July 2006 Archives

e-politix.com has published a list of NuLabour Special Advisors (SpAds):

Special advisers: List in full

Full list of government special advisers in post on July 24, 2006:

Prime minister Tony Blair
Jonathan Powell (Chief of staff)
Liz Lloyd (Deputy chief of staff)
Ruth Turner (Director of government relations)
Matthew Taylor (Chief adviser on strategy)

Policy directorate
David Bennett (Head of policy directorate)
Conor Ryan
Paul Corrigan
Geoffrey Norris
Philip Collins
Justin Forsyth
Kieran Brett

Strategic communications and press
David Hill (Director of communications)
David Bradshaw
Hilary Coffman
Matthew Doyle
Chris McShane
Benjamin Wegg Prosser
Huw Evans

Events and visits
Jo Gibbons (Director of events, visits and scheduling)
Katie Kay
Angela Goodchild (part-time)
John Watts
Victoria Gould

Research and information unit
Catherine Rimmer
Katie O'Donovan

Deputy prime minister John Prescott
Joan Hammell (Chief of staff)
Mick Halloran

Minister for the Cabinet Office and social exclusion Hilary Armstrong
Peter Kyle
Anna Turley

Communities and local government secretary Ruth Kelly
Julie Crowley (Media and communication)
David Leam
Rachel O’Brien (Women and equality)

Chief whip (Commons) Jacqui Smith
Sue Jackson
Simon Benson

Chief whip (Lords) Lord Grocott
Margaret Ounsley

Constitutional affairs and lord chancellor Lord Falconer
Garry Hart
Philip Bassett

Culture, media and sport secretary Tessa Jowell
Nick Bent

Defence secretary Des Browne
Matt Cavanagh
Alaina Macdonald

Education secretary Alan Johnson
Chris Norton
Mario Dunn
Clare Montagu

Environment, food and rural affairs secretary David Miliband
Madlin Sadler
Tony Grayling

Foreign secretary Margaret Beckett
Sheila Watson
Ed Mitchell
Malcolm Chalmers

Minister for Europe Geoff Hoon
James Connal

Minister for trade Ian McCartney
Martin O'Donovan (Trade)
Blair McDougall (Communications and human rights)

Health secretary Patricia Hewitt
Liz Kendall
Karen Livingston

Home secretary John Reid
Steve Bates
Justin Russell
Anna MacMillan

Leader of the Commons and Lord Privy Seal Jack Straw
Mark Davies
Declan McHugh

Leader of the Lords and Lord President of the Council Baroness Amos
Joe Dancey
Dorothea Hodge

International development secretary Hilary Benn
Beatrice Stern (Communications)

Northern Ireland and Wales secretary Peter Hain
Claire McCarthy (Northern Ireland)
Philip Taylor (Northern Ireland)
Andrew Bold (Wales)
Matthew Burchell (Wales)

Transport and Scotland secretary Douglas Alexander
Paul Sinclair (Transport)
Iain Gray (Scottish affairs)

Trade and industry secretary Alistair Darling
Andrew Maugham
Sam White
Emily Thomas (unpaid)

Chancellor Gordon Brown
Spencer Livermore
Damien McBride
(Plus Council of Economic Advisers members Dan Corry, Paul Gregg, Shriti Vadera, Michael Jacobs and Stewart Wood who are employed on special adviser terms; and unpaid adviser Sue Nye)

Chief secretary to the Treasury Stephen Timms
Jonathan Ashworth
Jo Dipple

Work and pensions secretary John Hutton
John Williams
John Woodcock

Minister without portfolio and Labour Party chairman Hazel Blears
Paul Richards
Andy Bagnall

UPDATE: the Prime Minister's Written Ministerial Statement listing the SpAds, and also their approximate pay bands

We will try to keep an eye on the activities of these NuLabour political commissars, and their contatcs with commercial lobbyists etc.

We will also watch which lobbying consultancies they join after leaving office.

Questions:

• Does Lord Adonis, a former SpAd, and now an Education Minister, not have a SpAd ?

