Ilett is a press officer with the NHS and is worried about a recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request by his local paper, which wants to know how much of the local NHS budget is spent on 'spin'.
He rightly points out to the NUJ audience (many of them, local hacks) that local newspapers would struggle to fill their pages without the work of his team.
"I spent six years as Head of Comms at MORI. MORI's local government research showed that councils that invest in good communications have much better approval ratings than those that do not. The truth is that people like to know what is going on," writes Ilett.
Quite right; and that goes for national politics too. Party political spin doctors have given government communications officers a bad name they don't deserve. The Opposition might think they can add information officers to their hit list for 'cost cutting' measures, but who'll be left to publicise the (pifling) amount of public money they saved along the way?
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