TUESDAY 2 JUNE, 1998

SIR BERNARD INGHAM

  1.  May I welcome you, Sir Bernard, as the first witness into our inquiry into the Government Information Service. This is not the Select Committee on Alastair Campbell, but the Select Committee on Public Administration and this is not an inquiry into Alastair Campbell, but into the Government Information Service and obviously it is a great pleasure to have you here because you are in some ways the doyen of the profession of the past quarter of a century, half a century, whatever, because of the longevity at which you were the head of the Government's Information Service and the Prime Minister's spokesman—without the present title—so we thought it was an excellent idea to give you the opportunity to give us your experiences from your period at the top of the profession as head of the Government Information Service and also observations that you might wish to make to us about the comparisons between your day and today as far as you can tell what is happening today from the outside. I do not know whether you have an opening statement you might wish to make or whether we will go straight into the questions?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  No.

  2.  Okay. Well, then I will start with a few questions and we will pass it around to the rest of the Committee. I think for a period of 10 or 11 years you and Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister at the time, you were the sort of Sherpa Tenzing and Edmund Hillary of the essential relationship between Prime Minister, Prime Minister's Press Secretary and you were also head of the Government Information Service. Can you tell us how important you thought it was at the time that you were (a) a professional career civil servant and that you were combining the roles of head of the Government Information Service with being the Prime Minister's Press Secretary?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  Well, I would not have recognised myself as Tenzing, but nonetheless.

  3.  I thought you were Hillary.
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  My position was quite simply Chief Press Secretary for eleven years, and Head of the Government Information Service for the last two, combining both posts—I presume on the grounds of longevity—and I think it is important, all things being equal, that the head of information in any department should have some media experience and I think I would always go for somebody with media experience if indeed I were choosing that person, all other things being equal. They seldom are, but I think I would like to see some media experience and therefore I think that a professional Government Information Service is important and I think it was important in Margaret Thatcher's day and I think it was very important that you had somebody there to manage her relations with the media as she did not exactly regard journalists as her natural habitat. That was really the role I played; my job was to manage relations with the media and to keep them on as even a keel as it is possible ever to keep the media, although I do know that since May last year they seem to have become poodles. I would never have expected it, but they have become astonishingly poodle-like as compared with what they were like in my day.

  4.  They gave you a much tougher time, do you think?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  Not really that. They said in 1983, when she was returned with a majority of 143 that: "You now have a majority of 143, there is no effective opposition; we are the opposition and we shall give you hell". Well some of them tried.

  5.  The title of Prime Minister's official spokesman was not a title that you ever held, so you were able to do what you might call unattributable briefing. Do you think it was a retrograde step when following the Mountfield Report the present Prime Minister's Press Secretary actually was given the title of Prime Minister's official spokesman and the briefings, which presumably you also did, were on the record and not off the record as yours were? Can you give us the pros and cons, as you see them, of the on-the-record, off-the-record choice?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  I do not know what difference there is other than titular. I was called all kinds of things; in fact, my official title was Chief Press Secretary. I was frequently called spokesman or press officer or you name it, so forget the title. I think the important point here is to recognise that civil servants, if that is what they are, in the Government's service are supposed to be backroom boys better neither seen nor heard. It is very difficult in the televisual age not to be seen, but I do not think it is very difficult not to be heard. Now that, in my view, is the sole reason why in this country we have what was described as the Lobby system. I think the Lobby system where official spokesmen give unattributable briefing is a classic example of the Government coming to terms with its constitutional and Parliamentary environment and what I think is very interesting is that while it is now possible to describe Alastair Campbell as, I think it is, the Prime Minister's official spokesman or whatever, he is not identified and what is more radio and television are still excluded. In other words, the point I make about our constitutional position, the position of civil servants is, to my astonishment, preserved. I am rather surprised at the restraint that the broadcasters have shown this new system bearing in mind that the Press Secretary is on the record. I know the Government says that the broadcasters are not to be admitted, but that has not stopped them demanding things in the past in my experience. Nonetheless they do not and the anonymity as such is preserved and of course you and I know that it has not stopped unattributable briefing at all. All that you have now is an ability to say that the Prime Minister's chief spokesman has said this. It did not take an intelligent animal even to know who was briefing when under the previous system it was described as sources close to the Prime Minister, which was technically I suppose just within the previous rules.

