TUESDAY 2 JUNE, 1998

SIR BERNARD INGHAM

  160.  Do you think it is wrong that these roles are being—I mean, is it your view that it is wrong that people are being paid from taxpayers' money to perform these roles, to write articles which obviously have a heavy party political spin on them?
  (Mr Riddell)  I think the problem is a blurring one. I do not think it is wrong to have a Strategic Communications Unit. I think it actually relieves some of the burden from what is a very small press office in Downing Street; it is a tiny one. It has high quality people in, a mixture—well, just now only two political special advisers and the rest are civil servants. I think that clearly needed the co-ordination role, which is the desirable role, to be done by other people. I have no problems with that. I merely think it needs watching. So I do not think it is necessarily wrong, I think it needs watching to make sure that those lines are not crossed because I think there is a danger of them being crossed.
  (Mr White)  I think it is import to remember the historic sense of beleagurement which the Labour Party has vis-a-vis the capitalist press. It is a very odd situation at the moment. It is very popular, most of the newspapers are more or less being nice to the Government. That will not last, but I think many of these arrangements were contingent upon the traditional view of the days when Gerald Kaufman, another Mirror refugee, and Joe Haines, were in Downing Street. I think probably that Alastair Campbell would say that when Mrs Thatcher was in power and Sir Bernard was her Press Secretary the Strategic Communications Unit was located on the editorial floor of the Daily Mail. Jolly good it was too.
  (Mr Hipwood)  I think it is worth pointing out that however many articles are churned out by the Strategic Communications Unit at Number 10, it is not incumbent on any editor in the country to use them ever and I think that it is very important that if Gordon Brown wants to explain why he is imposing this particular tax or reducing this particular tax after the Budget Day, then there is a clear case there for Gordon Brown explaining what he is doing. Keith Hellawell did it in our newspaper recently in terms of what the Government was doing in fighting drugs, the drugs problem. Now that is clearly beneficial, it is informative, it is useful, but if it is pure party political spin or just government spin well there is always the chance to have a reaction from an opposition spokesman, but really I think most features editors will decide: "Well, no thank you very much".

  161.  May I just add one more point? What we, I think, have is not a dramatic shift, but a tendency to a different style of doing things. We have I think you have said there has been an increase in the use of favouritism. It has not been a dramatic shift; it was already there to pick off some journalists at the expense of others in order to try and maximise the extent to which the message can be got across. There has been a tendency towards politicisation through the introduction of the Strategic Communications Unit, through other changes, through the appointment of more party political oriented type people into jobs in the Government Information Service and various departments. Both those points were referred to by Sir Bernard Ingham. The third thing that he referred to, which is an increase in the tendency of certainly Number 10 to be prepared to rubbish Ministers. He denied that he ever rubbished Ministers. He said that the remarks he had made about John Biffen were forced out of him and misunderstood; he did not quite use those phrases, but he certainly said it was the exception rather than the rule and that is more akin to what I recalled, the exception rather than the rule. Sir Bernard produced a list, Strang, Clark, Dobson, Smith, and I think two others, and he alleged or clearly implied that a great deal of the briefing was going on from Number 10 about other parts of the Government, more than had been the case in the past. How would you respond to this?
  (Mr White)  I was here for that part of Sir Bernard's evidence and was surprised that an old pro like Sir Bernard would make that unsupported allegation. We all know how whispers get around about people. I am pretty sure I have never heard any of the people we will characterise as the usual suspects make the kind of remarks about the Ministers who, Sir Bernard Ingham named in those terms. He, for example, specifically said that Alastair Campbell had said the Chancellor was psychologically flawed. Now that turned up in a Sunday paper. I have no idea who said it. I think the consensus among the Kremlinologists who discussed it on Monday was that it would not have been Alastair Campbell himself. For one thing it is much too crude and clumsy and it is improper, and the Chancellor is not a man you do that sort of thing to if you are Alastair Campbell. So it would have been both a crime and a mistake. It may have been said somewhere in the woodwork but one of the difficulties—and it is incumbent upon us as journalists to be straight about this and we are not always as straight as we should be—is to identify sources to give them a proper weight. It could have been said by the office teaboy. It could have been said by a very junior spin doctor. It could have been said by a friendly backbencher, senior backbencher, as we always call you all. My guess would be that it was not made by Alastair Campbell, notwithstanding Bernard's allegations.

