Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: Audience/Royal Family, Iraq, War on Terror and Fire Dispute.
Audience/Royal Family
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that, due to this evening’s Eve-of-Session drinks, the Prime Minister would not be able to attend the weekly Audience with the Queen. Consequently, they would speak on the phone later this afternoon, as his colleague had said yesterday.
Asked whether Downing Street had been in contact with Buckingham Palace today in the light of a possible inquiry into the rape allegations, the PMOS said he thought it probable that the Private Secretaries had been in contact, given the fact that the Prime Minister’s telephone call with the Queen later today had to be set up. Asked if the Prime Minister believed it would be useful to establish an inquiry into what had happened, the PMOS said that, as we had underlined yesterday, these were matters for the Palace, not us. The Prime Minister had said what he had said about the trial in his news conference last Monday and had nothing further to add.
Iraq
Asked the Prime Minister’s reaction to the Iraqi Parliament’s rejection of the new UN Resolution agreed last week, the PMOS said the Prime Minister believed that it didn’t change anything. Saddam Hussein knew what he had to do, by when he had to do it, and also what would happen if he didn’t do it. The demands of the international community were absolutely clear - complete disarmament. How that would happen was Saddam’s choice. That it would happen was not negotiable. The PMOS added that, contrary to a number of predictions, the UN Resolution had been approved unanimously. He drew journalists’ attention to a reported comment made by the French Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin, who had said overnight, "It is in the interest of [Saddam's] country and his people, and he must (comply) … If Saddam Hussein does not comply, if he does not satisfy his obligations, there will obviously be a use of force". The Iraqi Parliament might have ‘debated’ the issue, but everyone was pretty clear where the decision-making processes in Iraq lay. Saddam Hussein had been given seven days from last Friday to signal his intention to comply with Resolution 1441.
War on Terror
Asked to explain the process in which judgements were made to decide whether to take intelligence reports seriously or not, the PMOS said that if he was being asked about the ports story on the BBC this morning, it might be advisable for people to look again at the Prime Minister’s speech to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet last night in which he had set out the nature of the new threats facing us and the Government’s strategy to deal with them. Obviously, we would be as open as we could be, mindful of the terrorists’ desire to terrorise and the need not to do their job for them. That was why the Prime Minister had explained in some detail the nature of intelligence, the different types of intelligence and the difficult judgements which had to be taken. He had been taking the public into his confidence in the hope that we could have a mature understanding of this issue, but had also made the point that if we publicised and acted on every piece of intelligence we received, we would essentially shut down large parts of the country for months at a time, thereby doing the terrorists’ job for them.
As he had acknowledged yesterday, there was a lot of intelligence around. Every piece of it, in the hands of certain journalists, could no doubt lead the news. However, we had to ask whether that was necessarily a helpful way to conduct the debate given the circumstances in which we found ourselves. It would certainly be wrong if we had to give a detailed rebuttal of every piece of media speculation. That said, he would put today’s story into context in the hope that it would lead to a better understanding and that journalists would do more rigorous checking in the future. There had been a number of intelligence reports about possible threats, as there normally were. As usual, these were shared within the intelligence community. As a result of that process of assessment, we did not think there was reliable intelligence of a specific new threat to ports. However, it was clearly sensible for the port authorities to be reminded, as they were on a frequent basis, to maintain their security presence to reflect the heightened risk. The same went for airports and other parts of the transport infrastructure. He pointed out that the actual advisory from TRANSEC had stated specifically that threat levels to British maritime interests remained unchanged. They were high because we had a heightened security situation post-September 11 and it was obviously important to maintain our vigilance. In our view, journalists needed to exercise care in reporting issues relating to terrorism and intelligence, otherwise the public might become inured to the issue to the extent that they might discount warnings which we might want to impart at some point in the future.
Asked if we were disputing the BBC’s suggestion that TRANSEC had put out a new security warning to reflect a higher security threat, the PMOS said that TRANSEC had put out a further generalised advisory about the heightened security situation in which we found ourselves. However, as they themselves had stated, the threat levels to British maritime interests remained unchanged. Pressed as to whether threat levels were higher now than they had been six months ago for example, the PMOS said we were not denying that threat levels in the UK were extremely high. They could not have been higher post-September 11 and they were essentially at the same level now. Put to him that Robin Dodridge, port security officer at Dover, had confirmed that Dover had been asked specifically by the Department for Transport in the last week to tighten security, the PMOS said that a warning had been put out underling the need for a heightened sense of vigilance. Obviously that was what Dover and other ports had been responding to. Asked to confirm the BBC’s assertion over last weekend that security at Dover was higher than it had ever been before, the PMOS repeated that we were in a heightened security situation. However, the position remained as it was post-September 11. It was serious because the threat was serious.
