When is a minister responsible for his SpAd?

The hand that shoved Adam Smith out of the culture department this week wasn't all that invisible. Whether or not Jeremy Hunt's erstwhile special adviser volunteered to take the whole blame for providing endless updates to the News Corporation lobbyist Fred Michel is almost beside the point. That the Culture Secretary accepted that he should take the whole blame for clearly inappropriate revelations is more important and revealing about a minister who is more usually presented as a gallant nice guy.

Of course, the special adviser should never become the story. Alastair Campbell and Charlie Whelan both had to go when they were doing so (though their respective contributions to the Labour government were of a very different quality) as did Jo Moore after her 9/11 email. But this case seems different. Jeremy Hunt has been an avowed cheerleader for News International. He has made no secret of the fact. There is no question that he will have been sympathetic to Murdoch's BSkyB bid, though I am sure equally that he would have wanted to be seen to be judging it with the impartiality that his office requires. So, he could never talk directly to Murdoch's people. Yet he may have felt that his special adviser could keep them informed through a discreet back channel without it ever being revealed.

It was just unfortunate that the whole Levenson business came along and the internal emails of the Murdoch empire were forced into the public domain. Otherwise, how would we have known? We can be quite sure that there are no emails from Hunt to Smith or Smith to Michel, at least on DCMS servers. Jeremy Hunt is not an idiot and nobody would be so silly with today's Freedom of Information rules. So Hunt's volunteering of his emails to his adviser is a pointless charade. But discreet phone calls or face-to-face conversations would not be recorded and would not have to be revealed in any pesky FoI requests.

In truth, we will have no way of knowing for sure whether Smith was acting like an improbable lone ranger on a solo mission to keep Murdoch's man in the loop or whether he was doing his master's bidding. What we do know is that his minister should explicitly be held responsible under David Cameron's ministerial code for what his special adviser did.

The responsibility for the management and conduct of special advisers, including discipline, rests with the Minister who made the appointment. Individual Ministers will be accountable to the Prime Minister, Parliament and the public for their actions and decisions in respect of their special advisers.

And since we also have Hunt's word that Smith is 'someone of integrity and decency' who simply 'overstepped the mark', this begs the question as to what he was asked to do, and by whom? Clearly the Permanent Secretary didn't approve any back door communications with News International, as his refusal to answer the question yesterday demonstrated. So, at some stage, the minister must have said or indicated to his adviser that he should do so, even if he left it to Smith to decide how much to reveal. That is the difference between 'overstepping the mark' and 'going rogue'.

Of course, there may well be times when a special adviser doesn't keep their minister informed of every conversation they have. And indeed it would have been prudent not to have done so in this case, given the impartiality required of the Secretary of State. But that doesn't mean that there was no initial agreement - tacit or otherwise - that the special adviser would keep the back door open. And if there was such an agreement, it was wholly improper, and the code makes it the responsibility of the minister.

So, it is simply unacceptable for David Cameron to try to sweep the whole thing under the Levenson carpet. He needs at the very least a speedy adjudication by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Jeremy Heywood, to get to the facts and be assured by Sir Alex Allen, the independent adviser on the code, that there was nothing ever said or indicated by Hunt to suggest that his adviser should maintain special communications with Murdoch's man during the period when the Secretary of State was required to be impartial. Indeed, Hunt should have explicitly told Smith to avoid discussing the issue with News International unless it was properly minuted and equal time was afforded to the opponents. Ministers have had to resign for far less important transgressions than this before. Unless we can have a categorical assurance that Hunt made no such suggestion or indication, the Culture Secretary should go - and do so before Levenson reports.

No spin from us, honestly (isn't that right, Andy?)

