Downing Street Says » Tessa Jowell

Asked for a response to recent revelations about Tessa Jowell, the PMOS said that he was not sure that there had been any "revelations" about Tessa Jowell since he dealt with the issue yesterday. He had nothing to add to what he said yesterday. The main thing was to point people to Tessa Jowell’s statement on Monday.

Put to him that this seemed to set a precedent where ministers could simply plead ignorance when questioned about financial irregularities, the PMOS said that in a sense this question closely resembled a question he had answered yesterday. First of all Tessa Jowell herself had said that she should have been told and had she been told she would have taken the appropriate steps. Secondly, the suggestion that in some way this was something ministers would try and use as an excuse in the future was contradicted by the experience of the past two weeks. Clearly no minister would want to go through that kind of experience. Tessa Jowell had stated her position because that was the truth of the matter.

Asked if it wasn’t the minister’s responsibility to find the information out, the PMOS said that the position was as it was set out in the ministerial code. Gus O’Donnell had tried to improve the system so as to help ministers work with it.

Asked if there was any sign of departments appointing an advisor to help ministers implement and interpret the code, and put to him that Government had accepted that recommendation and had so far done nothing about it, the PMOS said that permanent secretaries were there to help as advisors to ministers, but at the end of the day it was the ministers’ responsibility and the Prime Minister’s judgement as to whether ministers had lived up their responsibilities. Any suggestion that this should be handed over to an independent figure should take account of the fact that when you did have an independent figure, as we had in London, that was not without controversy itself.

Put to him that there was a separate recommendation for an advisor, not for an independent inquiry panel, the PMOS said that he would have a look and see what stage we were at on that.

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» Wednesday, March 8, 2006

Tessa Jowell

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