Q&A: Did Cook mislead over leaked report?

The BBC's political correspondent Nick Jones examines the questions raised by Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's off-the-record phone call to him over the Commons foreign affairs select committee report in 1999 into the "Arms to Sierra Leone" affair, and allegations that the minister used a leaked report but told MPs he had not.

Q: Why did Mr Cook call the BBC in the first place?

A:The fact that the foreign secretary was prepared to telephone me personally - to complain about my reporting on the BBC - reflected the concern within the government over the way the Foreign Office was being criticised about a British arms shipment to Sierra Leone which had taken place in defiance of a United Nations arms embargo.

On the morning of my radio broadcast, journalists were waiting for a report from the House of Commons select committee which had investigated the shipment.

I said it was understood that the committee was "scathing in its criticism" and that some of the "severest criticism" was directed at Mr Cook for refusing to do more to co-operate with the inquiry.

It was 8:12am when I spoke to Mr Cook on the phone, returning his call. He was clearly annoyed by my report and said that, far from criticising him, the committee had praised him for a "quantum leap" in the amount of information which he had supplied.

If my report was to be balanced I had to refer to the paragraph which stated this. He ended the call by saying: "Remember, this conversation didn't take place."

Q: But surely the foreign secretary was making a fair point? He thought your report was unbalanced. What was wrong with that?

A: Well, it was what happened later which made the call - and the timing of it - so significant.

It was revealed subsequently that, some days before publication, Mr Cook had been sent a leaked copy of the report and that revelation led to an inquiry by another House of Commons committee.

Mr Cook told that committee that he and his staff made no use of the leaked report. They received copies of the final report at 8:00am under a strict embargo that expired two hours later.

In advance of the publication of the report at 10am "we made no comment to the media about the report" he said. This appeared to contradict my account of what happened. Mr Cook had spoken to me at 8:12am and had seemed very well versed in its contents.

He had picked out paragraph 99 in a report of 112 paragraphs. And, even earlier that morning at 6:45am, a Foreign Office official had complained to me about one of the my earlier news reports and had told me then that Mr Cook intended defending his officials from further criticism.

It appeared to me that the Foreign Office had made use of the contents of the leaked report and, according to the shorthand note I had taken, Mr Cook had spoken to me before publication.

Therefore I had reacted with disbelief when Mr Cook told MPs: "The only contact we had with the media regarding this report in advance of its publication was as a result of reports in The Independent and The Times."

Q: Some may say you have broken the journalists' code by revealing something you were told "off the record" - how do you answer that?

A: I accept that many journalists are not prepared to break confidences and will treat information as "off the record".

However, I was not soliciting information from Mr Cook, nor did he supply me with any information that could be considered newsworthy, so I consider I am under no obligation.

I thought the foreign secretary's objective in telephoning me was to ensure he was presented in a better light. I felt it was rather stretching a point for a minister to telephone a correspondent, rebuke him for what he had reported, and at the same time insist that his complaint was somehow off the record.

Q: How serious for Mr Cook is the charge that he misled Parliament?

A:Mr Cook has rejected my version of what has happened and says there was no impropriety.

He insists no use was made of the leaked report. However, his statement has made no reference to his telephone call to me, or to the earlier call by a Foreign Office press officer.

Mr Cook insists he has not broken the ministerial code under which the prime minister has promised to sack ministers who are found to have misled Parliament.

The question of whether the inquiry which was conducted into the leaking of the select committee report should be re-opened is a matter for the House of Commons watchdog, the Standards Committee. Several MPs on that committee have said they think Mr Cook now has some questions to answer.

Q: Why is it that the story has emerged now, in the run-up to the election, rather than two years ago when it happened?

A:That is a fair question. My account of what happened is an extract from a book I have written examining the media techniques used by the Blair government.

What I have examined is whether Labour's tactics have weakened the authority of Parliament. Some of the parliamentary committees believe their work has been undermined.

I have also examined the government's practice of trailing announcements in the news media in defiance of criticism by the speaker, who believes policy decisions should be announced first in the House of Commons.

My book is therefore an assessment of Labour's first term and asks questions about what should happen if they are re-elected.

My account of what happened with Robin Cook has been seized on by the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as an example of what they believe are the manipulative techniques of the government.

Inevitably the closeness of the elections makes this a topical subject.

Q: Coming on top of the Hinduja affair and Peter Mandelson's resignation, how damaging to the government are these latest allegations?

There is no doubt that the standards of government ministers are under the spotlight.

What I have written about extensively is the relationship between politicians and the news media.

What I detect is a readiness by ministers to take inexplicable risks when seeking to influence the news media.

Peter Mandelson had to resign because of confusions over his answers to questions about the Hinduja passport application.

Similarly, my description of what happened when I was rebuked by Robin Cook illustrates the lengths to which ministers are prepared to go to rebut stories they dislike.