» Thursday, April 1, 2004

Prime Minister’s press conference

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[This is the transcript of one of the Prime Minister’s occasional press conferences; these
are the words of the Prime Minister giving a statement and answering the
questions of journalists. Unlike the PMOS’s briefings, this is a more-or-less
verbatim transcript of the Prime Minister’s words. Such press conferences
happen about once a month, and occasionally more often.]

The Prime Minister answered questions on immigration, Iraq, the Middle East and terrorism in his monthly press conference today.

Mr Blair welcomed the decision to allow the reunited Cyprus to join the European Union in his opening remarks.

“It’s an enormous beacon of hope to people in Cyprus, and I congratulate very much all those who have been involved, in particular Kofi Annan and his Special Representative who have done so much to bring it about,” he said.

Read the transcript in full below:

Prime Minister

Well, I’m sure that you will be wanting to ask me about one or two other things than the things I had down to talk to you about, and I know some of you are complaining, after the first few of these press conferences, that we weren’t sharing any new stories for you to ask me about. We appear to have rectified that.

The first thing I’d like to say, just before I come to some remarks on public services and public service reform, is just to give a wholehearted welcome to what is an historic decision taken in Switzerland for a reunited Cyprus to be able to come into the European Union. That is a huge tribute to the parties concerned. It’s an enormous beacon of hope to people in Cyprus, and I congratulate very much all those who have been involved, in particular Kofi Annan and his Special Representative who have done so much to bring it about. But it is a truly historic occasion and shows once again how the possibilities of European Union membership can make such a tremendous difference to the resolution of age-old conflicts.

Now, secondly, what I was going to talk to you about is just to lay out some of the big picture items in relation to public services and the economy. The Budget has shown how strong the economy is, how we can sustain growth, how over the past few years we have managed to provide economic stability with low inflation, low interest rates and levels of low unemployment not seen for many decades in the country.

Also earlier this month we had a report on how well the National Health Service had coped with winter pressures and we in addition last week had the news about the present situation in respect of cardiac care where we literally have a situation now where cardiac deaths are down by over 20%. As you know, waiting lists and waiting times are, in respect of every single national indicator, in a better place than 1997 and for those who are saying that maybe those figures couldn’t be relied upon, the Chairman of the Audit Commission reported last week that there’s no doubt that the reductions are real, and I expect tomorrow’s figures on the Health Service to show that that improvement is continuing.

There are also now over half the schools in the country are specialist schools. We’ve got 12 City Academies up and running, another 40 under way. I want to see that programme extend still further. I think yesterday with the vote on tuition fees we can see how it is going to be possible for Universities both to expand the quality of the education, the numbers going into University, and give them the sound financial base for the future, a vital part of the economic sector that we need to develop, and in respect of crime again we now have record numbers of police officers, we have the criminal justice system, as I have found myself talking to senior people within not just the police service but other connected agencies, we have got the criminal justice system with a better chance of sorting itself out now than for many, many years. In addition to that we of course, in respect of the issue of asylum, we have got numbers well under half of what they were 18 months ago.

So, I think in all these areas there is still an awful lot of progress to be made, but nonetheless I believe that if we look on the economy, or the National Health Service, or education or law and order, there is real and substantial progress being made that we need to continue and the programme of economic stability leading to investment and reform is a programme I believe is working.

Anyway, you will now want to question me on detail and all that, no doubt.

Question

Prime Minister, are you going to take personal charge of immigration questions as your own officials were briefing newspapers last night?

Prime Minister

Well, there’s no question of my taking personal charge. The Home Office has actually done a fantastic job in relation to asylum where we have hugely improved the system from where it was a few years ago. The claims are down by well under a half, applications that used to take 18 months on average in 1997 to process, 80% are being done within 2 months. There are issues to do with immigration. Of course I’ll take a close interest in that. We need to deal with it, otherwise it becomes a real source of tension and misunderstanding within our own community here in this country, but I’m sure that we will be able to deal with that, and I hope that the issue, which is actually a very specific and particular issue in relation to the EU accession countries which has caused Bev Hughes’ resignation should not colour the whole of the immigration picture and although we have to deal with abuses, and it is important that we do, I hope we all remember and recognise that generations of migrants into this country have made a great contribution to this country.

Question

Prime Minister you have repeatedly referred already to targets in the public services this morning, but isn’t the real point about Beverly Hughes’ resignation that it is going to shake public confidence in statistics, particularly when you have set and laid great emphasis on targets and in the operation of Immigration Service. Now some of your own MPs are already saying that there needs to be a whole look at immigration again, possibly a Cabinet Minister for Immigration, taking it away from the Home Office. There are also people, as you know, including the Liberal Democrats, saying there should be a full public enquiry into immigration statistics and I have to say wouldn’t you conclude from today’s evidence that Ken Sutton is not up to the job, inasmuch as he investigated this and turned none of it up, and so the investigation you have ordered is clearly inadequate.

Prime Minister

Well, he was investigating earlier a different dimension, albeit of the same group of people and I think actually what we really need to do is to take swift action if there is in fact a systematic fraud that has been going on in relation to these particular countries – Romania and Bulgaria – and applications under the Accession Agreements. No, look, in respect of asylum, I know there will be a big debate over the figures and I think we have got to find some way of laying that to rest because there was a real concern which I expressed myself about the asylum system. The fact is that all countries all over the world have had big increases in asylum claims. We know that many of those claims have in truth been claims from economic migrants. We have hugely changed and reorganised the asylum system. We are calculating on exactly the same basis as it has always been calculated, and the figures on asylum are right, they are correct and I hope that people accept that, and I think we have got to demonstrate that very, very clearly.

