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Government Communications

My Lords, I am sure that this will be a much calmer debate than the debate that we have just had, dealing as it does with one of the Government’s outstanding successes: government communications. We will see. First, I thank the journalists and government officials who gave evidence to the committee, and I pay particular tribute to Sir Robert Phillis and his highly skilled team, which reported in 2004. I also thank our committee clerk Chloe Mawson, and our committee specialist Peter Hills-Jones, who have both rightly moved on to higher things. They both made a major contribution to the work of this committee and its predecessor on the BBC charter. Last, but in no way least, I also thank the very hard working members of my committee, some of whom are here this afternoon. Let me make clear from the start my belief that there is an important role for government communications; I can hardly say less given that, when I was Secretary of State for Social Services, I ran a very high profile campaign on HIV/AIDS using radio, television and the press. I do not deny for a moment that the Government are entitled to advertise when, for example, there is a public health danger or to employ press officers to answer questions about departmental policies. There is no disagreement on that point. Indeed, I would go further and say that as many high-flying civil servants as possible should serve for a period in the press office so that they understand what is involved and, frankly, to keep their feet firmly on the ground. That might prevent the kind of conversation that I once had with the Treasury about public spending, in which I pointed out that the cut that it was proposing went smack against what had been in my party’s manifesto, and got the reply from one of the Treasury officials, "Oh, Secretary of State, that’s just politics". The more you can keep civil servants adjusted to what is actually happening outside the House, the better. I therefore welcome the Government’s sympathetic response to our proposal that as many officials as possible should have press office experience, and their assurance that they will examine ways in which this can be done practically and with the least cost. I have no quarrel with the principle of government communicating either with the public or the press, but we then come to crucial questions about the scale of government communications and their purpose. The committee believes that it is of the utmost importance that information provided by the government service should be accurate and impartial, and that there should be no hint of party political bias. This is obviously of the greatest importance now in the period leading up to a general election. If government press officers were to be misused to put out party messages, that could be an unfair influence at a crucial time. Special advisers have a different role from that of departmental press officers, but they too are governed by the Civil Service Code. In reviewing the effort of the government communications machine as a whole, it is obviously crucial that its cost should not be excessive. On the question of cost, it is clear that there has been a substantial increase in the costs of the government information machine under the present Administration. That simply cannot be denied. It was clear from the beginning in 1997 that changes were to take place. In his evidence to us, Sir Robert Phillis explained that, ""the Labour opposition before the election was very, very effective in its news management, and on taking power I think the view was that much of the old"—" Government Information Service— ""system was not well equipped in the skills of news and media management … as the Labour opposition had been before they took power"." In the two years following the 1997 election, 17 of the 19 departmental heads of information left office and a number of political special advisers were appointed to work in communications. What has happened since? The number of press officers in government departments in Whitehall has increased by 72 per cent in the past 10 years. In December 1998, there were 216 press officers. By September 2008, this number had risen to 373. At the same time, the number of special advisers has also risen sharply by no less than 92 per cent since 1996. In that year, there were 38 special advisers. In 2008, there were 73. In terms of overall cost, it has been extraordinarily difficult for the committee to find a total of all government spending. Departments such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Ministry of Defence and the Department of Health were able to provide such information, which sometimes raised a range of questions. For example, the Department of Health planned to spend double the amount on communications in 2008-09 than it did in 2007-08; that is, £107 million compared to £52 million. But the extraordinary point is that the Government are unable to give a total cost figure for all departments. The suspicion must be that if they did so that figure would be very high. They say that there are problems here of definition, but that ignores the fact that three government departments were able to provide such information. They defended in a generalised way the increases that had taken place. They said that the demands of the media were now much greater than ever before, while ignoring the fact that many of the so-called new news platforms do not have their own reporters, as we pointed out in a previous report, but rely on agency copy and do not carry out an investigative or truly reporting role. We did not have time to go further into this issue without unduly delaying our report, but perhaps I may suggest that this would be a proper subject for the Public Accounts Committee to investigate and see whether the public are getting