  162.  You do not see that tendency?
  (Mr White)  No, I do not see that tendency at all.
  (Mr Hipwood)  As somebody who goes to every Lobby briefing—well, if I miss one it is a mistake. As Chairman I go to morning briefings and the evening briefings. I have never heard anything of that nature come out of Alastair Campbell's lips certainly at a Lobby briefing and to be fair to Sir Bernard when you think that he was doing two briefings a day too, if he made a remark about another Minister within the Conservative Government it was very, very rare indeed and we do not see a lot of that. Sir Bernard's remark I think was probably the most accurate one when he said that most briefing against Ministers comes from fellow Ministers.
  (Mr Riddell)  Also, in the case of the forthcoming reshuffle in July, the tenuous link for Dr Strang and Dr Clark talk to other Ministers and civil servants and also in one of the cases that is where the assessment comes from. So it is not particularly Number 10 in this case actually and we judge people's public performances as well and also talk to other Ministers who in fact tend to be more acid.

  163.  The picture we are getting from you, I think, is of much more continuity and perhaps questions about cycles than of real change, of regarding Number 10 as a special case because it has this strategic overarching nature to its work, as it were, and perhaps of some need for clearer guidelines between the Government Information Service and the political advisers, that that might be an area where clarity is always needed in the dealings, but you have not noticed anything that is particularly astray but it is an area where you would welcome it being clarified.
  (Mr Hipwood)  On page 28 of the Mountfield Report it says, paragraph 3.2, "Ministers should require both Press Officers and Special Advisers active in communication matters to keep in very close personal contact and tell each other what they are actually doing." And I find that a lot of the problems that are occurring at the moment are those problems occurring from the fact that these people do not talk to each other enough.

  164.  So if there is a problem it is more of cock-up than conspiracy and certainly cock-up is not consonant with spin, as it were, if there is one?
  (Mr Hipwood)  Perhaps.
  (Mr Riddell)  With one qualification, there is a tendency—and this again is a factor of an Opposition coming in and I have sometimes viewed bits of the current Government as a kind of Leninist vanguard. The Blairite takeover in July 1994, the sense of the very term New Labour. There can be a tendency of them or us. Now this is a very subtle concept when one views the relationships between 10 and 11 Downing Street; them and us can be subdivided. I think there is a tendency of that and that can come through so one has to look at some of the time there is an aspect of, and favouritism is oversimplifying it, but there is an aspect of looking at it in those terms. The other point which I would introduce into it, and perhaps it might illuminate the Committee, are our opposite numbers on some of the tabloids, particularly what is now happening with the Mirror, because the Mirror has decided to go into, I am not sure if you would even describe it as loyal opposition to the Government as has been seen over the last week, and is having a battle royal with The Sun or rather in the Mirror's case with the Daily Mail, for circulation. They are much more in the firing line on a lot of these issues of possible people being helped. "Are you one of us or are you not". I think you would find some different coloration of answers to the ones we have given from, say, Ken McGuire from The Mirror or Trevor Kavanagh of The Sun.

  165.  You talked about the fact that you tend to focus on splits and if there is a U-turn you find that you turn if you possibly can rather than actually looking at people who are agreeing about things or moving forward. Do you think that some of the focus of that will ever change? With freedom of information do you think you will ever spend more of your time unpicking the facts rather than going for the personalities, because a lot of it is really about personalities. It is not really about the drift or the effectiveness of government policy to find a single backbencher who happens to disagree with the Government on something and is prepared to be quoted on it?
  (Mr White)  I think we said something slightly different which was that the emphasis upon, what is the word, everyone saying the same thing tended to increase the value of divergence. So in a sense it was a kind of counter-productive zero sum game involved in that the more people were expected to conform, the greater value was placed on those who did not, so it accentuated ——

