Clear for Clare

Should BBC DG Tony Hall ever get in a toe-to-toe with Government, he will be reassured by the presence of ring-savvy former Civil Servant Clare Sumner CBE at his side. Clare was at the heart of No 10 in the biggest ever stand-off between the BBC and the Prime Minister's Office, when Alastair Campbell took on the reporting of Andrew Gilligan in a grim battle that eventually led to the death of Dr David Kelly, and the ditching of DG Greg Dyke.

Clare, most recently Executive Director of Civil Service Reform in the Cabinet Office (working alongside Katherine "Taste the Strawberry" Kerswell), fills the gap left by Jessica Cecil as "Chief of Staff" - the exact title may now be less military than that, but you get the picture.  New colleagues at Broadcasting House describe her as firm, but a Good Thing.

Clare took a course in journalism at City University, after graduating from Downing College, Cambridge, and joined the Civil Service, initially as a junior press officer. She prepared briefs for Jack Straw when he was made Home Secretary under Tony Blair; he was impressed, and promoted her to Private Secretary. She was his eyes and ears on the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry - and then moved to be a Private Secretary in Number 10.

There, she made news as the organiser of Blair's file for Prime Minister's Question Time.  A leaked all-points memo from 2000 reads 'I have been revisiting the standard format for the briefings for PM's Questions to see whether it can be further enhanced and improved. You will not be surprised to know that in my view it can. The PM has specifically asked for all briefings provided to (correspond to) the attached format from Monday, May 15. If the PM does not have good, accurate and well-considered briefing to use it reflects badly on departments and often leads to media interest and further work.'' A second note followed: "On elephant traps you should advise the PM what to say, but also what not to say". (As if she did not have enough to do, Clare spent part of her time in 2000 as a non-executive director of the Bedford Hospital NHS Trust.)

Robin Cook first stood in for Blair at PMQs in June 2002 and recalls it thus in his memoir: "Clare Sumner is my transmission mechanism to the Government machine. This is a heavy burden to be thrust upon a twenty-nine-year-old but there are many up and down Whitehall who have come to regret not treating her with the respect due to a fifty-nine-year-old Permanent Secretary. As a result, briefings of astonishing clarity, incision and accuracy appear within fifteen minutes at her command".

More headlines for Clare came in that very same month, when she telephoned Black Rod to discuss arrangements for the Queen Mother's funeral. This brought (hotly-denied) accusations that Tony Blair was trying to "muscle in" on the event.

The Hutton Inquiry revealed that Clare was copied in to a range of significant emails about various Iraq dossiers, and more when the No 10 machine was after Gilligan's source. Also appearing in these email chains: Godric Smith, CBE, currently on contract to Tony Hall, BBC DG, for his PR thinking.