There isn’t a second email system in my humble opinion – there is a confidential database thats written in Lotus Notes – a system more commonly recognised as an email platform but one that also can be used for database work.
The system is primarily used by Labour party employees and although partly ran by No. 10 staff, access is severly restricted, in the same way parliament’s I.T. department have to provide impartial service to the parties who have MPs, so do the No. 10 staff have to be impartial when helping the party-in-power therefore there is a kind of two-tier IT infrastructure in No. 10 and also the Palace of Westminister.
The database access is for staff in the No. 10 office of the Labour party, Powell and his staff and also key minsters’ SpAds, they contribute briefing documents, in various stages of preparation before being used by other spads to present key ideas to ministers and ultimately Tony Blair himself, all the speeches and statements and PMQ briefs are in there, going all the way back to ’97.
To Guido this rings true.