Willetts uncensored

Yesterday my colleague Brian Owens pointed out that BIS were nervous about publishing David Willetts’ speech at Oxford Brookes University. This morning we found that the department has published “extracts” from the address.

BIS has generously given us the opportunity to identify exactly which parts of the speech were considered too risqué to be published on the department’s own website. So we did a quick comparison of the full text of the speech with the “authorised version”.

Three passages are gone, amounting to about 500 words. The missing sections are those in which the new minister is criticising decisions made by the Labour government. This is the “political” part of the speech that BIS cited as a reason for not posting the complete speech in the first place.

Here’s an example:

“Last Autumn, when Labour was planning a cut in student numbers for this Summer, I proposed 10,000 extra places. Labour opposed it until – just before the Election – they suggested 20,000 more, financed through a one-off fund. When we came into government, we had to assess where things stood. The bids made to the fund were for significantly fewer than 20,000 places. They were of variable quality. And some of the universities were unable to use a one-off fund to pay for three years of education.  We therefore settled on the 10,000 extra places that we had planned for all along. So it is hard to take Labour seriously now when they complain about a supposed cut of 10,000 places, when it is actually 10,000 more than they had originally proposed.”

So does this mean that, whenever ministers discuss the policies of their Labour predecessors, Whitehall will seek to keep a distance? Or is BIS nervous because Willetts’ kite-flying has not been agreed with Big Boss Vince Cable?

THE LATEST:

BIS has written to explain that their policy on party-political speeches is nothing new:

To avoid any confusion as to the rationale for editing speeches we have recently updated the site to
include our speeches policy.

In short we edit speeches to comply with the Ministerial and Civil Service codes which state
that government websites cannot carry party political content, or because the audio quality has made it impossible to transcribe what was actually said. These arrangements are the same ones that were in place during the period of the last government.

Longtime policy or not, we may see a lot more edited speeches cropping up on the BIS website under the coalition government. It's a useful way for ministers from different parties to avoid having to justify potentially contentious points made by their departmental colleagues.