Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: 300th Anniversary of Act of Union, Robert Gates, Special Envoy, Policy Review Session, Law and Order-Home Office, Iraq, Radar Sale, Building Schools and No10 Butler
300th Anniversary of Act of Union
Asked if the Prime Minister would be participating in any of the Act of Union celebrations, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) replied that he was not aware at this stage that the Prime Minister was.
Robert Gates
Asked if the Prime Minister had had any contact with Robert Gates, the PMOS said that they had met yesterday. They had discussed the US plan for Baghdad, its welcome by the Iraqi Government, and moving forward. However, the PMOS said that he would leave the full details of the discussion, as they were private.
Special Envoy
Asked why the Prime Minister had appointed Lord Triesman as Special Envoy, the PMOS said that as people knew, returning people from abroad, and failed migrants, was one of the Government’s priorities, and what we wanted to encourage was other countries to accept these people. Therefore, what we needed was a Special Envoy to work in conjunction with the Home Office with foreign governments to significantly increase the number of people returned to countries who were in the UK illegally. We also wanted to open up new routes to countries from which the UK had experienced large numbers of failed asylum seekers and had not been able to return them. The Special Envoy would review the existing arrangements and try to ensure that they were efficient, effective and sustainable.
Asked which countries were the problem ones, and what did the new routes mean, the PMOS replied that what they meant was trying to get countries that in the past had not traditionally accepted people back to start accepting them back. In terms of detailed lists of "bad guys", the PMOS said it would not the best diplomatic way to proceed.
Asked if those countries would be offered any sort of financial incentive, the PMOS replied that was not part of the plan as he understood it.
Asked to confirm if Lord Triesman would remain a Foreign Office minister, the PMOS said that he would.
Asked if this was separate from the Memorandum of Understanding talks that were still ongoing, the PMOS replied that they were obviously a part of it all. We would continue to go down as many tracks as possible to try and achieve this objective.
Asked who was responsible for returning people, ie was the Home Office, or the Foreign Office, the PMOS said that it was one of those responsibilities which went in both directions, as there were different aspects of it. That was partly why Lord Triesman had been appointed to this role.
Policy Review Session
Asked if the policy review session today was a general one, or was it focusing on education, the PMOS explained that it was partly an update on the public side of where we were on policy review. It was a seminar which would ask whether people were prepared to consider the questions that were the basis of citizen forums. Those questions were: how could public services make a step change in customer care? What could the state and individuals do to change culture, expectations and aspirations to tackle damaging behaviour? How should we update the relationship between citizens and state, focusing on rights and responsibility? The PMOS said that Pat McFadden and Ed Miliband would chair the discussion on the three issues for consulting the public on, and as people knew, the policy review process was announced last October.
Law and Order-Home Office
Asked for a reaction to the suggested reports that the Government’s law and order policy have had no effects, the PMOS replied that we firmly rejected this analogy. Overall crime, as measured by the British Crime Survey, was down by over a third since 1997, and it had continued to fall significantly after 2000. Violent crime, as measured by the British Crime Survey, was down by over 43% since 1995. There were 14,000 more police officers, 19,000 additional prison places and over 250,000 more offences being brought to justice each year.
Asked if the Prime Minister was involved in the new database, the PMOS replied that as John Hutton had made clear this morning, it was about data sharing, rather than a new database. This was about how we shared details more intelligently between departments so that people did not have to keep coming back and giving new information. From July 2006, customers could apply for both the state pension and the pension credit via the telephone, and be offered the facility to make a claim for housing benefit and council tax benefit at the same time. In the past, that would have meant four separate calls, but now people could do it all at once.
Asked if the Prime Minister was involved in the decision to suspend the civil servant, and did he still have full confidence in the Ministerial team, the PMOS replied that it was a matter for the Home Office in terms of suspension of senior civil servants, and it would not be right for the PMOS to comment on that. The Prime Minister still had full support for the Home Office Ministerial team for the reasons we had set out last week.
