Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: Gibraltar, Euro and Stoiber.
Gibraltar
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that the Foreign Secretary had released a joint Anglo/Spanish statement following his meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister, Josep Pique. It said: "We met today to continue our discussions on Gibraltar in a friendly and constructive atmosphere. We have made good progress since July 2001 and remain committed to reaching agreement by the summer. At the same time, we both acknowledge that there are real difficulties which remain to be resolved. We’ve agreed to convene a further formal Brussels Process meeting in late June or early July".
Asked whether the Process could be dropped in the summer if the difficulties were too tough to resolve or whether it would continue until a resolution was found, the PMOS said that as the Prime Minister had pointed out at PMQs this afternoon, the Brussels Process had been started seventeen years ago under the previous Administration. We were approaching the issue from the standpoint that we wanted to deliver benefits and a better future to the people of Gibraltar.
We had reached a point in the negotiations where we were having to deal with some of the more difficult issues. We wanted a permanent resolution to the issue, but we were not in the business of concluding a deal which we did not believe served either our interests or the interests of the people of Gibraltar.
Put to him that the current talks were following a classic pattern set down over the years, namely that they started, they begin to make a little progress, they floundered, they stopped, they were picked up again a few years later by another Government, the PMOS said that we were in the middle of ongoing discussions. As the statement today acknowledged, there were difficulties, but there would be another formal meeting in late June or July.
Both the British and Spanish Governments had set the summer as a target because they believed that having some sort of timescale would help to focus minds and energy. He urged journalists to be realistic. We were talking about constitutional issues and issues of sovereignty that went back many many years. No one approached them with the idea that they would be easy to resolve.
Asked whether the Prime Minister had any plans to visit Gibraltar at any stage during the Process, the PMOS said not as far as he was aware. However, the Foreign Secretary had visited very recently.
Euro
Asked to explain what the Prime Minister had meant by saying in his Newsnight interview that there wouldn’t be any gap between making a decision to recommend entry and the referendum timeframe, the PMOS drew journalists’ attention to the Prime Minister’s Statement on the National Changeover Plan which he had made in the House on 23 February 1999, in which he had set out an indicative timetable from a decision to a referendum to the next stage after that.
Asked if the position had changed in any way since February 1999, the PMOS said no. In answer to further questions about the timetable, the PMOS observed that the point of the Prime Minister doing interviews and making Statements was so that journalists should use his words, rather than those of his spokesman.
Asked what the Statement in February 1999 had said, the PMOS said he was happy to read it out provided journalists did not interpret the fact he was doing so as some great coded signal, given the words were three years old. The Prime Minister had stated in February 1999, "Overall, we believed it should be possible to move: in four months - from a Government decision to a referendum; in twenty four to thirty months - from a positive referendum result to the introduction of notes and coins…." The policy had not changed since then. An assessment would be made in the first two years of this Parliament. The Changeover Plan set out an indicative timetable showing the sort of timescale we would be looking at were a positive assessment to be made against the economic conditions.
Asked how the Prime Minister would feel about being the person responsible for ‘killing the pound’ in light of his answer to Jeremy Paxman, the PMOS said he would encourage journalists to use the words of the Prime Minister when he had answered this question twice in his interview. The Prime Minister was the Prime Minister whereas he, the spokesman, was just a ‘functionary’.
Stoiber
Asked why the Prime Minister was meeting Edmund Stoiber tomorrow afternoon, the PMOS said that given the forthcoming Election in Germany, it made sense for the Prime Minister to meet the German Opposition candidate. It was not unusual for such meetings to happen from time to time.
Asked what the Prime Minister and Mr Stoiber would discuss, the PMOS said that they would talk about Anglo-German and European issues, as you would expect. He suggested it would be better if we briefed on what they had discussed afterwards rather than what we expected them to discuss. Questioned as to whether Mr Stoiber would be meeting any other Ministers, the PMOS said that he would meet the Chancellor and Jack Straw.
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