A short guide to the phrases ministers reach for when the honest answer would be damaging

Ministers are bound by the Ministerial Code, which requires them to give accurate and truthful information to Parliament and to correct any inadvertent error at the earliest opportunity. Knowingly misleading Parliament is, on paper at least, a resigning matter.

That is precisely why the most interesting work in ministerial language happens in constructions that are not lies. Each of the phrases below is capable of being literally true while leaving the listener with an impression that the documents do not support.

There is no evidence that

This is true whenever nobody has looked. It describes the current contents of a file rather than what happened, and it remains accurate even if a search would produce evidence immediately. The question that tests it is what search was carried out, by whom, covering what period, and whether the outcome was published.

All rules and guidance were followed at all times

A claim about compliance with rules is not a claim that the rules permitted anything reasonable, and it says nothing about who wrote them. The High Court found the PPE high priority lane unlawful while the government maintained the outcome would have been identical. Ask which rule, in which version, and who had the power to change it.

I do not recognise those figures

This is a statement about the speaker’s recognition rather than about the figures. It sounds like a denial and functions as one in a broadcast interview, but it commits the minister to nothing that could later be shown to be false. Ask which specific figure is wrong and what the correct one is.

We are already taking action on this

Usually true and usually irrelevant, because the action predates the finding and does not address it. Departmental responses to Prevention of Future Deaths reports rely heavily on this construction. Ask what changed as a result of this particular report, and on what date.

It would not be appropriate to comment on an ongoing process

Entirely legitimate where proceedings are genuinely live, and routinely deployed in relation to processes with no defined end point. Ask when the process concludes and who set that timetable.

Lessons have been learned

The passive voice removes the person doing the learning, which is the only detail that would make the sentence checkable. Ask which post holder learned what, and what they now do differently.

How we use this

Whenever one of these appears in response to something we publish, we log the statement with its date, the exact wording used and the question it avoided answering. Denials age badly, and the log is the point of the exercise.