The claim
“The Government will be open about its links with the media.”
Proposed addendum to the Ministerial Code, 15 July 2010
The background
Reeling from the phone-hacking “firestorm” that has engulfed Westminster, Fleet Street and Scotland Yard, David Cameron made a key concession on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister told the Commons he wanted an end to the old days when media moguls could access the ear of premiers in secret meetings.
In the new spirit of openness, he said he would consult the Cabinet Secretary on an amendment to the ministerial code “to require Ministers to record all meetings with newspaper and other media proprietors, senior editors and executives, regardless of the nature of the meeting”.
He added: “This information should be published quarterly. It is a first for our country, and alongside the other steps we are taking, will help to make the UK Government one of the most transparent in the world.”
On Friday Mr Cameron confirmed the proposed wording of the new addendum, which will read: “The Government will be open about its links with the media. All meetings with newspaper and other media proprietors, editors and senior executives will be published quarterly regardless of the purpose of the meeting.”
And, with impressive haste, Number 10 has produced the first publication of all Mr Cameron’s meetings anywhere with media proprietors, editors and senior executives since he assumed office in May last year.
Downing Street also released a list of everyone who received a prized invitation to stay at the Prime Minister’s official country retreat, Chequers, at the taxpayer’s expense.
The analysis
The list shows that Mr Cameron lavished more hospitality on News International’s chief executives than the bosses of any other print media organisations.
Rebekah Brooks was the only senior media figure to visit the Prime Minister at Chequers twice last year, seeing Mr Cameron at the Buckinghamshire residence in June and August.
News International chairman James Murdoch and his wife Kathryn also visited the country house later in the year, during November.
Daniel Finkelstein, the executive editor of The Times, also owned by News International, and his wife were also entertained by the PM at Chequers.
Indeed, the only senior executive in print media not working for News International to land an invitation to Chequers was Lord Rothermere of The Daily Mail.
According to the list, including her Chequers visits, Mr Cameron met Ms Brooks five times last year – more than any other single media executive. Mr Cameron also saw Rupert Murdoch once and James Murdoch twice; and the editors of The Sun and The Times four times each.
The only newspaper group to come close in the number of meetings is The Daily Telegraph, whose owner, chief executive and editor combined met the Prime Minister a total of nine times.
Interesting reading, but do these disclosures really mean that all the Prime Minister’s cosy fireside chats with media moguls at Chequers will be subjected to the full glare of public scrutiny from now on?
Well, no. It’s clear that there are at least two serious weaknesses in the new disclosure policy.
The first is that the lists of guests at Chequers include only people who are official guests of the Government, and receive hospitality paid for by the taxpayer.
So anyone who stays at the Prime Minister’s country retreat as a personal guest of Mr Cameron won’t have their details released.
That much has been made immediately clear by the case of Andy Coulson, who Number 10 admitted on Friday had stayed overnight at Chequers in March, two months after he resigned as Mr Cameron’s Director of Communications.
The revelation was described as a “yet more evidence of an extraordinary lack of judgment by David Cameron” by the Shadow Culture Secretary, Ivan Lewis.
Whether that’s true or not, it appears to be the kind of contact that will go under the radar in the future.
Number 10 told FactCheck the list of Chequers guests will not include people, like Coulson, whose stay is paid for out of the Prime Minister’s own pocket.
So a Prime Minister will be perfectly free to have a newspaper executive or anyone else over at Chequers, and if he pays for the privilege, the meeting will be kept out of the public domain.
That’s not the only black hole in the new age of transparency.
When Channel 4 News first reported Mr Cameron’s plans to come clean about his dealings with the press on Wednesday, our Political Editor Gary Gibbon posted a blog asking the first question on many commentators’ lips.
He wrote: “David Cameron had just announced one change that won’t wait for an inquiry. He said that contacts (actually, he said “meetings” but I can’t believe he’s going to try to ignore phone calls?) between senior politicians and press proprieters would in future be publicly declared.”
Well, Gary, believe it, because Number 10 has indeed confirmed to FactCheck that the wording of the addendum refers specifically to face-to-face meetings, and excludes telephone conversations.
So as things stand, Rupert Murdoch could pick the phone and spend three hours in a conference call with senior members of the Government, and by doing so he could avoid any record of the conversation being made available to the public.
The verdict
We ought to point out that the new rules on disclosure are still a work in progress. There’s still time for the PM to tighten them up to include telephone calls.
Until he does, it’s difficult to see how the proposals will shed any real light on dealings between Ministers and press barons. In the future, a tycoon who wants to lobby, threaten or cajole a Prime Minister off the record will have to deny himself the pleasure of a break at Chequers. But all he will have to do is pick up the phone.
The analysis by Emma Thelwell and Patrick Worrall
