Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Public Services/PM’s Speech, Higher Education White Paper/University Funding, Iraq and Zimbabwe.
Public Services/PM’s Speech
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that the Prime Minister would be making a speech in London tomorrow on public services. Asked for further detail, the PMOS said that he would take the opportunity to defend vigorously the Government’s Higher Education White Paper. He would also talk about how reform was the route to social justice, the need to go further faster and the need for more reform, not less. In answer to further questions, the PMOS said that as the speech was to a Party audience, it was being handled by the Labour Party.
Higher Education White Paper/University Funding
Asked why the Prime Minister felt the need to ‘defend vigorously’ the Higher Education White Paper, the PMOS said that anyone who had read the White Paper today would have to agree that it was a bold piece of policy making. These were not easy issues and there were no simple solutions. It could be argued that it would be easier, politically, to keep the status quo. However, the Prime Minister and other Ministers believed that to do so would be wrong. You only had to look at the figures: student/staff ratios had fallen from 10:1 in 1983 to 18:1 in 2000; funding per student had halved over the last 25 years, having fallen by 36% between 1988 and 1996; there was an investment backlog of nearly £8bn in teaching facilities; academic salaries had risen by 20% in real terms since 1980 while graduate average earnings had risen by 60%. It was therefore clear that if we were going to see the universities that we wanted in the future, we would have to take bold decisions. As the White Paper set out, upfront tuition fees had been abolished entirely and around a third of students (including mature students) would be better off because of the introduction of grants on top of the existing availability of loans. The vast majority of costs would continue to be borne by the state and we would continue to be at the forefront of support for students - 36% compared to 8% in France and 19% in Sweden. Students would pay this money back interest-free once they left university and got a job, which was a pretty significant step to take given graduates earned considerably more than non-graduates.
Asked how these measures squared with the Prime Minister’s desire for a meritocracy, the PMOS said that the White Paper set out provisions for a pay back system, which meant that the amount students paid back would be linked to their earnings. The introduction of an ‘access regulator’ would lead to more opportunities being available to people from poorer backgrounds. These measures were not about social engineering. The point was that many schools currently had no contact with some universities. That was why the proposals outlined in today’s White Paper would put in place structures which could spread best practice, based for example on the work of the Sutton Trust. The Trust ran summer schools which invited children from schools which traditionally had no links to certain universities in order to give them a taste of what those institutions were like in the hope they might apply. No one was talking about setting quotas. We were, however, serious about expanding access.
Asked to explain how the Government was expecting to gain support for a White Paper which would have a serious impact on parents and their children by saddling them with heavy debts, the PMOS repeated that the Government was abolishing upfront fees. As we had made clear, the figure of £21,000 which had been widely reported was at the very top end of the spectrum. The average debt would be much less than that - around £14-16,000. Questioned as to how the Government was expecting 21 year-old graduates to earn enough money to pay back their debts, the PMOS pointed out that most people would accept that the earning power of those who attended university was significantly higher than those who did not. The payback of fees would be linked to earnings and would be interest-free. People who went to university were investing in their own future. Pressed as to why anyone would support a measure which would increase loans to students, the PMOS said no one was saying that there was one easy solution. Either we had a system which was funded entirely by the taxpayer, or we had a system where people would pay back a proportion of the cost of their own education. It was simple for people to say that the Government should keep things as they were - and, clearly, keeping the status quo would be a politically softer and easier option. However, Governments were elected to make difficult decisions for the long term benefit of the country. The Prime Minister remained firmly of the view that the issue of university funding and access was something the Government couldn’t ignore. Put to him that university under-funding over the last twenty years was not the fault of the public but the fault of successive Governments, the PMOS pointed out that the current spending review provided for a 6% increase in funding. Moreover, the majority of the cost of going to university would continue to be borne by the state. However, it was important for people to recognise that the extra investment needed for our universities would not come from ‘free money’. The money had to come from somewhere - and that meant taking difficult judgements, as Governments were elected to do. The Prime Minister believed that we would not have the skills base that we needed in the future unless we invested in our universities. That was precisely what we were doing.
