Huw Edwards traces the role of the spin doctor

He told the Public Administration Committee, which is looking into the Government Information Service, that "hassling and pushing editors is counter productive."

Ingham says the government's message is dangerous: "Tow the line, or else"

In an aside aimed at the current high-profile government spin doctors such as the prime minister_s official spokesman, Alistair Campbell, he said: "I was in the long term of business of government information. I suspect some people are in the short term business, which is something else."

In attacking the transparency of the current briefing process, he directly attributed an offensive comment to Mr Campbell: "The system is now so transparent that I believe that Alistair Campbell described the Chancellor of the Exchequer as psychologically flawed, but he's never been landed in the prominent way with that charge in the way that I was for much less offensive comments."

Sir Bernard, who was press secretary for Baroness Thatcher when she was prime minister, said that the best thing that the Conservative Opposition could do would be to leave men like Mr Campbell where they are because: "The favouritism currently shown to some journalists and not to others will reap the government a whirlwind."

He told the Committee that in his view the role of official spokesman, in this government, could not be seperated from a party-political role. He went further saying there are "too many people serving their political apprenticeships at the tax payers' expense."

Sir Bernard did not just reserve his criticism for spin doctors. Journalists were lambasted too:

"The biggest spinners in the business are the journalists themselves. They massage, knead and perform miracles upon basic information to present it for commercial consumption," he said.

Rhodri Morgan empathises with an aversion to pagers

Sir Bernard criticised as "ridiculous posturing" what he called "all this nonsense about a 24-hour media":

"I managed perfectly well without a pager. I operated on the basis that if it was good news then I didn_t need to know, and if it was bad then it would find me very rapidly indeed - and it did."