These are the four ways the Government stops you hearing about its big mistakes

Though it gets them in trouble, ministerial advisors still use these clever techniques to bury bad news

Government press officers sneak out negative stories when you're looking the other way. (Getty)

At 2.55pm on September 11 2001 a little known Government special advisor wrote an email that would propel her to infamy and coin a new phrase in the British political lexicon. As millions of people watched in horror at collapse of the Twin Towers collapses Jo Moore dropped a quick note to her colleagues in the Department of Transport. “It is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury. Councillors expenses?”

Fifteen years on, and despite the opprobrium heaped on her, 'burying bad news’ is still very much the meat and drink of Whitehall press officers and special advisors. Here's how they do it.

The Jo Moore memorial trowel

While no special advisor would ever be stupid enough to commit such thoughts to paper or email these days, that does not mean that the traditional practice of burying bad news is dead. Far from it. If a Government department has an uncomfortable announcement to put out they will often wait for what they know will be a busy news day before quietly slipping out a press release or statement. The best kind of event to bury bad news underneath is a predictable but important news story that preferably doesn’t involve people dying – even if you get caught out, the sin is not one of crass insensitivity.

The Friday afternoon drop

Rightly or wrongly Whitehall officials think that newspaper hacks switch off on a Friday afternoon – possibly because that’s what Whitehall officials do. So 4pm on a Friday is often an opportune time to scan through online Government releases with great care. Even then the tactic can be effective. It is often hard to get big news stories into Saturday morning’s paper at that time while they rare get the ‘momentum’ of stories that appear earlier in the week.

Take out the trash days

This is what happened on Thursday. Normally when Parliament is about to rise for a holiday the Government will use the opportunity to ‘dump’ large numbers of unfortunate announcements out at one time. The theory behind this tactic is that while you will get bad publicity you get it over in one go and newspapers and TV bulletins have restricted amounts of space so can only dedicate limited opprobrium to each one.

Make an announcement in the House of Lords

The idea here is to plant a question in the second house to your minister and then get them to answer it slipping out whatever you don’t want to draw attention to. Very few journalist monitor the Lords carefully and by the time the news filters out you can claim that the story is ‘old’ and question why the journalist is possibly interested in writing about it now.

Oliver Wright is political editor of The Independent