Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Prime Minister, Department of Justice and Casinos
Prime Minister
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) began the briefing by clarifying events tomorrow. There would be a Cabinet tomorrow morning at 09:00, although this may not be as long as usual. The Prime Minister would then be going “elsewhere” to make an announcement, and that would be all that would happen. There would be nothing said in Downing Street and as far as we were aware there would be no other statements or interviews anywhere else.
Asked if the Prime Minister would be notifying HM The Queen what his intentions were, the PMOS reiterated that the basic principle in all of this was that tomorrow’s announcement was not about the Prime Minister’s position as Prime Minister. He was also not going to resign as Party Leader tomorrow. Tomorrow was about setting out the Prime Minister’s intentions, and this needed to be borne in mind. Given that it did not affect his position as Prime Minister, this in effect answered the question.
Put that Cabinet would have nothing to discuss tomorrow except the Prime Minister’s position, and did this not mean that we were in to a “lame duck” period of Government, the PMOS replied that this was not the case. We had two more policy review papers coming up, the launch of the City Academies’ prospectuses, a white paper on streamlining the planning system, a white paper on securing our energy supplies, action to seize more assets from criminals, a Criminal Justice Bill to be introduced in the House, publication of the Counter-Terrorism Bill, an interfaith conference, the EU summit, the G8 summit - we had quite a lot on.
Department of Justice
Asked if the Government was happy with Lord Falconer’s comments that prisoners who breached their conditions of licence should only face a maximum of 28 days, the PMOS replied that he had not seen the comments and would need to see them in context before he replied.
Casinos
Asked if the Prime Minister’s comments earlier today implied that Blackpool could now get a casino, and would this need a change in legislation, the PMOS replied that there was a review process going on where Ministers were considering how to proceed. But while this was going on, Tessa Jowell had given a commitment to Parliament not to bring forward any further super casinos in light of this Parliament, and that would not change. But we could consider what might happen in the future.
Asked if the Prime Minister could have been talking about a smaller casino, the PMOS replied that the Prime Minister was indicating his own personal view on the issue. But the commitment had been made and that commitment was there.
Asked when the Ministerial review would be completed, the PMOS referred the journalist to the Department.
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