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ON THE RECORD
DAVID HILL ANDY WOOD INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 21.6.98
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: This week the man who does his job
behind the scenes will move into the spotlight at the front of the stage.
Alastair Campbell, Chief Press Secretary in title but in truth, one of the
most influential men in the government because of his close friendship and
working relationshiop with the Prime Minister. Mr Campbell will be questioned
by a House of Commons committee. MPs are growing increasingly worried, some of
them away, that the whole Government Information Service is becoming
politicised. With me in the studio is David Hill, who was until recently the
chief press officer of the Labour Party, and Andy Wood who was director of
information in the Northern Ireland office until he fell out with Mo Mowlam -
or perhaps SHE fell out with HIM
Andy Wood, does it worry you that the
job is becoming - Mr Campbell's job is becoming more political?
ANDY WOOD: Clearly there's always been a heavy
political element to it; even by explaining government policy you obviously are
being seen to be defending it as well. I think what worries me is the sheer
increase of the number of press officers, information officers, special
advisors who are being brought into government. You would almost think from
these numbers that this is a government on its beamends, perhaps in the last
year of the parliament and fighting for every little bit of tactical advantage,
whereas they've got four clear years ahead of them with a very handsome
majority. The question is I think, why do they need all these people?
HUMPHRYS: And some people who don't know the way
these things work necessarily, David Hill, would say why do you need as it
were a party hack in that role of the Prime Minister's chief in the past we've
had people like Sir Bernard Ingham who you may say defended the policies very
vigorously indeed, but was a civil servant.
DAVID HILL: Well, in the first instance can I say
that I actually think that what Andy's just said is not very right. It's
a bit of nonsense because I was a special advisor in the 1970s when I worked
with Roy Hattersley. There were two of us there, and I spoke to the press
quite often on behalf of Roy Hattersley as a special advisor in the
1970s, so this is not a 1998 phenomenon for Labour. We're talking about the
mid-1970s when I was doing that job. But I think that...
HUMPHRYS: But let's stay with Alastair Campbell.
HILL: Well, I just wanted to put the record
straight on that.
HUMPHRYS: I want to come back to that.
HILL: Of course. But as far as Alastair
Campbell's concerned, I mean, Alastair Campbell does everything on the record.
Alastair Campbell is doing a good .....
HUMPHRYS: Does everything on the record?
HILL: Yes, he does, he speaks on the record
now. All is briefings are on the record. That was not true of Bernard Ingham,
it was not true of Joe Haines. But what we're talking about is a
process where strong Prime Ministers, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher, and now
Tony Blair, have press secretaries who do a very good job on their behalf
speaking to the press on behalf of both the Prime Minister and Government. And
I think it's important that that person has a special role, and that role
recognises that most of the time they merely speak for government, but from
time to time, particularly when there are political attacks on the Prime
Minister or the Government they have to defend them, and that means there has
to be a political element in there.
HUMPHRYS: Well, that's understating it a bit isn't
it. Much of the time is spent attacking the government, and many people would
say why should we taxpayers pay for somebody like Mr Campbell to attack the
Government - attack the Opposition.
HILL: Yes, attack the opposition. The
fact is that very little of Alastair's time is spent attacking the opposition.
When I was working-
HUMPHRYS: Well, the Prime Minister himself did
say that that was his job, and he said - now I've got a quote here somewhere:
He does an effective job attacking the Conservatives.
HILL: There are two points about that. I mean
the first one he was talking very much about what Alastair had been doing over
the years, much of which was in opposition. And secondly, there are occasions,
many occasions, when the story is essentially an attack on the government by
the Opposition, and Alastair Campbell when he's doing a briefing for
journalists cannot possibly just say: I refuse to comment. He has to give a
response which is by definition going to have a party political element in it.
But basically he spends ninety-five per cent of his time putting forward the
government's case to journalists. And I can tell you from my experience over
the years, that since we got into government while I was doing the job of chief
press office for the Labour Party, whenever there was a party political issue
he would say: refer it to David Hill, and he did.
HUMPHRYS: Mmm. But the idea that it's only very
very rarely that Alastair Campbell ventures criticism of the Opposition is a
bit rich isn't it?
HILL: Well, no, that's not a bit rich. It
isn't very very rarely, it's every time it's appropriate, but the fact is-
HUMPHRYS: -many many times.