I think you have then got to take account of a different range of problems in relation to immigration as a whole because immigration as a whole includes people coming in here entirely lawfully for work, with a work permit, so there is an actual employer they are going to work for. It includes people visiting here as tourists, it includes people coming here as students, it includes a whole range of people who we want to see come in here lawfully. Now if there has been systematic fraud in respect of one particular part of this which is in relation to these accession countries, we will have to deal with that, and if there have been any failures in the system, we have to expose that very clearly for people. But I actually think the most important thing is to get action taken in respect of those thing where we know there is a problem, and one has surfaced obviously in respect of Romania and Bulgaria, but also at the same time, as I was trying to do yesterday in the House of Commons, put this in context. In the asylum system with a very specific problem that we needed to deal with, but we have got to be careful when we deal with immigration that we don’t brand everybody who comes into this country, the vast majority of whom come in lawfully and for perfectly good reason and then go back out again, as if they were engaged in some illegal fraud.

Question

In a speech a few weeks ago, you praised the Immigration Service for being a transformed part of government and highly competent. Is that a view you want to revise now? You and the Home Secretary praised Beverly Hughes as an excellent and competent Minister for Immigration. Is that a view you want to revise? And just now you have constantly said that there is a problem of fraud. Isn’t there a problem of government competence? The Foreign Office said don’t let people in. The Home Office said do let them in. That’s nothing to do with fraud. That’s simple government competence, isn’t it?

Prime Minister

Well let’s wait and see what is revealed by the investigation that’s been done, but I would agree with you to this extent. There are two quite separate questions here. One is whether a mistaken view, but in good faith, was taken about the rights of people to come in under these Accessions Agreements, which are very particular agreements applying to countries that are about to join, or will join, the European Union. And the other is, if it was as I think has been suggested in recent days, there was a deliberate permission of fraudulent and forged claims. Now that would be of a wholly different order of seriousness. Now I think we will get to the bottom of that, and need to very quickly obviously. But in respect of the general picture, let me just say something to you about this. The issue that we have to deal with that I think was of most concern to people was the issue of asylum claims that were growing in number – not just here actually but right round the whole of Europe – where in reality people weren’t genuine asylum seekers or refugees, but were in fact economic migrants. And in 1997, as I say, it used to take something like 18 months to process the average asylum claim. The system, with its multiple appeals, with the legal system that went around it was subject to abuse, we had a huge backlog of cases to deal with. We now have a situation where within the past 15 months we have more than halved the number of claims, we are now dealing with 80% of those claims within 2 months, we have virtually cleared the backlog, and we have got a far more effective system in place.

Now, people once they realise that we are sorting the asylum system have now moved on to the general immigration system. If there is a particular case of fraud or abuse here we have to deal with, but all I’m saying to you is we should not allow that to contaminate the whole of the immigration system, and that would be dangerous because there are perfectly good reasons for people who come in here as visitors or students, or even who come into work for a short period of time. Now, the praise that I gave the Immigration Department and Beverly Hughes was to do with the reduction in asylum and I think you will see from the correspondence that we exchanged that the reason why she felt she had to resign was because she felt on reflection that the answer she had given in interviews – I think on the Monday night – were not consistent with the correspondence that she was going to give to this Inquiry. I think she has behaved with integrity in coming forward immediately to me and saying this is what I think I should do.

Question

So your message Prime Minister is that this is well run because this will be a real puzzle to people at the end of this week. You seem to be saying everything is all right, the Minister just said the odd wrong word in an interview.

Prime Minister

Well, I’m not saying that …

Question

People looking from the outside may think it looks a horrible mess.

Prime Minister

No, I’m not saying that, am I? Because I’m saying that the very reason why you have to investigate this claim in respect to Romania and Bulgaria which is a different dimension of similar claims made in respect of the same countries a few weeks ago, is that there is obviously something that went on that was wrong here. The point that I am saying is, the question is was this, as has been suggested, a deliberate permission to allow in fraudulent and forged claims, or was it a misunderstanding of what the entitlements of people were from accession countries. Now those are two different things. All I’m saying to you is just remember the numbers of people you are talking about is a small fraction of the numbers of people who will come in here as visitors or students, or come in here with work permits. Now where there is abuse within the system we have to deal with it. Where there was abuse of the asylum system, we have dealt with it. All I’m asking you to do is to have some sense of balance in reporting. Yes, there is a problem here that they are investigating and we have to be very clear if there has been abuse here it has to be dealt with, but not let that, as it were, give an impression to people that the entirety of our immigration system is in the same state because I think that would be wrong, and I think it would be misleading to people and I also think it would ignore the real changes that have been made in the asylum system that are important.

Question

The Home Secretary was very explicit that Beverly Hughes was a first rate Minister and the media shouldn’t claim another scalp. She’s gone, should he consider his position, or do you have full confidence in him?

Prime Minister

No, because the reason why Beverly decided she had to go was because of the correspondence that she uncovered in the course of going through all these papers to give to the Inquiry and the inconsistency she felt between that and the interview she had given on Monday night. These are difficult situations for people who are Ministers and in public life and I think she has shown a great deal of courage. She could have waited for all the things to be given to the Inquiry and then strung it out for weeks, she didn’t. She came to me very honestly yesterday evening and said look I don’t think I can continue because I think that the answers I have given in these interviews, having looked at the correspondence, are inconsistent with that, and all I am saying to you is just bear in mind that there are other things that she has done in the course of her time as a Minister which have been important and good, including as I say the biggest overhaul of our asylum system that we have had so that we can now have at least some confidence that that system has integrity. Now we need to make sure that the same applies to the rest of the immigration system, and that is what we are going to have to do.

Question

Does it say something about the system that a Minister didn’t remember that exchange of letters. I mean is it too big, is it too large, does the Minister have too much to do?

Prime Minister

Well, there is certainly a huge amount for the Immigration Minister to do because remember the other thing about this is that these Ministers are getting in enquiries the whole time from individual Members of Parliament. The pressure in general terms is always to say, put up the barriers and don’t let people in. The pressure in very particular terms, in respect of individual cases, Members of Parliament who are raising these cases, is often to say this person has a legitimate case. So it is a heavy case load, but she’s not hiding behind that. She as I say has come very honestly and said look I can’t reconcile these two things and I feel that I should go.