  6.  So it enabled you to be identified for everybody in the know, but it protected your identity from being compromised because you were a career civil servant? Is that what you are telling us?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  And that is what we have got now substantially. We have not changed much at all.

  7.  Would you regard it as an almost inevitable next step that in a few years the Prime Minister's official spokesman will be known by name and will appear in front of cameras, like Mike McCurry, the President's Press Secretary in the United States?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  No, I do not. I do not think it is inevitable and I do not think it is desirable either. I think it is important in the kind of democracy that we have that you do preserve the position of Ministers as being the front men, plus spokesmen and officials as advisers and briefers, if you like, elaborators of the Ministerial message. No, I do not think it is inevitable. The media may think it is inevitable but that depends upon the politicians.

  8.  May I just turn to what you regard as the definition of the task of a Prime Minister's Chief Press Secretary and Heads of Information generally? I think everybody would accept that career civil servants are not allowed to put a party political spin on things and to seek to gain party political advantage because they are paid by the taxpayer; we can all see that bar on the use of taxpayers' money to gain party political advantage. I do not think anybody would argue that at all times all information officers must respond to requests for information to the best of their ability, but there is this grey area in the middle of what is known as either advocacy or spin doctoring or hassling the media to put a favourable gloss on a story that is perhaps the area that is really interesting in trying to establish how far a government information service should go in trying to get the Government's line over. Now, could you give us your view as to whether things have changed since your day or whether essentially all Government Information Service people do seek to try and get the Government's message over as distinct from merely providing the bare facts that have been asked for by journalists?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  You asked first what is the job of an information officer and I wrote in 1967 when I was invited to write my job specification in the Department of Employment, that it is to promote an informed press and public about the Government's policies and measures and to advise Ministers and officials on the presentation of those policies and measures and I think that that stands the test of time. I think we now have a very peculiar position because according to The Guardian at any rate, Alastair Campbell is a civil servant when he chooses to be and is not when he chooses not to be. He is supposed to have a peculiar contract in which he observes the norms and conventions of the Civil Service except when it is convenient to bash the Tories and indeed Mr Blair thinks this is a splendid idea because he has praised him for the way in which he is attacking the opposition. Now in these circumstances, Alastair Campbell is quite clearly not a civil servant and in my strong view should not be paid by the taxpayer. He is a party political appointee and as such should be paid so. Now I am sorry to have to say that all governments have sold the pass because there are a very large number—they have proliferated latterly—of political advisers who are also paid by the taxpayer who are, in fact, serving their political apprenticeship at the expense of the taxpayer. Now I think all this is a very difficult and grey area and it is why indeed I suppose that Alastair Campbell gets away with his dual remit. I did not have that remit and indeed I spent a great deal of my time trying to make sure that what went out—I am not saying that I always succeeded or that I was absolutely infallible myself—but I spent an enormous amount of time trying to make sure that the norms and conventions were observed.

  9.  Do you include in those norms then the issue in relation to, say, negative briefing? In the history books of the 1980s, in some ways your two most famous contributions will be seen as negative briefing contributions. They were against Ministers of the Cabinet, not against the Opposition of course, but they were the references that you made unattributably to John Biffen and to Francis Pym and what I find fascinating about those in reading some of the things that you have written about that period is that you also said that you would rather commit hari-kiri—I am not quite sure of the correct Japanese pronunciation of it—than to have complied with the request from Collette Bowe, if I remember correctly, who was Leon Britten's head of press and information to leak the Solicitor-General's letter in relation to Michael Heseltine at the height of the Westland controversy. You said it was not your job to do dirty work; you were a civil servant. Now why was it your job to do dirty work as regards negative briefing against John Biffen and Francis Pym?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  I did not think I was doing dirty work. What I thought I was doing was trying to bring some rationality to the argument and that is frequently difficult, if I may say so, in Lobbies. What was happening here was that Francis Pym had made an extremely gloomy speech in the same week that the Chancellor had said we were coming out of a deep recession. It turned out the Chancellor was right and the Lobby, not unnaturally, since Francis Pym was in charge of the presentation of policy, wondered how such a man could remain in the Cabinet.

