One of Gordon Brown's ministers, Ed Miliband, said this
week that the departure of Damian McBride should put an end to the
e-mail smear scandal. But smearing is a cultural problem, as
Computer Weekly discovered during Parliamentary debates in 2007 on
the NHS's £12.7bn National Programme for IT [NPfIT].
During the debates the then health minister,
Caroline Flint, - and a former health minister,
Lord Warner, - made allegations against individuals and
organisations, based on incorrect briefings they had received. The
false claims have never been corrected.
The allegations named individuals and various organisations in
the IT industry, implying that they had become allies of the Tories
in making politically motivated criticisms of the NPfIT.
A few months before the debates, in February 2007, a small
delegation representing the Department of Health had briefed the
then Prime Minister Tony Blair that criticisms of the NPfIT were
politically motivated. Computer Weekly obtained a copy of the
confidential briefing paper which was given to Blair.
At a
debate on the NPfIT in the House of Commons in June 2007
Caroline Flint ascribed to a report of the National Audit Office
positive comments on the national programme that the NAO had not
made. She then claimed that a Computer Weekly reporter, Tony
Collins, had briefed only the Conservative Party on the NPfIT.
She told the Commons, "I am sure that members of the
Conservative opposition are familiar with the content of the [NAO]
report because it was laid before Parliament on 16 June 2006. I am
sure that they do not rely only on the opinions of such people as
Tony Collins of Computer Weekly, who has, I understand, provided
briefings solely to members of the Conservative party and produced
material for publication by Conservative party think-tanks."
Computer Weekly has not given briefings solely to the
Conservative Party, nor produced material for its think tanks.
Separately, Lord Warner, the former Health minister who had been
the government's spokesman on the NPfIT, obtained a series of
e-mails which had been written by
Ross Anderson,
Professor of Security Engineering at the Cambridge University
Computer Laboratory. Anderson was at the time an adviser to the
Health Committee during its investigation into aspects of the
NPfIT.
Lord Warner cited the e-mails during a
debate on the NPfIT in the House of Lords on 21 June 2007 when
he questioned the political neutrality of Anderson. Lord Warner
said, "Some of my puzzlement over hostility to the programme has
been removed, since leaving office, by discovering people working
together to campaign against this programme.
"The campaign seems to be made up of the Foundation for
Information Policy Research, the Big Opt Out organisation, the
Conservative Technology Forum, Computer Weekly, Medix surveys and
the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, which I only
recently discovered.
"An energetic presence in this network is a Cambridge professor
called Ross Anderson. Some interesting e-mails of his have found
their way to me."
After quoting from several e-mails, Lord Warner said, "I have
insufficient time to entertain the House with more extracts. I am
willing to let them be seen on a private basis by my honourable
friend in the other place who chairs the Health Select Committee.
In a spirit of bipartisanship, I would encourage Conservative
parliamentarians to look closely and sceptically at some of the
sources of advice they appear to be using."
Even today, and despite a request under the Freedom of
Information Act, Anderson has been unable - yet - to discover how
Lord Warner obtained his personal e-mails.
Miliband, some ministers and the Cabinet Secretary Gus
O'Donnell, see the Damian McBride affair as the beginning and end
of smear. But the desire to try and debase the reputations of
individuals and organisations to further political aims runs much
deeper in the government system.
In the case of the NPfIT, the smears served only to divert
attention temporarily from the most potent criticisms of the
national programme.
It is worth nothing that a year after Caroline Flint's speech
the National Audit Office published its second report on the NPfIT
- which was strongly critical of aspects of the programme.
Links:
A "smear" speech on NPfIT critics in the House of Lords
>>
Some NPfIT major issues - did the then Prime Minister get a full
briefing in 2007? >>
Officials attack the NHS for "inaccurate" reporting of NPfIT
incidents >>