Why did PM let him escape a full vetting?
DAVID Cameron endured searching new questions yesterday over the failure of officials to vet disgraced spin doctor Andy Coulson to the highest level.
Coulson – who became Downing Street’s chief spin doctor in 2010 – was not security-vetted to the same level as his predecessors and successors.
Instead, the former tabloid editor was vetted to ‘security check’ level, which allows only supervised access to the most secret government documents. He resigned before a stricter ‘developed vetting (DV)’ clearance process had been completed. Of the Downing Street communications directors before Coulson, three were already vetted to the DV level, two others were granted the status three months after starting the job and another after seven months. Mr Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne hired Coulson as the Conservatives’ director of communications only weeks after he quit the News of the World in 2007, saying he took ‘ultimate responsibility’ when royal editor Clive Goodman pleaded guilty to phone hacking. Labour leader Ed Miliband revelled in Coulson’s downfall yesterday and asked why he had not gone through the full vetting process earlier.
Mr Miliband said: ‘ I think David Cameron must do much more than an apology. He owes the country an explanation for why he did not act on these allegations against Andy Coulson, why – as the evidence piled up – he didn’t do anything about.
‘ He doesn’t seem to have received the most comprehensive security vetting and clearance. We need to know why that didn’t happen.’
Mr Coulson’s background had been probed by a private company contracted by the Conservative Party when he began work as its head of communications in 2007. But it was decided to commence ‘developed vetting’ of Mr Coulson only after he had to brief the media on a terror alert at the East Midlands airport in October 2010. This had not been completed when Coulson resigned in January 2011.
Under Mr Cameron’s premiership, current director of communications Craig Oliver has been develop vetted, as has Gabby Bertin – Coulson’s deputy.
No 10 pointed out that Lord Justice Leveson concluded in his inquiry report that the Civil Service decides what levels of security clearance staff require.
Last night Gordon Brown’s spin doctor Damian McBride, who resigned over a smear campaign against opponents, attacked the Tories for ’equating my behaviour – however rep- rehensible – with the criminal activities for which Andy Coulson has just been convicted’. He added: ‘I had to undergo the developed vetting process, and have my finances, love life and past activities t horoughly looked through by the security services. I was not allowed to start doing the job properly until I’d received my DV status.
‘Why was Coulson not put through developed vetting for the director of communications job in No 10?’
But Whitehall sources said it was unlikely a ‘developed vetting’ process would have uncovered any fresh evidence about Coulson and phone hacking.
The Tory leadership had been dreading the conclusion of the Coulson trial for months, since Mr Cameron had vowed to make a full public apology if he was convicted. Mr Cameron admitted at the Leveson Inquiry that
‘We gave him a second chance’
his decision to hire Coulson had ‘haunted’ them both.
Coulson, however, insisted the question of voicemail interception was raised only once by Mr Cameron during his recruitment – in a phone call while he was on holiday in Cornwall.
Downing Street said Coulson had given assurances to the police, Press Complaints Commission and a Commons select committee that he knew nothing of hacking.
Mr Osborne said: ‘I too am very sorry for the decision we made to employ Andy Coulson. He gave us assurances that turned out not to be the case. We gave him a second chance but, knowing what we now know, it’s clear that we made the wrong decision.’
Former Labour deputy prime minister John Prescott said he wrote to Mr Cameron in July 2009 ‘questioning his decision to employ Andy Coulson’.
‘I received no reply to my warning,’ he said yesterday.