Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: MOD-Iraq & Afghanistan, School Monitoring, Peerages Police Inquiry and Nuclear Power
MOD-Iraq & Afghanistan
Asked whether Adam Ingram was right to say that we needed a national debate on Iraq and Afghanistan, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that he had not seen the comments so he could not talk about them directly. In general the Government had contributed to the national debate on both Iraq and Afghanistan and if people had not noticed this yet the Prime Minister was not afraid, at any opportunity, to put forward the arguments as to why we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. No doubt he would be given the opportunity to do so again with the usual vigour at tomorrow mornings monthly press conference. Asked why a Minister thought there needed to be a debate, the PMOS said that he suspected that it was a case of saying, in a different way, that we constantly needed to remind people why we were in Iraq and Afghanistan. In its simplest form that argument was about defending democracies. There were democratically elected governments in both countries who were under attack and we were part of the defence of those democratic governments.
Put that it had been suggested in The Sunday Times that the Iraqi Prime Minister had told the Prime Minister in May that we should withdraw our troops by the end of the year, the PMOS said that if the article and question were suggesting that this had been on the trip to Baghdad he had heard no such suggestion. In fact the message that we had received from the Iraqi Prime Minister, his Deputy and from the Kurdish, Sunni and Shia quarters had been that they did not want to see an immediate withdrawal. They wanted to see a process whereby as their capability grew they took over responsibility. This was our shared analysis - a withdrawal as and when Iraqi forces were capable of taking control. It was a process, which depended on the capability of the Iraqi government’s own forces as well as first and foremost the views of the Iraqi government.
School Monitoring
Put that the PMOS’s characterisation of the Guardian story this morning was somewhat different from Ruth Kelly’s who had called it a sensible monitoring of activities, which sounded a lot like spying, the PMOS said that spying suggested an activity that was covert in nature. Putting the positive case for pluralism was a sensible thing to do whether you were in university campuses or schools or wherever and as such putting forward a positive case was what we were about. This also addressed extremism and no one should be in any way apologetic about taking on the extremist argument whether in society as a whole or in our education system. Part of that task was understanding the argument put forward by the extremists. Asked by Sky what the difference between spying and monitoring was, the PMOS said that it was, for example, knowing the likely arguments put forward by Sky and preparing a defence against them. That was not spying it was common sense monitoring.
Asked what putting the positive case for pluralism meant, the PMOS said that it meant educational programmes, which explained about democracy. That explained why violence was wrong. They would, of course, vary from place to place but we should not be afraid to argue the case for a pluralist democracy such as the one we had in this country.
Peerages Police Inquiry
Asked why Nigel Griffiths had said that the CPS had said there was not sufficient evidence to proceed when the position at No10 was not to comment, the PMOS said that he suspected that this had followed the Financial Times report. The journalist was right about Downing Street position, which was not to comment on any ongoing Police investigations. This had been our position throughout this particular situation. Asked whether the Prime Minister had been invited to speak to the Police, the PMOS thanked the journalist for the opportunity to answer and the answer remained no. Asked whether any others in No10 had, the PMOS said that he had nothing new to say on that subject either, which if journalists had done their own monitoring would know was also consistent with what he had been saying all along.
Nuclear Power
Put that British Energy had shut down two reactors because they had cracks in the boilers and had this had an effect of the government’s nuclear policy, the PMOS that we relied on the view of scientific experts and he would not pretend to be one of those experts. The general view of the experts was that the public was safeguarded. In regard of the case in question he was not an expert to comment on it.
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