Downing Street Says » 2005

» Monday, July 4, 2005

Voting Reform

Asked in the context of the speech Geoff Hoon would make to the IPPR later today what the Prime Minister's views on compulsory voting were, the PMS said that Geoff Hoon was starting a debate. This was his personal view and did not signal that the government was about to introduce a change to its policy. Clearly we wanted to see as many people as possible taking part in the electoral process and Geoof Hoon setting out his view in the hope that this would start a debate amongst others. Asked about the review the Government had promised on this issue, the PMS said that the review wouldn't look at compulsory voting but the electoral process. Asked what the Prime Minister's personal view was, the PMS said that she hadn't asked him.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (11)

G8

Asked about German aid commitments and their lack of enthusiasm the PMS said that at this stage it would not be helpful for her to start commenting on reports that were coming out of other countries or out of meetings she had not attended. We were looking towards the G8 with an ambitious agenda and the important thing was to see what happened there. We only had 2 or 3 days left before the meetings started. We should concentrate on what happened there.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Olympics

Asked where the Prime Minister would be when the result of the IOC vote was announced, the PMS said that the plan was that he would be in Gleneagles. Asked if he was confident, the PMS said that the Prime Minister was very up-beat. As we had said last week, we were going flat out to get the bid. He was having meetings today and tomorrow with IOC members.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Zimbabwe

Asked why we were deporting people to Zimbabwe, the PMS said that the Prime Minister had set out the position last week. We had had a policy of not returning people to Zimbabwe which ended last November. Since then every case would be considered individually on their merits and the policy hadn't changed in terms of how we were looking at deportations to Zimbabwe. People were exercising their rights under the system and that system would continue.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Home Secretary

Asked about reports that the Prime Minister did not have full confidence in the Home Secretary, the PMOS said that the Home Secretary had the Prime Minister's full confidence and support and to suggest anything else was absurd.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

» Friday, July 1, 2005

Olympic Singapore

The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said a few words about the UK bid for the 2012 Olympics. He said that we had to recognise that this had been a highly competitive bid. On the other hand it had been a great honour to compete and Seb Coe had led a very very good bid. That had been recognised by the evaluation report on the 6 June. We still believed there was all to play for, we were going flat out at Singapore for the final pitch at putting our case and that was what we would do. In Singapore there were two different elements. There was what you could set up in advance and what you could do, to use a technical term, on the hoof. In terms of what we had set up in advance the Prime Minister would, over the course of Monday and Tuesday be meeting between 20 and 30 IOC members for one-to-one meetings. He would also, as would Mrs. Blair, be meeting as many others as possible, at various receptions and so on. In terms of the case we would be putting, we would obviously be pointing to the very strong technical nature of our bid, the legacy that it would leave to sport here, stressing the multi-cultural nature of London and the welcome that athletes would receive in London, but also that this bid was not just restricted to London. Finally we would point to the fact that there was real strong substantial support, as Tessa Jowell said at Cabinet yesterday, for the bid. 80% of people in London and 75% in the UK as a whole, 2.5 million people had gone to the bother of registering their support at the 2012 website and text message service. We were going flat out and by the end of the week we might well be flat out, with exhaustion, but we were going for it.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Climate Change

Asked where we were on climate change, the PMOS said that we were where we thought we would be. Negotiations were still going on, they were serious negotiations. Precisely because they were serious negotiations we would not give a running commentary despite stories which attempted to say where we were, as he had anticipated there would be. It was far better to simply put our heads down and recognise that what mattered was what we emerged with next Friday.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (2)

Live 8

Asked if there would be any Prime Ministerial participation in Live 8, the PMOS said that clearly the Prime Minister supported Live 8. The physical manifestation of that was his appearance on MTV yesterday alongside Bob Geldof.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comment (1)

EU

Asked for a reaction to Mr Borroso's comparison of the EU to a boxing championship, the PMOS said that all he could talk about was our approach. Our approach to the summit had been to set out what we believed was not just our national interest, in terms of the rebate, but also Europe's interest in terms of getting a budget which more accurately reflected the needs of Europe as it was today rather than as it was 40 years ago. The reception that the Prime Minister's speech received throughout Europe indicated that there was a consensus in Europe about the need for e proper debate on those issues. We were not claiming that everyone agreed with our position on the rebate. What people did recognise was that we were right to say that there needed to be a debate and that the Prime Minister's speech was an important contribution to starting that debate. What we wanted to do in the Presidency was take that debate forwards and that we would do. He did not see anything in President Borroso's comments that argued against that, indeed quite the reverse. Asked what the President's intentions might have been in making such comments, the PMOS said that Mr Borroso would speak for himself. However it was clear that he was a strong supporter of reform. He had to reflect the reviews and he did reflect the views of Europe as a whole. Equally as he had clearly stated there was a need for Europe to reform to meet the objective that Europe had set itself of becoming a truly competitive economy in the era of globalisation. We supported those views.

Briefing took place at 11:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

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» Monday, July 4, 2005

Voting Reform

G8

Olympics

Zimbabwe

Home Secretary

» Friday, July 1, 2005

Olympic Singapore

Climate Change

Live 8

EU

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