Ministers need their Werrittys

I’ve never met Adam Werritty and hadn’t even heard of him before a few weeks ago. I’m also of the belief that financial wrongdoing should not be the only test used to judge Liam Fox’s suitability for ministerial office. And I don’t think the fact that a previous government changed ministers too often is a reason to overlook inappropriate ministerial behaviour. Whether the Defence Secretary, in fact, behaved inappropriately remains to be seen. But the signs are not, at this stage, good – even if the airwaves are now dominated by “Foxies”: the Defence Secretary’s friend and allies.

That said, I think the self-styled advisor is getting an unfair wrap, at least based on the information available to the public. As James Kirkup reported earlier this week, there have been plenty of people in the past who worked with and for ministers, but were not – at least initially – on the government’s payroll. The last Labour government was no different. Michael (now Lord) Williams, Lord Levy, John Birt are just some of the names that spring to mind. My colleague Mark Leonard was in and out of Downing Street during the Blair years.

In this modern, fast-changing world, where officials are drawn from a small pool of talent and are taught throughout their careers never to challenge superiors, ministers often need support from elsewhere. That is why they have SpAds (though not enough) and rely on others for fresh perspectives and contacts.

Fox clearly valued Werritty’s advice and found his networking and globe-trotting useful to his MoD work. It probably was. As such, the Defence Secretary should have created some kind of role for him such as “Special Envoy” or put him in an unpaid capacity on some Defence Advisory Board. Or had him enobled. As long as it was unpaid and Werritty did not benefit financially, nobody would have worried too much. Officials would have learnt how to work with him, correcting his advice to Fox when it did not take account of bureaucratic realities and making common cause with him on some issues.

The fact that Fox did not create such a slot suggests that he either did not understand how “the system” works or thought he did not need to bother. Either way, this is problematic. As for Werritty, he seems exactly the kind of guy a Defence Secretary would need as an envoy – people have described him variously as charming, a global networker and someone who cared mainly to advance UK interests. If true, that sounds like the sort of person Britain should want to have more of.