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From the Secretary of the Cabinet and Head of the Home Civil Service Sir Robert Armstrong GCB CVO
Ref. A085/476
12 February 1985
My dear Antony,
Briefing for the Prime Minister
At our meeting on Friday 25 January with Robin Butler and Charles Powell, we discussed ways of improving the briefing for the Prime Minister at bilateral and multilateral summit meetings. We agreed that, while it was impossible to invent the perfect briefing system, the present system should be modified to take account of the fact that the Prime Minister and other senior Ministers have been so long in office and know the issues so well. Taking into account the points made at our meeting, and in particular the proposals put to us by Charles Powell, I suggest that we might in future aim to arrange the briefing along the following lines.
As regards the general drafting of briefs, we noted that the Prime Minister wanted briefing which concentrated on specific, concrete objectives, and which was set out in annotated rather than narrative form. In particular, after six years in office, she is familiar with much of the background anā does not need verbatim speaking notes. Instead of "points to make" or "speaking notes", briefs should list the arguments to be deployed in support of our objectives, including tactical arguments which could be used if necessary to put the other side on the defensive.
On the format of the briefing, we need to distinguish between three types of international meeting:
Sir Antony Acland KCMG KCVO
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