Downing Street Says

» Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Iraq

Asked why the investigation was not referred to a Judge, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister had to take a view as to who the right people might be. The Prime Minister had taken advice from the Cabinet Secretary and the people who were selected for this Committee of inquiry were in the Prime Minister s view and the Government s view, well-established experts in their particular fields. The Prime Minister thought that these were the right people to lead the inquiry.

Put that the committee did not look completely neutral, the PMS replied that these people were highly regarded, credible, independent, serious people who had a high public standing and who in the Prime Minister s view, were individuals of great integrity who were perfectly able to conduct a fully independent investigation.

Asked whether the Prime Minister had asked opposition party leaders to nominate people who they thought should sit on the panel, the PMS said that there were discussions and consultations with the other party leaders, but we would not get into the specifics of that. Their views were taken into account, but as we had said yesterday, this was an announcement from the Government and we were not expecting the other parties to sign up to every aspect of what we had announced yesterday. Nonetheless there was an opportunity for them to be consulted and for them to feed in their views.

In response to whether the Prime Minister had asked the opposition party leaders if they approved of his selection of panel members, the PMS said he would not get into a discussion into what the nature of the consultation was. The other party leaders were consulted for their views on who the panel members might be.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

Name (required)
E-mail (required)
(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
Website
(You may give your website, and it will be displayed to the public.)

Comments:

This is not a way of contacting the Prime Minister. If you would like to contact the Prime Minister, go to the 10 Downing Street official site.

Privacy note: Shortly after posting, your name and comment will be displayed on the site. This means that people searching for your name on the Internet will be able to find and read your comment.

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

June 2009

Mon

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Sat

Sun

« May

Jul »

» Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Iraq

No Comments »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries