» Monday, December 20, 2010Weather
Asked if the Prime Minister thought that the Transport Secretary was handling the problems caused by the weather effectively, the PMS said yes. The situation was that we had exceptionally severe weather conditions at the present time, which was clearly having an impact. The Government was doing all it could, led by the Transport Secretary, to ensure that the country kept moving. Asked if the Transport Secretary had offered to resign, the PMS said no. Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned that there still weren’t any flights from Heathrow, the PMS said that the Transport Secretary had said this morning that discussions needed to take place about what had gone wrong. At the moment the priority was working with the transport operators, local authorities and the Highways Agency (HA) to ensure that we were doing all we could to relieve the situation. Put that that meant the Prime Minister thought something had gone wrong, the PMS said that the Transport Secretary had said this morning that a conversation would take place about what went wrong. One of the things that had come up was that customers had not been given sufficient information about their flights. Asked if there were sufficient supplies of salt and heating oil, the PMS said that on salt we were in a better place than we were last year. As of last Monday we held 1.25million tonnes of salt, and the HA held 260 thousand tonnes, as opposed to 227 thousand tonnes this time last year. In terms of heating oil there was not a lack of supply, it was an issue of distribution, and we were seeing what we could do to help. For example we had relaxed the regulations on driver hours to ensure that heating oil could be transported throughout the country. Asked if the Prime Minister had attended any meetings on the weather conditions, the PMS said that there were meetings going on constantly, which the Transport Secretary had been leading on. There had been a number of conference calls over the weekend with the relevant agencies, and the Prime Minister had spoken to the Transport Secretary over the weekend. The Prime Minister had also spoken to the First Ministers of the devolved administrations. Briefing took place at 10:00 | Search for related news 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. |
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