Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: PM Speech on Higher Education, General Election, Rail, Friday - Chequers Meetings, Iraq, Resignation Letters and Speeding Fines/Compensation for Victims.
PM speech on Higher Education
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that the Prime Minister would be making a speech today at an IPPR event in London on university funding. He would say that these proposals were about "social justice and extending opportunity, not to a few but to all. They help poorer students go to university. They help families by abolishing upfront fees. They help universities by increasing substantially their funding. They do not penalise the ordinary taxpayer. Instead they represent a fair way to meet the future challenge of getting more of our young people better educated than ever before".
Asked if he would agree that the Prime Minister’s words were more of a restatement of the argument than an advance, the PMOS said that insomuch as the policy was as set out in the Bill, it was a question of articulating what it actually meant. As with any wide-ranging proposals, there was often an inevitable tendency for people to focus on one particular element. Of course, that was not to say that the issue of variability was not important. Obviously it was and the Prime Minister would mention it in his speech later today. The Bill was the same so the arguments remained the same. However, he wanted to focus on opportunity. This was about how we got more people into university in a way that was fair and progressive.
Asked the Prime Minister’s view on growing suggestions that the rebellion was about the opportunity to ‘get him’ rather than opposition to elements of the policy, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister was concentrating on articulating why the policy was important for the future of the country, why we needed more funding for our universities, why we needed more students to be better educated, why we needed a fair system of repayment and why the abolition of upfront fees was important, together with more support for poorer students. Obviously he hoped that people were focussing on the argument and dealing with the policy on its merits.
Asked if the Prime Minister had reconsidered his view that those who voted against the Government’s proposals on tuition fees were in danger of betraying the interests of the country, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had been spelling out on Sunday why it was so important for us to make the necessary changes to our higher education system. No one was truly dissenting from the view that the status quo was not delivering what was in the national interest. What we were currently seeing was our universities under-funded, the loss of a lot of talented people and opportunity not being extended more widely so that we did not have the requisite numbers going into higher education in order to achieve a more skilled workforce. Pressed as to whether the Prime Minister regreted using the word ‘betrayal’, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister stood by what he had said.
Asked if Charles Clarke’s comment that the policy was not a "pick ‘n’ mix menu" meant that the Government would not proceed with the whole Bill if the Commons voted to remove some elements, such as variability, the PMOS said that Mr Clarke had been making the point that the policy was the result of a lot of detailed work and stood as a whole. He had simply been saying that people could not choose the bits they liked and ignore the rest. It stood as a coherent package. We were working to get the legislation through and were not contemplating defeat, as the Prime Minister had said.
Asked if the Prime Minister was satisfied that the Chancellor was doing all he could to "persuade his many allies" to back the Government on the Higher Education Bill, the PMOS said that he hadn’t been tracking the diaries of Cabinet Ministers to find out whom they had and had not been talking to. The Cabinet was united around the policy. The Chancellor, himself, had said on a number of occasions that he fully supported it and had been very closely involved in its development and the discussions in the run-up to the publication of the Bill last Thursday. As had been clear from Cabinet last week, all members would be talking to their parliamentary colleagues about the issue over the next two weeks. Obviously that was already happening.
General Election
Asked if the Prime Minister was planning for an election in May or June 2005, the PMOS said that during what had been a very busy morning, he hadn’t discussed the issue with the Prime Minister or indeed anyone else. He suspected the Prime Minister hadn’t discussed it with anyone either. We were dealing with the reality of what was in front of us. There was clearly some important business between now and whenever the next election might be.
Rail
Asked if the SRA’s report on the future of the railways had been ‘binned’, the PMOS pointed out that the report had not in actual fact been given to Ministers, so it would be difficult for the Government to have suppressed it or binned it. As he understood it, the Department for Transport had agreed with the SRA to delay the publication of the report until after the Spending Review, which was due to take place in the summer. Asked to explain the rationale behind that decision, the PMOS said that as he understood it, there was a commitment to draw up a document of this nature on an annual basis. However, since the Spending Review would be taking place this year, it had been considered more appropriate for the report to be published alongside it. Put to him that it made more sense for the report to be published before the Spending Review so that it could be taken into account during the deliberations, the PMOS said it went without saying that all the necessary figures and information would be given to the Treasury by the Department as part of the usual discussions for the 2004 Spending Review.
Friday - Chequers Meetings
Asked why the Transport Secretary would not be attending the ‘Delivery Cabinet’ on Friday at Chequers given the fact that transport was one of the Government’s key priority areas, the PMOS observed that anyone reading parts of the press this morning would be forgiven for thinking that Ministers would be traipsing down to Chequers on Friday to receive their exam results, as it were, from the Prime Minister. That portrayal was completely wrong. It was not the way things worked. The Prime Minister was taking the opportunity for a stock take with some of the delivery Departments to look ahead to the challenges facing them and discuss how they might be addressed. This week, it would be Health, Education and the Home Office. That did not preclude the possibility that the Prime Minister would meet with other Cabinet Ministers at a future date. He obviously would. The PMOS took the opportunity to explain why the picture which had been portrayed in the press this morning was wrong. We disputed in the strongest terms the suggestion that progress was not being made in all these key areas. It was. The question we were asking was how we could build on that steady progress. For example, on health, maximum waiting times were falling. On education, we were now third in the world in terms of reading standards for ten-year-olds. On the Home Office front, there had been a significant reduction in the number of asylum applications. That was what we called progress. However, we acknowledged that there was clearly a lot more to do. We were not complacent.
Iraq
Asked if the Prime Minister remained confident that the Iraq timetable could still be met, despite opposition expressed by Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the PMOS said that the timetable as set out was the one towards which everyone was continuing to work. He hadn’t heard anyone talking about slippage, although everyone clearly recognised that it was demanding.
Resignation Letters
Asked if every letter written by resigning Cabinet Ministers, apart from Clare Short, had been drafted by Alastair Campbell, the PMOS said that he didn’t know.
Speeding Fines/Compensation for Victims
Asked if the proposals to use speeding fines to raise money for compensation for victims were going to come into force, the PMOS said that the proposals that had been put forward were for consultation. Final decisions would be reached later this year. It went without saying that we would be listening carefully to people’s views. In answer to further questions, the PMOS said the idea that speeding wasn’t important was not one to which we would subscribe. However, there was clearly an issue about providing more support to victims. That was why we would be listening carefully to what people had to say about the subject.
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