Hutton Inquiry

Abstract: Recent controversies over intelligence in Iraq, to give one example, have raised problems about the politicization of official advice from government, particularly what we are led to believe is factual or ‘objective’ advice. Objectivity is a contested value and the lines are often hard to draw between fact, spin and misrepresentation. Public servants are held to higher standards of objectivity than politicians, a fact on which politicians trade when they seek to attribute assessments of evidence to their officials. The growing openness of government documentation is placing pressure on departmental officials who wish to be both loyal to their political masters and honest in their factual assessments. These issues are discussed with reference to recent Australian experience (and also with reference to the UK Hutton Inquiry into the death of Dr David Kelly.

Abstract: "The Blair Years" is the most compelling and revealing account of contemporary politics you will ever read. Taken from Alastair Campbell's daily diaries, it charts the rise of New Labour and the tumultuous years of Tony Blair's leadership, providing the first important record of a remarkable decade in our national life. Here are the defining events of our time, from Labour's new dawn to the war on terror, from the death of Diana to negotiations for peace in Northern Ireland, from Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq, through to the Hutton Inquiry of 2003, the year Campbell resigned his position at No 10. But above all here is Tony Blair up close and personal, taking the decisions that affected the lives of millions, under relentless and often hostile pressure. Often described as the second most powerful figure in Britain, Alastair Campbell is no stranger to controversy.Feared and admired in equal measure, hated by some, he was pivotal to the founding of New Labour and the sensational election victory of 1997. As Blair's press secretary, strategist and trusted confidant, Campbell spent more waking hours alongside the Prime Minister than anyone. His diaires - at times brutally frank, often funny, always compelling - take the reader right to the heart of government. "The Blair Years" is a story of politics in the raw, of progress and setback, of reputations made and destroyed, under the relentless scrutiny of a 24-hour media. Unflinchingly told, it covers the crises and scandals, the rows and resignations, the ups and downs of Britain's hothouse politics. But amid the big events are insights and observations that make this a remarkably human portrayal of some of the most powerful people in the world. There has never been so riveting a book about life at the very top, nor a more human book about politics, told by a man who saw it all.

Abstract: The Hutton Inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr David Kelly in 2003 shed a unique light on the inner workings of the government of Tony Blair, particularly its approach to record keeping. This paper explores both the written and oral evidence presented to the inquiry, and draws attention to the shortcomings that are likely to be a feature of the ‘historical’ record of the events leading up to the war in Iraq. It reflects on the development of record keeping in the government of the United Kingdom, and asks, in the light of the high standards in the physical world, how there could be such evident shortcomings in the new electronic media. It draws some tentative conclusion, focussing particularly on the collapse of the distinction between back and front office functions. The paper concludes by proposing that record keeping by government and the transfer of records into the public domain requires the protection of the law so that the executive can be held to account. The paper questions whether this function in the United Kingdom can be entrusted to a minister of constitutional affairs, a member of the executive, and suggests it should become the responsibility of the president of the supreme court who can take decisions in defiance of the executive.

Abstract: In recent years, there has been a substantial increase in the literature on the relationship between politics and mass media, mainly in discrete topic areas such as the impact of mass media on electoral behaviour, the emergence of new forms of political communication, or media political economy. At the same time, this diverse literature has often focused on a single general issue, typically characterised in terms of the ‘transformation’ of politics. Despite this common theme, there has been relatively little attempt to connect and compare the different approaches. Looking at the theoretical differences in the new literature on politics and mass media reveals three perspectives ‐ pluralist, constructivist, and structuralist. These approaches have too often tacitly co-existed, instead of more competitively striving to advance knowledge in the three main topic areas above. Whatever else the Hutton Inquiry established, or failed to establish, it provided another illustration of the link between the worlds of politics and mass media. In a few seconds, and a few (ill-chosen) words, on an early morning ‘two-way’ between two professional journalists, the lives of individuals and institutions were irrevocably changed. Or so it seemed, and so it was widely reported by those same broadcasters and their colleagues elsewhere. The news stories and commentaries gave credence to the assumption that media and political institutions were locked together, the fate of each dependent on the other. The phrase ‘sexing up’, at the heart of Andrew Gilligan’s initial report on the UK government’s behaviour, was emblematic of the relationship. Lord Hutton gave quite specific attention to the phrase’s precise political significance. What the judge did not question was the assumption that a dossier could be more or less ‘sexy’, that it could be made to seduce those who read it; and that its ‘sexiness’ was directly measurable in the headlines and column inches it produced. The words ‘sexing up’ symbolised the conjunction of politics and media, and the Hutton report can be read as an extended lament for the fate that has befallen traditional political life as a result of its intimate conjunction with media (a theme subsequently developed by the journalist John Lloyd (2004)). This pessimistic view is echoed in much recent academic literature on the relationship between politics and mass media, although here, amidst the lamentations, there is also the sound of celebration. What these different responses share in common is the thought that we are witnessing a ‘transformation’ of mass media’s political role and with it a transformation of politics itself. The claims about these transformations are partly claims about power and its distribution and organisation: the influence of media moguls and newspaper