Labour spins every 4 minutes

Labour's media machine is putting out a press release every four minutes - non-stop, day and night.

Since Tony Blair came to power five years ago today his Government has produced 32,766 separate releases to journalists, a statistic which appears to back claims that the Prime Minister is obsessed with "spin".

Each announcement costs an average of £80 to produce - a total of £2.6 million since 1997. Spin doctors in Whitehall departments churned out 120 documents yesterday alone.

Nick Harvey, culture spokesman for the Liberal Democrats who produced the figures, said: "A new initiative every four minutes beggars belief and there is very little to be seen for it on the ground."

For the first eight months of 1997 Labour's spinners produced 4,907 press releases but for the next 12 months this jumped to 7,950, growing to 8,357 in 1999. An estimated 5,813 government "news" releases were drawn up in 2000 and 4,749 in 2001. So far this year 2,744 press releases have been sent out.

A Labour spokesman said: "The fact that we produce so much demonstrates how keen we are to keep the public informed."

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