The BBC reports that after a spate of tell-all memoirs by civil servants (especially Christopher Meyer‘s DC CONFIDENTIAL) the government has had enough – and is imposing stricter controls on what they can reveal to the public and what they cannot.
Ministers and civil servants would have to clear any publications with the authorities as they do now. But the procedures should be much clearer and if civil servants publish without prior clearance, the government would be allowed to seek the profits. Though ministers technically “do not have a contractual relationship with the government,” the reports adds “a duty to sign a formal commitment to consult before publication should be placed clearly and specifically in the Ministerial Code.”
The committee chairman, Labour’s Tony Wright, said: “Nothing in this report will prevent memoirs being published. They have a real value and should be encouraged. But it needs to be clear what the rules are in order to protect those matters that genuinely need protection, and a fair process to deal with disagreements. We believe that our proposals will help to avoid the kind of difficulties we have seen recently, and give more certainty both to memoir-writers and to governments.”