I’ve just submitted the following additional request to the Cabinet office regarding coaching sessions for Cameron & co for their Leveson testimony:
Dear Cabinet Office,
I require to know the following information, please:
1) How many hours David Cameron and other ministers have spent in
preparation and coaching (or refamiliarisation, to use Mr Cameron’s
term) for their testimony to the Leveson enquiry. This information
to be listed by individual minister.
2) The dates, along with start and end times, of any such sessions.
Yours faithfully,
Steve Walker
Since the Prime Minister and his ministers don’t need preparation to be able to tell the truth, but merely to prevent personal and/or party political damage, any coaching should be outside of their working hours as members of the government. Especially since those hours are, by their own admission, quite limited anyway.
Of course, there remain the massive questions of why they need coaching if they’re simply going to tell the truth, of who carried it out, and of who has paid for this preparation, legal fees etc. It certainly shouldn’t be the British taxpayer. But those are covered by the earlier Freedom of Information request.
I’ll keep you updated as I hear anything.