Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Italian Earthquake, CRB, Environment/Chewing Gum Fines and Iraq.
Italian Earthquake
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that the Prime Minister would be sending a personal message to Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy to express his horror and sadness at the tragic events in Italy yesterday and today.
CRB
The PMOS said that a Lords PQ was being answered today regarding the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). It set out that proposed checks on certain categories of people would be deferred. Those affected included existing staff in care homes, agency staff in nursing homes and school governors. In answer to questions about the performance of the CRB, the PMOS said that as the Home Secretary had made clear to the Home Affairs Select Committee in September, the performance of the Bureau had not been up to scratch. The changes announced today had been made in consultation with the Department for Education and Skills and the Department of Health and were the result of the work of the review team which had been established to improve the level of service in the medium to long term. Essentially, this was about making sure that, where there were finite resources, checks would be done first in priority areas, namely on people caring for children and vulnerable adults. Others checks had been deferred in order to clear the current backlog. Asked what the backlog was, the PMOS said that he didn’t have the figure to hand. As he understood it, however, the CRB had been issuing just under 40,000 disclosures a week for the last three weeks, compared to the average of 24,000 in August. Clearly, standards were improving. However, there was more to be done. Put to him that the figure for August was misleading as a comparator because it was a time when a lot of people would have been away on holiday, the PMOS said yes, but it was an important period because it was the month before schools returned from their summer breaks. No one was pretending that the performance of the CRB had lived up to expectations in every respect. That said, there were considerable efforts going on to clear the backlog. Staff were continuing to work flat out. A review had also been set up to look at the different elements of the CRB’s remit in order to prioritise the work it was doing. Obviously a decision like the one announced today had not been taken lightly. However, we believed that it would build on the improvement that we had already.
Asked to explain why checks on agency staff were being deferred, the PMOS observed that they were fewer in number than their counterparts who were employed by the social services department. Decisions had been taken about prioritising the work of the CRB. In an ideal world, all the necessary checks would be carried out simultaneously. However, the pressures on the CRB at the moment meant that checks on these particular categories of staff would be deferred. Obviously this was not an ideal situation. However, we were dealing with it. People should not under-estimate the amount of work being done by CRB staff to turn things around. It would take time.
Asked to clarify David Blunkett’s comment that the performance of the CRB was ‘not up to scratch’, the PMOS said the Home Secretary had told the Home Affairs Select Committee that, given the pressures put on the CRB, its systems had not been robust enough to cope with the demands being placed on it. The CRB’s management had recognised this problem and had made big efforts to try to resolve it. Clearly things were now improving. Asked how much responsibility the Government took for the problems, the PMOS said that the day-to-day operation was for officials, but he acknowledged that we had a focus in setting the framework for the organisation. It was not a perfect example of public administration, he freely admitted.
Questioned as to whether the Government would think twice before awarding future contracts to Capita, the PMOS said that any future tenders would be looked at in the usual way. There was no blanket ban on companies. Obviously they had to deliver a certain service and live up to certain standards, and of course past performance would be looked at where relevant. However, problems experienced by individual companies in one particular area were not necessarily an indication of a general malaise.
Environment/Chewing Gum Fines
In the light of today’s media stories about ‘binmen administering fines for dropping chewing gum’, the PMOS said that journalists appeared to have taken three separate strands of a consultation paper and done a 2+2+2=9 job. This was a document which contained a myriad of different proposals, one of which included a suggestion to reclassify discarded chewing gum as litter. Another proposal looked at whether the scope of fixed penalty notices could be extended and proposed a voluntary scheme set up in order to enable local authorities to do so. The third proposal focussed on the idea of allowing more junior officials to administer fixed penalty notices. For some reason - he couldn’t possibly think why - some quarters had sought to conflate these three particular suggestions into a proposal to have binmen administering £50 fines to people who carelessly discarded chewing gum. A closer reading of the consultation paper would show that specific proposal was simply not the case. Nevertheless, he had to concede that it had been a good effort by the journalists concerned. Put to him that the Department itself had talked about refuse collectors, the PMOS said that the document focussed on extending powers to deal with the problem of litter. Obviously any proposals that were introduced would have to be workable. In saying that, he was not signalling a U-turn or anything like that. He was simply making the point that we would have to be persuaded that the proposals, as presented so creatively by some quarters today, were ‘workable’. He said that some of us had come in this morning and gone through the document to try to find the binmen/chewing gum fine suggestion, as we hadn’t spotted it first time round. Fair play to the press. We would consider their proposal as part of the consultation, but would probably reach the same conclusion that they had. On the broader point, as the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister had underlined yesterday, this whole issue of anti-social behaviour and rights and responsibilities was absolutely at the core of what the Government was about. The Queen’s Speech would demonstrate how dealing with this issue was integral to the Government’s legislative programme. He reminded journalists that the Prime Minister had made a speech about ‘liveability’ issues about four months before the last election. Yesterday’s document was a menu of different ideas which would be looked at and discussed. The proposals were the result of active discussion with local authorities and others. As he had said yesterday, people might consider things like aerosol sprays, graffiti, nuisance alarms and chewing gum as comparatively minor. However, it was important to recognise that they had a disproportionate effect on people’s lives - for the worse.
Iraq
Asked for a reaction to reports that the UK and US had been in discussion about the use of British military bases to launch an attack on Iraq, the PMOS said that our focus at the moment was on achieving a Security Council Resolution so that the Weapons Inspectors could return to Iraq and do their job properly. The disarmament of Saddam Hussein was not negotiable. The Prime Minister had made the point that threatening to use force meant that, in some circumstances, it might make it less likely to need to use it. Nevertheless, the Government would be accused of negligence if it didn’t prepare for different scenarios. That said, however, he was not aware we were at the point of decision on discussions of the type referred to in today’s reports. The focus was very much on the UN.
Asked if we shared the Russian Foreign Minister’s evaluation of the situation at the UN in terms of agreeing a fresh Resolution on Iraq, namely that differences were narrowing but they still existed, the PMOS said it was fair to say that the differences between the members of the P5 were certainly narrowing and we remained hopeful that we would be able to get a new Resolution. Clearly that was not going to happen this week. The talks currently taking place at the Security Council were very intense, as you would expect. No doubt those negotiations would continue over the weekend and into next week. As the Foreign Secretary had said yesterday at Cabinet, as we reached the endgame, we hoped there would be a successful conclusion. However, no one was pretending we were at that stage yet.
delicious
digg
facebook
