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It is rare – maybe unprecedented – for a senior former mandarin to take to the airwaves to insert himself into a live political row. That is what Lord McDonald, former head of the Foreign Office, did with his open letter to the Commissioner for Parliamentary Standards, explaining what really happened about complaints regarding Christopher Pincher’s behaviour while he was a minister. McDonald said he felt impelled to intervene because the No.10 press office had fed out a line that the prime minister was unaware of substantiated allegations against Mr Pincher.
Lord McDonald knew that was untrue. The prime minister should have known it was untrue – as Lord McDonald points out – and should have been able to remember an accusation so serious. Boris Johnson’s immediate entourage may or may not have known it was untrue and had relied on the prime minister’s assurances. But someone in No.10 allowed the press office to lie to the press.
Press officers are paid to put a positive spin on government policy and to defend the government when its record comes under attack. So the press office will have a set of defensive lines to take. And it will have ways of presenting the government’s achievements which make the government look as good as is possible – within boundaries.
The most important of those boundaries is that a taxpayer funded press office must not lie to or deliberately mislead journalists (save perhaps if there is a pressing national security situation). That duty is in the civil service code. It is in the guidance to government communications officers.
In this case the No.10 press office might have been a victim of others’ lies in No.10. But that was clearly not true in the case of the partygate allegations. There the press office was at the heart of the party culture in No.10 exposed in Sue Gray’s report. But despite knowing that it was impossible to dress up what had been going on as “work events” – the defence which cost Allegra Stratton her job – they went on covering up. It was only after the fines were issued and the full Gray report was published that the official spokesman stopped lying and put an apology for doing so on the public record.
Amazingly that apology was not followed by the spokesman’s resignation or dismissal. It should have been. The prime minister’s official spokesman cannot double as a liar. Both the press and the public need to know that they can trust what is being said in the name of the prime minister and the government. And that action should not have rested with the prime minister – it should have been the cabinet secretary who made clear that the lies had besmirched the civil service’s reputation and demanded their departure.
Instead, at the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs select committee last week, the cabinet secretary seemed to suggest that this was not the case. He said: “It is not automatically a breach of the Civil Service Code. There is a professional point here. I think that the reason why he apologised, although it is not an easy relationship between the press officers and the media, is that it is important that there is a degree of trust, which is why he apologised.” This was a remarkably contorted justification for clearly inappropriate behaviour.
Honesty is not just the best policy – it is the policy. And lying clearly breaches it. Case’s equivocation suggests the only problem with lying and the only reason for apologising was that this had compromised the relationships between press officers and the media. It may be that in the Pincher case, the integrity of the No.10 press office and of civil service press officers more broadly is just another piece of collateral damage from the prime minister’s behaviour. But that integrity was already in question after partygate.
Taxpayers do not pay for civil servants to lie to us via the media. The prime minister may not accept that. But the cabinet secretary should make clear that he does