  166.  But many of us agree with each other about the main issues and the way of dealing with them. This is not a point about messages on our pagers which I have to tell you are always administrative and never political. I have never had a political message on my pager, ever. They are always about administrative arrangements. Your assumption is somehow that people who agree with each other, that there is a problem about that in some way?
  (Mr White)  Speaking for myself, I would say that this Government coming in with an extraordinarily large majority and a powerful public mandate is at a phase where there is not much fundamental disagreement as to direction, strategy or even, I was going to say policy, but I withdraw that. There is plenty of disagreement about policy but it is conducted in private. It has not reached the stage which all governments reach as they mature where it will come out more into the open. So we are going through a period of tranquillity from which the Government is benefiting and many of its backbenchers, particularly its new ones, are quite happy with that state of affairs. But rightly or wrongly the old sweats assume that it will not last forever because it does not.
  (Mr Riddell)  And also because admittedly there is interlinkage between personality and policy. `Twas ever so.
  (Mr White)  Tony Benn is disproof of his own thesis that personality does not matter in politics. He matters hugely as a personality.
  (Mr Riddell)  And often they come together. A disagreement about policy will emerge as a personal disagreement. If you look at resignations through history, they have generally been about policy. The classic story in reverse is when Geoffrey Howe resigned and Kenneth Baker, who was then Chairman of the Tory Party tried to say: "Oh, there is no real disagreement" to which Geoffrey Howe rightly responded in his famous resignation speech: "I must be the first person to resign because I agree with the Government". So they become interlinked. I was very struck by your question and Mr Bradley's question. We recognise that 80 per cent of the Parliamentary Labour Party basically do agree. Maybe I am understating it, but whatever. We recognise that, no-one disputes it and you all genuinely believe. I do not agree with some of the patronising Blair's Babes stuff which is drivel and both inaccurate and patronising. It is completely wrong and I think most of us recognise that and it is genuine what you feel and understandably given what happened last year, but there are subtleties and complexities within that which is our job to discuss as well as pointing out most of you agree.

  167.  All I am saying is that there is a big role for the press and there will be a bigger role of the press under freedom of information because your access to information will be improved in a whole variety of ways. I agree with you about Tory Cabinet Ministers, the personalities and the politics were all bound up together. You cannot disagree with that, but what you can say is that the junior backbencher, elevated in your reportage as being as a senior government backbencher as it were, and the only person found really who is happy to express a different view about something, is really just a fly on the wall of no particular interest in the general thrust of things which the Government of the day is doing. Is it not a role that you need to develop, the role of investigating and peeling back the things that actually do matter, that are of greater substance? I am just interested to hear how you see, in the context of all of this, freedom of information as developing your role?
  (Mr Hipwood)  Which MPs' views do you think should be written off as just a fly on the wall and written off in that sense

Miss Johnson:  I am not going to indulge in personality politics which you are inviting me to do?
  (Mr Hipwood)  I cannot imagine any MPs ever want to be dismissed in that fashion and the idea—I do not know which newspapers you have been reading since May 1 last year——

  168.  I read most of them.
  (Mr Hipwood)  —— but the idea that somehow we are giving an impression that most Labour backbenchers, or whatever, that there are great splits within the Labour Party at present is fanciful, is it not? I just do not think it is happening.