Questioned as to whether there had been any intelligence ‘chatter’ mentioning lorries and explosives and whether we had taken a judgement that it didn’t appear to be a realistic threat, the PMOS said that there was always a proper process of assessment. We did not think there was reliable intelligence of a specific new threat to ports. Questioned further, the PMOS said that he didn’t want to get into the business of commenting on every little bit of intelligence which might move in and out of the media. We all had a responsibility to address this issue in a measured way. He would leave it up to the journalists themselves to assess whether this issue had been reported in a helpful way.
Asked if it was Downing Street’s view that the BBC’s report this morning on port security had not been responsible, the PMOS said that he had no intention of getting into a ding-dong with the BBC. Nor did he have any great desire to feed a ‘No. 10 Row With The BBC’ story. If the organisation had not been aware of our view of their reporting before this briefing, then hopefully they would be by now. He repeated that we all had a responsibility to address this issue in a mature, measured way. Obviously it was important to check contexts rigorously when reporting on intelligence matters.
Asked to explain the term ’specific threat’, the PMOS said that the process of intelligence assessment was every bit as important as the process of intelligence gathering. This was a hugely complex jigsaw of intercepts and chatter from which it was impossible to extract one element without putting it into a wider context. The job of Ministers and the intelligence services was to bring coherence to the material being gathered, act where they could on specific intelligence to thwart any potential attacks, and to do what we could to bring people to justice. As the Prime Minister had observed last night, we faced a dilemma. We had to be mindful of the need for the public to be vigilant. Equally, we had to able to warn them of certain threats without alarming them; or, as the Prime Minister had said last night, take preventive measures without destroying normal lives. It went without saying that that was a difficult judgement to make. If, at some stage, the Government decided that it was necessary to say something very specific, then obviously we would do so because we believed it to be of primary importance to put citizens’ safety first. However, in doing that, we had to make sure that we were not doing the terrorists’ job for them in bringing the country to a standstill.
Asked why security at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet was much higher than it had been last year if the terrorist threat had not changed, the PMOS reiterated that we were in a heightened security climate to which we were responding as appropriate. That might mean, on occasions, changing the nature of security around certain installations or venues. We had to acknowledge that the passage of time since September 11 had not diminished the fervour and intent of Al Qaida terrorists and fanatics to wreak havoc wherever they could. That was why we had to maintain our vigilance and take the appropriate measures.
Questioned as to whether we had received intelligence that Al Qaida were now regrouping and posed a new threat which hadn’t been present six months ago in terms of a new capability, the PMOS drew journalists’ attention to the Prime Minister’s speech last night in which he had said, "Would Al Qaida buy WMD if it could? Certainly. Do they have the financial resources? Probably. Would they use them? Definitely." Clearly this was something to which we had to be alert.
Asked how many threats were coming from abroad, the PMOS said that intelligence was picked up both domestically and abroad. Security services operated both here and around the world and there was co-operation between the two, as you would expect, as well as inter-country.
Fire Dispute
Asked for a reaction to Andy Gilchrist’s criticism that the Bain Review had undermined the FBU’s talks with the employers and that there were ‘dark forces’ at work in the Government who wanted the strike to go ahead regardless, the PMOS said the idea that the Government wanted the strike to take place was plainly nonsense. We had done everything we could to try to deal with the situation reasonably. In this climate of heightened security, why on earth would anyone want a fire strike? Moreover, the public accepted that, in the current pay climate, with a benign inflationary situation, a 40% pay claim was simply not realistic. The impact it would have on interest rates and inflation would be considerable. We acknowledged that the firemen did an extremely good job. However, we recognised that we needed to look at the issues of pay and working conditions. Any extra money had to be linked to modernisation, which was why the Bain Review provided a good framework for discussions. It was up to the employers and the FBU to negotiate on these issues and a meeting was taking place today to do just that. In our view, the Bain figure of an 11% pay increase over two years in a low inflation environment was surely not inconsiderable or unreasonable.
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