Questioned as to why the Government had decided against introducing a graduate tax, the PMOS said that we had had to take a judgement as to whether graduates should make payments through a pooling system which would mean that they would all repay broadly the same amount linked to earnings, or whether they should pay back part of the cost of their own educational degree course. In our view, the latter was fairer. Questioned further, the PMOS said that there had been a discussion within Government about all the options available, as you would expect. As Charles Clarke had underlined at the weekend, this was a Government which was passionate about education. It was therefore not unreasonable for different ideas to be floated and discussed as part of the policy making process.
Put to him that the providers of certain courses, such as fine art and ancient Chinese, would lose out because students would choose to do degrees in subjects which would get them jobs pretty quickly in order to begin paying back the money they owed, the PMOS said that he would disagree. He believed that humanities degrees were just as valuable and relevant in today’s job market as those that were linked directly to jobs and vocations, such as law and medicine.
Put to him that in his June 2001 election manifesto the Prime Minister had underlined his opposition to the introduction of upfront tuition fees and yet here he was today supporting a policy that was very similar, the PMOS pointed out that the fees would not be introduced until after the next election. The Government had undertaken a much-needed review of higher education funding. That had meant making difficult decisions and difficult choices. The Prime Minister believed strongly that ducking those choices would do long term damage to our higher education system.
Iraq
Asked to explain why the Prime Minister was so confident about obtaining a second UN Resolution when France and Germany had stated clearly in the last couple of days that they would do all they could to scupper it, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister remained absolutely of the view that the UN process was the right way to resolve the issue of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The immense time and effort that had gone into achieving a 15-0 unanimous Resolution last autumn showed how serious we were about the process. It was up to the inspectors to report back to the Security Council, as Hans Blix would be doing on January 27. If, at a future time in a subsequent discussion, the Security Council came to the view that there had been a material breach, logic would dictate that there should be a second Resolution. Otherwise, it was being suggested that the UN should make Resolutions to set down its will and then do nothing if that will was breached. That simply didn’t make sense since it would be an indication to Saddam and other dictators that the UN’s dictat was meaningless.
Asked repeatedly if the Prime Minister was concerned about the stance adopted Germany and France in the last forty-eight hours, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister remained of the view that a second Resolution was desirable and preferable. He remained confident that there would be one should we reach that stage. A process was ongoing. The next stage was a progress report to the Security Council by Hans Blix. That would happen next Monday. As the Prime Minister had said, it was important for the weapons inspectors to be given the opportunity to carry out their job. That was what they were doing. As we had underlined many times, there was a qualitative difference between this Resolution and previous ones in terms of the obligation imposed on Saddam to co-operate actively with UNMOVIC. Hans Blix and Mohammed ElBaradei had both flagged up their concerns about a lack of co-operation on the part of the Iraqi regime. We would wait and see what they said on Monday. Asked if he was implying that the trigger for military action would be the fact that Saddam had not co-operated rather than the discovery of WMD, the PMOS said that it was important for people to be patient and wait for the weapons inspectors’ report on the 27th in the first instance. He was simply making the point that it was not enough for Iraq to open the gates of factories. If the inspectors were asking questions about what had happened to quantities of VX nerve gas, for example, which UNSCOM could not account for when they had had to leave Iraq in 1998, it was up to the Iraqis to answer those questions to the satisfaction of the inspectors and prove that they had disarmed and destroyed it or else allow it to be destroyed.
Asked for a reaction to Dr ElBaradei’s comment that he would make a request to the Security Council on 27 January for more time for the weapons inspectors to do their work, the PMOS repeated that it was important to wait for the report. He understood the reasons why these questions were being asked. However, it was difficult to jump ahead when this chapter was still being written. He emphasised again that 27 January was not a deadline, although it was clearly an important day.