Question

Picking up on Mark Mardell’s point, the Home Secretary said that in the House on Tuesday, but he also gave the impression that the problem was that officials hadn’t been passing up the complaint. Now it turns out that not only had they been passing it up but that a Minister had alerted the government to what was going on. Surely this does imply that the Home Office just can’t cope with the volume of work, and that perhaps there is a need for some kind of reorganisation so that the Home Secretary doesn’t have to do so much in government.

Prime Minister

Well let me be slightly careful about what I say because obviously I have seen some of this myself now and I think there is a very clear distinction – and I won’t say any more than this and it is entirely up to Ken Sutton what he finds – but I think there is a very clear distinction between these two things. One is, as I say, the deliberate permission of claims where the documents are obviously and clearly, knowingly fraudulent or forged documents. That is on the one hand which has obviously been an allegation of bad faith on the part of officials or Ministers or whoever, and the other is a belief that under the Accession Agreements that were signed 10 years ago, that people have an entitlement from those accession countries to come in here, unless it can be proven that their claims are fraudulent or forged. Now I think that is what will be looked at, and I think you will find in relation to this specific problem it isn’t actually an issue to do with workload, it’s an issue to do with what people thought was the proper procedure to follow, but that’s something he can look at.

Question

Surely a Minister who was in charge of their Department would know what was going on? They wouldn’t have to wait for something like that to happen. And isn’t that the real charge that this makes the government look incompetent on such an important issue?

Prime Minister

I think the question will be what was the proper entitlement and what should have been the proper procedures. But look, what is clear here is that something has been going on that shouldn’t have been going on and that why David Blunkett has now suspended the pre-entry visa clearance from Romania and Bulgaria and we have to look into it. All I’m saying to you is that we will look into a very, very specific issue, and I should say in relation to pre-entry visa clearance, as far as I can see from the other accession countries, there has not been some great spike in claims from those countries, and I think the majority of these claims, which are 7,000 in total, the majority of these have actually come from Bulgaria, but the remainder of the accession countries only account really for a handful. That is in pre-entry visa clearance, so we’ll just have to see.

Question

Prime Minister, every time there are general worries raised about immigration levels, Ministers argue that Britain needs more immigrants for economic reasons and to sustain the social security base. What is your government’s estimate of how many immigrants Britain needs in the average year, and do you still accept the Home Office estimate that there are only going to be 5,000 – 13,000 a year coming in from the accession countries of Eastern Europe?

Prime Minister

Well, we have obviously said we will track very carefully the numbers coming in from the accession countries, but very much the same fears were raised in the case of Spain and Portugal and didn’t materialise, but we are tracking it carefully of course. In respect of the overall position, this is why I think that immigration in general is different from asylum in particular. In respect of immigration in general, I think the vast majority of the public has a perfectly sensible view of this, which is that there have to be rules and order in the system, but that it is plainly right that there will be people who will come and work here and stay here for short periods of time, or there may even be people who come and settle here, and perfectly justifiably so, and that is what happens in respect of British people who also work abroad, and their worry is whether the rules and order do indeed apply, and that’s why there has been such concern over this particular situation in respect of Romania and Bulgaria and the accession countries. Now what we have got to do is deal with the abuses that are there, but make sure that that does not affect the general picture of the whole of immigration, because as I was trying to point out in the House of Commons yesterday, if you look at the labour force survey of the number of migrant workers working here at any one point in time, and the same incidentally would be true of any major industrialised country, if you look at the top 10 categories of country, by far the largest is from the Irish Republic, you’ve then got large numbers from America, from Australia, from New Zealand, from India – often in the information technology sector. So you know it’s a situation that is I think slightly different from the perception that people have the whole time, and one of the things that I have been very anxious to do is to avoid the issue of asylum, which is a specific problem being run into the whole issue of immigration. I should also just say to you this – I can’t be sure of this because we haven’t done a full analysis of the figures – but if you look at the asylum countries, or the countries of origin of the asylum claimants, and you look at where the big falls have happened in the last 15 months, those big falls have happened from countries where we have no reason to believe there has then been a rise in other types of applications. The biggest fall, for example, has been from Afghanistan as a result of the fact that people are no longer claiming asylum from there in the numbers that they were. So, all I am trying to say about this is that it is important at the same time as we recognise the problem that’s here, which is why I’m not saying everything’s fine, it obviously isn’t. If there has been this type of abuse going on in respect of Romania and Bulgaria, fraudulent or otherwise, we have to deal with it and then we have to make sure that if there are other abuses within the immigration system they’re dealt with, but they should not end up dismaying people to the point where they think that the real and genuine advances that have been made in handling the issue of asylum are not real, because they are and that I think will be shown by any proper investigation.

Question

But we are not talking numbers Prime Minister, and if you are going to have a managed immigration policy, what are the numbers that are manageable and desirable?

Prime Minister

Well I don’t think you can start putting arbitrary figures on it because for example with something like the numbers of students, or the numbers of people coming in with work permits, people who come in with work permits, they have to have an employer who is prepared to employ somebody, and then there is a whole process that has to be gone through, so you can’t set some arbitrary limit on it. And it is true as your economy, as you have full employment in many parts of the British economy at the moment, there will be an increased desire for incoming migrant workers. There are in the National Health Service today. One of the main elements of migrant working population here are from the Philippines. Now many of these people will come and work in the National Health Service for example and that’s something you want. So you can’t put an arbitrary figure on it I don’t think.

Question

Prime Minister, the question of Miss Hughes’ resignation. These allegations first surfaced on Saturday night, yet it seems that her office only got the paperwork in order yesterday and she came to you last night as you said. We were told by No 10 that Bob Ainsworth, the Deputy Chief Whip, remembered that he had written to her on this subject on March 2003. Can you confirm that the catalyst for her resignation was Mr Ainsworth coming to her some time yesterday, or was it the day before, saying I have found this in my files, you must find it in yours. And secondly, can the Minister for Immigration, a terribly burdensome job, also be the Minister for Terrorism, also a burdensome job?

