Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Iraq/BBC.
Iraq/BBC
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) distributed copies of a letter from the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell, to the BBC’s Director of News, Richard Sambrook, setting out questions which we wanted answered by the end of today.
Asked to explain what ‘the end of the day’ actually meant in terms of timing, the PMOS said that we were not as pedantic as some would like to believe. We wanted to see a response by the end of the day. Asked what action Downing Street would take if the questions were not answered by the end of today, the PMOS said we hoped that the BBC would answer the serious questions we were posing and apologise for what we believed to be a very serious and untrue allegation. Pressed as to what action might be taken if the BBC declined to respond, the PMOS said that people should be patient and take things one step at a time. We had stated clearly both yesterday and today why we believed that the statements made on the Today Programme were untrue. Today we had asked the BBC a series of questions. We hoped that they would respond. Asked why it was so important for the BBC to respond by the end of the day, the PMOS said that the Director of News had made his comments in his Today Programme interview this morning based, presumably, on a very careful consideration of all the evidence, including remarks made by Andrew Gilligan and Today. If he was able to speak so confidently on that basis in the morning, surely he was able to answer the questions we had posed by this evening - in the same way we had been willing to answer questions throughout this whole regrettable affair.
Put to him that the matter could be cleared up easily by publishing the first draft of the September dossier, the PMOS said that the FAC had made certain requests yesterday which had been confirmed by the Clerk last night. It was not for him to detail what those requests were. However, we would be responding to the Committee after consulting the JIC. When we did so, the material would become the possession of the Committee and it would then be up to them to decide what to do with it. Asked if he was saying that the first draft of the dossier might be published at some point, the PMOS said he did not think it would be helpful to engage in speculation. The FAC had outlined certain questions in open session yesterday. Those had been translated into questions which the Clerk had put to us last night. We would respond to the Committee within the specified timetable with the caveats set out by Mr Campbell yesterday. However, we had no intention of providing a running commentary on the information which had been requested and that which would be supplied, in consultation with the JIC, because it would be disrespectful to the Committee to do so.
Asked if any thought had been given to the possibility of taking legal action against the BBC, the PMOS said we hoped that the BBC would respond positively to our very serious request to consider whether what it had said, based on one anonymous source, had been accurate when the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, the head of the JIC, the intelligence and security co-ordinator and the heads of the intelligence agencies had all agreed that it was not. Asked what would happen if the BBC refused to do so, the PMOS repeated that it would not be helpful to engage in speculation about the future.
Asked if an inquiry was being launched into who Andrew Gilligan’s source might be since he - or she - would have broken the Official Secrets Act by revealing information to him, the PMOS said that that was a matter for others to consider, not him. Asked if the Prime Minister believed that Mr Gilligan should be sacked given the seriousness of the issue, the PMOS said that BBC personnel policy was entirely a matter for the BBC, not anyone else.
Asked if the Prime Minister continued to stand by his claim that every detail of the two documents was accurate, the PMOS said yes. We had freely admitted that a mistake had been made in the second document inasmuch as we had failed to attribute part of it to Dr al-Marashi. Nevertheless, the substance of that document remained accurate, as was the substance of the September dossier.
Asked why Mr Campbell, in his letter, had singled out BBC journalists who boosted their incomes by writing for national papers given this appeared to have nothing to do with anything and that other broadcast journalists did the same thing, the PMOS said that as Mr Campbell had underlined yesterday, he had a high regard for most BBC journalism and believed that some of the finest reporting during the Iraq conflict had come from the BBC. Equally, he believed that the BBC, as a deservedly world-renowned organisation, was one of the biggest selling points for this country. By reason of its special position, different standards applied to it in terms of impartiality than applied to other news organisations. It therefore followed that different standards applied to its journalists as well. It was in that context, that he had referred to BBC journalists who wrote for national papers. Asked to explain the different standards relating to impartiality which applied to the BBC but seemingly not to other broadcasters, the PMOS said that rules of impartiality applied in equal measure to other broadcast organisations too. His point was that given the size and presence on the world broadcast stage of the BBC, the issue of impartiality was even more important for the BBC than it was for others.
Asked if the Prime Minister was aware of the high-stakes game he was playing given the last time we had ‘pushed the nuclear button’ with a media organisation (re: the PCC, Spectator and Mail on Sunday) Downing Street had ended up with ‘egg all over its face’, the PMOS said that what we were aware of was that a highly damaging and untrue allegation had been made, based on one anonymous source, which had questioned the integrity of the Government on a very important international issue. We had tried to set the record straight within an hour of the allegation first being made, but we had failed to convince the BBC that what they had said was wrong, despite the backing of the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, the Chairman of the JIC, the intelligence and security co-ordinator and the heads of the intelligence agencies.
Asked the point of writing the letter to Mr Sambrook when the BBC was likely to maintain that it stood by its story and would refuse to answer what Downing Street would call the ‘processology’ questions that had been put, the PMOS said that the letter illustrated the difficulty we had in understanding why the BBC had not checked the story with us in the first place. Was that normal BBC practice, especially in relation to such a serious matter and allegation? The letter also asked for an explanation as to why, when we had made it clear that our denial of the story was supported by the Chairman of the JIC, the BBC had persisted in running the story. Put to him that when he had been a BBC journalist he would not have bothered to ring up Downing Street to ask them to deny an allegation that they had done something wrong, the PMOS said he would reject the suggestion in the strongest possible terms. When he had been a BBC journalist, he would not have run a story of such serious consequence on the basis of one source.
Asked if he could give a guarantee to the BBC that Downing Street would not take punitive action by refusing to put up Ministers for interview for example, the PMOS said that this was not about petty manoeuvring or petty actions. It was much more than that. He could not emphasise enough the seriousness of the allegation that had been made, the seriousness with which we had refuted it and the seriousness of our efforts to convince the BBC of our view. Asked if he was speaking on behalf of the Prime Minister, Alastair Campbell or himself, the PMOS said that he was the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman. As the Prime Minister had made clear, the allegation was untrue. That view had been echoed by the entire Cabinet this morning. Asked to explain why, if we were not into petty actions, the Prime Minister had appeared to snub the BBC during his press conference with President Putin this afternoon by inviting ITN, Sky and the Washington Post to pose questions, the PMOS said that no one had a right by nature of their organisation to ask a question. Unfortunately, there had been time pressures this afternoon so the number of questions had had to be limited. Put to him that, according to convention, a question was taken by each of the national broadcasters and that it was surely not coincidental that the BBC had been ignored in favour of the Washington Post which was a foreign newspaper, the PMOS said he was not aware that when Moses came down from the mount, one of the rules was that he had had to take a question from the BBC. Put to him that it was ‘quite extraordinary’ for an American newspaper to be invited to ask a question instead of a host broadcasting organisation, the PMOS said everyone would agree that the correspondent on the Washington Post was a highly respected journalist, and as anyone who had been listening this afternoon would recognise, he had asked a very serious, hard-headed question which had been worth answering. Put to him that the Sky correspondent had actually asked the Prime Minister if he wanted to take a question from the BBC but that the Prime Minister had simply turned his back and walked off, the PMOS repeated that time had been short and the cars were waiting for the Prime Minister and President. No snub had been intended.
In answer to further questions, the PMOS said that the way for the issue to be resolved was for the BBC to do what we had done in relation to the second document where we had put up our hand, admitted a mistake had been made and apologised for it. We had faced a lot of criticism for that error, some of it justified, some of it not. Yet, within twenty four hours of it coming to light, we had been honest enough to admit openly that there had been a mistake and that lessons had been learned.
Asked to give a guarantee that this whole affair would not affect the commercial and editorial freedoms of the BBC contained in the Communications Bill, the PMOS said he could give a categorical guarantee that that would not happen.
Asked how many letters Alastair Campbell had written to the BBC about this matter, the PMOS said that he hadn’t counted them but he had seen the file - and it was very thick.
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