• Does Lord Drayson, a Defence Procurement Minister not have a SpAd ?

• Does Lord Sainsbury the Science Minister (and a major Labour Party funder) not have a SpAd ?

• Is Lord Levy, the Labour Party / Tony Blair fundraiser, and Middle East Envoy, not effectively a SpAd ?

We welcome any information on these shadowy political manipulators.
Feel free to use our PGP public encryption key

Please take the appropriate precautions if you are planning to blow the whistle on these shadowy and powerful people. e.g. see these hints and tips for whistleblowers

The Independent has an article which quotes David Miliband on his controversial plans for "Individual Carbon Credits".

Presumably, this uncritical article, has been pumped out by the David Miliband's public relations spin doctors at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs which ended up in after the latest NuLabour Cabinet re-shuffle.

Mr Miliband will suggest banning products such as inefficient light bulbs and electrical appliances which waste power while on standby.

Will this really save any energy at all, given that many devices which would have been left on standby, will , instead be left on at full power instead ?

He will suggest new environmental taxes to shift the cost of pollution on to consumers and propose that consumers might make automatic payments to offset pollution.

Who could possibly have guessed that NuLabour's policies would involve even more taxes aimed at consumers ?

He will say: "In the short term it is likely that a mixture of the above tools will be needed. But in the long term, we should look more radically at the option of tradable personal carbon allowances. Imagine a world where carbon becomes a new currency. We all carry carbon points on our bank cards in the same way as we carry pounds. We pay for electricity, gas and fuel not just with pounds but carbon points."

Remember that this is a Government which has spectacularly failed to implement something as comparatively simple as to the poorest families. Instead, there has been massive complexity, red tape, bureaucracy, genuine hardship as a direct result of bureaucratic incomptence, and massive, multi million pound frauds.

How would "Individual Carbon Points" be anything diffreent, except on an even larger scale ?

Why should such a complicated "Soviet Communist GOSPLAN centralised planning" style scheme like this one, ever have a chance of working at all ?

Why should anyone have to submit to the snooping of a bureaucratic "Carbon Means Test" , with all the dangers of privacy violations which that will inevitably create ?

Which "private sector" partners has David Milliband got in mind who would profit from such an artifficial market in "Carbon Points" ? Will they be tapped up for loans or donations to Labour Party funds ?

What is this inane and impractical talk of a nightmare "world where carbon becomes a new currency" ?

Surely Miliband knows that even in the UK, there are lots of people who do not have a bank account let alone "bank cards" on which their "carbon points" will somehow, magically, be traded securely.

Where is there any evidence that normal market pricing mechanisms will not achieve the aim of reducing carbon emissions in the UK?

We will be watching David Miliband's taxpayer funded blog, to see if he bothers to try to justify this "Individual Carbon Points" alternative currency malarkey.

Blairwatch have drawn our attention to an example of of a NuLabour spin doctor Darren Murphy, who now seems have joined a political lobbying consultancy firm ACPO Worlwide.

According to his ACPO Worlwide biography:

"Mr. "Darren Murphy, director in APCO Worldwide’s London office, provides expertise in crisis communication, strategic communication and government relations as well as a unique insight into health care decision making at the highest level. Mr. Murphy is a former adviser to the Blair government, a position he held from May 1997 to September 2005"

So what happened to the Civil Service Code, which is meant to apply equa;lly to Special Advisors as well as to Civil Servants ?

"Leaving the Civil Service

26. The Business Appointment rules apply to all civil servants, including Special Advisers, for the first two years after leaving office. The rules are set out in Section 4.3, annexes A and B of the Civil Service Management Code. Decisions on applications submitted by Special Advisers will be taken by the Permanent Secretary. "

Civil Service Management Code (92 page .pdf)

Darren Murphy appears on the current and the previous 1 June 2005 - 30 November 2005 (30 page .pdf - ACPO is the first alphabetical entry) Register of the Association of Professional Political Lobbyists i.e. he must have joined ACPO Worldwide less than 2 months after leaving his post as a Special Advisor.

How can this be ethical ?