value for their money. It is ludicrous that the Government cannot make some estimate of the money that the taxpayer is spending in this area. Other members of the committee will speak for themselves on the subjects in this report that they consider important, but there are two particular areas where we made proposals and where the Government’s response causes me concern. The first is special advisers. We said we believe that it is of key importance that Ministers made clear at all times that special advisers must follow the guidance available and stay within the limits set down. The Government’s response was complacent. They said: ""The Civil Service Code also applies to special advisers and this makes clear that they always act in a way that is professional and that deserves and retains the confidence of all those with whom they have dealings"." The Government were saying not that special advisers should act in this way but that they always did act in this way. Their response was dated 2 April. A few days later on 11 April, this explanation was effectively blown out of the water by the case of Damian McBride, a special adviser to the Prime Minister—a very senior special adviser at that— misusing public funds to try personally to smear political opponents. If ever a special adviser was guilty of dragging politics into the gutter it was Mr McBride. It marked a new low in British politics and raised the question why a man like this was ever employed inside the Government, let alone at No.10. Let us be clear where responsibility for special advisers lies. Again, I quote from the Government’s response to our report. They say that the Ministerial Code makes it clear that the, ""appointing Ministers are responsible for the management and conduct of their special advisers"." I repeat, the "appointing Ministers". So, if those words mean anything, it is that the Prime Minister is responsible for his special advisers and other Ministers are responsible for theirs. Being responsible does not just mean saying that when something goes wrong, "I take full responsibility and I have sacked him", it means making it clear to special advisers from the start what they are expected to do and what under no circumstances they can do. That is what taking responsibility means. I welcome the fact that in their response the Government agree with us that codes of conduct will now be made available not just to special advisers but also to Ministers. However, by itself, that is not enough. Ministers must recognise that they are responsible and accountable for the conduct of their special advisers and they must do their utmost to avoid any abuse by them. My second concern is on announcements to Parliament. The committee recommended that the Prime Minister should draw to all Ministers’ attention the guidance in the Ministerial Code that the most important announcements of government policy should be made in the first instance in Parliament. The House will note that we recommended that the Prime Minister should make this clear. The Government’s response was, again, deeply complacent. They said that our recommendation simply reflected the current position. When Parliament is in Session, they said, the most important announcements of government policy should be made in the first instance to Parliament. The Government therefore proclaim themselves totally satisfied, and yet three weeks after that response, where does the Prime Minister choose to make his statement on MPs’ allowances, the abuse of which had rightly caused grave public concern? He did not make it in Parliament where he could be questioned and where by definition it was most relevant and, I would argue, most appropriate. He did not even make it to the Lobby, where he could be questioned. He made it as a deliberate act of policy to YouTube where there was no opportunity for questions. Quite rightly, the policy eventually came to grief. The Prime Minister was not exactly in Oscar-winning form, but the graveyard humour over his performance should not disguise one fundamental point. By any measure, it was probably the most extraordinary bypass of Parliament that any of us can remember. I do not deny for a moment that over the years and in previous Governments there have been attempts to bypass Parliament. Of course that is true. I remember remonstrating with one Minister of the Conservative Government in the mid-1990s when I was on the Back Benches on the grounds that one popular newspaper seemed to be getting an extraordinary string of exclusive stories from his department. So I do not quarrel with that, and what I emphasise and underline is that the recommendations of this all-party committee apply to all Governments of whatever persuasion. But what I do say to the Minister is this: in almost 40 years in Parliament, I cannot remember a time when politicians and Parliament itself were held in lower esteem than they are today. There are many factors to this, but the impression of sleaze is added to immeasurably when the Prime Minister’s own special adviser conspires to reveal untruths about the personal lives of political opponents and uses public money to do so, while the best way of downgrading Parliament and making it irrelevant is by deliberately ignoring it and making statements outside the Chamber. The truth is that in spite of the Phillis committee report and in spite of our own report, there is still a very long way to go. If we believe in democratic government, it should not be about fixing the news, about burying bad news on a day of world catastrophe, or about trying to blacken the personal reputation of opponents. There is a challenge here for government and for any party that has aspirations to be a Government. We need honesty and openness, and the responsibility for achieving those must rest on Ministers themselves. That is one of the key recommendations of our committee.