Prime Minister

Well, terrorism is ultimately the responsibility of the Home Secretary, but also there is a specific person Sir David Ormand, who is in charge of co-ordinating security and the fight against terrorism here and is doing an excellent job in doing so. In respect of the first thing, it’s not so much the correspondence, it is what Beverly felt, and could I just ask you to accept that it is to her credit that she came forward herself, it is not the exchange of the correspondence per se, it was the fact that when she went back and looked at the correspondence she found that that was inconsistent, or she felt it was inconsistent with the answers that were given in the interviews on Monday night, and she looked at that correspondence, and that correspondence between herself and Bob Ainsworth although it is phrased actually in a slightly different way from the allegations that have been made, she felt that she could not stand that alongside the answers that she gave in interviews on the Monday night.

Question

Because Mr Ainsworth seems to have been the catalyst here. He said, look I wrote to you, former Home Office Minister, and that appears to have prompted them to get their paperwork in order, and really the question we are all going to be asking all day, and might as well ask it now. When did Mr Ainsworth go to Miss Hughes, when did you find out, when did Mr Blunkett find out?

Prime Minister

When Bob Ainsworth wrote to Beverly Hughes just over a year ago, which Beverly Hughes replied to and actually followed up with action which is why I say the ultimate question here will be whether people knew that these applications were fraudulent, or whether they mistakenly thought that the applications had to be allowed, and that’s the question that will be looked at. I knew about the correspondence shortly before my preparation for Prime Minister’s questions, and then Beverly came to me after Prime Minister’s questions and said to me as I say I think very fairly look going through this documentation in order to give it to Ken Sutton to conduct his enquiry, I don’t think this is now consistent with the answers that I gave on Monday. Now actually to be fair to her the answers that she gave on Monday night were in relation to these allegations that there had been a deliberate policy within the Immigration Department of allowing through forged claims. Now that is not in fact the allegation that she ever thought was the allegation that there could be any substance to.

Question

Prime Minister, you keep trumpeting the success of the asylum claim reductions which have come rather belatedly after 7 years in office and isn’t the problem of illegal immigration far wider as you yourself admitted a few moments ago, and has been a problem for a very long time throughout your government, and that the Home Secretary, what I want to know is do you have faith in the Home Secretary who admits in his own words that he doesn’t have clue how many people are illegally in this country.

Prime Minister

Well, illegal immigration, Trevor, as you know has been a problem for many, many years and all countries have the same type of problem. The best that you can do is to take every single action you can to try and secure your own borders, to try for example to make sure that the entry from France into this country, and across the Channel into this country, is as closely monitored and watched as possible. Now, it’s under David Blunkett that for the first time we have actually got controls not just on the English side, but actually on the French side, and when people ask to estimate the numbers of illegal workers, obviously because they are here illegally, it is difficult to give a precise figure. I don’t think that is the critical issue on relation to asylum. The critical issue in relation to asylum is that the system was such that people could come in, claim asylum and then literally have months, and months, and months before their cases were determined, with a long drawn out set of legal proceedings, and then it would be extremely difficult to remove them at the end of that. Now as a result of the border controls that we have introduced, as a result of the closure of places like Sangatte, as a result of the changes in the law we have made it far more difficult for people to come into this country, as well as come into it and claim asylum.

Question

But it is still the first choice of all countries in Europe for illegal immigration.

Prime Minister

Well, I don’t know on what basis you say that.

Question

Because of the figures that your own statistics show. The European Union figures show it.

Prime Minister

They don’t with the greatest respect. In respect of asylum it is not correct actually proportionate to our population that we have ever been the No 1 country for asylum. In respect of the overall numbers now, today, and remember those figures that people are often quoting are back from November 2002. If you take the figures today, the claims are now running at just under 3,000 a month. That is well under half of what it was back in November 2002. We will not be, not merely not in relative terms, but in absolute terms the No 1 place for asylum seekers to come. But it is true we obviously, partly because of the strength of the economy in the South and South-East, this is a place where people want to come and work and want to come and be. But that doesn’t mean to say that we shouldn’t have strong controls, and we have got those strong controls in place.

Question

Prime Minister, now that the families have been informed, why are you not going ahead with an enquiry into the Pat Finucane affair, while the others are going ahead and what are you going to do to address the pain of the victims of the past 30 years?

Prime Minister

I don’t want to say too much in advance of Paul Murphy’s statement. I would simply say that we will abide by the commitments that we have given, there are particular reasons why we can go ahead with some of those enquiries now, but where there is a difficulty in respect of the Finucane case, but I do think it is important that we do try in Northern Ireland to move beyond the past. These things have to be gone into, but we should start to move beyond the past and I don’t know whether necessarily a Truth and Reconciliation Commission is the right way to do it, but I think there needs to be some way of trying both to allow people to express their grief and their pain and indeed their anger in respect of what has happened in Northern Ireland without the past continually dominating the present and the future, and that’s what we will try to do.

Question

Prime Minister, are you absolutely satisfied that David Blunkett did not know about the reminder from Bob Ainsworth to Beverly Hughes or about the original correspondence between him and Beverly Hughes at a time when the Home Secretary was standing up in the House of Commons saying that the first he had known of all this was when the Conservatives revealed it?

Prime Minister

Yes, but let me again make one other point to you as well, because it is very important as to what these allegations were. The allegations were to do with forged and fraudulent claims being deliberately allowed in. Now the Ken Sutton Inquiry will look into that. But I know that inevitably in these situations people get into a who knew what and when and all the rest of it. I think it should be some mark of the integrity of the people involved that this came to you as a surprise this morning. This wasn’t dragged out of Beverly Hughes. She came along to me last night and said look I’ve gone back through the correspondence, I did have this correspondence with Bob Ainsworth, admittedly it was in a slightly different context from the allegations that have been made, but I don’t I can stand with the interviews I have given. Now she came to me and she took the decision herself, which is a credit to her. But I know inevitably there is all this who knew what and when. And I’ve told you what I knew, but I think the important thing is that we actually sort the system out.

Question

But Prime Minister this morning your official spokes repeatedly to say when Bob Ainsworth had sent his reminder to the Home Office, both to Beverly Hughes and presumably to David Blunkett as well. We are left drawing the inference that the reason you will not say when this happened, is because perhaps David Blunkett did know before he was standing up in the House of Commons.

