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20.11.17
17 Deputy K.G. Pamplin of the Chief Minister regarding a new protocol for
Government press releases (OQ.332/2020):
Further to the Chief Minister's comments during the debate on P.149/2020 that a new protocol will be put in place for Government press releases, will he provide a timescale for this to be implemented and state what action, if any, will be undertaken in the meantime?
Senator J.A.N. Le Fondré (The Chief Minister):
The Assistant Chief Minister, the Connétable of St. Ouen , and the director of communications, have been liaising on this matter. It was agreed that a new protocol for press releases and media queries is going to be formally in place by the end of the month. Existing measures have already been strengthened to ensure absolute clarity in how press releases and press inquiries are to be handled.
- Deputy R.J. Ward :
The press releases that will come from the Communications Unit, can I simply ask him how much is spent on the Communications Unit each year?
Senator J.A.N. Le Fondré:
I do not have that figure to hand. I will obviously come back to the Deputy . I can give an indication of the kind of work that is done. So, in terms of queries received in this year to date, it is around 3,800 media queries and just under 800 news releases sent out and 700 interviews arranged. So the volume of work that is going through is quite considerable, particularly in things like social media. We have had 60 million impressions in 2020 against 12 million impressions in 2019 and we have 63,000 followers. So the point I am making is that I will get the costs to the Deputy but the context is also the amount of work that they are doing. By bringing some of the work in-house they have saved money, for example on design.
- Deputy K.G. Pamplin:
Further to the Chief Minister's answer to my first question, will he also include in that work with the Connétable a review of my former proposition, P.88, and the success of weekly press engagements as we saw on Friday and how effective they can be beyond anything that is ever posted on Facebook?
Senator J.A.N. Le Fondré:
I am sure you will be continuing to review that. As we have said, the media engagement is tailored to the moment. But in where we are going forward into COVID there will be more formal press conferences coming.