The Information Commissioner is set to pave the way to make the private email accounts of those in government FoI-able. Given that most SpAds and Ministers are sick of civil servants snooping around and leaking things before decisions have even been made, government by GMail is widespread in Whitehall. Someone told the Guardian: ”Everyone is shitting bricks at the implications. It looks as if they are going to say Post-it notes are disclosable. There is going to be material on the budget, Libyan strategy, everything.” One senior Downing Street staffer, quick to eschew convention, has given up on official emails completely:

From: Steve Hilton shilton@no10.x.gsi.gov.uk
Date: Wed, Dec 14, 2011 at 10:41 AM
Subject: Out of Office AutoReply:

Thank you for your email – Please note, Steve does not access his No.10 emails.

If you require a response please contact ███████ █████ █████@no10.x.gsi.gov.uk or via the No.10 Switchboard on 020 █████ █████.

Many thanks

Annette Craze
Assistant Private Secretary to Steve Hilton

For latest news and information from Downing Street visit: http://www.number10.gov.uk

Help save paper – do you need to print this email?

“Steve does not access his No.10 emails.” Guido refuses to believe that the Downing Street Director of Strategy never sends emails related to his work. It’s right that we are able to see the decision making that is currently off the books. 

It seems Clegg is taking this fake row thing a little too far…

UPDATE: Cleggies tell the Sun that Nick doesn’t “want to be a distraction”. Yeah right…

According to a tweet from The Sun, glamorous Gabby Bertin, the PM’s press secretary is breaking the strike to man the border at Heathrow.

Echoes of Churchill’s strike breaking aristocratic bus drivers from the 1926 General Strike…

The East London Tech City is the pet project of some of the trendier inhabitants of No 10. Yesterday Dave announced 600 new businesses have started up in the area Old Street.

He also appointed a “Tech City Ambassador” - Ben Hammersley of Wired. A King of the Dickheads, if you will…

Former Minister for Dirty Tricks Tom Watson thinks he can redeem his past sins on the back of pummelling Murdoch. The media are too terrified to say a negative word about him, so not for the first time it falls to Guido to highlight some hypocrisy ignored by the craven Old Media. A Labour Party press release in Watson’s name yesterday bleated:

“At a time when David Cameron is squeezing the income of millions of hard working families, he has decided to show off his grace and favour accommodation which he has lavishly and unnecessarily refurbished at the taxpayers’ expense. £30,000 of taxpayers’ money was reportedly spent on refurbishing the flat – more than most workers earn in a year… This is blatant hypocrisy and shows just how out of touch Cameron is.”

What our Tommy fails to mention, “wilfully” you might say, is that the refurbished flat will last far longer than Cameron’s premiership and will remain the property of the people. Unlike someone else’s lavishly fitted out residence…

The personal flat that Watson shares with fellow former Minister Iain Wright has seen them claim over £100,000 for refurbishments and such like for their pad including their shares of the legal costs involved in buying it, as well as the fees to buy the freehold. Unlike the PM he will be able to sell and keep the profit from his taxpayer feather-bedded nest. Interesting to note that Watson is suddenly willing to bring Cameron’s family into play. Given that the Watson clan have collectively taken £300,000 off the taxpayer you might wonder whether Tom is really one to be criticising anyone…

A good rule of thumb when feeding negative stories to the press about a Prime Minister, whose administration you work in, is not to do it from the office phone. A mighty row has blown up in Downing Street after a leak hunt has found the Deputy Prime Minister’s spokesman up to his neck in it after giving the Mirror a story about the Cameron and Osborne children playing in the Rose Garden. The Mail on Sunday reported the row yesterday without naming James McGrory as the leaker…

Cameron hit the roof and his staff got in Scotland Yard to trace the leak. McGrory’s study looks out over the Rose Garden and his phone made three calls to the Mirror just before they put a call in to Downing Street for a comment. On the day that Clegg announces that he is going to spend half a million on seven new LibDem SpAds across Whitehall, he should probably start thinking about an eighth…

With the LibDems trying to have their “told-you-so-moment” over a register of lobbyists, Guido drew your attention yesterday to the controversial spinmeister Clegg has brought into the heart of his operation – Olly Grender. Overnight many a co-conspirator also pointed out that Clegg’s Chief of Staff Jonny Oates is another flesh presser…

Starting at Westminster Strategy in the nineties, Oates worked his way up to become a director at Bell Pottinger in 2004. With a host of international and UK clients that would put any sandal-wearing LibDem member off their lentils, Bell Pottinger are the largest UK firm to refuse to take part in any of the voluntary regulation schemes that are around. Their chairman Peter Bingle has been at the forefront of defending the industry this week. Almost a lone public voice…

So two of Clegg’s closest advisers right now are former lobbyists. His promised clean up of the body politic clearly doesn’t start at home…

In those heady days of spring 2010 Nick Clegg told the ITV leadership debate that he wanted “something I’ve supported all my adult political life, which is a complete clean-up from top to toe of politics.” This included an end to murky lobbying and he subsequently convinced the Conservative coalition negotiators of the need for a compulsory register of lobbyists. So it is odd then that the lobbyist Olly Grender has gone to spin for Nick Clegg out of the Deputy Prime Minister’s Office. Grender is in Downing Street covering the maternity leave of Clegg’s gatekeeper Lena Pietsch, which means she will be back on the outside practising the dark arts very soon….

After spinning for the Liberal Democrats in the run up to the 1997 election, Grender turned to the dark-side of lobbying at Neal Lawson and Jonathan Mendelsohn’s scandal ridden and now defunct LLM Communications, which became notorious for their level of access to the Blair government. Eventually she moved on to PLMR – Political Lobbying and Media Relations. Leaving the quack green energy companies represented by the firm aside,  the organisation boasts that they represent Frankenstein doctors  like PLMR client Reneuron who experiment with stem-cells taken from new-born children, and pro-puppy-torturing and mouse-probing animal research organisations like UAR. PLMR also spin for the Brazilian Beef food processing industry, which George Monbiot accuses of “deforestation, slavery and murder”. Classy stuff…

Given the unfettered access that Grender now has and that her appointment is only temporary, what measures have been taken in Downing Street to make sure that her firm’s clients, who until very recently were paying her to represent them, do not have undue influence? The Cabinet Office can instigate a cooling off period after officials leave the government before they can jump through the revolving door. Will this “two years in the cooler” apply to Grender and her corporate lobbying career? With Nick Clegg leading the charge against the spinmeisters, what has he done to get his own house in order?

Oh dear, the Mirror have Letwin bang to rights with photographs taken by resident Downing Street pap Steve Back of Political Pictures, who followed the eccentric Cabinet Office Minister through St James’s Park early in the morning as he strolled along catching up, and then binning, constituency business. There was no sensitive or government material retrieved, but you have to wonder quite how far Letwin’s head is in the blue-sky if he didn’t pause for one moment to think this might have bin a bit silly…

Today’s PMQs session will be a tough one, unemployment is up, the defence secretary is in the wars and the Health Bill is falling apart. If you notice something a little different about Cameron’s performance at Prime Minister’s Questions later it will be because Peter Campbell, who has been in charge of Dave’s PMQs briefings since the moment he became Tory leader, has joined the Downing Street exodus. He left Cameron’s Private Office last week.

Something tells Guido that this won’t be the last we hear of Mr Campbell. The PMQs briefer is a key job in any leader’s office and it was a fresh faced young Conservative Party researcher called David that used to do the honours for John Major.

He was the future once…