Secret ministry e-mail: 'Use attack to bury bad news'
By Barrie Clement and Andrew Grice
09 October 2001
A senior government "spin-doctor" was under pressure to resign after seeking to take
advantage of the terrorist atrocities in America to "bury" embarrassing stories.
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Within an hour of the second hijacked plane hitting the World Trade Centre, Jo Moore,
an adviser to Stephen Byers, the Secretary of State for Transport, Local Government
and the Regions, sent a memo to senior colleagues trawling for sensitive material to
publish.
Timed at 2.55pm on 11 September and sent to the Department's director of
communications, Alun Evans, Ms Moore wrote: "It's now a very good day to get out
anything we want to bury. Councillors' expenses? - Jo." The memo, also sent to
another top civil servant and copied to a policy adviser, resulted in a minor press
release about the reform of payments to councillors, but it provoked a furious
reaction among officials.
A Whitehall source said: "Everyone who knows about it is appalled. It shows such
insensitivity looking for party political advantages at a time when thousands of
people had clearly been killed."
Theresa May, the Conservative spokesman for transport and local government, said: "If
this is true it betrays a disgracefully cynical attitude ... [by] government
spin-doctors. All we can hope is that this heartless attitude is not typical of
Labour's publicity machine."
Don Foster, her Liberal Democrat counterpart, said the memo "plumbed new depths" of
spin-doctoring. "While the rest of the world looked on in horror at what was
happening in America, I find it staggering that someone was able to think along these
lines. No wonder people are disillusioned with politics."
Ms Moore, 38, has had a difficult relationship with civil servants at the Department
of Transport, Local Government and the Regions and at the Department of Trade and
Industry, where Mr Byers had been the Secretary of State. Mr Evans, the memo's main
recipient, has since left his job after clashes with Ms Moore. She refused to
comment.
Although ministers deny the charge of using the war on terrorism as a smoke screen,
senior civil servants admit privately that Labour has brought forward some decisions
since 11 September.
News of the appointment of Gavyn Davies, a Labour donor and friend of the Chancellor,
Gordon Brown, as chairman of the BBC governors, was rushed out in the wake of the
terrorist attacks, as was the go-ahead for a controversial BNFL reprocessing plant at
Sellafield.
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