Asked who would decide whether there had been a material breach, the PMOS said that under the terms of Resolution 1441, it was for the inspectors to report back to the Security Council and then for a discussion to take place in order to reach decisions and judgements. Questioned as to whether the US and UK reserved the right to ignore the majority of the P5 in terms of a second Resolution and take action unilaterally, the PMOS referred journalists to the Prime Minister’s session with the Liaison Committee yesterday in which he had said that a second Resolution was desirable and preferable and that the UN should not put itself into a situation in which it would prevent itself from taking action if a breach occurred. Pressed as to who would determine whether a breach had occurred if Russia, China and France were all of the view that it hadn’t - but that the US and UK believed that it had, the PMOS said that it wasn’t our policy to answer hypothetical questions. Hans Blix had yet to report to the Security Council and it would not be helpful for anyone to pre-judge what he might say on Monday or at any future date. Put to him that journalists and the people of this country had a right to know, the PMOS said that he was being asked to comment on a hypothetical report to the Security Council and a hypothetical response by some its members to such a report. He hoped journalists would understand that whilst it might helpful in their story terms, it wouldn’t serve any other purpose to go down this route.
Zimbabwe
Asked if the UK had the power of veto to prevent Robert Mugabe attending the Franco-African summit in Paris next month or whether we would be putting pressure on France not to invite him, the PMOS said that on 18 February 2002, all EU members states had agreed unanimously to the targeted sanctions, including the travel ban covering the arms embargo and assets freeze, on 20 senior members of the Zimbabwean Government, including Mr Mugabe himself. In September 2002, that had been extended to 79 people. At next Monday’s meeting of EU Foreign Ministers at the General Affairs Council in Brussels, the whole issue of the sanctions rollover, including the travel ban, would be discussed. This was because the existing ban and sanctions regime was due to expire in the middle of February as the measures had only been put in place to last a year. Under the procedures set out in respect of the travel ban, the French would have to make a formal proposal - either by writing to member states and giving them 48 hours to reply, or by raising it at Ministerial level, which would appear to be what was going to happen on Monday in respect of this summit. Clearly this was a live issue and would be discussed. We had yet to receive a formal proposal from the French Administration and he had no intention of pre-empting the British Government’s position in the absence of that.
Put to him that his reluctance to pre-empt what France might do was an odd state of affairs in the light of our comments regarding the England cricket team playing in Zimbabwe, the PMOS said that our view on Mr Mugabe was well known. This was a live issue and would be discussed on Monday. People had to be patient and await the outcome of the meeting. Our position would become clear in due course. Put to him that the FCO had appeared to indicate that they would allow Mr Mugabe to attend the summit, the PMOS repeated that no formal proposal had yet been received from the French Administration, although the issue of Zimbabwe was likely to have come up in contacts between the British Government and the French Administration. Asked if he was implying that we had received an informal proposal from the French, the PMOS said that he wasn’t saying anything more than the fact that the issue was likely to have been raised during contacts between the British and French Governments.
Questioned as to whether unanimity would be needed in order to prevent Mr Mugabe attending the summit, the PMOS said that as he understood it, there would have to be unanimous agreement to waive the ban. There would also have to be unanimity on sanctions. Questioned as to whether the veto of one EU member state would be enough to stop Mr Mugabe, the PMOS said inasmuch as it had to be agreed unanimously that the ban should be waived. Asked whether Mr Mugabe would be allowed to travel if unanimity could not be reached but the sanctions against him had expired, the PMOS said that it was not helpful to start hypothesising about what might or might not happen. The GAERC was meeting on Monday to discuss the issue and we would await its outcome. Questioned as to whether such a scenario was possible, the PMOS said theoretically. Asked repeatedly if we were proposing that the ban should be extended for a further year, the PMOS said that as the Prime Minister had said today, we had made it clear that we supported the sanctions which had been put in place against Zimbabwe. The British Government’s view of Mr Mugabe and his regime was well known. This was a live issue which would be discussed on Monday. Questioned as to whether a decision would be taken on Monday to extend the sanctions, the PMOS said that since the sanctions were due to expire in February, a decision had to be taken on Monday about whether to roll them over. The Prime Minister had signalled in the House of Commons his desire for them to continue.
Questioned repeatedly as to why we were quite happy to express our view about the England Cricket team playing in Zimbabwe but were reluctant to say anything about Mr Mugabe’s invitation to the Franco-African summit, the PMOS said that he understood why these questions were being put to him. However, we had not yet received a formal proposal from the French Government. The issue would be discussed on Monday and the position would become clear in due course. Asked whether Clare Short’s words represented the Government’s position, the PMOS said that Ms Short was a senior member of the Government. Our views on the Mugabe regime were well known. In answer to further questions, the PMOS said he had nothing further to add.
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