Downing Street to end 'exclusive' daily briefings for lobby journalists
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Your support makes all the difference.Tony Blair's frustration at media coverage of his Government was underlined emphatically yesterday when his office announced that the 70-year tradition of Downing Street briefings for lobby journalists would be scrapped this autumn.
Alastair Campbell, the Government's director of communications and strategy, revealed that a daily press conference would be held instead at the Foreign Press Association (FPA) in St James's. In an attempt to sidestep journalists based in Westminster, specialist and overseas reporters currently excluded from No 10 briefings will be invited to attend.
Mr Campbell claimed that the changes were part of a process of "opening up" relations between the Government and the media, which has seen the Prime Minister host his first personal press conference and allow select committees to question him at length.
As an important part of Mr Blair's drive to speak more "directly" to the public, over the heads of the press, the new style of briefing will run in tandem with his own press conferences, the second of which takes place today.
Mr Campbell said that the success of the first prime ministerial question-and-answer session last month had confirmed that it was "in the public interest" to widen the morning briefing. However, critics claim that as a former member of the Westminster press pack himself, Mr Campbell is also exacting his revenge against a lobby system of exclusive access that he loathes.
With the Prime Minister frequently getting a better write-up in the foreign media, the symbolism of holding the briefing at the FPA will not be lost on those at Westminster.
Although there will still be a daily afternoon briefing for lobby correspondents in the Commons, the change will be seen as an attempt to dilute the power of political journalists.
Lobby journalists have been making daily trips to Downing Street since the 1930s, with the convention being formalised in the 1950s. Bernard Ingham, Margaret Thatcher's press secretary, and Mr Campbell made their reputations briefing the press, but it was the latter, a former Daily Mirror journalist, who put the event on the record for the first time in 1997.
Ministers and senior policy officials will occasionally host the briefing with the Prime Minister's official spokesman. Part of the session will also be on camera for the first time.
Philippe Le Court, president of the FPA, said Downing Street had agreed to pay for the hire of its premises in Carlton House Gardens. The FPA is the oldest press club in the world and is housed in the former residence of the Liberal prime minister William Gladstone.
A spokesman for Iain Duncan Smith confirmed that the Tories would reinstate the daily briefings in Downing Street.
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