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Lobby correspondents

The "Lobby" is the name given to a small group of parliamentary journalists who enjoy privileged access to certain parts of Parliament. The chief privilege is the right to enter the Members' Lobby (see plan of parliament) in order to interview MPs. Information given to journalists in the Members' Lobby is given on "lobby terms" which means it may not be attributed to whoever released it. Senior parliamentary journalists on newspapers and in TV and radio are recommended for membership of the Lobby by their employers. They must then seek permission to join the Lobby from the Serjeant at Arms, who is responsible for administration and security within Parliament. Lobby journalists are also invited to 10 Downing Street for regular briefings at which ministers and the prime minister's press secretary will seek to give journalists an "off the record" spin on the day's main political events.  Reporting on Westminster: whose Lobby is it anyway? March 26, 2009 the lobby “Being a lobby correspondent is a lot like prostitution,” says Sheila Gunn, a former lobby journalist for The Times. “You can never go and approach a minister, you just have to stand in the lobby and try to catch their eye. “If they ignore you, you’re not allowed to chase them. You just hope they’ll be interested and come over.” In 2004, an independent review of government communications recommended an investigation of the lobby system by a House of Lords committee. The result was Government Communications, a report published in January this year. It described the system as a “barrier to openness” and advised that the lobby’s morning briefings should be broadcast live on the Number 10 website to “dispel continuing myths about the lobby and the sense of secrecy which surrounds it”. Lobby journalists attend intimate briefings by the Prime Minister’s spokesman and also have wide-ranging access to ministers and civil servants. Of course, not all political journalists are in the lobby. The favoured few (176 last year) obtain passes through their newspapers. Gunn remembers the day she became part of it: “When I got my lobby pass I was one of the elite. It was a status thing. Like the company executive getting the keys to the bathroom.” Once journalists are part of this club, they are held to a set of rules dictating how they report. No other correspondents have the same restrictions placed upon them. The rules include never approaching a minister in the lobby, never reporting on something you overhear or see in Westminster, and never making notes when conversing with a source. Perhaps most important is the way journalists must treat information given to them off the record. The lobby rules dictate that journalists can receive such information on one condition – they aren’t allowed to go to other people for a reaction. They’re also forbidden to name the ministers who tip them off. Ultimately, this is the key issue, and the Lords’ report failed to address it. Martin Bright, former political editor of the New Statesman says: “This is a totally informal agreement but it means that if the Government tells you about a new super hospital opening up, you have to report it straight – you can’t go to the Tories who might tell you that it’s using corrupt money.” Some say the report does not go far enough in tackling the grey area of sources. As Kevin Maguire, associate editor and lobby correspondent of The Mirror, points out: “You can televise the briefing, but it’s not going to change the culture. The real secrecy is around people’s personal contacts. People are always stopping MPs or special advisers in the corridor. Going out for lunch or a drink with someone counts much more than the formal briefings.” Surely if the Government really wanted to be more transparent, it would look at this institution of off-the-record conversations, and ask whether it’s appropriate for politicians and journalists to operate in this way? When The Independent left the lobby in 1986, it quickly found how difficult it was to be on the outside. “The Independent felt the lobby was a corrupt system,” says Peter Wilby, editor of The Independent on Sundayfrom 1995 to 1996. “[We thought] it was being used by Thatcher’s press spokesman for low-level rubbishing. You couldn’t even say ‘the PM’s spokesman’ you had to say ‘a Whitehall source’.” Nevertheless, he says it was difficult not to be part of the lobby. “All the other papers were still in the loop and it meant that they got all the political information. It lasted three, four years and then we had to go back. We weren’t getting the stories.” Lord Fowler, who led the Lords Communications Committee, points out that every journalist needs off the record conversations, which the lobby provides: “All specialists, from health to education correspondents, talk on lobby terms. There’s always been a bit of guidance of the press.” Yet the main difference between a specialist correspondent and the lobby is the personal relationship with the source. While specialist correspondents choose to keep some sources anonymous, the lobby journalist is tied by the lobby rules, which dictate that the source must never be named. It’s a subtle difference with huge consequences. The relationship between the politician and the journalist is prioritised over the relationship between the journalist and the reader. Journalists become merely self-serving, trying to get MPs on side so that they can be fed the juiciest stories. The flipside of this is that the journalist who has built a relationship with an MP becomes reluctant to report their mistakes or misdemeanours, for fear of losing the source for good. Kevin Maguire admits that this relationship can make it difficult: “Sometimes when someone says something colourful about someone else, you think ‘that would be a fantastic thing to write about’, but you know if you do, you won’t get access to that person again. Someone might be doing something wrong – or very interesting – and you didn’t report it as a result.” Martin Bright says that this became especially serious at the height of New Labour’s power, when the Sunday papers were “like Pravda – mouthpieces for Government announcements.” Paradoxically, those behind February’s report see the off-the-record system as necessary for opening up Government, and are happy for it to continue. Lord Fowler says: “It’s not in the public interest to insist all conversations are on the record. Under the current system there is more information getting to the public as people are speaking more freely.” What the report doesn’t acknowledge is that far from opening up Government, these private relationships create barriers, making political reporting dependent on a network of personal relationships where the players trade information and power. It’s true that there may always be “quick lunches” and one-to-one contact with politicians. However, this doesn’t need to be done within the lobby system. As Bright points out: “Derek Draper, cash for honours, the Hinduja brothers – all those stories were covered by journalists from outside the lobby.” Political bloggers are also showing how it’s possible to report on Westminster from a distance. One of them, the notorious Guido Fawkes, revealed John Prescott’s liaison with Tracy Temple in April 2006, and took a swipe at the lobby when he pointed out that the affair was an open secret among its journalists. If the system remains unchanged, obedient lobby reporters will remain incapable of reporting serious ministerial misdemeanours, their “exclusives” driven by party feuds or backbench discontent. It should not take a Lords’ report to remind us that journalists reporting on politics should strive to break down “barriers to openness” and throw open the closed doors within Westminster. Written by Hannah Hudson · Filed Under Features, Features Archive