  169.  It is just that you will write a whole story about one or two people will say. Somebody, I think, criticised the very good briefings that Number 10 and Mr Blair are having for backbenchers, for example. Now I tried to get a different view expressed about that because I felt very strongly that those are extremely valuable and who would not welcome the opportunity to sit round a table with about as many of us who are sitting around here and talk about the issues of the day with the Prime Minister directly, with nothing else to intervene in any way? Yet those briefings were criticised by some of your colleagues and the attempt, which was only probably by one or two people who had different views about it and wished to dismiss them and try and make something out of it. Most of us felt extraordinarily pleased to have that opportunity and think it is very valuable, and yet you cannot get that view expressed by any of the newspapers?
  (Mr Riddell)  May I say perhaps you are being slightly over-sensitive? Wait and see when the water gets choppier, which it will.
  (Mr White)  I think what you are saying is there is a challenge to us when we get greater access to freedom of information and let us hope we rise to it. Frankly, we have good days and we have bad days. In many respects newspapers, which are bigger and fatter and not all advertising these days, carry a lot of very detailed information which they did not carry 20 years ago. We had a fascinating report by one of my colleagues about Dounreay yesterday, which was very long, the man knows what he is talking about and it would not have got into a daily paper 20 years. It is not all trivialisation, froth and personality. Like everything else in life, you lose a bit, you gain a bit.

  170.  I am not saying it is all. All I am saying is that you have a big opportunity there and I am interested to see how you develop it. The other issue I would just like to go through quickly is obviously a lot of what the Government is going to be doing is cross-departmental working. A lot of the thrust of government policy is to say that we will address issues which span a number of departments and a number of departments have answers, part of the answer to this and I am interested to know with the Government Information Service how you see that message as best being got across because to some degree it may end up with Number 10 having to do a lot of it because of the cross-departmental nature, or you may have a different view about how this information about those kind of initiatives—social exclusion, a lot of the health things that we are going to be doing, a lot of environment things, the way of tackling things like crime—are all going to across departments?
  (Mr Riddell)  Normally there is a lead department in each case and that is a practical one; a kind of bureaucratic point. The other answer will be related to something which no doubt the Committee will be looking at in the Autumn, which is the Wilson Report. When we have Sir Richard Wilson's report on the centre of government and any changes which result from that in the structure of the Cabinet Office, that may well be one of the answers and depending on what structure and whether the Minister Without Portfolio takes over that role, who is not slow at putting a message across. That in a sense will be, I think, the issues related to that.

  171.  Taking up the freedom of information aspect, to what extent do you think there will be substantial change within the Government Information Service when we do hopefully have freedom of information legislation? Do you think it will make any difference?
  (Mr Hipwood)  We all have our hopes about that, let us put it that way. Again it comes down in the end to people's attitudes, I think, within individual departments and that has got to come from the lead of the Minister involved. If the Minister at the top is not keen on something coming out then it is very unlikely that it will come out. So the aims are fine. We would all agree with it; who would ever say we do not want a Freedom of Information Act, as journalists, but I think the proof will be in the pudding.
  (Mr White)  The theory of course is that the Minister will not be able to stop it coming out because the Freedom of Information Act provides leverage and mechanism. The history again in the United States is mixed. It is a more instinctively open society than ours. People assume they have a right to know and they ring the Government Information Office or anyone; they do not say:"How dare you ring me up", they tell you the most extraordinary things even though they have never met you. That is the way they are. For better or worse they tell policemen in Boston what they are thinking about their clients as we read in the papers yesterday. So the onus will be on us to use the Freedom of Information Act. None of us know how it is going to work. My instinct would be that because political journalists are by nature, perhaps like politicians, jacks of all trade, the chief benefit may come to specialist correspondents within newspaper systems, people who know science or health or whatever, in ways that we as the wallpaper brush operators do not.
  (Mr Riddell)  There will also be test cases. I think what we will see—indeed that is the American example—and given the report you produced just before the recess and you will see the response to that—and also with the probable change of Minister responsible whether they are going to take it forward properly. There are a lot of areas in that about the harm test to see whether that has weakened a lot. It is a role for your Committee.
  (Mr White)  We are already beginning to get it. My colleague, David Hencke, who is an assiduous burrower, has been writing to Ministers saying: "Will you give me the evidence upon which you based the policy change" or something. Others have done it too, I have no doubt—and he has had some successes and some failures. Ministers are feeling their way as to what they should and could do and no doubt there are fierce battles going on which——

