:00:01. > :00:11.Raymond Snoddy. This week, why did the BBC broadcast so many weeks of
:00:11. > :00:20.
:00:20. > :00:24.last week's Budget ahead of the Welcome to NewsWatch. Why we have
:00:24. > :00:28.all been busy working out if we are winners or losers from a street's
:00:28. > :00:33.Budget, George Osborne has been talking to the Treasury Select
:00:33. > :00:36.Committee -- last week's budget. We asked why everyone seemed to know
:00:36. > :00:42.so much about what was in the Budget before he delivered it.
:00:42. > :00:45.Every single budget I have seen in the 20 or so years I have seen --
:00:45. > :00:48.been in politics, there has been speculation beforehand, sometimes
:00:48. > :00:53.budgets have leaked and sometimes the speculation has been well
:00:53. > :00:58.informed. What I can confirm is that no Treasury official or
:00:58. > :01:04.Treasury minister, no Treasury special adviser briefed before the
:01:04. > :01:07.Budget any specific information on tax rates or tax allowances.
:01:08. > :01:11.featured last week and you are's objections to hearing about the
:01:11. > :01:21.budget's contents in advance of the day itself and it is a tendency
:01:21. > :01:41.
:01:41. > :01:44.others have complained about. He It in this -- it is an issue Nick
:01:44. > :01:48.Robinson addressed in a report shown the night before the Budget.
:01:48. > :01:52.Gone are the days chancellors do the deed until a prime minister
:01:52. > :01:56.what they were planning. Now every line has to be agreed by the so-
:01:56. > :01:59.called quad which runs the coalition. Negotiations which have
:02:00. > :02:03.at a to lead -- a habit of leaking out. Her local stock even he has
:02:03. > :02:07.probably heard that the government is about to cut the 50 pence top
:02:07. > :02:11.rate of tax. So does the fault lie with politicians or with
:02:11. > :02:14.journalists? And how much of a problem is it? I am joined by
:02:15. > :02:18.Norman Smith, chief political correspondent on the news channel.
:02:18. > :02:23.Norman Smith, whatever happened to budget purdah? In the far distant
:02:23. > :02:28.past the Chancellor could get fired for leaks. The truth is purdah has
:02:28. > :02:33.been dying a slow DEFRA decades now and gradually, incrementally, the
:02:33. > :02:36.amount of information that is passed out by one way or another to
:02:36. > :02:41.journalists ahead of the Budget has been increasing until we reach the
:02:41. > :02:45.stage this year we're frankly there was only one really headline Budget
:02:45. > :02:49.measure which hadn't been briefed in advance which was the so-called
:02:49. > :02:53.Granny Tax and the reason for that in part is the changing nature of
:02:53. > :02:58.the way politics is covered now by the media. It is so intensive,
:02:58. > :03:03.particularly with the new forms of media, I am thinking particularly
:03:03. > :03:07.of Twitter, the internet and so on, that there is more persuasive
:03:07. > :03:12.pressure on politicians now to disclose, to give some insight, to
:03:12. > :03:18.give some titbit of information and that builds up a team at his
:03:18. > :03:22.momentum where more substantive -- and that builds up more momentum
:03:22. > :03:26.where more so stunted allegations become apparent. That is one thing
:03:26. > :03:29.that has happened. Is the other thing coalition government? Have
:03:29. > :03:36.you got the phenomenon of the Lib Dems leaking against the
:03:36. > :03:38.Conservatives? It is absolutely the case and the other key reason was
:03:38. > :03:44.because we are in a political environment with a coalition
:03:44. > :03:49.government which is bluntly meant a public negotiation or horse trade
:03:49. > :03:54.between the political parties over what they want out of the budget,
:03:54. > :03:57.their red lines, then no going areas and their positioning so they
:03:57. > :04:02.can trope and -- so they can trumpet to people look, this is
:04:02. > :04:05.what we have achieved. Within the Chancellor's team they take the
:04:05. > :04:09.view privately that the Liberal Democrats were guilty of leaking
:04:09. > :04:14.information to the media as a way of buttressing their position
:04:14. > :04:18.against accusations that they had sold out over the match and tax or
:04:18. > :04:22.whatever that they briefed n advance certain games such as on
:04:22. > :04:26.the raising of the tax threshold to insulate themselves against that
:04:26. > :04:30.accusation after the Budget. there a danger that journalists
:04:30. > :04:33.from being caught up in political games, the sort of differential
:04:33. > :04:36.leaking as you said, the so-called granny tax was not least because it
:04:36. > :04:42.was not something they were particularly wanting to draw
:04:42. > :04:47.attention to. Are you caught up in these games between Lib Dems are
:04:47. > :04:50.leaking against the Conservatives, etc? Yes, that is part and parcel
:04:50. > :04:54.of the political cut-and-thrust, the more so now because it is a
:04:54. > :04:58.coalition error. From my perspective it seems to me
:04:58. > :05:04.increasingly the view that all political announcements, all
:05:04. > :05:08.initiatives, are three briefed in advance. In fact when the Queen
:05:08. > :05:12.came to Westminster the other day it was frankly a shock because the
:05:12. > :05:18.Palace absolutely did not give us anything in advance, which for
:05:18. > :05:22.political journalists come hang on a second, we have to tell audiences
:05:22. > :05:25.what you are going to say and we did not get that from the palace
:05:25. > :05:28.because the Palace comes from a previous media era and in a funny
:05:28. > :05:31.way when a politician makes a speech very often it gets
:05:31. > :05:35.comparatively little courage and all the coverage is its front
:05:35. > :05:39.loaded because at the time he makes it, editors are thinking I have
:05:39. > :05:43.heard that, there is nothing new, so it is a weird world but it is
:05:43. > :05:49.increasingly the case that everything, including budgets, is
:05:49. > :05:53.extensively briefed in advance. viewers complained that the BBC
:05:53. > :05:58.should not be indulging in speculation, should just report the
:05:58. > :06:04.facts but if you are right you were not indulging in speculation, you
:06:04. > :06:08.were reporting the facts, the leaks are mainly true? Yes, I would not
:06:09. > :06:12.entirely dismissed the speculation side of it in the sense that had
:06:12. > :06:16.been speculation, I would rephrase it as informed analysis if you
:06:16. > :06:20.wanted to be slightly pompous about it but I think there is a place for
:06:20. > :06:24.trying to provide some thoughts from people who are within the
:06:24. > :06:26.Westminster village, who perhaps have a sense of where story is
:06:27. > :06:31.going or how it is likely to develop without necessarily having
:06:31. > :06:34.all the concrete facts lined up in a neat row. Betting you can join up
:06:34. > :06:37.dots. When people say League setting the temptation is to
:06:37. > :06:42.imagine someone from the Treasury rings you up and say the Treasury
:06:42. > :06:46.is going to do this, this is not how it happens. It tends to be more
:06:46. > :06:49.oblique conversations where I would not get very far if I said to a
:06:49. > :06:54.government figure is the Chancellor going to cut a top rate of tax?
