Confidentiality - or Hypocrisy?

I seem, currently, to be asking a lot of questions in my headings!  This one is because of the Question Time programme on BBC 1, on Thursday night.  I should have posted then, but I had been out for most of the evening at the Christmas Carols by Candlelight service in St George's-Tron Parish Church in Gasgow, which was under the auspices of the Christian Police Association (I'm a member by virtue of my Force Chaplaincy).

It was near to the end of the programme - the final question, if I recall correctly - when the panel was asked if Julian Assange (of WikiLeaks) was a hero or a terrorist.  During the discussion that followed, Dr Liam Fox, the U.K. Defence Secretary, commented to the effect that politicians and diplomats had to be able to be sure that their 'off-stage' (or 'off-mike') comments were kept confidential as this was how they built up trust among one another.  He used, as an illustration, a normal MP's 'surgery' in which, he rightly said, a constituent should be able to have the assurance that the matter discussed would not be made public.

I was a little bit confused!  He seemed to be saying that because a private matter between him and a constituent should, quite properly, be kept private, that it is acceptable for poiticians and diplomats to say one thing to their foreign counterparts in public, while saying something totally different in private!  I would disagree.  This is like comparing apples and oranges.  For me, as a minister of the Gospel and, therefore, with a required level of confidentiality, to share private matters with all and sundry would be absolutely wrong. and a breach of that confidentiality upon which I set a high value.  However, for me to tell my wife that the hat she has just purchased (that isn't going to happen, by the way!) is beautiful, and then to send an e-mail to a friend telling him how hideous I think it is, is nothing more, or less, than hypocrisy!

Perhaps Dr Fox - and a lot of others - need to check out the meanings of words, and use the correct terminology.  A manually-operated agricultural digging implement is a spade!