Asked if that suspension would come from the Permanent Secretary or the Cabinet Secretary, the PMO said again that he did not want to comment on the process, because as the Home Office had made clear, this was part of the investigation.
Iraq
Asked if there was any reaction to the "botched hanging" in Iraq, the PMOS said that he presumed that the journalist was asking about the latest executions in Iraq. The PMOS said that in terms of the death penalty in Iraq, our position on the death penalty was well known, and we had made that position known to the Iraqi Government again since the death of Saddam Hussein. However, Iraq was a sovereign Government, and therefore had a right under international law to decide its own policy on the death penalty.
Asked if the Prime Minister agreed with President Bush that the Iraq war had made the US, and therefore, the UK more vulnerable to terrorist attacks, the PMOS said that the question was a very partial summary of what President Bush had said. We had always recognised that because of the threat of international terrorism, countries were at risk. The PMOS said that the threat was there before the Iraq war; 9/11 was before the Iraq war, the Bali bombs were before the Iraq war, as were other attacks around the world. The threat did not come about as a result of the Iraq war, no matter how much people tried to use the Iraq war as an excuse. It was not the root cause of terrorism.
Asked for further information regarding the Prime Minister’s meeting today with the Iraqi Vice President Tareq Al-Hashemi, the PMOS replied that they would discuss the latest plan, how we implanted it, and how we dovetailed what we were doing in Basra with that plan. The Iraqi Government had said today that it fully supported President Bush’s plan that he had announced last week.
Asked if people thought that President Bush had rejected the Iraqi Study Group’s (ISG) recommendations, the PMOS replied that he had answered the same question in detail last week. The ISG said that we should fully support the effort to increase the capacity of the Iraqi Government to take responsibility, and that was being done. It also said that we should put more effort into reconstruction. The plan announced a doubling of reconstruction efforts.
Radar Sale
Asked for further information regarding the Guardian story today about Tanzania buying a military radar system, the PMOS said that he understood that this was part of an SFO investigation, therefore he could not comment.
Asked if the Prime Minister would be discussing good governance with the President of Tanzania, and if not, why not, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had always expressed his view about good governance with the leaders of Africa. It would be better, however, to brief after the meeting, rather than before.
Building Schools
Put that the Times today had said that there were no new schools being built as promised, the PMOS said that if people looked at the figures on building schools and at the amount of money that was going into building schools, then they would see that there was an enormous amount of effort going on. The PMOS said that there was a six-fold increase in capital investment in schools from £643 million to £6.4 billion, and that was set to rise to £8 billion by 2010/2011. That was under the "Building Schools for the Future" programme. We were investing a further £7 billion over 15 years to refurbish half of the 17,000 primary schools in England. We had also streamlined the planning and design process, improved management and leadership at local authority level and were now making good ground. That, however, could not be turned around in a day, given the lack of investment in the past.
Put that it had not been a day, but rather, had been going on for years, the PMOS replied that if people looked at the amount of work that had gone on, it was an impressive list of achievements.
Asked if the report in the Times was wrong, the PMOS replied that we would dispute the interpretation.
No10 Butler
The PMOS told journalists that the stories about the Downing Street "butler" could best be described by a four-letter word - TOSH! This post had existed under every Prime Minister for as long as people could remember. It was essentially the person who looked after the public side of the Downing Street operation, and had nothing to do with the family of the Prime Minister.
Asked further about the job description, and why was it called a new post, the PMOS replied that it was described as such because the new person would take on extra responsibilities, within the House, rather than for the Prime Minister’s family. This was a House manager post - it was someone who would look after all the guests that came into No10, and all the public events. The PMOS said wrong, wrong, wrong!
Put that was it not the No10 House manager who brought the Prime Minister his cup of tea in the morning, and interrupted at that point by someone else suggesting that it was the PMOS that did so, the PMOS said no! As people knew, it was Monica and Vera’s job!
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