Downing Street Says » 2005

» Monday, November 21, 2005

EU Budget

Asked if the Prime Minister had any plans to use diplomacy in the run up to the EU budget talks in December, and also was there any response to people who had said he was "leaving it far too late" to negotiate the budget, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that in terms of the latter point, Hampton Court was about setting the whole context, and we believed it successfully did that. We also had to take into account that Angela Merkel had just become Chancellor in Germany. What we had was a well thought through approach and process.

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

EU

Asked if our EU partners were perhaps not as optimistic as the Government about securing a budget deal by December 7th, the PMOS said that the reality was that at Hampton Court we had very successfully set out the broad context in which we believed the budget negotiations should take place. What the Foreign Secretary had announced this morning was the start of the process of turning that broad context into detail with a special meeting of foreign ministers on 7th December. He pointed out that the 7th December could not be called a deadline since there was a European Council meeting on 15th-16th December.

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

Terrorism Bill-ACPO

Asked if the Prime Minister thought the House of Lords should now accept the 28 days ruling from the House of Commons, and also were the comments about the death penalty regarding the police officer who died during a raid on Friday considered helpful, the PMOS said that given the horrific events of Friday, people were perfectly entitled to express their view. It was not one, however, that the Government agreed with. In terms of the Terror Bill, the Government's belief was that 90 days was the right solution, but the Commons had spoken. What the House of Lords would do was a matter for them.

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

Aircraft

Asked if the Prime Minister would like a Government aircraft at his disposal, the PMOS replied that the simple fact was, as we had tried to tell people, that we had not yet received Sir Peter Gershon's report, though other departments had. Therefore, it would better to wait and see what the report said. The facts were very simple: the present arrangements involved aircraft that were increasingly old and unreliable. Therefore, we had to do something about it, but it would be better to wait for Sir Peter Gershon's report.

Briefing took place at 13:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (2)

Energy-nuclear

Asked if Professor David King had accurately mirror the Prime Minister's views on the need to restrict the issue on nuclear power, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister's view was that we needed to look at all the options. The important thing was that we looked at this both in terms of the energy security of this country, and that the energy market was changing, both in Britain and in Europe as well. We also needed to look at the issue of climate change, so both were guiding principles. With regards to a forward-look, there would be announcements soon, but the PMOS did not want to pre-empt them.

Briefing took place at 13:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (4)

Councils

Asked for further clarification about a Daily Telegraph story regarding the abolition of county councils, the PMOS said: no. Ministers had taken no decisions about whether or not in some way to go for a reorganisation of the two-tier structure. We would be taking forward the vision for local government, alongside the work of Sir Michael Lyons' inquiry and in partnership with local government and key stakeholders. We also anticipated drawing the debate together over the course of the next year.

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

Statesman Award

Put to the PMOS that the Prime Minister had been named as the Statesman of the Decade by an American think-tank, and was he flattered, the PMOS replied that the Institute was entitled to make its award, and the Prime Minister would respond when he was ready.

Briefing took place at 13:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (2)

» Friday, November 18, 2005

Education Speech

Asked what the Prime Minister hoped to achieve today and what his message was to members of his party who still remained unconvinced, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that what the Prime Minister had set out to achieve today was first of all to recognise the improvements there had been in the education system in the last few years. He had set those out in detail in the speech. Secondly, he had wanted to recognise two things. One that even with those improvements there were still many children who left school without 5 good GCSEs and that there were still too many children in deprived areas that were not getting as good an education as they should. Two, in the globalised world that we lived in we needed to raise the skill and educational base of this country.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Bill Clinton-Iraq

Asked if the Prime Minister agreed with Bill Clinton on Iraq, the PMOS said the important point to recognise was that in the constitutional referendum 10 million Iraqis voted, in the January election 8 million people voted. We now had more parties than ever registered to vote in the December election. This now included Sunni parties. None of that could have happened if Saddam had still been in power. Asked if he was saying Clinton was wrong, the PMOS said that rather than commenting on other people's speeches we should deal with the facts. They were that, painfully admittedly, slowly but surely a democracy was being established in Iraq. The Prime Minister himself had said there was aspects of what happened that could have been done differently, such as de-baathification. That did not take away from the real progress that had been made.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Whitehall Expenditure

Asked if there had been a £1bn overspend by Whitehall departments and if that was true what did it say about the Government's economic stewardship, the PMOS said without knowing where that figure had come from keeping departmental spending under tight rains remained a big priority for this Government. It would continue to do so as outlined in the spending review.

Briefing took place at 8:00 | 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.

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

» Monday, November 21, 2005

EU Budget

EU

Terrorism Bill-ACPO

Aircraft

Energy-nuclear

Councils

Statesman Award

» Friday, November 18, 2005

Education Speech

Bill Clinton-Iraq

Whitehall Expenditure

Search

Supported by

Recent Briefings

Archives

Links

Syndicate (RSS/XML)

Credits

Enquiries