  172.  In a sense this debate, which has been partly historical, seems to me to be overlooking the fact that we are about, if we take the leap, to make an amazing leap forward which depends partly of course on the press using the new opportunities that will be given to them. I must say I was slightly disturbed on our trip to Sweden when we met with the press because in a sense they took it for granted, but they said they had become lazy and that even though there they had enormous access they tended to still just trot a long in the usual way and not actually do the research which is actually necessary to make serious inroads. But if the Government Information Service is retrained in a new culture, which is of course what Dublin has been doing in relation to their new Act, then it seems to me that that will be one way because you will have a new culture hopefully, and the second way in is through the fact that you will not actually need them that much because you will be able to get the original documents in many cases and not have to rely on briefings?
  (Mr Riddell)  But I think, Dr Clark, the key answer is the one you implied from your Swedish experience. It is us not being lazy, it is also the environment in which we work as journalists. It is whether our papers—and I cannot say I have had any conversation with any of my colleagues, apart perhaps from Mr White's colleague, David Hencke, about the implications of freedom of information and know one really knows it is going to hit them and the opportunities provided. May I take a different example which you know well, devolution. Just as the London-based papers have not begun—they have begun actually, but only just begun—to think of the implications of devolution, also with freedom of information, we have not begun to think about it.

Dr Clark:  I think you should be thinking about it.

  173.  When Lord Irvine came to give evidence for two and a half hours on constitutional reform, including freedom of information, the place was absolutely packed and all the press wrote about was his wallpaper?
  (Mr White)  An interaction of policy and personality, Mr Bradley.

  174.  A couple of points, and I apologise for missing the beginning, because I do share the view that Mr Riddell hinted at that things will change when the climate changes and things get a bit tough. I was here when Mrs Thatcher had everything going for her and I actually thought Bernard Ingham started to emerge when things got really tough. He started to exert a lot of pressure during that tough period, so I would be interested to know if you see a sea-change having to occur right across government, not just from Number 10, but in the way in which the press officer and the spin doctor reacts to the toughening up exercise which will occur maybe in the next 12 months, maybe a bit later, but certainly in the second half of this Parliament things will change. I would be interested to know if you think that the Campbell approach will have to change?
  (Mr Riddell)  Well I am certain that the answer is that the Prime Minister's approach will change. Let us give an example. When we have the first Portsmouth South by-election of the Parliament, when Labour loses its first by-election seat, that will change political climate. Everyone will behave differently; we all know that. How they will behave differently heaven knows, because it goes back to the original point, no-one—practically no-one in the actual Government itself—has ever had that experience before. Lord Richard and Jack Cunningham have, but they are about the only ones who have actually been there through such a buffeting. How it works out, heaven knows, but it will change it, that is what I am saying.

  175.  Fine. Okay, then, drawing on your experiences from elsewhere, what do you think we still need to do to get the Information Service right? You have spoken at great length about experiences in the United States. What do you feel we still need to make your job a better avenue for getting out the message?
  (Mr Hipwood)  Hire more press officers as I hinted—well, I did not just hint at but said if you really want a slick and successful information service you have to staff it properly and I suspect that one of the reasons that we do not get the answers we want when we want them is because there are not enough people to provide the answers or to go to the officials to get the answers. So I think that is one of the main changes which I suspect is the one which will not happen.
  (Mr White)  John Hipwood's testimony is important to that point, Mr Hancock, because Peter Riddell and I work for large and expensive national newspapers with specialist correspondents. Mr Hipwood has to do all sorts of things which might, in the case of the Health Department he mentioned a moment ago, be done by my specialist colleague back in Farringdon Road. I also suspect the health department would give greater priority to my specialist colleague back in Farringdon Road than he might do to Mr Hipwood and a greater priority to the BBC or ITN than he might to The Guardian or The Times. So in a sense, he is quite a long way down the food chain, even though his readers—particularly on something that is as intimate and localised as hospital waiting lists—have as much right to know what is going on in their locality as broad brush generalisations in the Fleet Street press.