  10.  He was not in the Cabinet?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  Hang on a minute. He was certainly in the Government. What I sought to do at the end of a long and difficult passage, because neither Mrs Thatcher showed any signs of sacking him and he certainly did not show any sign of going, what I tried to do was to bring some rationality to the argument and explain it in terms of personality.

  11.  You were a civil servant and you were knocking a Minister of the Government?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  I now wish I had not done it because that and John Biffen, which is exactly the same circumstance where I was trying to explain by relation to his position in the Government why he would do such a thing. I wish I had done neither, because it got me a reputation—in my view utterly undeserved, but nonetheless I got it—for rubbishing Ministers. Now rubbishing Ministers seems to be routine, several of them.

  12.  It puts your ability to criticise, say Alastair Campbell, for doing the same thing in a different light——
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  No, I do not think it does.

  13.  —— if you are saying well you did the same thing?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  No, I did not do the same thing. I was trying to explain at the time why certain circumstances had occurred.

  14.  By saying fairly nasty things about members of the Cabinet?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  Well, I am not sure they were nasty either.

  15.  Well, moan a lot, is not exactly a compliment, is it?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  Well, he was a gloomy person. I think Francis would admit that he was.

  16.  That might be a convenient moment to pass the questions to Helen Jones.
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  I have never known calling someone gloomy was a term of abuse.

  17.  Sir Bernard, I am interested in exploring this issue with you further, particularly the relationship between your role as a civil servant and your role as the Prime Minister's Press Secretary and I think in your article: "The Awkward Art of Reconciliation" you referred to the moment when Mrs Thatcher announced that she intended to fight on for the Tory leadership. You say that as a civil servant you had no role in those events, but if I understand you correctly you believe that to have abandoned the Prime Minister at that point would have had political consequences for the Government. Do you believe then that there are circumstances where it is impossible to draw the line between presenting government policy—I think you referred to it earlier as promoting an informed press and public about the Government's policy and measures—and acting in what can only be described as a political way? If not, where in your view should the line be drawn? Where is it your duty as a career civil servant to say: "No, there are certain things that I cannot do"?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  I think it is very difficult to divorce a Chief Press Secretary from politics. He is at the heart of politics, not necessarily party politics. On this occasion the Prime Minister was going out—in fact, she charged out and almost trampled John Sargent underfoot—to say and to hold the line as had been previously arranged, depending upon the scenario, to hold the line back in London with Tory MPs. Now, as such, I had no role in that but I felt two things; first of all I felt that it would send a political message if she was being seen to be abandoned by her closest civil servants and I therefore thought we had a responsibility to look after the Prime Minister so long as she was Prime Minister. Second, I had to cope with the media and while it had nothing to do with me, because in a sense it was a party political occasion, I also had to have regard for the reputation of the Foreign Office too in these matters. If the Foreign Office had been seen to neglect the Prime Minister in these circumstances, then that could have carried a political, as distinct from necessarily a party political message, and therefore I made arrangements for the media to be catered for. It is frequently very difficult to do this, but I tried and I tried to get a pool position for those so that we could get a decent sound feed for radio, decent pictures and then I put all the others on the other side of the courtyard so that they could get a sound feed from the loud speakers. Then I saw that somebody had filched the central mike, so I charged down the steps in order to recover the central mike for the benefit of all these people over that side who had in fact to meet the same deadlines as the people who could hear in the pool place and that explains why I did it.

  18.  I understand why you did it, although I find the idea that Mrs Thatcher could be neglected by anyone rather touching really, but the question is quite a different one in that she was acting then not in a Prime Ministerial role, but purely as the leader of the Conservative Party, it was about an internal Conservative Party election. So are you actually saying to us that it is impossible in those circumstances, or almost impossible, to be what I might describe in shorthand as a neutral civil servant?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  No, I was a neutral civil servant. I was not playing any part other than facilitating the Prime Minister—admittedly as party leader—to make the statement that she wished to make. I did not say anything.

  19.  That casts an almost inevitably party political aspect to it, does it not?
  (Sir Bernard Ingham)  I do not think it is a party political aspect. Here you are employed by the Prime Minister who has something to do and which turns upon the office, to a degree, of the Prime Minister and I sought to facilitate the dissemination of the message. I did not do anything else.