Parliamentary committees are good sport. Hacks love them. The witless chairman of company x,y,z gets hauled before MPs to explain himself. To be abused, in short.
The MPs, who are better at sound bites than chief executives anyway, have prepared their “please put me in the paper” quotes.
They get to sound tough.
The business people are generally on a hiding to nothing, though it would be a good thing to see at least one make a decent fight of it.
I think where the flak trade could do better here is in background briefing once the duffing-up is over.
They could point to the transcript (just getting us one would be a help) and explain the point the chief executive was trying to make.
He couldn’t say this out loud, or decided just to take it on the chin, but here’s what he was getting at. Here’s the pickle he is in. It is really not as simple as the grand-standing MPs made it sound.
Here is what the company is actually trying to do about this situation. Hacks do get a bit of this push-back, but not enough.
We certainly tire of MPs sounding wise after the event. You should fight back.
