Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: War on Terror/Home Office Document, Fire Dispute and Gibraltar.
War on Terror/Home Office Document
In the light of reports in today’s papers, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that the Home Office had been quite open in admitting that there had been an administrative slip-up last night (other people had used a different, more direct, form of words). However, it was important for people not to be diverted by what had happened and to concentrate on the substance of the document. There was a serious and on-going threat from Al Qaida, as had been confirmed by intelligence reports from various parts of the world. That threat applied just as much to this country as it did to others - and, as we had learned on September 11, this was a qualitatively different kind of threat from previous terrorist threats. There was a general level of threat which we all had to be aware of. The key message of the document was that we all had to remain vigilant. It was a message which the Prime Minister would reiterate in his Lord Mayor’s Banquet speech on Monday night, when he would also talk about other foreign policy issues such as Iraq. As the document underlined, there was a balance to be struck. Terrorists wanted to damage countries and economies such as ours, and they could do it by one of two means: either by actual attacks, or through fear of attacks. What they wanted to do was to paralyse society. What we had to do was recognise that that was their goal and stop them, both by thwarting their attacks through our vigilance - as governments, businesses and individuals - and also by ensuring that normal life continued. We had to show that we were not being scared into paralysing society through fear of terror as much as the terrorist acts themselves.
Asked why we had considered the document to be too damaging to publish when the Home Office had admitted that it was going to be published as part of a PQ anyway, the PMOS said that it hadn’t been recalled because it was damaging. Rather, it was because we hadn’t wanted people’s attention to focus on one particular kind of threat. We wanted people to focus on the fact that the threat came in a number of different shapes and forms and that, consequently, we had to be vigilant across the range. Objective observers of the two documents would recognise that the second one contained a starker, more direct message. We wanted to warn the public to be vigilant in general. Pressed as to why the document had been withdrawn when it was going to be published in any event, the PMOS said that judgements had to be made in terms of the message that we wanted to get across. We had wanted to get up a more general message, which was why the original document had been redrafted.
Asked if he would accept that the first document had been written by someone who had been a little ‘over-enthusiastic’, the PMOS said no. As journalists no doubt understood well, official documents - like press reports - had to go through a drafting process in order to produce a sharper, cleaner text. As was often the case, first drafts tended to contain more detail than final drafts. The document in question had been refined in order to project a simple and direct message. We had not wanted the specific examples of terror contained in the original draft to be included in the final document because we did not want them to become the story.
Asked which was the real reason why the document had been withdrawn - was it because we had not wanted the examples of specific threats to distract from the real message or was it because the document was going to be published in a PQ, the PMOS said there was no doubt that the initial document had been a draft. He was also uncertain as to whether the Home Office had been planning to publish the final text as a PQ and advised journalists to check with the Department themselves.
Asked if the examples were accurate or misleading, the PMOS said that the threat came in a number of different forms. We did not want to focus on specific threats because it wasn’t our policy to do so. We were trying to get across the fact that, as September 11 showed, there was a new kind of terrorist threat, qualitatively different to the threat we had faced before. Our message was to advise the public to be more vigilant. Questioned further, the PMOS reiterated that he had no intention of getting into a discussion about one type of threat versus another because that would take away from the general message that we wanted to get across. Asked to explain what the public was supposed to be vigilant about, the PMOS urged journalists to read the document for themselves. It set out the issue very clearly. We wanted the public to remain vigilant against the threat of terrorism, such as reporting people acting suspiciously or who seemed to be up to no good.
Asked who had taken the decision to publish the document, the PMOS said that that this had been done in the usual way through the normal process of consultation. He was not going to get into what was clearly becoming a process story. Asked if the Home Office was launching an internal inquiry into what had happened, the PMOS said it was much more important to focus on the substance of the document rather than processology. The document had been put out last night and conveyed a general message.
Fire Dispute
Asked when Sir George Bain’s interim report might be published, the PMOS said that Professor Bain had indicated that he would try to bring forward elements of his Review as soon as he could. In the end, the timing was a matter for him.
Gibraltar
Asked if the Prime Minister would rule out the prospect of joint sovereignty with Spain in light of the result of yesterday’s referendum in Gibraltar, the PMOS said that Denis MacShane had re-stated the Government’s position on this matter in his Today Programme interview this morning. We had stated from the outset that no deal would be imposed on the people of Gibraltar without their support expressed through a referendum. That remained the bottom line. In saying that, however, there were real issues which had to be discussed both with the people of Gibraltar and with the Spanish authorities. Whether those discussions would take place next week, next month or next year, it was clear that those issues were not going to change. It was important to recognise that the question of sovereignty had been raised in 1984. It was not something which had suddenly come up now. The key questions were how to ensure a more prosperous future for the people of Gibraltar, how to resolve the real practical issues and how to work with the Spanish Government in order to do so. Questioned about the significance of the referendum result, the PMOS said that the result did not tell us anything we didn’t already know.
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