Laura

Once the prime minister was informed on Tuesday, he immediately instructed officials to establish the facts.

about why the developed vetting was granted so he could update Parliament at the earliest opportunity as part of our commitment to transparency.

We've published a readout of the meeting between the Prime Minister, the Cabinet Secretary and the Cabinet Office's Permanent Secretary where the Prime Minister was made aware.

So that's what we were referring to earlier.

That was number 10's sort of attempt to...

manage the fallout of this by publishing an account of a meeting.

But, you know, another former official sort of old hand in government said to me, why did they just not get all of this out straight away?

Give it all to the Intelligence and Security Committee, which is a kind of secret committee who could then decide, just hand it all over at the beginning of this mess.

That is the basics.

They said to me, just get it all out.

This has been running for ages and ages and ages and the government is still being pushed on this rather than being out on the front foot.

Because don't forget, this all came out because of the work.

of journalists, our colleagues at The Guardian newspaper, are the people who brought this to light.

And successive governments have found that if you're in a sticky wicket, the successful way through tends to be to control the information flow rather than wait to be found out.

Tomorrow on the programme, we'll be talking about this.

We'll be talking to the Science and Tech Secretary, Liz Kendall, about this saga and also about the government's plans on social media.

We know that's something that our viewers care about a lot.

We've talked endlessly about social media and kids and the rewards and the risks of technology.

So we'll be talking to her about that.

And I've spent all week in the glorious motherland.