Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: 45-Minutes and EU Accession Immigration.
45-Minutes
Put to him that the Prime Minister’s admission that he had not known that the claim of "45-minutes" referred only to Battlefield munitions, when he was making his speech in the House of Commons on the vote on whether or not to go to war, was an extraordinary admission, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said no. The secret intelligence report had not specified the particular delivery system to which the time of 45 minutes applied. Therefore there was no reason why the Prime Minister should have asked that question. Asked if the Prime Minister should then have qualified it since he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, the PMOS said it was not that he didn’t know what he was talking about. The Prime Minister was relying on the information from the SIS which was very different from not having a clue. Put to him that the Prime Minister had left the House with the very strong impression that the 45-minute claim referred to more than Battlefield weapons, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had not over-emphasised the 45-minute point in his speech at the time. Asked why the Prime Minister had chosen to raise it at all given its ambiguity, the PMOS repeated that the Prime Minster had not made a big point about it in the speech to the House on the 18th of March last year. In fact he had not mentioned it at all.
Asked if the Prime Minister’s confusion over the 45-minute claim demonstrated a lack of communication in the Government given that Geoff Hoon and John Scarlett both understood it, the PMOS said no because the 45-minute point was still relevant. The Prime Minister had made it clear in the House today that even if it was used in a battlefield context it would still be a Weapon of Mass Destruction which was used to cause massive casualties and would still have had a significant impact on regional stability. People were in danger of under-estimating the impact a Battlefield Weapon of Mass Destruction would have. Asked if he was quite satisfied that we went to war when the Prime Minister did not have a clear idea of the threat, the PMOS said the Government was quite satisfied that WMD Battlefield munitions were a clear breach of 1441. That was why we had given the answer we had in Paragraph 9 of our response to the ISC yesterday. Asked if the Prime Minister had known that the Evening Standard headline about 45-minutes was wrong, the PMOS said that it was self-evident that since the Prime Minister was not aware of that distinction, he could not have known that it was wrong. Put to him that Prime Minster had genuinely thought that we were 45 minutes from doom, the PMOS said he did not respond to loaded questions. Neither did he appreciate words being put into his mouth. He had explained earlier what the Prime Minister knew and why he had not queried it. That remained the position and it was set out in Paragraph 9 in the Government’s response to the ISC.
Asked to clarify the Prime Minister’s view that artillery shells and mortar shells were Weapons of Mass Destruction, the PMOS said that that was a complete misunderstanding of what he had said. Battlefield weapons which were modified to carry WMD were WMD. Asked if it was his understanding that any munitions which carried biological/chemical agents banned by various treaties constituted WMD, the PMOS said that any munitions which carried nuclear, chemical or biological weapons which were capable of mass destruction ipso facto were Weapons of Mass Destruction. Asked if the weapons used in the First World War were weapons of Mass Destruction the, PMOS said that we were entering the silly phase of this discussion. Asked to clarify what he meant by WMD, the PMOS said that in terms of WMD on the battlefield, it was clearly obvious that if you had a nuclear device, if you had a biological device or if you had a chemical device, then you had a Weapon of Mass Destruction.
Asked to clarify what the Prime Minister understood by the phrase 45-minutes before the war started, the PMOS drew journalists’ attention to Paragraph 9 in the Government’s response to the ISC report where it said: "because the source of the intelligence report on which the JIC assessment drew did not specify the nature of the delivery system to which the 45-minutes applied, there was no reference either to Battlefield or Strategic systems in the final JIC assessment on the 9th September 2002. That had been the position the Prime Minister was in.
Asked what the definition of a Weapon of Mass Destruction was, the PMOS said that journalists could get the technical definition from the Ministry of Defence. He had given journalists his definition.
EU Accession Immigration
Asked to clarify what the Prime Minister had said when he referred to "withdrawing concessions" on immigration to the EU Accession countries, the PMOS made it clear that the Prime Minster was not talking about rescinding the right to work. We believed that the right to work was important to the UK, not least because of the skills shortages, for instance, which had been highlighted by the CBI earlier this week. What the Prime Minister, David Blunkett and Andrew Smith had been working on was action they could take to further tighten up procedures, such as the Habitual Residence Test for the 1st of May. That dealt with when people got benefits and so forth because we were not going to tolerate so-called "benefit-tourism". We would stress again however that this was a precautionary exercise, because the evidence suggested that the predicted flood of people coming here, which had been predicted whenever any enlargement has taken place in the past, wouldn’t happen.
Asked if the Government was considering putting a ‘cap’ on immigration numbers, the PMOS said that we hadn’t yet reached the point where we had firm proposals to put forward. When we did, we would deal with all those issues.
Asked if we would take into account sections of the United Kingdom which were suffering from de-population with regard to immigration restrictions, the PMOS referred journalists to the point he had made about skill shortages which would seem to apply to that.
Asked for an assurance that there wouldn’t be any caps placed on skilled workers, the PMOS said that journalists should go to the Home Office for details, but he saw no reason why the Government would go down that road.
Asked if the Prime Minister had gone further in his phrase "withdrawing concessions" than the PMOS was going now, the PMOS said the reference to "withdrawal" was in terms of whether changes were necessary to a procedure such as the Habitual Residence Test. That was the sort of area we were specifically looking at, but in terms of detail journalists should go to the Department.
Asked if people from Accession Countries might have to demonstrate that they had work to go to or relevant skills, the PMOS pointed out that to pass the Habitual Residence Test people needed to demonstrate those sorts of things. The PMOS cautioned journalists against jumping ahead of the thinking-through process, which Downing Street was carrying out with the Home Office and the DWP. Asked whether we might impose a two year restriction on immigration, the PMOS said that one of the issues which would no doubt be considered was the period given to people to demonstrate that they were proper residents in the UK under the Habitual Residence Test. Questioned further, the PMOS said that we were not going in the direction of a two year restriction on Accession country immigration. The Government believed that because of the skill shortages he had referred to, the UK would gain a net benefit from this process. We were allowed under the relevant legislation to keep this matter under review, tighten legislation and introduce safeguards if we believed it to be necessary.
Asked if the Government was looking at withdrawing any concessions aside from the issue of benefits, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had been looking at the Habitual Residence Test. The Government would look at the picture in the round and see where we had got to. What he couldn’t do was pre-empt the outcome of that. Asked exactly what the "concession" was, the PMOS said that, in terms of the overall issue, it was about tightening up procedures and that was what he meant. Put to him that he seemed to be backtracking on what the Prime Minister had said, the PMOS said he was not backtracking. The central difficulty we had was that the Prime Minister was indicating a process of thinking going on in Government before we had got to the stage of reaching firm conclusions. It was perfectly legitimate for journalists to try and get him to indicate where we going. It was also perfectly permissible for him to reply that we were not yet at that stage. He could not in all honesty give any further information at this point. Questioned further, the PMOS made it clear that the Prime Minister was not talking about withdrawing the right to work. What he had been talking about was whether we needed to tighten the safeguards in order to deal with the problems that some people had raised concerns about.
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