Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Iraq/BBC and EU Consultation and Information Directive.
Iraq/BBC
Referring to the publication this morning of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FAC) report, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that we would give our formal response to it in due course. He took the opportunity to point out one factual correction as a result of a comment made at this morning’s FAC press conference in which one member had said that the Prime Minister did not deal with the JIC direct, but rather left it to his Director of Communications and Strategy, Alastair Campbell. That suggestion was completely and utterly wrong. Mr Campbell had no role in the intelligence assessment process and the Prime Minister dealt directly with the JIC.
The PMOS said that the BBC’s central allegation had always been that which had been made on the morning of 29 May: that Number 10/Alastair Campbell had inserted the 45-minute intelligence into the document; that it had done so probably knowing it to be wrong; and that it had done so against the wishes of the intelligence agencies. Not only did the FAC report contain no evidence to support this assertion, but paragraph 11 stated clearly that Mr Campbell had not played any role in the inclusion of the 45-minute intelligence, and had not exerted, or sought to exert, improper influence on the drafting of the September dossier (paragraph 13). Paragraph 14 also concluded that, in the absence of reliable evidence showing that intelligence personnel had neither complained about, nor sought to distance themselves from, the contents of the dossier, allegations of politically inspired meddling could not be credibly established. Finally - and crucially - paragraph 33 underlined that Ministers had not misled Parliament.
The PMOS said that we also noted that the BBC Governors’ statement yesterday had not specifically defended the original allegations. The key question this morning, therefore, was the same as that on May 29. It was not a matter of whether the BBC should have run the story, but whether it now believed and accepted the story to be right or wrong - given that it had now been proven to be false. That had now been stated by Number 10, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary, the Defence Secretary, the Chairman of the JIC, the heads of the intelligence agencies - and now the committee, whose members were now even saying that they could find no evidence to support the claim.
Asked if the Government accepted the minority view of the FAC that there was insufficient evidence to clear Alastair Campbell, the PMOS said it was important to recognise that the minority view of the Committee was not about whether they believed there was any evidence to suggest the BBC’s claim was right. It was about access to the intelligence assessments. There were very good reasons as to why we were protective of our intelligence sources - which was precisely the reason why it was the ISC that was given access to assessments and why it operated in the way it did. That said, it was important to recognise that both Mr Campbell and the Foreign Secretary had pushed the envelope out as far as they could in terms of the appropriate conventions. For example, Mr Campbell had published his comments on the dossier, which had been reflected in the Committee’s report. The Foreign Secretary had also read to the Committee excerpts from the JIC assessment. The evidence, therefore, was in direct contrast to the claims made by the BBC on May 29.
Asked to explain why it was alright for the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service to speak to an Opposition backbencher but not to a Select Committee of the House of Commons, the PMOS repeated that the conventions existed for very good reasons, and were no doubt responsible for shaping the way the ISC had been set up by a previous Administration. That said, it was important to recognise the weight of opinion which stated clearly that there was no evidence to support the allegations made on the morning of 29 May.
Asked why the 45-minute claim had been given such prominence in the dossier, the PMOS said that the decision about what to put in was a matter for the JIC. The information had been included as part of the continuous JIC assessment process and had been consistent with ongoing JIC judgements. The dossier itself had made it clear that the intelligence was recent. It went without saying that the information had been included after the proper JIC assessment procedures had been gone through. Put to him that he was inviting the suggestion that it was the intelligence services which had given the 45-minute claim undue prominence in the dossier, the PMOS repeated that the information had been included as part of the continuous JIC assessment process and had been consistent with ongoing JIC judgements. The dossier had also made it clear that the intelligence was recent. We stood by the JIC assessment process. If, in their judgement, it had been right to include it, it had been right to include it in our view as well.
Asked if Downing Street was surprised that the FAC had not requested the BBC to retract its report and why we felt that the Committee had not made such a recommendation, the PMOS said that the report was a matter for the FAC and he had no intention of second-guessing its judgements. That said, it was regrettable that the BBC had so far refused to admit that their story was wrong. That was all that we were asking them to do, given the weight of evidence and the fact that FAC report had concluded that they could find no nothing to support their claim. Asked if we had given up on trying to extract an apology from the BBC, the PMOS said that the important thing was to set the record straight and make sure that the BBC recognised that there was no evidence to support the claim that anyone in Number 10 had inserted the 45-minute intelligence in to the dossier; that there was no evidence that we had done so probably in the knowledge that it was wrong; and that there was no evidence that we had done so against the wishes of the intelligence agencies. On those three points, the BBC had so far refused to say whether they now accepted they had got it wrong.
