Media and Lobby Briefings

Lord Russell of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, I come back to the point I made earlier. Briefings for selected journalists are regular occurrences across government, not just in No. 10, and they have been for many years. Who drew up the list for this briefing, I cannot say.

[Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, may I gently point out to the noble Earl that I do not think this was just a normal selective briefing? My understanding is that one of the reasons that so many journalists were keen to go to this briefing is that, rather than being one of the Prime Minister’s unseen spokesmen, the person who was going to give the briefing was Mr David Frost, the chief negotiator with the European Union, hence the degree of interest.

[Earl Howe]

The noble Lord may be quite right. There probably was a lot of interest, but I say again that this briefing was to selected journalists. Other journalists had every opportunity yesterday at Greenwich and after the Prime Minister’s speech to ask any question they liked through the lobby process.