  (Mr Riddell)  It is a problem of self-confidence. I think this may be a matter of time. The new heads of Information need to establish their independence in a way and the distinction of the role between Party and Government and I think that is crucial. The Committee can do a job there by suggesting improvements on the Mountfield procedures for the distinction between special advisers and Government information officers, but beyond that—you know, you can have as many rules as you want to—it is a matter of the information officers getting more self-confident in dealing with new Ministers. That, one hopes, will happen with time. I think that is crucial as well as the resource point which Mr Hipwood rightly made.
  (Mr Hipwood)  It also helps of course if the head of the department has an ethos which says: "You are there to answer questions. You are there as an information officer and not as a dis-information officer." So the training of new recruits is vital. You get some departments which are excellent, that will be only too anxious to answer your questions. There are other departments which are positively hopeless and you get to the stage where you do not even bother ringing up. You are much better off going to see if you can track down the Minister in the Lobby at 3.30 p.m.
  (Mr White)  The new technologies may help us here in ways we have not probably devised yet. Dr Clark's question as well, because we do not access web sites anywhere near as much as we should. I am hoping to get the proper kit installed in my office tomorrow. It has taken weeks to do it with our IT Department, but there is a world out there which we are having to come to terms with in which access in government primary sources and all the sorts of things we do ourselves without the intermediary of the government press officer may be something that we have to get to grips with more than we have done in the past.

  176.  I am interested in the sort of increasing development of Government Ministers not being available when things go wrong now and then not available for a quote. I am interested from you three how difficult you feel that a barrier has been created by the effective——no?
  (Mr Riddell)  It is a broadcasting point, not a writing press point really.

  177.  You do not have the same problem?
  (Mr Riddell)  No, it does not apply to me as a columnist because I can make my view, but I do not think even if I was still writing news that is not a problem for the writing press. The fact that the empty chair—you know, there is bad news, we will not put someone up, which I dislike. This is where I said the broadcasters are actually in a weaker position than we are as writing journalists because they have to have someone there, they are under statutory rules and so on and I think there is a problem there and I think the broadcasters have to be a bit more Jeremy Paxman-like.

  178.  I want to follow up what Mr Hancock said because I think all the stuff about how journalists treat MPs is very interesting but not really relevant to the Government Information Service. You all accept that we are deeply sensitive souls who are highly wounded if you do not print our favourite stories, but I was interested in what you were saying about the need for more press officers, Mr Hipwood, and I wonder if you could comment first of all on what sort of background ought those information officers should have? Do you think it is more helpful to you as journalists if more of them come from a background in the media and therefore understand the deadlines and so on or the pressures on you, or can they be bought from within the Civil Service and trained properly to understand that? The other point that I would like to follow up is the question of how the service serves the regional press because I understand your comment? I have difficulty in making government departments understand where my constituency is, never mind relate to it at all. I assume that regional papers have similar problems; the focus is on the London press and I would be interested in hearing what you thought could be done about that?
  (Mr Hipwood)  Well on the last point it is certainly true. Over the years it has improved; we have been battering away from within the regional press for a long time to get the proper recognition because—I will not go through all the figures—but a very high percentage of readers in the West Midlands will read my newspapers and they will not take The Sun and The Times and The Guardian or whatever else. So in any particular area the regional press is the most read newspaper wherever. Getting that through to Whitehall has been a problem. It is not always the information officers that are the problem, I think it is sometimes the Ministers too that do not actually recognise this although they, for goodness sake, should know because they all have a regional newspaper sitting in their backyard. It has improved over the years, it certainly is not right yet and I think it is certainly true that if the Today programme goes on to a department or BBC Television goes on to a department and asks a question then they will certainly get their reply probably before I do in the morning, so there is that problem too. I think so far as bringing ex-journalists into the information services concerned it can only be a good thing provided that it does not blight the career opportunities of good career civil servants. The proof of the pudding is that there are several very good directors of information, chief press officers, senior information officers within Whitehall who have never been reporters and have come up through the system. Equally I would have thought that if you have two or three ex-journalists sprinkled about a department then that is not a bad thing, because they can just explain things about evening paper deadlines; morning paper deadlines have come forward a huge amount over the years and so that is helpful too. I do not think there should be a great distinction as long as you have got a good balance.