:06:54. > :06:58.That would be simply, I can't tell you. You rarely get clear,
:06:58. > :07:00.categorical facts, of this is what is going to happen, but you can
:07:00. > :07:07.piece together the bits-and-pieces to form an idea of what is likely
:07:07. > :07:10.to happen. Norman Smith, thank you. For some more of your comments and
:07:10. > :07:15.what you have been watching this week on BBC News, or in the case of
:07:15. > :07:17.the NHS Bill, what you have not been watching, the Health Bill
:07:17. > :07:21.gained Royal Assent on Tuesday after a tortuous passage through
:07:21. > :07:26.Parliament and a row over the government's refusal to publish an
:07:26. > :07:36.internal risk assessment. Professor Peter Jane Evans from Oxford
:07:36. > :07:49.
:07:49. > :07:52.University felt this deserved more A rather more active objection to
:07:52. > :07:57.BBC output was made this week by representatives of the Mormon
:07:57. > :08:01.Church, who visited the corporation to hand to deliver a letter of
:08:01. > :08:05.complaint. It centred on Tuesday's This World documentary on BBC Two
:08:05. > :08:08.in which John Sweeney investigated the religious beliefs of Mitt
:08:08. > :08:12.Romney and asked whether the United States is ready for a more one
:08:12. > :08:17.President? I can't in good conscience vote for him, I can't do
:08:17. > :08:24.it. Mitt Romney is a Mormon and they believe that Jesus came to
:08:25. > :08:29.America. Are the more one bashers just religious bigots? I go on the
:08:29. > :08:35.road to find out. Some NewsWatch viewers were equally unhappy with
:08:35. > :08:45.the programme. One view was said it was poorly researched and
:08:45. > :08:53.
:08:53. > :08:57.One of the bigger and angrier postbags we had last year followed
:08:57. > :09:01.August's riots across English cities. Many viewers felt the
:09:01. > :09:07.extent of the coverage on BBC B -- BBC News had fanned the flames.
:09:07. > :09:12.Among them, John Bell. I thought that it had become very
:09:12. > :09:21.irresponsible. We were just being flooded with picture after picture
:09:21. > :09:26.of the riots and to my mind it almost became an invitation, you
:09:26. > :09:30.know, look what is going on out here, guys, come and joiners or
:09:30. > :09:33.there will be another one tomorrow night. This week saw the
:09:33. > :09:37.publication of an independent report into the roots of last
:09:37. > :09:44.summer's event. Over the course or five extraordinary day's last
:09:44. > :09:48.August England learnt how order and chaos are close neighbours. Them
:09:48. > :09:52.rioting, looting and arson spreading like Bush fires across
:09:52. > :09:58.the country, the politicians initially blaming criminality, pure
:09:58. > :10:04.and simple. But then commissioning a report to look at the deeper
:10:04. > :10:07.social causes and lessons to be learned. One of the panel's
:10:07. > :10:11.findings chime with the concerns of our viewers at the time. It said
:10:11. > :10:16.the spread of violence was helped by televised images of police
:10:16. > :10:20.watching people looked at will. And that many felt the 24 hour news
:10:20. > :10:25.coverage on the BBC and Sky exaggerated the extent of rioting
:10:25. > :10:29.where they lived, helping to make the riots self-fulfilling prophecy.
:10:29. > :10:32.Finally, another own complaint -- old complaint has come back to
:10:32. > :10:36.haunt BBC News. In January we showed how the news channel had
:10:36. > :10:40.mistakenly captioned Labour leader Ed Miliband at his brother, David.
:10:40. > :10:50.Well, at last week's Prime Minister's Question Time the same
:10:50. > :10:53.
:10:53. > :10:57.thing happened again. Ed Miliband. Mr Speaker, following the Prime is
:10:57. > :11:03.to's recent trip to Washington we now know that the timetable for the