Downing Street Says » 2005

» Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Licensing Laws

Asked what the Government's message was to people taking advantage of the new licensing laws coming into force tomorrow, the PMOS said that as we had said all along this change in the law was designed to do two things. Firstly it allowed those who were responsible to enjoy a drink when they wanted and secondly to allow the police, local authorities and local neighbourhoods to take action against problem premises. The Prime Minister hoped that both things would happen.

Briefing took place at 15:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Angela Merkel Meeting-Europe

Asked what the expectations of her meeting with the Prime Minister were, and also, was there an expectation that she would be more conducive to business than her predecessor, the PMOS replied that obviously, this would be a chance for the Prime Minister and Angela Merkel to go over the ground. That included the WTO round, budget negotiations, and the general state of affairs in Europe, and all of those matters would probably be part of that discussion. The Prime Minister looked forward to doing business. The PMOS also said it was generally not a good idea to give other political leaders marks out of ten, either when they were in office, or out of office! It was not conducive to diplomatic negotiations or relations.

Briefing took place at 15:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Northern Ireland

Asked what the Prime Minister would be saying to the RUC widows he was meeting today concerning the 'on the run' legislation, the PMOS said that Sylvia Hernon asked them to meet today and the Prime Minister was happy to accede to that request. They had said that they were primarily concerned about 'on the run' legislation. The Prime Minister acknowledged that there was nothing he could say which would lessen the pain of those who were affected by this legislation and who lost relatives killed by the IRA. In the same way that there was nothing that we could say to lessen the pain of those who had relatives who were killed by prisoners released early.

Briefing took place at 15:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Flu vaccinations

Asked to clarify the figures regarding flu vaccinations that the figures rather than being 11 million at risk were more like 14 ½ million, the PMOS gave some statistics to journalists. Last year, 13 million flu jabs were ordered, of which 11.7 million were used, i.e. there were 1.3 million that were not used. On top of that, this year, we had ordered an additional 1 million, (a 25 per cent increase in total), because of our anticipation that there would be more take-up. Therefore, in total, we had over 14 million available. As things stood, because of the increased awareness, partly because of the fact we had one of the most successful vaccine systems in Europe, along with the media stories on bird flu, meant that we had a 2 million increase in the take-up. Clearly, therefore, the Department of Health (DH) were now looking actively at the figures, and they were trying to put together a way where those practices which were having problems could get additional jabs from reserves that had not run out, but also from practices where there was a surplus. The PMOS said we were also trying to get from manufacturers an additional 200,000 jabs by December.

Briefing took place at 15:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Angela Merkel

Asked if we expected more progress with the EU budget from Angela Merkel then from her predecessor, the PMOS said that it didn't do much for public diplomacy to mark foreign leaders out of ten either when they were in office or when they had left office. Angela Merkel would come with her views, the Prime Minister had his views, and the whole point of tomorrow was to provide an opportunity to share them.

Briefing took place at 15:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

» Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Asylum

Asked if the Prime Minister was going to apologise for the Government's failure to meet the targets on asylum removals, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) replied that we believed that we would meet the targets in the coming months. What it underlined was the difficulty of what it was we were trying to do, but we believed we would meet it. It was unfortunate that we did not meet it as per the original deadline, but given how far back we started, it still showed a considerable degree of progress.

Briefing took place at 14:00 | Read whole briefing | Comment (1)

Flu Vaccinations

Asked if Government departments had offered their staff flu vaccinations, the PMOS said it was important to get the issue in context. 14 million doses of influenza vaccine were ordered this year, and we reckoned that there were 11 million people in the "at risk" group. As with many large organisations, government departments could and did offer priority staff flu vaccines, but that was the same as with any big organisation. What that did not do, however, was impact on the GPs' flu vaccine stocks, because they were all ordered at the same time. As the DH had made clear, it had released an extra 400,000 vaccine stocks because of the increase of demand and they had also ordered an additional 200,000 which would arrive in time for January. The PMOS told journalists what seems to have happened was that the publicity in terms of avian flu had increased the number of people who were not in the "at risk" category had applied for a flu vaccine, even though we had stressed that we did not believe that the normal flu vaccine would be effective against avian flu.

Briefing took place at 14:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Power Stations

Put forward that there was a breaking story that some power stations were reducing their output because of price increases, and was there anything the PMOS could add, the PMOS said: no. In terms of the gas situation, the vast majority of industry remained unaffected by it.

Briefing took place at 14:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Licensing Law

Asked if the Prime Minister shared the same view as Paul Goggins regarding the number of incidents reported by police would increase as a result of the introduction of the Licensing Law, the PMOS replied that he presumed what Mr. Goggins was reflecting what Tessa Jowell had said. She said that inevitably, if the police focused on a particular area in policing, then inevitably, the number of arrests in the area would increase because police resources were concentrated on that area.

Briefing took place at 14:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

» Monday, November 21, 2005

Nuclear Energy

Asked for the Government's position on nuclear energy production, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said it was well known that the Government was looking at all the options, it was also well known that we would be putting in place a process to do so and the Prime Minister would be making an announcement to that affect shortly. That consideration would have to take into account all the circumstances including the need to ensure that our energy supply was secure at a time when the very nature of energy supply was changing, both here and in Europe. In addition there was the impact of climate change to consider. Those were the circumstances that the review of where we were would have to take into account.

Briefing took place at 13:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Original PMOS briefings are © Crown Copyright. Crown Copyright material is reproduced with the permission of the Controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scotland. Click-use licence number C02W0004089. Material is reproduced from the original 10 Downing Street source, but may not be the most up-to-date version of the briefings, which might be revised at the original source. Users should check with the original source in case of revisions. Comments are © Copyright contributors. Everything else is © Copyright Downing Street Says.

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» Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Licensing Laws

Angela Merkel Meeting-Europe

Northern Ireland

Flu vaccinations

Angela Merkel

» Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Asylum

Flu Vaccinations

Power Stations

Licensing Law

» Monday, November 21, 2005

Nuclear Energy

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