Prime Minister

No, I have just said to you that as far as I am aware David didn’t know that. However – and it’s not correct incidentally – Bob Ainsworth wrote to Bev Hughes back in March 2003 following a visit to Bulgaria and Romania and she said – I don’t know whether the exchange of letters and resignation have yet been issued to you – as I say when she went back over the correspondence again she realised that as I say it was inconsistent with what she said on the Monday night. But look, this is not a situation in which people have tried to cover things up. On the contrary what she has actually come along and done is say I’ve now been back through this, I have to turn all this correspondence over to the person who is going to conduct this enquiry, and it is not consistent with the answers I’ve given. And I think the fact that she came forward herself. No-one had to drag that out of her. She came forward herself and said I’ve got to go in these circumstances, and that is what she has done.

Question

Inaudible.

Prime Minister

Well I have just answered that, as far as I am aware, and I think David himself has answered in interviews too. But you can go on forever on who knew what, when. The fact of the matter is the claims that were made in the e-mail that was sent to the Conservative Party, which were claims that there had been a deliberate policy of allowing these fraudulent claims through in order to, I can’t remember what the allegation was, but I think in order to speed up the process, that is not an allegation that anyone had known about.

Question

Was it wise to release the Tipton three so quickly in the current climate, given that the American Ambassador said that there was substantial evidence of terrorism. Who is right, the British or the Americans?

Prime Minister

Well it is a judgment as to whether to release people or not that is not made by me. The Prosecution Service have to decide whether they prosecute someone or release them, and they have to act according to the law. All I have said on this is that I am not going to start commenting or speculating on the individual backgrounds to these cases, except just to say to the public there are always two sides to these stories and that this all arose out of a situation where people were picked up in Afghanistan in circumstances where British and American troops were fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban. Now I won’t say any more about it than that, I don’t want to comment on what the American Ambassador has said, but I can assure you there were very good reasons why we wanted to question these people, but whether, how they are released and when they are released is not a matter for me, I can’t take that decision.

Question

Going back to Robin Oakley’s point about your unwillingness to get into the numbers game in terms of overall inward migration, doesn’t the government have to get into the numbers game to the extent that this factor implicates a lot on your other policies. How on earth are you going to calculate the housing needs, particularly in the south east, which you have referred to specifically, and also the size of transport infrastructure needed, if you have no actual policy about the amount of net inward migration each year?

Prime Minister

Well you have a set of rules and you obviously base your policies, it is not that we don’t know the numbers of people who have come in here to work for a period of time and go back again, it is just that you don’t set some arbitrary limit on how many people should come in, it is a question of applying the rules. For example over the past few years there are more people who have come in with work permits, but that is because there has been a requirement for them. And as I say, in certain parts of the public sector we have got a policy deliberately of trying to make sure that people do come in. In respect of the overall effect on our services, again I think we have just got to be careful on this. Very often when you are doing meetings with people in local communities, they have a view about the numbers of asylum seekers and the impact on our public services that is not always correct.

Question

… population if you have no limit on the number of incomers in circumstances where not just in London, but in other areas too, many people can’t get a decent home for their family.

Prime Minister

Yes, but let’s be absolutely clear about this Patrick, the housing shortage is not a function of immigration, the housing shortage is a function of not enough houses being built. Now let’s just be very, very careful about this, it is a function of the number of houses that need to be built because over the past few years we have not been building enough houses, not just merely social housing but in the private sector as well. That is the reason for Kate Barker’s report. But it is not immigration that is driving that, it is down in the south-east of the country where you have got as I say virtually full employment and where there is a desire for people, particularly first time buyers, to get houses. That is why we are engaging in the policy of expanding housing in certain parts of the south-east in order to meet that. But there never has been a policy, as far as I am aware, of any government of saying we are going to set some arbitrary limit on people who can come and people who can’t.

Question

More than 500 people, British Muslims, have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000/2001. Charges were pressed only against 7 of them. Don’t you think that policy gives credit to some critics that say there is racial profiling in Britain?

Prime Minister

No, I think it is a recognition of the reality that this particular form of terrorism that we are dealing with is based on what I think the vast majority of Muslims would accept is a perversion of the true faith of Islam and therefore necessarily and obviously many of those that will be questioned will be Muslims. But that is not in any shape or form a disrespect to the vast majority of the Muslim population here who contribute an immense amount to our country. But we need I am afraid, particularly in these days, to take every precaution we can to make sure that if we believe anyone may be suspected or involved with terrorist activity that we are prepared to act on it. I don’t think the broad public, including the Muslim population, would accept anything different. And therefore when people – if I can say this respectfully – like al Jazeera quote these figures, of course what we are looking at is a particular form of terrorism that is associated with what the vast bulk of Muslims recognise is not anything to do with the true faith of Islam. So it is not surprising that the people we are picking up are Muslims, I am afraid there is no way out of that, but that is for the reason that I have given and it is for no other reason.

Question

But with all respect …

Prime Minister

We are getting into a bit of an interview with these questions, but anyway since I have allowed others to do it, I will allow you.

Question

We believe that there is a difficult situation here and because of the fact that a lot of people involved in terrorism are actually coming from such backgrounds, but don’t you believe that this might lead to a conflict within the British population itself eventually?

Prime Minister

Well I hope in part it depends on what people like yourselves say to the Muslim community, because in the end it is perfectly obvious why we are having to do this, we are having to do this because we want to protect our people against terrorism, and in protecting people against terrorism we are protecting the Muslim population as well. But we need the laws that we have. Look I think that we will need to readjust our terrorism laws still further, I have to say this to you, and I think that the whole issue of identity cards that a few years ago were not on anyone’s agenda are very much on the political agenda here, probably more quickly even than we anticipated, and that is because we are living in a new world and with a new threat that we have to take account of.

Question

There are many in the Muslim community who believe that the war on terrorism is increasingly selective when it comes to dealing with the Muslim populations in different parts of the world. You yourself expressed concern when it comes to the Middle East, but do you believe that it is right or even wise to give President Putin quite such carte blanche when it comes to dealing with Chechnya, which is increasingly becoming a cause celebre within the Muslim community?