David Cameron on Marr this morning was a taste of things to come, if the polls are right. When asked where he would find the £50 billion of cuts that the respected Institute of Fiscal Studies has said that he must find, he tells us that he and his cabinet will take pay cuts, saving a few thousand quid a year. When honesty is called for - and at least Gordon Brown has promised to halve the deficit in a clear timescale, even if that too may not be enough - all we seem to get from the man who could be PM is populist spin. Then the ex-spin doctor tells us that he will be ignoring the 24-hour news cycle to pursue 'quiet effectiveness' if he gets to No 10 as he rolls up his sleeves. Even though his special advisers and spin doctors will be concentrated in his Downing Street bunker to a greater extent than ever. Expect plenty of flying pigs too.

Advisers and leaders

I took part in a radio discussion earlier today about leadership, spin doctors and advisers in the wake of the crisis for Fine Gael and its leader Enda Kenny following this week's resignation of George Lee. The discussion was chaired by John Murray, with Noel Whelan and Gavin Duffy on RTE Radio 1's Marian Finucane show. You can hear it here (discussion starts around 33 minutes in).

Was Damian McBride right to speak out?

I've listened to the very long Radio 5 interview with Damian McBride and read the interview in today's Media Guardian. He has done a fairly professional job in getting across his point of view, and in killing a few of the more outrageous things that were said about him. And by feeding the media he should be allowed to get on with his new school job without hassle from journalists.

So, in that sense, I can understand his doing the interview. But it has also done a lot to revive memories of an unsavoury episode in recent government history, one that preceded the MPs expenses saga but probably contributed as much to the terrible poll results that Gordon has had since. So, the government could certainly have done without it.

As for the content of the interviews, I only knew McBride by reputation, so I have no idea whether or not he did much of the briefing that is attributed to him. What I do know is that his argument that he had to engage in some sort of briefing war with people he describes as Blairite 'ultras' like Charles Clarke, Alan Milburn or Stephen Byers suggests that he lacked a sense of proportion at best and that he made a serious error of judgment at worst. Special advisers who deal with the media should not indulge in serial briefing against senior figures in their own party, briefing which also seemed to go on when these people were ministers.

That this seems acceptable to McBride may go a long way towards explaining why Gordon Brown has had the difficulties he has had since becoming PM.

Special advisers have a positive role to play in government

The last few days have not only given Downing Street's advisers a bad name (though there are many decent special advisers working in there whose names have not featured in press pictograms), they have hardly done wonders for the reputation of special advisers in general. Yet having people who understand the politics of the ministers is vital both for good governance and civil service impartiality. I spent six years in the role, working both for David Blunkett and Tony Blair.

I won't pretend the job was without its frustrations, and the sheer grind of pushing through manifesto commitments and relaying ministerial wishes didn't always make us advisers the most popular people, but neither I nor most of my fellow advisers across government would ever have thought about smearing either people within our own party or individuals in the opposition.

Instead the role was a combination of policy development - there is too little external expertise in Whitehall - and ensuring that policies were followed through (the latter being the more difficult in a civil service that had traditionally assumed a passive role in that regard). I was also one of the few advisers who spoke regularly to the media during my time with David Blunkett, largely to ensure that the government's case was heard and positive aspects of a policy got a mention in a media that invariably focused on either the negatives or political gossip.

All ministers need such people to help them do their job. But where advisers can guide civil servants in how their political masters are thinking, they can also help them do a better job. Equally, where there is trust between advisers and politicians, they can help clear up misunderstandings about what civil servants are proposing.

Political advisers are a part of governments the world over, though often in much greater numbers than here (as is causing Obama problems in the US). Their presence in British government also allows civil servants to pass on tasks like party conference speeches or political content in Commons debates that they should not engage with. If David Cameron comes to power - and he is a former special adviser himself - he will need the support of political advisers in Whitehall if he is to implement whatever policies he wants to introduce. Damien McBride's actions should not be allowed to negate that reality.

UPDATE: I was invited to talk about the role of the special adviser following the tougher code issued by Gus O'Donnell today, on the World At One. The broadcast is available here for seven days. I also see Fraser Nelson has made the case for SpAds well on the Spectator website today.