Downing Street Says » Jacqui Smith

Asked to confirm whether Jacqui Smith had asked the Prime Minister to leave the Cabinet in Easter, the Prime Minister s Spokesman (PMS) told the assembled press that he would not comment on private conversations which may or may not have taken place between the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues. The PMS added that anything else was just speculation.

Asked what the Prime Minister s mood was as there was a sense that things were getting out of control, the PMS replied that whenever there was speculation that there might be a reshuffle, it was common to get speculative stories of this kind. We had seen this before and there wasn t anything particularly unusual about that. This was the nature of Westminster and political reporting; this was not a criticism, just the way things tended to be whenever there was reshuffle speculation in the air.

What the Prime Minister was doing was concentrating on two things; firstly, there was a very lengthy discussion in Cabinet this morning about the next steps on how we restore trust in politics. The other big issue was how to help British families and British companies get through the economic downturn.

Put that what was not regular were resignations pre-empting a reshuffle, the PMS said Beverly Hughes had announced she was stepping down, but the rest was just speculation. There were lots of precedents for people announcing their intention to step down at a future point, so none of this was unusual or unprecedented.

Asked what the Prime Minister s message would be to voters who were looking at this with surprise, the PMS said that the Prime Minister s message was that what he was concentrating on was restoring trust and public support for our political process and dealing with the big economic issues facing the country and that s what he was focussed on.

Asked if the Prime Minister was confident that his Government was stable, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister was confident that his Cabinet Ministers were focussing on the issues that they should be focussing on, which was the issues relating to their portfolios.

Asked whether the Home Secretary had the authority to deal with a terrorist attack tomorrow for instance, the PMS said that yes she would have, but anything in relation to Jacqui Smith had not been confirmed and was just speculation.

Asked if there was an argument for bringing the reshuffle forward as there did seem to be a collapse of authority, the PMS said he would not accept that at all. Asked again what the Prime Minister s mood was, the PMS repeated that the Prime Minister was focussed on those two big issues he had mentioned earlier. There was a very good and substantial discussion at Cabinet this morning about constitutional renewal issues and he had been speaking recently about some of the big economic issues we faced, both here and overseas.

Asked if he accepted that the timing of these things damaged the Prime Minister, the PMS said that what he would accept was that whenever there was speculation that there might be a reshuffle, there was a lot of speculation about who might be stepping down and who might not be and that s what we were seeing at the moment. Asked if the Prime Minister had full confidence in Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary, the PMS said that he did. Asked if he expected Jacqui Smith to stay on, the PMS said that that was a reshuffle question and that would get the same answer as every other reshuffle question.

Asked how much of a loss the Home Secretary would be to the Cabinet, the PMS said that that was a hypothetical question. Asked what Jacqui Smith brought to the Cabinet, the PMS said that the Prime Minister thought that Jacqui Smith was a very good Home Secretary. She was dealing with some of the big issues about how we strengthened our response to terrorism, how we dealt with safety on the streets, issues around gun and knife crime
and she had been taking forward some significant reform of policing such as increasing the role of neighbourhood policing and making police services more responsive to local communities.

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» Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Jacqui Smith

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