Asked what course of action the Government was intending to pursue given the improbability that the BBC would admit it had made a mistake, the PMOS said that the ball was now clearly in the BBC’s court. The FAC report had not been published when the BBC Governors had met to discuss the matter last night. We considered it significant, therefore, that they had not specifically defended the original allegations in their statement. Asked if he would agree that Downing Street’s case for seeking an apology from the BBC had been weakened substantially by the FAC’s majority verdict, the PMOS said the crucial point was the fact that no one on the Committee was suggesting that there was any evidence to support the BBC’s claim. Questioned about the way the Committee had voted, the PMOS said that that Committee members would have had their own reasons for voting in the way they had. It was not his job to suggest what they might be.
Questioned as to whether the Committee’s recommendations regarding the production of the September dossier would be taken seriously when producing future documents of this kind, the PMOS said that these issues would no doubt be dealt with in our detailed response to the FAC’s report which would be published in due course. He pointed out that we had already admitted openly that a mistake had been made with the February document and that procedures had changed as a result. However, as paragraph 32 of the FAC report stated, the row about provenance was unfortunate because "the information it contained was important". We would agree wholeheartedly with both parts of that statement.
Asked if the Government continued to believe that the September dossier was accurate given what we now knew, the PMOS said that the Committee itself had stated that "the claims made in the September dossier were in all probability well founded on the basis of the intelligence then available". That obviously included the 45-minute intelligence information. So yes, we stood by the September dossier. Pressed as to whether the information that had come to light since the dossier’s publication had caused No 10 to change its mind in any way, the PMOS repeated that we stood by the September dossier. If he was being asked about the reality on the ground in terms of WMD, it was important not to underestimate the work of the Iraq Survey Group. Questioned as to whether Downing Street continued to stand by the dossier despite the doubts expressed by the FAC about the Niger uranium claim, the PMOS said that the dossier had drawn on intelligence reporting from more than one source. At no stage prior to its publication had the UK possessed or had sight of the IAEA document subsequently alleged to have been forged. Asked to explain how we could continue to stand by the dossier when the Niger claim was untrue, the PMOS said it seemed that some people were confusing our intelligence process with that of others. The claims made in the September dossier had been based on our procedures.
Asked to comment on the Committee’s concern about the ‘filtering’ role Alastair Campbell played between the JIC and the Prime Minister in the light of the fact that he was only half political appointee and half civil servant, the PMOS repeated that the FAC member who had said this morning that the Prime Minister did not deal directly with the JIC but left that role to Mr Campbell had been completely wrong. The Prime Minister did deal directly with the JIC and Mr Campbell had no role in the intelligence assessment process. Yes, he had chaired a committee on Iraq, but it was a presentational, rather than intelligence, committee. That was the key difference.
Asked if the Prime Minister would address the FAC’s view that, however inadvertently, the February document had misled Parliament, the PMOS said that we would publish a detailed response to the Committee’s report in due course. That said, the Committee itself recognised that the intelligence material contained in the February document had been important in terms of providing new information. Consequently, we did not believe that the Prime Minister had misled Parliament - as indeed paragraph 33 of the FAC report underlined. Put to him that convention dictated that the Prime Minister should go before the House to rectify any misrepresentation, the PMOS pointed out that the Chairman of the FAC had underlined in his press conference this morning that he was not saying the Prime Minister had misled Parliament. In fact, the Committee itself accepted that the material contained in the February document had been important and new. Pressed as to whether the Prime Minister would take the opportunity to correct the misrepresentation in the February document given the fact that misleading Parliament was a resigning matter, the PMOS repeated that we did not believe the Prime Minister had given any misrepresentations to Parliament. In answer to further questions, the PMOS said that we had admitted at the time that we should have attributed the second of the three sections of the paper and that we had been wrong not to do so. We had held up our hands when the mistake had been discovered and we had apologised as was right and proper. However, the first and third parts of the document, which had been about intelligence, had contained important and new information which had been included on the basis that it had been supplied by the SIS who had said it was right to publish it. It had therefore been correct for us to have apologised for what we had got wrong. However, as paragraph 32 of the FAC report stated, the row over provenance was unfortunate because the information it had contained was important - and in the end that was what mattered.
Asked why Downing Street should expect the BBC to apologise when the Prime Minister was refusing to apologise to the Commons for misleading Parliament, the PMOS said that we had already apologised for the failure to source the second section of the February dossier. Indeed, the Prime Minister himself had told the House that we regretted the failure to attribute the work of Dr al-Marashi. However, that did not take away from the fact that the information in the first and third sections had been based accurately on intelligence material.
In answer to further questions, the PMOS took the opportunity to make a general observation about the BBC. He underlined that this was not an attack on the BBC per se. Nor was it was an attack on BBC journalism - much of which we thought was excellent, superb and led the world. This was simply an attempt to try to get them to recognise that what was probably the most serious allegation anyone could make against any Government was wrong and that all they needed to do to set the record straight was to answer three questions: Did they believe that Number 10 had inserted the 45-minute intelligence into the dossier - yes or no? Did they believe we had done so probably knowing it to be wrong - yes or no? Had we done such a thing against the wishes of the intelligence agencies - yes or no? It was as simple as that. To portray this as being a matter of ‘do or die’ for the BBC and that it was all about the BBC’s independence and the next Charter was wrong. It was not. It was about trying to set the record straight. Put to him that the BBC had probably got the impression that it was being attacked when he had read out in a recent briefing a leaked memo which had been written by a BBC defence correspondent, thereby implying that the BBC had an agenda, the PMOS said that to reflect the views of a BBC corespondent about some of the failings of the organisation’s coverage was distinct from launching a general diatribe. The questions he had asked of the BBC that day were also the same he had asked again this morning, namely did the BBC accept that the original allegations were false. Put to him that he had posed a range of questions on that day including one relating to hypothetical financial malpractice by a member of the Board of Management, the PMOS said that he had simply been trying to illustrate the point that the weight of evidence pointed to the fact that we had not done what was being alleged, whereas the BBC was relying on an anonymous source who did not sit on the JIC. The comparison being made was where a junior member of staff from the BBC made an allegation about the BBC which turned out not to be true. That was precisely the position in which we found ourselves today.
Put to him that Downing Street appeared to be ‘retreating’ by focussing now on one narrow point and not on whether we believed that the BBC had an anti-war agenda, the PMOS said that there were some aspects of the BBC’s coverage of the war with which we remained unhappy. That was distinct from this issue which was about whether we had knowingly misled Parliament and had included information in the September dossier which we had known to be false. Asked if he was saying that Downing Street was not ‘retreating’, the PMOS underlined that we were not retreating in any way. However, we did not want this whole affair to be portrayed as a battle with the BBC. Put to him that he had done more than anyone else to make it a battle, the PMOS said that we had initially gone to great lengths to ask the BBC privately to set the record straight. Unfortunately, they had refused to do so. Consequently, given the smear was on the record, there came a point where the rebuttal also had to be on the record, which was precisely what had happened. Asked if that meant that Alastair Campbell would now withdraw his allegation that the BBC’s war coverage had been biased, the PMOS said that it was important to keep what Mr Campbell had said about the BBC in context given the fact that Mr Campbell had also stated that much of the BBC’s reporting during the war had been excellent. Asked again what course of action Downing Street would take if the BBC refused to answer the questions we had put, the PMOS said that his knowledge of the internal workings of the BBC’s complaints structure was a bit rusty since he had left the organisation in 1998. Pressed further, the PMOS cautioned journalists against getting too ahead of themselves at this point. We would continue to pose the questions we had put because they were vital to the integrity of the Prime Minister and the Government. The ball was now in the BBC’s court. It was up to them to say whether they believed the original allegation was correct or incorrect.
Asked if he would agree that Downing Street ought to be asking tough questions of the intelligence services regarding the reliability of their sources, the PMOS said that we preferred to rely on the track record of the JIC in past conflicts. We would also await the outcome of the work of the Iraq Survey Group. That was a far better way to approach these matters, rather than make snap judgements based on information that was still coming in.
Asked to explain why the Government didn’t seem to mind if the intelligence services made a mistake but took the BBC to task for doing the same thing, the PMOS said that everyone had a right to make mistakes occasionally. It happened to the best of us. The important thing, however, was to acknowledge when a error had been made, particularly if you were an organisation as powerful and with as global a reach as the BBC, because the consequence of getting things wrong would be to mislead both domestic and international public opinion. That was why it was important for any misperception to be corrected. In terms of judging intelligence information, it was important to understand that the material which had been included in the dossier was not material which had been included casually. It was the result of a rigorous assessment process by the intelligence agencies and the JIC. Therefore, those judgements had to be respected, not because of the people who had made them, but because of the rigour of the process through which they had gone. The time to judge the accuracy of those assessments would be when the Iraq Survey Group had completed its work and we knew much more about what had really gone on in Saddam’s Iraq. That would not be today. It would take time, which was why we would urge people to have patience and await the Survey Group’s verdict.
EU Consultation and Information Directive
Asked about the publication today of draft regulations to implement EU Consultation and Information Directive, the PMOS said that the Government had agreed an important framework for implementing an EU Directive on employment law with the CBI and TUC. The new plans meant that employees would be given a chance to be informed and consulted on management decisions affecting their future.
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