Hannan's Call to Order

Over the years I've got used to politicians and their funny little ways, but even so I was rather taken aback by the National Assembly for Wales's response to criticism from the architect Richard Rogers.

Lord Rogers disputes the administration's version of the difficulties over building or, more accurately, not building) a debating chamber for the assembly.

Lord Rogers e-mailed his side of the story

Last week he e-mailed members - all 60 of them - to put his side of the story.

Naturally ministers were asked for their reaction.

Oh, we couldn't possibly comment they said. This is a leak.

How the publication of the contents of a letter sent to 60 different people can be described as a leak, I didn't know, but then I remembered the kind of people we were dealing with.

This is a world in which the language they speak bears the same relationship to English as do those translated leaflets you get with electrical goods.

So, for example, when confidential information is published by someone else it's a leak.

When you've told people about it yourself, it's a briefing.

Journalists like the word leak because it suggests enterprise and skill on the reporter's part to secure it.

This is a world in which the language politicians speak bears the same relationship to English as do those translated leaflets you get with electrical goods

Briefings, on the other hand, imply the run-of-the-mill doling out of information to any hack who happens to be passing.

This sort of thing means that newspapers in particular are often written in a kind of code which can often exclude the poor old reader unless he happens to have the key to what they are really saying.

For example, the phrase, "close friends of the minister," usually means the minister himself who has said to the journalist concerned: "Don't say I said this."

Then, when something goes wrong, he can go round all day looking innocent.

"Sources close to the minister" might mean his special adviser, his press officer or some other form of spin doctor, while "insiders" can be junior officials in the department or entirely fictitious characters invented to add weight to the story.

There are other shadowy figures known as "senior backbenchers" or, alternatively, "an influential backbencher" who may in truth be a backbencher under the influence.

You should not, by the way, confuse these people with someone said to be a "top Tory."

Almost anyone can be described in this way.

It's important to remember that there are hardly any real secrets in political life

For example in the headline "Top Tory in Sex Scandal", the person concerned might well turn out to be no more elevated than the vice-chairman of the snooker committee at the Aberbigger Conservative Club.

It's important to remember that there are hardly any real secrets in political life.

What really matters to the participants is who is controlling the information.

To call something a leak isn't to say the information concerned is wrong. Quite the reverse, indeed.

It's simply a way of showing displeasure that someone got to the press first.

In much the same way when some report is dismissed as "pure speculation" you can be pretty sure it's accurate.

When I first became an industrial correspondent a lucky accident meant that I was provided with quite a lot of sensitive information about the steel industry.

I was told later that the articles I wrote caused so much concern that even the security services were involved in trying to discover my source.

In the great traditions of the security services they failed to do so.

"The thing is," a senior figure told me, (even now, you'll notice, I can't stop writing things like "senior figure") it wasn't really the leaks we were worried about. It was the fact that they weren't OUR leaks."

There's just one thing. All this, of course, is off the record.

Patrick Hannan's weekly political programme, Called to Order, is live on Radio Wales, 93-104FM, 882 and 657AM, and DSat channel 867.

You can also listen to BBC Radio Wales live online at http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/live/rwv5.ram.

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