Prime Minister

Well I don’t believe we should give carte blanche to anybody, and insofar as there are human rights concerns in respect of Chechnya, we raise them with President Putin and we should do that. But I think we have got to be honest about what the problem is. Every single major part of the world where we are trying to get a peaceful resolution of differences, this issue of terrorism is there. If you took terrorism out of the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the issue would be so much easier to resolve. If you took terrorism out of Kashmir, India and Pakistan could enjoy better relations. If you took terrorism out of Chechnya then I think it would be possible for Russia and people in Chechnya to resolve their differences. There is no doubt about what this problem is, and I don’t think that we are engaging in double standards in relation to it, I am afraid that is the terrorist problem that we face at the moment.

Question

… are you taking state terrorism out of it. There is Israeli state terrorism, there is Russian state terrorism. You yourself, the government itself has raised issues about Sheikh Yassin, but it has not been anything like as fervent when it comes to the killing of Muslim civilians in Chechnya.

Prime Minister

Yes, but you know we do raise those concerns, that is absolutely true, but as I always say to people when looking at the situation in respect of Israel, you have just got to see it from the Israeli point of view as well. There they are being faced with suicide bomb attacks on wholly innocent civilians, killing scores of people in cafes, and bars and restaurants, and they obviously want to take action against the organisation that is perpetrating this. Now we have our criticisms of what happened a short time ago in respect of Yassin, and we made those clear, but I don’t think anyone should be in any doubt as to what the problem in these conflicts is in exactly the same way. The problem for the Russian authorities is simply this, that they want to get a political arrangement under way. They are prepared to agree a massive amount of devolution into Chechnya. Now they disagree with secession, but there are Russian citizens dying in suicide bomb attacks. So I don’t accuse in any shape or form breaches of human rights that happen in respect of states that are trying to deal with this problem, but I think we have got to be very careful here of ignoring what the true origin of a lot of the difficulties are. If you took this appalling type of terrorism out of many of these situations they would become a lot easier to resolve. That is my view. Now that doesn’t absolve states of the need to obey the rule of law and where they don’t we criticise it, as we have been prepared to do, but they are often responding, as you can imagine, to huge pressure from their citizens to take that type of action. You see one of the things that the terrorists want to do is to create a situation where you come under enormous pressure as a country that has certain rules and regard for proper justice and the rule of law to change their whole system to accommodate it, that is I am afraid part of their strategy.

Question

As this press conference has demonstrated itself, there is a certain amount of issue convergency, not conflation, on immigration and asylum. If you combine that also with the questions on security and terrorism, which also involve Britain’s Muslim population, how concerned are you that the next election, perhaps for the first time in your lifetime, would actually be dominated by issues of race?

Prime Minister

There is no doubt that out in the country the issue of asylum and immigration is a major concern for people, and contrary to what people sometimes think, we haven’t been sitting there in government doing nothing over the past few years. The measures we have taken in respect of the asylum system, that I think most objective people recognise has made a difference, are testament to the fact that we are working on this and we are also going to deal with abuses within the immigration system. The only thing I ever say about this is to be careful when we handle this issue. The problems and abuses – which there are – should be dealt with, but the issue should not be exploited, and if it starts being exploited the impact will be felt right across the community. And remember something also about the terrorists, one of their strategies is to divide the community, and that is why I welcomed so much what the senior Muslim figures have been saying over the past few days in respect of a message to the Muslim community to say we do not want this extremism or fanaticism in our midst. That is an important message.

Question

… national politicians or parts of the national media at the moment?

Prime Minister

I just simply think it is important we all exercise care, because otherwise what you get into, let’s be clear about this, you get into this absurd and unbalanced description of the situation where it looks as if we on the one hand are simply saying there isn’t an issue or a problem. We are not saying that, that is why I have been doing virtually monthly stock-takes on asylum for the last two years. We are not saying that, we acknowledge there is a problem and there plainly are abuses within the immigration system we are going to have to sort out, and we will sort them out. But just as people should recognise that, on the other side people should also recognise when you are talking about the whole of the issue of immigration, there are perfectly good reasons why we have visitors in this country, tourists in this country, students in this country and people who will come to work for periods of time that do good to our economy, and the responsibility is on the politicians, on you in the media, on everyone to conduct this debate in a balanced way. That is all I am saying.

Question

Your speech in Sedgefield, just 6 days before Madrid, showed that you had a clear understanding of the problems of international terrorism. Can I ask you, is it now about time that the international community change their rules of engagement, the law about dealing with terrorism? And in that connection can I ask you, number one, on Hamas, the European Union and the Americans have said Hamas is a terrorist organisation, Britain has still yet to say so, there is no difference between the political and military wings. When is Britain going to actually say Hamas is that terrorist organisation? And secondly, Israel has suffered more than the equivalent of the World Trade Centre in terms of terrorism, as you have often admitted. Why is it different for Israel if it wants to take out, deal with, Hamas leadership who will not be arrested, there is no way of arresting these people. If it comes to the issue of Osama bin Laden, if British troops found Osama Bin Laden, are they going to arrest him or what are they going to do? Why is there a difference between Osama bin Laden and Sheikh Yassin?

Prime Minister

Well I think the important thing is that no-one does anything that unnecessarily inflames the situation. I understand the points you are making, indeed I have just been making some of them myself to an earlier question in respect of Hamas, I have got nothing to add to what the Foreign Office so far have said on this issue. I would just simply say to you, you can draw all sorts of parallels, I hope very much that in the next few weeks we get some prospects of Israel making moves towards long term peace and some response from the Palestinian Authority, and that is what we are working to do at the moment and I don’t think I will say anything more than that.

Question

… international law though?

Prime Minister

International law will require a lot of people to agree to that.

Question

I am wondering how you will ever go about persuading this country to accept the European constitution, or indeed eventually the euro. And given today’s date, perhaps you might go beyond the usual formulations because you can always say afterwards it was an April Fool’s answer.

Prime Minister

I am sure you would be generous enough to allow me to do that. But no, I am afraid you get the usual formulations. Anyway we will see.

