‘A good day to bury bad news’: The inside story of an infamous phrase

The notorious comment, perhaps the most memorable instance of a government’s attempt to conceal an announcement, is often considered an example of spin at its worst. Alun Evans, the then director of communications in the Department of Transport, revisits the aftermath

The email sent by Jo Moore while 9/11 unfolded snowballed into a crisis (PA)

Twenty years ago today seemed destined to be a relatively quiet news day. It was a Tuesday, and Tony Blair was in Brighton for the TUC conference where the political focus was on what he might say, but I, as the director of communications in the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR), had no reason to think that my department’s responsibilities would loom large in any press reporting of the prime minister’s speech.

At lunchtime I was meeting a Times journalist in Covent Garden to update her on the work of the department. At about 2pm I got a phone message advising me to return to the department immediately because of an emerging incident in New York. I was in a taxi on the way back to the department when I was told that the second of the twin towers at the World Trade Centre had just been hit – at 9:03 New York time (14:03 London time). This was clearly a coordinated attack on the US.

Back in the department, I headed to the Private Office of the Secretary of State, Stephen Byers. I paused briefly at my office to tell my assistant to keep an eye on my emails as I would probably not be able to look at any for the rest of the day. I told him to forward any ones which looked important to the relevant officials and with that, in a pre-smartphone era, I left my emails behind for the day.

In the private office, there was a combination of confusion and panic plus a determination to do whatever was required. The most urgent task was to close all the airspace over London – a DTLR responsibility – by contacting all the relevant agencies. The place was alive with ministers, their private secretaries, the permanent secretary and senior officials including those like myself from the communications directorate.

Blair returns to Downing Street following news of the 9/11 attacks (PA)

Then at 2.55pm, less than an hour after the second tower collapsed and unbeknown to me, an email was sent to my departmental account which included the phrase, “Today is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors’ expenses?”. The email was sent by Jo Moore, Byers’s combative special adviser with whom I had previously crossed swords. (The reference to expenses concerned a minor, but sensitive, announcement which the department was legally bound to make concerning increases in payments for local councillors – which would be unpopular with the public.

So, if it could be “buried” then so much the better.) The email was to make history. It led, in time, to her resignation as special adviser, to the resignation of my successor as communications director, to Byers’s resignation as secretary of state and to the abolition of the department. It also provided one of the most memorable quotations ever from a Whitehall permanent secretary.

So why on earth did Moore send the email? Why did she put such thoughts in writing? Why did she not simply tell me and the secretary of state, both together in his private office, how she thought the department might grotesquely exploit the tragedy as cover for the release of any bad departmental news?

The answer was relatively simple. First, she was one of the most ferociously loyal special advisers I had ever worked with. Everything she did was driven by her objective to secure maximum political advantage for her minister, Stephen Byers. Second, she tended to put her views in writing to provide a record which she could cite later if she felt that her wishes were not carried out. I had fallen out with her a few weeks earlier by refusing to allow civil servants in my team to carry out negative briefing against the mayor of London, Ken Livingstone and his transport commissioner, Bob Kiley.

Sending a timed email to take advantage of the crisis to bolster her minister must, in that split second, have seemed to her an ideal thing to do. She could not have been more wrong

Third, and perhaps most significantly, Jo Moore often worked from home, when it was less widespread than it is now. So, while ministers and officials were frantically trying to decide what to do, Moore was at home calmly watching Sky News away from the intense environment in Whitehall, considering how to make best political use of the event. Sending a timed email to take advantage of the crisis to bolster her minister must, in that split second, have seemed to her an ideal thing to do. She could not have been more wrong.

In fact, I did not even see the email at the time, being away from my desk all afternoon and evening. But my assistant did, and he promptly forwarded it to selected DTLR press officers. His action therefore laid the foundations for anyone minded to do so, to leak the email. And that is what duly happened three weeks later when the content of the email appeared in The Independent. Political condemnation of Moore was swift but, with the backing of Byers and of No 10, she grimly clung onto her job. She made an on-camera statement of regret but that failed to dampen the criticism.

By that time, I had already left the department and been replaced by the ex-BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith who, along with some members of the press office waged a briefing and counter-briefing war with Byers and Moore. But it was a very one-sided war. One commentator described it as like pitching the Viet Cong at its strongest against the Pope’s Swiss Guards. The outcome was inevitable.

Events came to a head in early 2002 when there was an allegation of yet further attempts to bury bad news on the day of Princess Margaret’s funeral. Enough was enough. Byers finally agreed that both Moore and Sixsmith should resign simultaneously. But even that agreement fell apart when Sixsmith claimed he had never agreed the terms of his resignation before it was announced. The permanent secretary of the department, Sir Richard Mottram, too, had had enough. He told a close aide, in colourful language that: “I’m f*****, you’re f*****, the whole department is f*****. It’s the biggest cock-up ever and we're all completely f*****”.

Byers recounts the events which led to Moore’s resignation in the House of Commons (PA)

And Mottram was right. The department could not survive the spin and counter-spin, the leaks and briefing from both sides. Sixsmith and Moore both left, and finally Byers resigned in May 2002, his case not being helped by his involvement in a subsequent sex scandal exposed by the News of the World. The DTLR was wound up and a new Department of Transport was created led by the safe pair of hands provided by Alistair Darling, the future chancellor of the exchequer. Sir Richard moved to another department.

It was all a massive distraction from what should have been a period when the whole resources of government were engaged with the international response to 9/11 or, domestically, on the pressing agenda of reform in local government, transport, education, health and elsewhere. Yet the DTLR secretary of state, his special adviser and the departmental press office were deep in an in-house battle from which there could be no real winners.

Just as with the assassination of President Kennedy or the death of Princess Diana, many people now recall precisely where they were and what happened when they heard of the attacks on the twin towers. Friends and families of those killed remember the tragic deaths of their loved ones; politicians and the military no doubt recall the long war against al-Qaeda that ensued. As for me, I remember the day for receiving an email that I didn’t even read at the time, but one containing a memorable phrase that was to enter the modern political lexicon.