’s intervention or otherwise.
Q37 Lord Cryer: I have to declare an interest: I am married to the Attorney-General. I have a question that I was going to ask, but can I ask another question following on from what you have said? You have mentioned a couple of times the dismissal in 1975 of Gough Whitlam and how that still plays a role in Australian life. People are taught about it. We have always had the view in this country that, although the monarch has exactly the same reserve powers as the Governor-General, that that will never happen.
What made it more likely—and the Labour Party was not in government at the time—was that Jeremy Corbyn had an overwhelming vote of no confidence in his leadership, which he just ignored. He carried on. I had to deliver the figures to him because I was chair of the PLP. You would have thought I was giving him the batting averages for last season or something. Honestly, he just could not give a toss. We were in opposition at that point and a long way from being in government. Nevertheless, what worries me is that events like that make that situation in government, as Lord Jones talked about, perhaps more likely in the future.
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Yes. Just because there has been good practice and people have played by the rules to date, we should never extrapolate that and assume that that will always be the case. I still go back to the thought that there are many structures that support our constitutional set-up. The sovereign, one could argue, is the arbiter of last resort. Funnily enough, Sam Mostyn, the present Governor-General of Australia, gave an interesting speech last year to mark the anniversary of the dismissal, saying that she could not see any Governor-General acting in that way today, because the right to be consulted, to encourage and to warn is for the proper functioning of government, not to exercise political judgments.
I still struggle to envisage a scenario where a Prime Minister is acting so against accepted convention but is still supported by a working Cabinet and is able to get anything through. Remember, in the Whitlam case, the problem was that the whole Government had ground to a halt. People were worried about getting paid.
Lord Cryer: The Senate had blocked the supply Bills.
Lord Young of Old Windsor: Yes, exactly. In that scenario, I agree with the present Governor-General’s view that that would be a matter for elected representatives to resolve rather than the sovereign.
Lord Cryer: You have sort of answered this question, but I will ask it just to be on the safe side. You are saying that the constitutional safeguards are sufficient. Would I be right in saying that?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: I do not want to sound complacent. No system is perfect. My personal feeling, having observed it and been involved in it close up, including through some very testing times, is that I cannot see a better system, or a less worse system, as it were. That does not for a moment mean that we should not continue to be vigilant.
I am conscious that we are short of time, but I would be delighted to see the Cabinet Manual updated. The Cabinet Manual is a great middle way. If it is stuck in time in 2011, as it is at the moment, that is something I would love to see changed. I would like to see every Prime Minister who comes in have an opportunity to review and update the workings of that. That would give me quite a lot of additional comfort around the question of the system and the weaknesses within the system.
Q38 Lord Jones of Penybont: In the face of a determined Government who fully control Parliament, are there any constitutional safeguards that could withstand the determination of that Government?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: That takes me back a little to the context. If this was a democratically elected Government who were determined to pursue a radical manifesto commitment, and indeed do that by virtue of having a majority in the Commons, and either immediately or eventually that legislation gets through the Lords as well, it would be very difficult to argue against that, because clearly a majority of those who voted had voted for that Government.
It becomes much harder if there is a situation where more voters voted for another party but, because of the quirks of the constituency system, a different result came out. Ultimately, this is a parliamentary democracy. If you have a democratically elected Parliament pursuing its manifesto commitments, it is difficult to see how that could be judged as constitutionally improper.
Lord Jones of Penybont: Is that a no?
Lord Young of Old Windsor: It is what I answered.
The Chair: We get to the end of our public session and the meeting will continue in a few minutes with the second evidence session of the day with Lord Case. In the meantime, I now draw this public evidence session to a close and pause the meeting briefly.