Question

Scotland’s population is declining and our migration problem is not getting enough of these people who cause you such problems in England it seems. Wouldn’t it be possible to direct migrants to parts of the UK that actually wants them, as well as need them, or is this something else which has fallen through David Blunkett’s in-tray?

Prime Minister

I think that is a little unfair because the Scottish Executive has taken decisions in relation to this to encourage certain types of inward migration into Scotland. I just think you need a balanced policy in relation to it, and that is a matter for the Scottish Executive to work with the Home Office, as they are doing, to say there are certain types of skills or people that we need here. Let’s be clear what people worry about in relation to immigration and asylum as well, what they worry about, this is the essential worry people have, and I understand the worry, the worry is I am playing by the rules, I am working hard, I need access to decent services and here is a group of people that don’t play by the rules and come in and take what is rightfully mine. That is how people feel out there, and what I am trying to say to people is look there are abuses within the system, we need to deal with those abuses, but there is also a large immigrant population stretching back through the generations that make a contribution to this country. And where for example in Scotland there are people who genuinely want to come and help not just themselves but your economy, well I think that a managed migration policy is sensible and we have got no reason to dispute that, and as I say the Scottish Executive have put forward what I think are quite imaginative proposals to deal with it.

Question

Inaudible.

Prime Minister

Well you can do that in conjunction with the Home Office.

Question

In the wake of the anti-terror arrests this week, a number of Muslim community leaders are blaming radical preachers in some mosques. How concerned are you about this and what is the government going to do about it?

Prime Minister

I am concerned about it, I think everyone is concerned about it. The good news is that so are senior Muslim leaders concerned about it. And we have to challenge these people and we have to take on their ideology, their rhetoric, their extremism, their fanaticism and we have to defeat it, and there is going to be a limit however to what a political leader in my position can do in respect of that. It also has to be led from within the Muslim community itself, and it has to be led also by moderate Islamic clerics who are prepared to put the true and majority view of the religion of Islam, which is one of peaceful co-existence with other religions.

Question

On the execution of Sheikh Yassin, is it about time to portray Israel as a terrorist state?

Prime Minister

No, is my answer to that. No. And whatever criticisms we have, I think it is important, for the reasons I gave earlier, to recognise what Israel itself is subject to.

Question

You mentioned earlier there might be a need to adjust terrorism laws further and you made reference to ID cards. Can you tell us more about that? And I thought the Cabinet had decided to defer ID cards for a few years.

Prime Minister

There are certain issues that are going to come up in the near future about terrorism laws and what we need to do in respect of that, and the … will publish proposals on it. But we need to make sure that in the light of fresh information and operations such as the one that we have just seen that we are keeping our law up to date with the reality on the ground. The second point in relation to ID cards is that I think there is no longer a civil liberties objection to that in the vast majority of quarters. There is a series of logistical questions, of practical questions, those need to be resolved, but that in my judgment now, the logistics is the only time delay in it, otherwise I think it needs to move forward.

Question

My newspaper first raised the issue of Romania and Bulgaria nearly a month ago as part of a wider story from Steve Moxon, the Sheffield immigration officer, and we were told then that there was no problem, and I just wonder why alarm bells didn’t start ringing then, why the investigation into that particular issue wasn’t started then, and also whether the Sunday Times is owed an apology for being misled by the Home Office then?

Prime Minister

I think that there is no doubt at all that there has been an abuse of the system and we have got to get to the bottom of that, and we will. As I say, the issue is whether that was, as has been alleged, done deliberately, in other words people were deliberately allowing in fraudulent claims or not. The allegations that have been made however, what has just happened recently, is a different aspect of the same dimension, which is the accession agreement countries, and I think it is best to wait until Ken Sutton reports on that, although I think it will come to a very specific issue, that is my judgment, about what is the legal entitlement of people from accession countries to come in here and whether there was a misunderstanding as to what that legal entitlement was.

Question

Isn’t that the point, that without a leak this would have gone on. What people believe is that without a leak the government would have carried on just as it was, it attacked the people that did the leaking, and that the public would never have known anything about any of this. Isn’t that the central problem?

Prime Minister

I don’t know that it is because I think to be fair there had already been a visit, I think in early March, over to Romania and Bulgaria by officials who were concerned about the information that was coming up to them. Now as I say, prior to all the information coming out, I am not going to sit here and either defend the situation or to engage in premature criticism. It is pretty obvious to me something was seriously wrong here. The question is was that based, as I say, on a misunderstanding of what the legal entitlement was, or was it based on a deliberate fraud within the Immigration Department. Now if that were the case obviously it would be extremely serious.

Question

… were suspended, the people who wrote the stories were attacked, the politicians who raised it were accused of playing the race card.

Prime Minister

No, people were not attacked for raising the issue, right, and any disciplinary action has not been taken, it is very important you make this clear, has not been taken by government Ministers, that is taken by line managers within the Civil Service. But people were not attacked for raising this issue, indeed as a result of raising this issue they actually went and investigated it.

Question

Your brother in Labour in Australia, Mr Mark Layton, the Opposition Leader, has said that if he wins the election this year he will withdraw all Australian troops from Iraq. To what extent do you think that would further undermine and unravel the coalition, and bearing in mind what happened in Spain, is it likely to heighten or lower the chances of terrorism?

Prime Minister

I don’t think I will get involved in your politics if you don’t mind, except to say obviously our own position on our troops in Iraq is that they should remain. I think despite the difficulties there it is vital for the security and stability of the world that we make Iraq better, and if we make it better we make it a stable and a prosperous and indeed a democratic country. That is probably as big a blow to the type of extremism and fanaticism that we have been talking about as anything else, because after all the whole case against us is that we went there to seize the oil, to subjugate the country. If we turn the country round, and that is what our troops are trying to do, that makes a big difference. But what Australia does is a matter for the Australian government and the Australian people, it is not a matter for me.

Question

Just picking up on that subject you were talking about there, I assume you have seen the unedited pictures taken by Iraqi film crews in Fallujah yesterday. Did what you see change your view about the relationship between coalition forces there and the Iraqi people themselves?

