Downing Street Says » 2006

» Wednesday, February 8, 2006

Abu Hamza

Asked if the Prime Minister believed that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) should have acted quicker against Abu Hamza, the PMOS said that, as journalists knew, we had an independent Crown Prosecution Service for very good reasons. This was how it operated. It was therefore a matter for the police and the CPS to independently decide whether prosecutions could go forward. However, without referring directly to the Abu Hamza case, this illustrated why the government believed there were additional powers that were necessary in this area. This was why we had put forward legislation, for instance on glorification, that would come back to the House next week.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Dunfermline by-election

Asked whether in terms of the Government, the by-election result sent a signal that the voters were in some way unhappy with the Government's performance in the last eight months since the election, The PMOS said that he did not want to get into analysing what were essentially Party matters. The best place to look in terms of the Government's response would be the Prime Minister's speech later today. What people would hear in that was that the Prime Minister's view that what the electorate had voted him to do was what he would continue to do, which was carry out the Government's programme.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Voting

Asked if the Prime Minister would be voting next week, and also, what was he doing between now and then to win people over to the argument, the PMOS relied that in terms of voting, as he had said this morning, the Prime Minister did regard the ID Cards vote and the Terrorism vote as important matters. In terms of winning people over, the Prime Minister was quite clearly setting out the argument, and he did so at PMQs today.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Schools Reforms

Asked whether the Prime Minister still thought he was walking a tight rope on school reforms and if he did was he prepared to make any further concessions, the PMOS said the clarifications had been sent by Ruth Kelly to Barry Sheerman and were there for people to study. The next step was the publication of the bill, before the end of the month, and then people would make up their minds. It was clear that the evidence, no matter where you looked, was that specialist schools were doing better than non-specialist schools. The reason why they were doing better was because of the extra freedoms that they had. The bill developed those freedoms and kept the pace of improvement going. If people looked at the select committee report it identified two key points: support for the idea of independent trust schools and a strategic role for local authorities. Both of those were at the heart of the education bill.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (2)

Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster

Put that, since the position of Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster had now been vacant for 100 days, the Prime Minister now regarded the position as redundant and asked whether it should be scrapped, the PMOS said that his answer was the same as his answer throughout the period, which was: the Prime Minister would decide on any reshuffle at the appropriate time.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Glorification-Terrorism

Asked that if the Government got its way, and the Bill reached royal assent, would it be retrospective, the PMOS said it tended to be the case that such legislation was not retrospective. The PMOS suggested that the journalist spoke to the Home Office to be sure.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Sinn Fein Allowance

Asked what the vote on Sinn Fein allowances was about, the PMOS said it was about restoring their MPs allowances, which were taken away from Sinn Fein because of previous activity. The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) report last year recommended they be removed and if people looked at the IMC report published last week it recommended that all financial sanctions on Sinn Fein should now be lifted. This would be voted on in the House this afternoon. There was also the new allowance of Short money.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

QinetiQ

Asked to comment on Lord Gilbert's phrase that the QinetiQ sell off was "bloody outrageous", the PMOS replied that Lord Drayson had set out the reasons behind it. As he had said before, the taxpayer benefited from the eight times rise in value of this company, because of the stakeholding that we had kept. The PMOS said he was not sure that Lord Gilbert's phrase would be one shared by the taxpayer in terms of the added value that had been added to not only the company, but also the taxpayers' holdings in it.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Prime Minister’s Voting Plans

Asked whether the Prime Minister would be voting on the ID card, smoking and terrorism divisions next week, the PMOS said the Prime Minister would decide when the votes came up. However journalists could take it that the Prime Minister regarded ID cards and terrorism as being important bills. The smoking bill was a free vote for MPs and as such the Prime Minister chose not to indicate in advance his intentions. Asked if this was why he had curtailed his trip to South Africa, the PMOS said the Prime Minister had important work to do in South Africa, but there was also important work to be done here.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Afghanistan

Asked whether the Prime Minister was concerned about cross party support for the deployment of troops to Afghanistan, the PMOS said it was for others to talk about whether they supported the deployment or not. We had been very clear about the reasons why the deployment was necessary. Those reasons had been set out by the Defence Secretary and were to support the democratically elected Afghan Government as it tried to create the physical, economic and political infrastructure that was necessary for a state to survive and overcome those who would wish to return to the days of the Taliban.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

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.

The unofficial site which lets you comment on the UK Prime Minister's official briefings. About us...

» Wednesday, February 8, 2006

Abu Hamza

Dunfermline by-election

Voting

Schools Reforms

Chancellor for the Duchy of Lancaster

Glorification-Terrorism

Sinn Fein Allowance

QinetiQ

Prime Minister’s Voting Plans

Afghanistan

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries