What should we read into Gus O’Donnell’s investigation role?

Not sure David Cameron was right to say in the commons that the Labour leader had asked him to get the cabinet secretary investigating Liam Fox. Labour has, I think, pretty consistently asked Sir Philip Mawer, appointed as guardian of the Ministerial Code in 2008 by Gordon Brown, to investigate.

So why is it Gus O’Donnell doing this and should we worry?

I believe this is nothing personal against Sir Philip but simply a question of speed. He has never completed any of his inquiries into MPs when he was Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards in anything other than months – often many of them. No. 10 wants this one cleared up in days. Since being appointed as custodian of the Code, the only occasion I can find when he has actually investigated any minister is Shahid Malik in the last government.

He does offer advice to ministers who want to know what to declare and sifts through their register of interests. But after not being called in as an investigator on this big one he might be forgiven for feeling a bit like John de Chastelain, the old Canadian colonel, who sat for what must have felt like an eternity in Northern Ireland waiting for the phone to ring so he could see some paramilitary weapons to be offered up for destruction.

Sir Philip cleared Shahid Malik pretty quickly but his track record is still too slow for comfort in No. 10 and giving the whole thing to Gus O’Donnell means they can keep in touch with the progress of the report. If a startling fact comes to light it will be on the PM’s desk pronto and Liam Fox’s mobile will be lighting up.

Here is paragraph 5.4 from Sir Philip Mawer’s first report on his job: “It is, I hope, clear (from this) that it is not the intention that the cabinet secretary will himself investigate ministers. Rather he will undertake a preliminary examination of the known circumstances surrounding an allegation against a minister in order to advise the prime minister on whether there is sufficient prima facie evidence of a breach of the Code to warrant the prime minister asking the independent adviser to investigate it.”

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