Prime Minister

I haven’t seen those pictures.

Question

They are horrific.

Prime Minister

I am sure they are horrific, what happened there was horrific, but let’s just be quite sure about this, the vast majority of Iraqi people are not wanting that to happen to coalition troops. Now there will be people within Iraq, extremists, terrorists, former sympathisers with Saddam, who will be wanting to kill as many innocent people as possible. We have seen that over the past few weeks, the fact that we see graphic pictures doesn’t mean to say they haven’t been trying to do it before, they have, and sometimes they have succeeded.

Question

… looked much wider and more publicly involved.

Prime Minister

You have got to make a judgment about that, but my judgment is that actually what the vast majority of people in Iraq want is the country on its feet, stable, prosperous and democratic. They do not want a gang of people who head up a lynch mob in charge of their country. You know the reason why this is so important in Iraq is because this is a country where that type of thing used to be done by the state, where the people for years had absolutely no freedom whatever, where the whole country as you can see, you have these what I regard as slightly odd reports when people come back and they say well I have been to Iraq and there is no proper infrastructure and the place is absolutely hopelessly run down and all the rest of it, as if this had happened in the last year. The place was a failed state, ruled by a brutal ruthless dictator who killed literally thousands of his own people every year. Now some of those people who want to stop us making Iraq what the majority of Iraqis want are going to carry on doing these things. Our response to that should not be to lose heart, or to walk away from it, it should be to redouble our efforts and make sure we succeed, because if we do succeed that is the blow to the extremists. If we fail, which is what they want, then what a huge boost that would be to this type of fundamentalism and terrorism we have been talking about.

Question

I am one of those people, I just came back 36 hours ago, and I was there during the war as well. I won’t comment on the state of the infrastructure, but after a year and with less than 100 days before we transfer sovereignty back to the Iraqi people in the hope that they will choose democracy and the rule of law, the rule of law as you and I would define it simply doesn’t exist in the country. And while it is possible to agree that Iraq should be put on the course of democracy, what mistakes in the last year, how is it that 12 months and with less than 100 days to go, we are in this security situation where people don’t trust the coalition to protect them and they don’t know who is actually going to be in charge.

Prime Minister

You are in a situation, aren’t you, where as a result of what has happened over many, many years, you are having to rebuild an Iraqi police force, an Iraqi civil defence force, you are having to start, actually I was about to say start from scratch, you are not, you are starting further back from that, you are starting back from a situation in which the police force was literally an arm of terror against the Iraqi people, you are starting from a situation in which 60% of the population were dependent on a food aid programme, administered by the government, where they didn’t get their food unless they supported the government, you are talking about a situation where in places like Basra, literally for 30 – 40 years nothing has been done with the infrastructure and where it was only because we were policing the northern part with our planes and with our troops that the Kurds were able to establish anything at all. Now that is going to take time to turn round.

Question

… then why turn over sovereignty on June 30? Isn’t that more to do with the Presidential campaign in the US and the timetable of the Bush administration? Why not extend the period or create some situation, bringing the UN in possibly, to sustain a greater international presence because at present it does seem to me that the security situation is very, very difficult and the people with guns and the willingness to use them, as we saw yesterday in Fallujah, as I saw Sunday in Mosel, are going to create havoc on July 1.

Prime Minister

Well they are going to do their best to create havoc and we are going to do our best to stop them. But let’s be very clear about this, the reason why we are handing over sovereignty, the coalition forces will still be there under a security agreement, the UN is involved, the UN Representative Brahimi has been intimately involved in this whole political process. The reason why we are transferring sovereignty is because the Iraqi people want that. They want more and more to be in charge of their own situation. But it is not surprising that you get this type of lawlessness, because that is what has happened for decades in Iraq, and to turn that around is difficult, but the Iraqi people are the ones who said we want as soon as possible formal sovereignty to reside within a body that is Iraqi. And whatever the difficulties, the best thing is to talk to people on the Governing Council and ordinary people there who will say whatever the difficulties we still want to make progress, and they know it is hard, of course it is going to be hard, but progress can be made.

Question

Now that your relationship with Colonel Gaddafi is a week old, can you tell us what you intend to do to resolve the unanswered questions on the Lockerbie disaster, and can you tell us if David Blunkett offered his resignation at any point this week?

Prime Minister

No, is the answer to the latter point. In respect of the first point, in respect of Lockerbie obviously it is important we continue in dialogue with the relatives, which we will do, and I myself will meet representatives of them again within the next few weeks. We just need to keep closely in touch with them about it.

Question

Did I understand you correctly that you knew about Bob Ainsworth’s letters before Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, and if so why didn’t you take that opportunity to set the record straight?

Prime Minister

Because the issue is not simply the correspondence that Bob Ainsworth had with Bev Hughes, but the answers that she gave on the Monday. And as I said yesterday, the inquiry, Ken Sutton’s inquiry, would be able to look at everything, including Ministerial involvement. And I hope that it is accepted by people, as I said earlier, that it was Bev’s own decision to come to me, I didn’t ask to see her, she came to me, and I think that is to her credit.

Question

I am going to ask you a question about the resumption of the nuclear fuel cycle, the Works, in Esfahan in Iran. The Iranians are adamant, the Islamic regime is adamant that it is not going against the agreement that it reached with the EU troika, and that it is its right to have its own access to its own nuclear fuel because it doesn’t want to be dependent on the whims of any outside power. And number two is regarding the human rights situation in Iran, since the elections the human rights situation has deteriorated. Now is it true that in pursuit of the nuclear agreements … that the human rights situation has been sidelined and totally disregarded from the package?

Prime Minister

No, the human rights issues are important and we continue to pursue them. But on the first point, this is in the hands of the IAEA and what we have to make sure is that Iran obeys completely and absolutely the stipulations laid down by that body. They are charged with making sure that any potential nuclear weapons programme of Iran is shut down and not able to take place, and that is for them to resolve and we will give them every support in doing so and we will maintain the pressure on Iran to make sure that that happens.

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