Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Cabinet, Compensation Culture Speech, Prime Minister’s Travel/G8 and the Olypmics.
Cabinet
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) spoke to journalists about the Cabinet meeting that morning. It began with the Cabinet discussing in some detail the Champions League final between Liverpool and AC Milan last night. The Prime Minister described it as brilliant victory for Liverpool. Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey had telephoned to send his congratulations. The Cabinet then went on to discuss the Olympics and Tessa Jowell updated colleagues on where we were and yesterday’s meeting with Lord Coe and Ken Livingstone. Tessa Jowell and Dick Caborn would be visiting some 14 countries between them over the next 6 weeks. This gave some idea of the seriousness with which we were taking this. The Prime Minister re-iterated his view of yesterday that the bid team led by Seb Coe and Tessa Jowell had done a fantastic job.
Jack Straw had also updated colleagues on yesterday’s E3 meeting with Iran in Geneva, and the outcome of that, which was that the E3 would put proposals to Iran again sometime in the mid summer.
There was then an overall discussion on Europe, which obviously touched on the possible implications of referendum results. It also included the Chancellor putting forward his proposals which were published this morning on economic reform which he’ll be putting to a meeting of the finance ministers shortly. Those proposals were designed to meet the challenge of globalisation. He said that he hoped there would be a genuine national consensus here as well as a debate on Europe. It was indicative of our pro-active approach to our presidency, when we took it over. He received very strong support from his Cabinet colleagues for that.
Finally Hilary Benn updated colleagues on the very welcome announcement by EU development ministers that EU aid would be doubled.
Asked if the Cabinet discussed the possibility of a ‘no’ vote in the French referendum on the EU Constitution, the PMOS said that he would specify any particular referenda that Cabinet discussed. But there had been an overall discussion about Europe of which part was obviously a discussion about the implications of upcoming votes. The overall discussion had been led by the Prime Minister and at various times many Cabinet colleagues had contributed. Obviously that included the Chancellor, Foreign Secretary, the Minister for Europe but also the DPM and other colleagues. The Cabinet were making no assumptions about the outcome of the referendum because it had not yet taken place.
Compensation Culture Speech
The PMOS previewed the Prime Minister’s speech this afternoon on Compensation Culture. The Prime Minister would call for:
"…a sensible debate about risk in public policy making. In my view, we are in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to the risks we should expect to run as a normal part of life. This is putting pressure on policy-making, not just in Government but in regulatory bodies, on local Government, public services, in Europe and across parts of the private sector - to act to eliminate risk in a way that is out of all proportion to the potential damage. The result is a plethora of rules, guidelines, responses to ’scandals’ of one nature or another that ends up having utterly perverse consequences."
The Prime Minister would go on to say:
"So what to do? First recognise the problem. Some public discussion of it helps engender a more sensible debate. Instead of the ‘ something must be done’ cry that goes up every time there is a problem or a ’scandal’, we make it clear we will reflect first and regulate only after reflection. Secondly, start to roll back the tide of regulation in specific areas: here, in Europe, in respect of the regulatory bodies themselves. Third, replace the compensation culture with a common sense culture."
And finally he will say that:
"Sometimes we need to pause for a moment and think whether we will not do more damage with a hasty response than was done by the problem itself. We cannot respond to every accident by trying to guarantee ever more tiny margins of safety. We cannot eliminate risk. We have to live with it, manage it."
Put to him that in the Queens speech the government had saidthere was a problem with public perception of compensation, the PMOS said that specific point would in fact be dealt with in the speech.
Put to him that a lot of the regulations that the Prime Minister was referring to were put in place in the last 8 years, the PMOS said that this was an issue the Prime Minister and his colleagues had been talking about for many years. As the Prime Minister would say, it was the nature of bureaucracies to take a safety first attitude. Equally we had to be wary of the full impact of regulation to make sure that it was not having a completely counter-productive affect.
Prime Minister’s Travel/G8
Asked why, given the overlap between the Olympic bid announcement and the G8, the G8 had not been put back a few days so that the Prime Minister could attend both fully, the PMOS said that by the time the Prime Minister left Singapore for the G8 summit he would have done all that he could. He would have been on the ground for 48 hours and by that point he would have seen all that the people that he needed to see.
Put to him that the Prime Minister’s large travel schedule was an acknowledgment that the UK had failed so far to get their agenda for their G8 presidency across, the PMOS said he completely disagreed with the premise of the question. The UK had always recognised two things about the G8 presidency. Nobody in the G8 was arguing with the prioritisation that we had given to Africa and Climate Change. Secondly there was a real negotiation going on and we would not know the outcome of that negotiation until we got to Gleneagles. We were however seeing real signs of progress. We were not in any way dimming our ambitions for the outcome of Gleneagles but we did need to see where different countries position was before Gleneagles. There was the benefit of having as much face-to-face conversation with other world leaders as possible, that was why we would be going to Rome, Washington, Moscow, Berlin, Paris and have video conferences with Japan and Canada.
Asked if the Prime Minister would be collecting his Congressional Medal whilst he was in Washington, the PMOS said he was glad to see that journalists were getting into the detail about why we were going. The short answer was no.
Put to him that the main task of making progress with the Africa and Climate Change agenda would be to convince to US, the PMOS said that there was a real debate going on about how we made progress on those two issues. He was not going to give a running commentary on where we were. There was however a real focus on making genuine progress across the board. We should wait for the outcome in Gleneagles and then judge that outcome against where we were. We believed we were making progress, but it was for other countries to outline what they were prepared to do.
Put to him that perhaps we had set ourselves up for failure by setting the bar too high, the PMOS said that unless we were ambitious we would not make progress. Unless there was a real clear idea of what needed to be done and we had set out our analysis, others like the Commission for Africa had set out their analysis and on Climate change we had set out the key things that we needed to see happen in terms of making progress. Recognising the problem, focussing on new technology and bringing in the emerging economies. Unless you were ambitious about those things you were not actually going to achieve progress.
Olympics
Asked if the "mad dash" by Richard Caborn and Tessa Jowell was an acknowledgement that they still needed to do more to catch the French bid, the PMOS said that it was not a "mad-dash". It was a sensible recognition that we needed to interface with those who would make the decision. There had been many discussions already going on. Both their visits and the Prime Minister’s visit to Singapore, were a recognition of two things. Firstly that the bid team had done a really good job. Secondly that we needed to make it clear to everyone concerned, and we would do so, that the Government and the country were fully behind the bid. We would do that in every way possible.
delicious
digg
facebook
