Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Memorandum of understanding with Libya and Public Sector Pensions
Memorandum of understanding with Libya
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) told journalists that the UK had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Libya concerning deportations. Put to him that this was a quite significant step forward for Libya, the PMOS said it was. It meant that we had MOU’s with both Jordan and Libya which was obviously of considerable help with dealing with the deportation issues the Prime Minister set out before the summer break.
Put to him that Libya had been the original pariah state, the PMOS said that in terms of relations with Libya, we visited there last year and that had helped. The important thing was that we now had the protection provided by the MOU, which was actually more specific in terms of an individual’s rights then existing human rights international agreements. Furthermore assurances would be given about the specifics of the treatment of individuals on their return.
Asked who else we hoped to sign agreements with, the PMOS said that as he understood it we were in discussions with Algeria and Lebanon as well as other countries. Asked if we had sent anybody back to Jordan yet, the PMOS said no, but clearly the desire was to implement the policy as soon as possible.
Public Sector Pensions
Asked if Downing Street was concerned about the impact on the public purse of the recent public sector pensions agreement, the PMOS said that in terms of the impact of the original deal, it was estimated that 85% of the savings would come from new entrants anyway. There were some 50,000 new people out of 550,000 who join every year. So the main impact was going to come from new entrants anyway. So it didn’t actually shift the burden of the savings to any great degree.
Asked to respond to union calls for the deal to be extended to the 1.3 million local government workers, the PMOS said that he was not going to second guess other discussions that were taking place. This was a sensible agreement that was reached with the unions and the savings would be considerable. The change would be worth £13billion over 50 years.
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