Tab 28 in your bundle there, page 263...

..a paper that you presented in 2006, The Iconography of Consensus.

Would you care to summarise the argument you present there?

Sure, yeah, the main thrust... Bearing in mind Lord Goolding's desire for plainness and clarity.

Right. OK.

Er, I hypothesise that...

Sorry.

I say...

..that the design structure for a parliamentary democracy

should be that of the Pompidou Centre.

Morally and structurally explicit and open,

a porous membrane.

Maybe just a little bit plainer, Mr Pearson.

People...

should know, er...

..what politicians are doing.

Brilliant.

Thanks.

Government should be porous?

Yes. But not leaking?

Come on. If someone is determined to leak information,

there's nothing that anyone can do about that.

So as Director of Communications,

you are unable to prevent sensitive material

being communicated to journalists?

If someone chokes on a packet of crisps, do you issue an arrest warrant for Gary Lineker?

Is it fair to say that you have in fact changed nothing,

and government communications carries on exactly as they did before, by leaks and whispers?

No, it is not fair to say that.

In fact, as you disapprove and condemn these practices,

are they not more covert and more hidden and more secret than ever before?

I think that is also an unreasonable assertion.

In spite of your desire to create a political Pompidou Centre,

haven't you created the opposite, Centrepoint?

Everybody sees it looming over them, but nobody has any idea what happens inside.

I think there's some kind of club on the top floor.