Downing Street Says » Deputy Prime Minister

Asked what meetings the Deputy Prime Minister would be having today, the Prime Ministers’ Spokesman (PMS) said that the Deputy Prime Minister would be working in Whitehall. He had chaired meetings with officials this morning looking at government business for the week and later today he would put out an update with DfID on the UK reaction to the Indonesian earthquake. The Deputy Prime Minister had been co-ordinating those efforts with DFID. As journalists knew he had also chaired a meeting on this over the weekend. Later in the week the Deputy Prime Minister would be going on a visit to look at a drugs rehabilitation project and on Friday he would chair a meeting of the British Irish Council on climate change.

Asked to confirm that the Deputy Prime Minister still continued to have the Prime Minister’s full confidence and whether as according to the Deputy Prime Minister’s official biographer that he had an assurance from the Prime Minister that they would go together, the PMS said that she would not comment on something that a biographer had written. On the first point, the Prime Minister still had absolute full confidence in the Deputy Prime Minister and in his fulfilling the role of the Deputy Prime Minister, which was to co-ordinate cross government business as had been set out clearly in his appointment letter published a week or so ago. Asked whether the Deputy Prime Minister would still be keeping Dorneywood, the PMS said that there had been no change to the current situation.

Put that the Mirror had reported that the Prime Minister would be meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister this weekend and that he would raise Dorneywood, the PMS said that she did not recognise the story. The Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were in contact on a regular basis, but she would not provide a commentary on every conversation they had. Put that the ODPM had placed in Parliament a staff handbook that said that improper conduct during work time was a disciplinary offence and was there any action being taken or needed against Mr Prescott’s former diary secretary, the PMS said that we had said all that we were going to say on that particular issue. Any personnel matters were a private matter and should be treated as such.

1 Comment »

PMS out of touch with reality again! Personnel matters are only private when it suits Downing Street.

As to commenting on books – well that happens all the time.

Today, just a few hours later, Dorneywood has been vacated by Prescott. Now all he has to do is hand back his other perks – cars, house/flat, taxpayer funded concubine, etc
Comment by Chuck Unsworth — 1 Jun 2006 on 10:08 pm | Link

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.

» Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Deputy Prime Minister

1 Comment »

Post a public comment

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries