Downing Street Says » Defence Secretary

Asked if the Prime Minister thought the Defence Secretary had the full support of the Armed Forces, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said yes and that the Prime Minister believes that the Defence Secretary has set out the situation honest and frankly. What was important was that people take a step back and recognise, as the Prime Minister said yesterday, that the crucial point is that our fifteen personnel were released, and they were released without a deal.

The Defence Secretary has said, in a very open and frank way, that if he asked about the decision made by the Royal Navy today he would make a different decision. It should be seen in the overall context of a genuine dilemma and that dilemma was that the personnel concerned, or at least some of them, wanted to set the record straight. There was also pressure, and money available from the media, and the navy took the decision it did. The Defence Secretary takes responsibility for that, but has said that he would make a different decision today.

Asked again if the Prime Minister believed the Armed Forces supported the Defence Secretary, the PMOS said again yes. Asked how the Prime Minister knew that, the PMOS said that he would not get into the processology, even after the Easter break.

Asked if the suggested official canvas of the Armed forces was true, the PMOS said again, he was not going to get into the processology and added that the Prime Minister believed that the Defence Secretary has been open and frank about this and he should be given credit for that.

Asked if the Prime Minister or Downing Street at any time, before the sale of the stories happened, were asked for a view or offered a view, the PMOS repeated that he really was not going to get into the processology of this. It has been set out when the Prime Minister knew, it has been set out how the decision was taken and he had nothing to add to that.

Asked by the reporter from the Herald if the Prime Minister accepted the view that the sale of the stories of the sailors demeaned the Armed Forces, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had been completely open about his view on this and he set that out last week. There is no point in getting into commentary on the matter. What we do have to recognise is that people acted in good faith in a particular circumstance. There were a unique set of circumstances and there was a dilemma. The reporter went on to pooh-pooh the idea that the circumstances were unique and scoff at what the PMOS had said. The PMOS responded by saying that in terms of people having to make statements to camera and so on and for the personnel concerned it was fairly unique. When the reporter again scoffed at the PMOS’s reply. The PMOS said that he doubted that the reporter from the Herald would do that if he had been held in Iran in the way the navy personnel had been. The PMOS added, despite interjections from the reporter, that people ought to step back and just take consideration of the particular circumstances that the individuals were placed under.

Asked if the PMOS thought that people would come away from the Defence Secretary’s statement feeling that he had apologised for a mistake, the PMOS said that being asked to give a commentary after a statement was one thing, being asked to give a commentary before a statement is again something he did not generally do. The PMOS went on to say that what people would see was that the Defence Secretary takes this very seriously, has taken it very seriously and he will be completely open and frank about the way in which decisions were made and his view on what to do now. Asked if the Defence Secretary would be speaking about the whole incident not just the decision about sailors stories, the PMOS again said he could not pre-empt what the Defence Secretary would say.

Asked if the Prime Minister still had full confidence in the Defence Secretary, the PMOS said yes the Prime Minister had.

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» Monday, April 16, 2007

Defence Secretary

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