HILL: Well, that may be quite often, that may
be quite often, but what I'm saying to you is, he doesn't just volunteer doing
this, he is responding to the way in which the politics of this country now
works, which is that the Opposition attacks the Government, attacks the Prime
Minister, and as a result the Prime Minister's press secretary's job is to
defend the Prime Minister and the Government, and sometimes that needs to have
a party-
HUMPHRYS: Well, is that entirely right. Sir
Richard Wilson, the Cabinet Secretary said his job is not to focus on out and
out attacks on the Opposition, can't justify that to the taxpayer.
HILL: But that's just what I've said. I've
just said he doesn't focus on out and out attacks. What he does is he defends
the Government and sometimes that has to have a party political element to it,
but when it becomes an out and out attack like, for example local election
campaigns, the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party, parliamentary
Labour Party meetings, I always dealt with those and I was speaking for the
party. Alastair Campbell fought the Government.
HUMPHRYS: So you accept that Andy Wood?
WOOD: I think we understand that there is a
division quite properly between the party press officer's function and the
government's press officer's function, and I've no particular bones to pick
there. Let me make it clear though, that what I was talking about was not
saying that the growth or the existence of special advisors, media advisors
whatever, is the function of the nineties under Labour. Of course it's not. I
remember you when you were working for Roy Hattersley. What I'm saying though,
is the growth in the numbers of apecial advisors. By a rough estimate Labour
has about half as many again as the Conservatives.
HUMPHRYS: About seventy at the moment, against
thirty-eight under the last lot.
WOOD: Coming on for double in that case, and
one wonders why that has happened. But I think in some respects the big issue
hasn't really been addressed either in the PAC meetings which have taken place
so far the two hearings, the Public Administration Commmittee, which has
happened, beginning of June and last week, and we'll be looking at Alastair
Campbell this coming week. The big issue is why at the head of the Government
Information Service, or the Government Information Communication Service, as we
now have to call it, ten heads of information have left their jobs, been forced
out of their jobs, or have taken early retirement since Labour came to power.
That is an issue which the PAC hasn't looked at, it's an issue on which the
wider Civil Service, and the top of the Civil Service, apart from some unease
expressed by the then Cabinet Secretary Robin Butler has been conspicuously
silent, and that, rather than revisiting Bernard Ingham in session one, which
was great fun for new Labour - as they sort of dredged up the old demon king
of political pantomime and brought Bernard back on stage, so Labour MPs could
be horrified by what he was doing seven/eight years ago, the PAC has not yet
looked - this is a very live issue.
HUMPHRYS: So what you are talking about is a kind
of politicisation, a creeping politicisation of-
WOOD: Well let's see if it is. There are
instances where clearly I think it has been politicisation.
HUMPHRYS: David Hill, that does suggest it, all of
those things does suggest that that is happening doesn't it. Otherwise you'd
have to say, with all those people who were sacked, people like Andy Wood were
no good at their jobs. Well maybe he wasn't, maybe he was very good, some said
he was I don't know. But, all of them, all of those who were sacked were simply
no good at their jobs, didn't get on with the ministers?
HILL: Well it's impossible for me to be able
to tell you-
HUMPHRYS: Looks suspicious.
HILL: -detail on each individual case and if I
were able to tell you the detail of each individual case you would ask why
someone who was a party official would know so much about what was going on
inside government. But, that having been said-
HUMPHRYS: Can't anticipate all the questions!
HILL: That having been said, I think one has
to recognise that we had had eighteen years of one administration under two
Prime Ministers. And over the last six years we had had a government and a
Prime Minister who by every judgement, every analysis was a disaster at
communication and you now had new Labour coming into office with a machine, or
a press and communications machine, the like of which we'd not seen in this
country. And the Ministers and the Secretaries of State demanded that the
process which served them was as good as it could be and as good in
comparision with what they had been served by in opposition as it could be. And
I have to assume that in a number of these cases, if not all of them, there was
a sense that the people who were heading the information in those departments
were not able to deliver the service that the Cabinet Ministers wanted.
HUMPHRYS: So in your case-
WOOD: I'll tell David what there was. There
was a feeling that the Millbank media machine, which admittedly ran a very very
slick operation for the Labour Party in opposition, I mean the slickest we'd
ever seen, a bit too American perhaps but let's not detract from that.
HILL: I'm quite happy with the result.
WOOD: Not for me to say as a former civil
servant.
HILL: Of course.
WOOD: And of course living in Northern Ireland
I can't even vote for Labour were I so inclined.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but go on..how things changed when
your boss came in, when Mo Mowlam came in?
WOOD: I think they thought they could take
Millbank and transplant it onto the Government Information Service or replicate
it within the Government Information Service.
HUMPHRYS: In other words treat it as a party, a
bit of the party machinery.
WOOD: A bit of that but more damaging is the
supposition that the GIS, the Government Information Service, was failing to
deliver. It's the quickest way to ruin the morale of any organisation is to
start pointing out where somebody else was doing it better. You know as well as
I do, because you've worked alongside the GIS over the years, there are some
very, very talented operators who actually, if they were to go outside as your
colleagues are increasingly doing, will earn a lot more money but because of
committment to the idea of public service, stayed in the Government Information
Service.
HUMPHRYS: When you started working for Mo Mowlam
as opposed to working for a Conservative Cabinet Minister, did you find that
you were being asked to do things you hadn't been asked to do before or in a
different way in which you'd been asked.
WOOD: No, I wasn't being asked to go out and
score party political points. I make absolutely no complaint on that score at
all. What wasn't absolutely clear and I think this was experienced by a lot of
my colleagues, Steve Reardon at DSS, noted this in the memo that he's
put into the PAC, the lines of demarcation were not drawn. You had a
proliferation of special advisors, whether they were policy advisors or media
advisors and it's potentially fatal for any department when you have so many
alternative voices accessible to the media. I mean only this morning the
deputy Prime Minister-
HUMPHRYS: -oh well.
WOOD: -is saying to Tony Blair rein Labour's,
not government, rein Labour's spin doctors in.
HUMPHRYS: Right let me put that to you, because-
HILL: I've read this article and there's not a
word from John Prescott in that article.
HUMPHRYS: Oh no, because it would have come from
the spin doctors wouldn't it. This is the whole point.
HILL: That's the cheap point to make.
HUMPHRYS: Well cheap point, it's exactly the point
isn't it. You wouldn't expect John..although if you're looking for things that
John Prescott has said on the record, he's said On the Record here, in this
very studio, just a couple of weeks ago, what was it, how was it: the teeny
boppers at Number Ten, by which he meant special advisors who were getting in
the way of policy making and the like. This is a serious matter isn't it, if
you are bringing in a lot of unelected, obviously, and non-civil servant
people, who are actualy taking over the machinery of government. And, in the
process, if John Prescott's words are to be believed this morning, or the
message is to be believed that's been delivered from John Prescott this
morning, damaging Labour's interests.
HILL: Well there are two points, firstly they
are not taking over the machinery of government. Seventy people are not taking
over the machinery-
HUMPHRYS: Well they are.
HILL: -with thousands of people working for
government. Secondly, of course there are many people, many people working for
the Government Information Service who are excellent but I return to the point
that I made, which is that New Labour brings in a new style of government and
wants to ensure that its communication strategy is effective in government as
it was in opposition. And most of the people, most of the special advisors you
know are not people who are particularly practised in talking to journalists
and I think one of the big mistakes that's made is to suggest that we have
seventy spin doctors. Hardly any of the people who work for the key figures in
government are people who spend a lot of their time talking to journalists,
many of them are specialists.
HUMPHRYS: So, where are all these messages coming
from now? I mean we saw a classic example of it this past week, didn't we?
The Gordon Brown-Margaret Beckett affair. One side putting out one story: how
Gordon had triumphed, another side putting out another story: how Margaret
this, that and the other. Where is all of this coming from? Somebody,
somewhere is sowing it all.
HILL: John, this has been happening for years
and years and years.
HUMPHRYS: Yes. But, more of it is happening now.
HILL: I don't believe more of it is happening.
In Government, there are clashes. In Government, senior politicians differ.
In Government, you therefore find that one side takes one position, another
takes another and their supporters - the people who are their friends and their
supporters - many of them actually elected politicians, will go out and do the
talking. There's no-there's absolutely no sense in suggesting that every time
anything appears in a newspaper it is from a spin doctor or from a special
adviser, most of the time it's from politicians.
HUMPHRYS: Well, couldn't we do with a bit less of
this leaking and this spin-doctoring - a bit more straight information?
HILL: I think that what we could do with is as
much as we possibly can - a political process which guarantees that we know
what is going on from the politicians themselves but as far as the spin doctor
story is concerned, it's much overblown.
HUMPHRYS: David Hill, Andy Wood, thank you both
very much, indeed.
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