» Thursday, November 4, 2010

Ian King Letter

Asked how the Prime Minister responded when he got the letter from Ian King of BAE Systems on 5th October that had emerged from the TSC, the PMS said that the Prime Minister had referred to the letter when he made the statement on the SDSR. The PMS added that as the Chancellor had said earlier in the day, we were shocked by the findings.

Put that lobbying of Prime Ministers and Cabinet Ministers by companies presumably goes on all the time and asked why the Prime Minister didn’t say that as the Government, we will take the decisions, the PMS replied that the Government had contractual obligations. The PMS added that as the Prime Minister said at the time of the SDSR, the Government was in a situation whereby it was locked into a contract that would cost more to get out of than to keep going with.

Asked why the Government would not try to renegotiate the carrier contract, the PMS said that as was clear at the time of the SDSR, the Government looked at this exhaustively and could not get out of this contract without it costing more to the taxpayer.

Put that Ian King said he had no doubt there was some scepticism around the analysis on the costs of the contract and asked whether the Prime Minister shared any scepticism around this analysis, the PMS said there was a lot of investigation at the time to see if there was any way around this situation with this particular contract.

Asked when the Prime Minister understood that there was a 15 year arrangement for the contract, the PMS said this was all brought to light in the SDSR discussions.

Put that the decision on the carriers was not made until the Prime Minister had seen the information in the letter; the PMS replied that the Prime Minister had already been aware as the MOD had previously raised these issues. The PMS added that this underlined the predicament that the new Government faced.

original source.

Briefing took place at 15:45 | Search for related news

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post.

Post a public comment

(You must give an email address, but it will not be displayed to the public.)
(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.

Downing Street Says...

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

Search


November 2010
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
« Oct   Dec »
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930  

Supported by

mySociety.org

Disruptive Proactivity

Recent Briefings


Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries

Contact Sam Smith.

This site is powered by WordPress. Theme by Jag Singh