Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Sex Offenders/Education, ID Cards, Education White Paper, Crime, Incapacity Benefit and Iran
Sex Offenders/Education
Asked for any further details, Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said the best thing on the review would be to let it move forward to Thursday. The important thing would be that where it strayed in areas of previous administrations there would be the necessary consultations. In terms of the impact of Bichard he had been right in what he had said in the morning. Asked how far back the review was looking, the PMOS said it would be whatever was necessary, but again the best thing was not to provide a running commentary on the review but wait till Thursday when Ruth Kelly would set out the entire picture as she saw it.
Asked if No10 was happy that Ruth Kelly had not mislead Parliament bearing in mind David Willetts’ point of order, the PMOS said that was the picture, as he had made clear in the morning briefing, Thursday would explain why that was the case. Put to him that it was unusual to look back at past administration cases, the PMOS said it was not unusual, as this kind of case had not begun in 1997. It would be an artificial deadline to suggest as such. It went back decades. When you were dealing with what happened during previous administrations then you obviously consulted with the people who were there at the time. It was best that the review was allowed to go at its own pace and allowed to happen without a running commentary.
Asked if that meant that somebody at the department would be speaking to previous Secretaries of State, the PMOS said if it was relevant then that would happen, but those sorts of decision were best left to the department and the review. Asked whether previous Secretaries of State had a veto on the consultation, the PMOS said that he would not be drawn into commenting on the consultation as that was for the department to decide as and when was necessary.
Put to him that the year 2000 had seen a change in the way the lists were operated, the PMOS agreed that there were changes made round about that time, but the correct time and place to explain the process was Thursday. Asked if it was the case then that from 2000 on people were automatically barred for life if placed on the list, the PMOS said that he was not disagreeing with the assertion but he would not get drawn into a detailed discussion of it. Asked when list 99 was introduced, the PMOS said that list 99 was eighty years old and the sex offender’s list was introduced in 1997.
Asked in that case how there could be any parallel with cases prior to 1997, the PMOS said there had been sex offences before 1997 and there had also always been "grey area" cases where people were considered for one reason or another to be worthy of discretion. These powers had always, up until now, been applied with discretion. Somebody had to apply that discretion and for 80 years that had been the role of ministers. It was now about whether you applied a life ban automatically or discretionally. Asked if prior to 1997 the discretion had been about whether to put people on list 99, the PMOS said that the grey area had always been about the discretion to put people on list 99. The first case mentioned was precisely that, whether or not somebody should be on list 99.
Asked then what the grey area was if people were automatically barred from 2000, the PMOS said that there had always been this element of discretion in terms of whether or not people were put on list 99. This was the grey area being discussed. The discretion was whether people went on the list not if they were barred once on the list. The change since 2000 was that people were now automatically barred once put on the list.
ID cards
Asked how important it was that ID card legislation reached the statute book without being amended to include an independent review of the cost, the PMOS said that in terms of the cost we continued to stick by the costs produced by the Home Office. As Home Office Minister, Andy Burnham had said this morning the costs had been validated by KPMG. We did not recognise the LSE costing, which we believed had been inflated.
Therefore we believed the Government’s cost analysis was a sound one. Asked if that meant the Government believed there was no need for independent analysis, the PMOS said that we had already had the objective analysis from KPMG, which had validated the figures. Put to him that Charles Clarke’s comments saying that support for ID cards had risen was characterised as wishful thinking by the LSE, the PMOS said that question was best put to the Home Office. However if your figures were validated by an outside body, such as KPMG, then that suggested that your analysis was somewhat more than wishful thinking.
If you looked at fraud, the trend in terms of private areas such as banking and the threat from terrorism these were all reasons why ID cards were becoming more, not less relevant as an issue.
Education White Paper
Put to the PMOS that Estelle Morris had today said that the white paper was the worst document she had ever encountered and that Downing Street only had itself to blame for the current difficulties, the PMOS suggested that there were a lot of documents competing for that particular prize and not all of them were produced by government. But to answer seriously the white paper was designed to meet a need. That need was clearly identified by the NAO report of last week, which showed that the number of failing schools had halved. Equally it showed and confirmed that there was still a long way to go in terms of raising all schools up to the necessary standard.
What we had to do therefore was learn the lessons of what had worked in the past five years and build on that. This was what the white paper sought to do, not just by giving schools more independence in terms of identifying an ethos and so forth but also in furthering personalised learning and in taking seriously the discipline agenda. All those were matters, which went right to the core of the education debate and were about what was necessary to raise education standards in this country. Put to him that the rhetoric had not matched the substance, the PMOS said that if you looked seriously at the white paper it was difficult to say that it was anything other than a very serious document addressing serious issues.
Crime
Put to the PMOS that the Mayor of Middlesbrough, "Robocop" had said that the Government’s crime policies were a great disappointment and people had been waiting eight years, the PMOS said that if you looked at the crime statistics, for instance in relation to burglary and vehicle crime reductions in those areas and the fact that overall crime was going down was sufficient answer. However the Government recognised that there were still areas such as violent crime where it needed to and was doing more. If you looked at the policies that the Government had developed on ASBOs, which dealt with low level crime, most people thought they were overdue but also certainly thought they were worth pursuing in relation to local crime at a local level.
Incapacity benefit
Asked about John Hutton’s speech and the comments on compulsion and whether this was for new claimants or existing claimants, the PMOS said that there was a green paper coming at the end of the month and it was better to wait for that.
Iran
Asked if there was a read out from the London meeting on Iran, the PMOS said that this was a private meeting that had become public. Despite that he thought the intention was to keep the outcome private. Asked what it went on to inform, the PMOS said that it would hopefully inform a meeting of the IAEA Board, which we would like to be sooner rather than later.
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