Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: Iraq and Fire Dispute.
Iraq
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that the Prime Minister had done an interview with Radio Monte Carlo this morning. This was the most popular radio station broadcasting into Iraq and we knew that Saddam Hussein listened to it. The Prime Minister had taken the opportunity to speak directly to Saddam, to the Iraqi people and to the wider Arab world. He had stressed that this whole situation was not about oil or religion, but about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). Saddam’s duty was to co-operate with the UN. The choice was his. He could disarm peacefully or by force. The Prime Minister had also noted the suffering of the Iraqi people. He said that their talents and skills, as well as the country’s natural resources, meant that it should be a prosperous country and that standards of living would be far higher if Saddam was not spending money on WMD and Presidential Palaces. The Prime Minister had also recalled the excellent relations we used to have with Iraq. He had noted, for example, that the British Council used to run many exchange programmes, and stressed that we wanted to return to that good bilateral relationship. The Prime Minister had also taken the opportunity to set out the UK’s position on the situation in the Middle East and had underlined our determination to work for a solution where Israel could exist in security alongside a viable Palestinian state.
The PMOS made two further points about Iraq. Regarding public opinion in the country and the vote in the Iraqi Parliament, it was interesting to note that the rejection of the UN Resolution had received no coverage there. Moreover, we also now knew that Saddam’s widely trumpeted claims of a 100% turnout in the recent Presidential elections were false and that only one in three Iraqis had voted. Turnout had been low even in the Sunni heartland. Asked from where we had received this information, the PMOS said that we had our sources.
In terms of the letter from the Iraqi authorities in which they had indicated their acceptance of Resolution 1441, the PMOS said it was important to be clear that acceptance was one thing, but compliance was another. We would have to wait and see how things panned out over the coming days and weeks. The letter claimed that Iraq had no WMD. We knew that that was not correct in light of the evidence from our dossier, for example. The letter had also claimed that weapons inspections were illegal. In fact, their legal basis was a series of UN Security Council Resolutions, as everyone knew well.
Fire Dispute
The PMOS advised journalists that Nick Raynsford had chaired a COBRA meeting this morning. Those involved included Ministers from the DTI, Treasury, DfES, Department of Health, MoD, Home Office, Department for Transport. Officials from the Regions had also been patched into the room.
The PMOS said that the Deputy Prime Minister would be making a Statement in the Commons later this morning in which he would bring the House up to date on the negotiations which had broken down between the employers and the FBU. He would brief on what the offer would mean as regards pay for fire-fighters. Obviously he was continuing to encourage the FBU to sit down and discuss these matters. He would also talk about the situation overnight in terms of the emergency service which had been provided. There had been four fire-related deaths during the night. It went without saying that everyone had huge sympathy for the relatives of those who had died. Our strategy had been to keep people talking. As a result, the twelve days of strikes which had been announced previously had been brought down to two. Mr Prescott had been in regular contact with the FBU, even up until Cabinet this morning, to try to reach an agreement on major incidents in order to get an undertaking to offer assistance. He would update the House on the result of those conversations, but people shouldn’t hold their breath. He would also use his Statement to condemn the hoax callers who appeared to have proliferated overnight. He would conclude by saying that the strike was wrong and unjustified. The Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and Chancellor all believed that granting pay claims, such as the one that the FBU was asking for, with the knock-on effect into other public services, would simply eat into the extra money that we had set aside for improving our public services. The Prime Minister believed John Prescott was handling the situation in exactly the right way. Obviously, the fact that the FBU had taken the decision they had was a great case for regret and was, as he had said many times previously, totally unnecessary.
Asked to clarify the Defence Secretary’s apparent agreement in a radio interview today that the Government would allow the military to be trained up on red fire engines after all, the PMOS said that difficult judgements had had to be made in the contingency planning for this current strike. The Deputy Prime Minister had been putting all his effort into avoiding a fire-fighters’ strike by keeping the relevant parties talking. He had done that with some success. The question throughout was whether to take red fire engines out of stations at precisely the time that negotiations were taking place, thereby provoking the very situation we were trying to avoid. Self-evidently, a lot of thought had gone into the contingency planning process. We readily acknowledged, as we had from the outset, that the service being provided by the military was, by definition, second-best to the usual fire service. For this forty-eight hour strike, a judgement had been taken that we were better off training 19,000 troops to use the Green Goddesses rather than the red fire engines which would have had to have been taken out of service while that was happening, which, in turn, would have meant lessening the cover available on non-strike days. The Deputy Prime Minister would want to underline at the end of his Statement to the House today that this strike should not have happened and that it was unfortunate it had. We did not want an eight-day strike. Ultimately the decision for that was the FBU’s. However, to go from a two-day strike to eight-day strikes was a totally different ball game. Clearly, some of the issues which we had said we were keeping under constant review would obviously have to be looked at again. Questioned as to whether the Cabinet believed that the use of red fire engines by the military was a distinct possibility, the PMOS said that there hadn’t been a discussion today about specifics. There had, however, been a recognition around the table that a two-day strike was one thing, but an eight-day strike was another. The Government was fully cognisant of the fact that once a line had been crossed - as it had been with the current two-day strike - an eight-day strike became a stronger possibility. Consequently, all options would be up for review.
