Downing Street Says » 2006

» Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Education

Asked if the Prime minister welcomed the remarks by the Chancellor on Education this morning, the PMOS said of course the Prime Minister welcomed the Chancellor's remarks. Asked about local authority control over Trust schools, the PMOS said that he would not get into the detail of the Bill before it was published. However the Prime Minister had set out his approach yesterday, which was that we should build on what the experience of the past few years had shown to work.

Briefing took place at 16:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Education White Paper

Asked if the intervention of Gordon Brown meant that it was less of a "high wire act" for the Prime Minister on the Education White Paper, the PMOS said that of course, the Prime Minister welcomed the remarks from the Chancellor. Equally, however, he recognised that there were still others who had different views, and therefore, we would have to keep trying to convince those people. The Prime Minister had set out the reasons yesterday why he believed that we needed to apply the lessons of what had worked in schools in recent years. If people looked at the letter today from Andrew Adonis in "The Guardian", where he said there had been a 73% improvement in the percentage of pupils getting five good GCSE results in the fourteen Academy schools, it underlined what had worked, as some of those schools had been set up in some of the most deprived areas in the country.

Briefing took place at 16:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (2)

Reshuffle

Asked if the Prime Minister was expecting a busy afternoon tomorrow, the PMOS said that he had a sense of where this question might be heading. To put it another way, so far he had had a relatively quiet week and nothing as yet indicated that it would not continue to be. But he could be wrong.

Briefing took place at 16:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

Afghanistan

Asked if we were expecting an announcement concerning the deployment of troops in Afghanistan, the PMOS said that he was not expecting anything this week.

Briefing took place at 16:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (0)

» Monday, January 23, 2006

Schools White Paper

Put to him that the Prime Minister had been bullish on the white paper and had seemed relaxed about winning with the support of the Conservatives, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said the Prime Minister was quite happy to put forward the positive arguments for the white paper. The fundamental core of that argument was that we had seen what had already worked to improve schools and what had resulted in substantially better figure figures in the last few years, even in the most deprived areas. We needed to learn from that experience and what the Prime Minister wanted was for people to address the substance of that issue. There was a period now to do this. There had been this argument about selection but it was not something which would be changed by this white paper. Therefore the Prime Minister hoped that people would address the fundamental issue, which was how do you learn from the experience of schools that had shown what worked.

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

Welfare Reform

Asked if the welfare reform green paper's priority was in the same order as the schools white paper, the PMOS said it was a separate issue that was distinct for its own reasons, which were to encourage people back to work. 90% of those surveyed on IB said they wanted to get back to work. Therefore you had to address how best to do that. The green paper would set that case out. Put to him that there was a suggestion that it would also include an announcement on the CSA, the PMOS said that was not something he was aware of. Asked if there was any indication yet of the timescale for developing the green paper into a white one, the PMOS said he would check but did not think we had given an indication yet. Asked if it was correct that the Government thought that changing the name of IB would help the process of reform and change attitudes, the PMOS said that John Hutton had indicated yesterday that there would be a new name.

Briefing took place at 15:00 | Read whole briefing | Comment (1)

British Nuclear Fuels

Asked if the Government had a view on the sale of Westinghouse, the PMOS said hat it was largely a commercial matter and as such it was best dealt with by the DTI. Asked if he had read that on Teletext, the PMOS said that he was amused to see that Sky had translated Teletext into TV Text.

Briefing took place at 15:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (4)

» Friday, January 20, 2006

Ruth Kelly Statement

Asked if it could still be said that 88 was a small number of sex offenders to be teaching children, the Prime Minister's Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that original questions were about the number of cases in which Ministers had made decisions.

Briefing took place at 16:00 | Read whole briefing | Comments (4)

Rendition flights

Asked what was the Prime Minister's response to the leaked document regarding rendition flights, the PMOS said he had dealt with that question, and there was nothing more to say about it. As he had said earlier, people were getting much more excited about the fact of the leak, rather than about the content of it. If people read the document, it said nothing new.

Briefing took place at 16:00 | Read whole briefing | Comment (1)

Drugs classification

Put that Charles Clarke wanted to look again at all the classifications of all drugs, and did that open the way to making Ecstasy in the same league as heroin, for example, the PMOS replied that what Charles Clarke was acknowledging was that it was not driven by a particular desire to explore a particular outcome. Rather, a desire to have as rational a system as possible, and that system had to reflect the relative harm to individuals and to society of particular drugs. It was sensible to look at that, but the PMOS said he was not going to pre-empt the outcome of the consultation process.

Briefing took place at 16:00 | Read whole briefing | Comment (1)

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» Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Education

Education White Paper

Reshuffle

Afghanistan

» Monday, January 23, 2006

Schools White Paper

Welfare Reform

British Nuclear Fuels

» Friday, January 20, 2006

Ruth Kelly Statement

Rendition flights

Drugs classification

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