Red Box - Times Online's Westminster blog

Because it's Friday in recess

This comes without justification or apology.

Machine-gunning Civil Serf

Civil Serf (the anonymous civil servant blogger who shut down her site at the weekend after stories about her criticising her bosses) should be very afraid. Tom Watson, MP, minister, enforcer and blogger, has her in his sights. He posted a somewhat menacing article this morning, headed: "There is only one way to get rid of a mole" - and suggesting Flashlight Machine Guns are the answer.  I don't think furry animals in the West Country are his target.

In his Cabinet Office role overseeing government websites, he later announced that he was drawing up a code for Civil Service bloggers. Essentially, this is: Rule 1 - no anonymity. Rule 2 - tell your boss. Rule 3 - no anonymity. The whole list is here.

Call me old fashioned, but I am not sure that any organisation would tolerate anonymous blogging that rubbishes what is going on, be it public or private sector. While genuine whistle-blowing is vital to safeguard democracy, casual smears are probably not. Even so, Watson appears to be on the verge of sanctioning much wider use of the blogs by civil servants, so long as they are up-front about what they are doing.

Whether individual departments have the courage to allow their employees to go ahead and blog is quite another matter though.

Dodgy uSwitch surveys do nobody any favours

The press release from uSwitch was very clear: "9 million (35%) will go without a pay rise." The release was timed to coincide with the run-up to Wednesday's Budget, designed to get maximum publicity for the price comparison company.

But ask how they came to this startling conclusion, and the assertion starts to fall apart. According to Sarah Henriques from the PR company Hill and Knowlton, the company appointed by USwitch to field questions, a YouGov survey "revealed" that 29% of teachers and a quarter of civil servants will not be receiving pay rises.

Er, utterly untrue. Public sector workers are on well-publicised pay rises (certainly not as much as they might like, but that is beside the point). We asked for further clarification. Ms Henriques replied: "We've looked into your question below and our thoughts are that what you are seeing in the numbers below is a reflection of a lack of consumer confidence and a general state of worry when it comes to the current economic climate."

So the assertion that 9 million will go without a pay rise is without foundation, based on a manipulation of a consumer confidence question, and therefore deeply flawed. None of the newspapers I've seen today fell into the trap of reporting this bunkum (although other, more solidly argued sections of the press release received widespread coverage in newspapers including The Times.) But dodgy assertions about people going without a pay rise do no one any favours.

Interestingly, this isn't the first time the work of U-Switch, owned by the US media conglomerate E.W. Scripps Company, has been called into question, according to the minutes of the Energywatch Management Board Meeting from September 20, 2007. Energywatch found that information provided by uSwitch's energy price comparison website was 'biased and not impartial' and uSwitch were provided with notice that the Energywatch code of practise had been breached. Tut tut.

The ten ages of policy development

A regular Tory tactic is to cry that everything done by the Government is "old" or a reannouncement. Occasionally this is fair, although Peter Riddell has argued that this may not do the Tories much good. Chris Paul, a Labour blogger, suggests a certain inevitability, given the way policy in the UK is born. He lists the stages:

1. Consultations
2. Policy forum
3. Conference
4. Green paper
5. White paper
6. First Reading and other Parliamentary stages
7. Law passed
8. Pilots run
9. Pilots appraised
10. Roll out/Mainstream

Plenty of opportunity for "spin" ...

Westminster journalist "D-noticed"

It's not often that a political correspondent gets a call from Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance CB OBE, secretary of the "D-notice" committee, which can request journalists refrain from printing material which they say may compromise national security.

But this morning it appears they intervened in a story by Alex Barker, the FT's political correspondent. He reported the suspected killers of British soldiers in Iraq were released under a secret deal to stop members of an extremist group bombarding UK bases. According to the copy, the paper was asked not to identify the Iraqi negotiators on grounds of national security.

The Government can't use the law to gag newspapers or broadcasters, but the committee includes representatives of most newspapers and broadcasters. The ruling is technically voluntary, but woe betide anyone who ignores their "advice".