  (Mr Riddell)  You have left out a category, which is the mainstream policy civil servants because in some departments—the Treasury is an example, the Foreign Office is another example—where the Head of Information has come from the main policy stream, often they have advanced sharply up, many of them extremely good. I think one of the points when one looks from a journalist's point of view of trust is to feel that they are well-informed and one of the problems, which John Hipwood has touched on, is not just not enough of them and, you know, some are not helpful, you feel that some of them do not know what the hell is going on and that is a real problem. So when you have someone, particularly in the very sensitive departments like the Treasury and the Foreign Office who is themselves a high flying civil servant, I mean there have been a number in both the Treasury and the Foreign Office who have gone on to, in my experience, very senior posts, who have been extremely good. Christopher Mayer, before he went to Number 10, why he attracted attention a long time before he went to the Washington Embassy, was Head of News in the Foreign Office and was extremely good at the job and one knew he was speaking as he understood what was going on. Similarly now with Nigel Sheinwald at the Foreign Office as head of news and who now is going on to a major policy post. So it has to be a mixture.
  (Mr White)  Mountfield makes that point, does he not, that you should get more policy makers involved in presentation and force them to acknowledge which historically the Whitehall mandarinate did not. The presentation is important, so again there is loss and there is gain in these things, but there is more synergy than there was.

  179.  What about the general service you get, particularly out of hours? Let us say a big story is breaking or whatever, how responsive is the Government Information Service? Can you get hold of the people you need at the right time.
  (Mr Hipwood)  If it is a big story the answer is yes. If it is a middling story or what they may regard as not an important story the answer is probably no. Sir Bernard, as he said during his evidence, if the four letter word hits the fan then he is going to know about it very, very quickly and he will have put people on to it or he will be on to it himself. It does not occur with what are called lesser stories, but in fact may be of just as much importance to any particular reader in any particular part of the country.

Helen Jones:  It is like pagers, you see.

  180.  May I just ask one final question because I meant to ask it? What do you think we would have thought if we had been at the 11 o'clock briefing today? Would we, as Members of Parliament, thought the Government had put up a good case, would we have thought that you bunch had actually performed well on the public's behalf?
  (Mr White)  You had a more enjoyable time here, Mr Hancock.

  181.  Really?
  (Mr White)  Well the 11 o'clock briefings are by their nature mainly pedestrian events. They tell you Parliamentary Questions to watch, a Ministerial statement in Sheffield, they say what the Prime Minister is doing, seeing the Prime Minister of Turkey and occasionally they come with a gift-wrapped story which you were not expecting. Obviously on any given day there are things you want to ask the spokesman about—something that has been on the paper or on the television—and sometimes things come up in the questioning which were unexpected. But as I think Mr Riddell implied a moment ago there is this enormous industry which has grown up about the mysteries of the Lobby which are not really warranted by the substance of the exchanges which take place there most of the time. And I say that with a heavy heart; poor Mr Hipwood has to go twice a day. I can only bear it going in the afternoon and sometimes it is good sport and people ask perceptive questions. I was at a non-Downing Street briefing yesterday where the most interesting thing that happened was that the briefer paused for 10 or 15 seconds before he gave an answer and we all thought: "Oh, we are on to something". Now that pause was not on the record, but it was interesting and that is often how these things occur.
  (Mr Riddell)  They do not sound well when they are published, Mr Hancock.
  (Mr White)  Absolutely not, no.
  (Mr Riddell)  They would be remaindered very rapidly.
  (Mr White)  I think it is more boring probably than reading the Exchange & Mart or the telephone directory, I suspect. There are more stories in there sometimes.

Chairman:  Right. I do not think anyone else has any more questions. I do not have any wrap up questions because you have already answered them, so I would like to thank all three of you for answering on behalf of the Fourth Estate, Westminster Branch, to this Select Committee's inquiry into the Government Information Service, first day. Thank you very much for coming and thank you very much for giving your evidence in the way you have.