Asked to clarify his point about an eight-day strike being a completely different ball game, the PMOS said that public safety was obviously the Government’s locus in a dispute like the one today. Geoff Hoon had explained this morning why we had taken a judgement to use the Green Goddesses. Among other things, training up military personnel on the red fire engines would most likely have provoked a strike, in addition to the fact that we would have had to take tenders out of service in order to train the army. If, after this two-day strike, the FBU decided that it was going to have an eight-day strike, then it was clear that the Government had a responsibility to look again at all the options. The PMOS said that he didn’t want to pre-judge what that might mean. However, it was clear that such action would take us into different territory and it might be that our response would have to be adjusted accordingly.
Asked if he was implying that the Government’s priority had now shifted from keeping people talking to preparing for an eight-day strike, the PMOS said no. It was certainly not too late for the FBU to sit down and discuss pay and modernisation with the employers. John Prescott would tell the House that Andy Gilchrist had been saying on the airwaves over the last 24 hours that he had his own plans for modernisation. Presumably that indicated he wanted to talk. Of course we would have to take a judgement at the appropriate time as to what needed to be done, recognising at the same time that timescales were tight. It would not be wrong to think that there were people who were turning their minds to the other options that might be available.
Asked for a reaction to a comment made by an FBU official in an interview this morning in which he had said that the FBU had offered to train the military to use red fire engines but that the Deputy Prime Minister had refused to accept the offer, the PMOS observed that it was a rather bizarre state of affairs for the FBU to be talking about how they could train army personnel to use the very fire engines which they were about to abandon and go on strike. It was important to remember the starting point to this whole situation. Responsibility for this strike lay with the FBU who had rejected an 11% pay offer, who had essentially said their working practices should not be modernised and that they should be the only public service where long standing working practices should remain fossilised. We had been as reasonable as we could be throughout and would continue to encourage dialogue. However, as the Deputy Prime Minister would say in the House, if we had an eight-day strike, we would have to look carefully again at some of the other options open to us.
Asked if Downing Street believed that the four fire-related deaths overnight were strike-related, the PMOS said the honest answer was that we didn’t know. That said, it did underline what was at stake. This was not a risk-free strike. As Geoff Hoon had said this morning, it could be that the four deaths had been tragically unavoidable - maybe we would never know. However, we had to be clear that strike action was not a risk-free business. Asked how the number of deaths last night compared to the average number when the fire service was not on strike, the PMOS said that as he understood it, around eleven members of the public on average died each week from fire-related incidents. However, in order to make a proper comparison, you would have to take an average over a period of time rather than use the figures from just one evening.
Questioned as to whether the Prime Minister was still intending to travel to Poland tomorrow despite a letter from the Opposition Leader urging him not to go, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister had a long-standing engagement in Poland where he was also due to have a bilateral with Polish Prime Minister Miller. Enlargement was an important issue for the Government. He believed that the Deputy Prime Minister was handling the fire situation well. He would be out of the country for less than ten hours. Modern communication being what it was, should he be required to make any decisions or discuss anything with anyone, that could easily be arranged.
Asked if he would agree with the suggestion that the Opposition Leader appeared to be using scare-mongering tactics in relation to the fire strike even though the Prime Minister had said that it would be wrong for people to use scare-mongering to disrupt daily life in relation to the terrorist threat, the PMOS said that if the Leader of the Opposition wanted to write to the Prime Minister, then he was perfectly entitled to do so. The Prime Minister would respond to him, as you would expect. No doubt the Opposition would make whatever statement they wanted in the Commons today. Our focus at the moment was on dealing with the issues we had to deal with, which in this instance was providing emergency cover which we recognised was second best.
Asked if Downing Street regarded the actions of the Tube workers who had walked out this morning as ‘Scargillite’, the PMOS said that as he understood it, LU’s management was talking today to the Health and Safety representatives of the trade unions to try to resolve the situation. We believed it was best for those talks to take place without any intervention from us which could otherwise escalate matters. What had happened was unacceptable. That said, it was clear the opinion that counted most was that of the Health and Safety Executive. As he understood it, the advice they had issued on 22 October on the fire strike and the Tube made clear that, "The total absence of the fire brigade would only have an extremely small effect on the risk to staff and passengers from fires at stations, in tunnels or on trains". However, this was somewhat different at 20 deep-shaft stations, which was why they had indicated that they should be closed. The HMRI was content with that approach. Questioned as to why we were taking such a benign approach towards what was clearly secondary action instead of condemning the conduct of ASLEF and RMT members who had brought whole sections of the Tube to a standstill and delayed thousands of commuters this morning, the PMOS acknowledged that that was a perfectly valid question. However, we believed that it was better to wait for the outcome of the talks that were taking place today. Asked whether the Government’s position on secondary action remained the same, the PMOS said yes.
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