Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Iran, Huning, Margaret Hodge and BBC.
Iran
Asked about the Foreign Secretary’s visit to Iran the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) told journalists that as Jack Straw said this morning with regard to concerns over the Iranian nuclear programme, we and the rest of the international community were proposing that Iran signed up to an additional protocol, which provided for more intrusive inspections by the IAEA. Obviously Jack Straw would be underlining that to the Iranian Government during his visit.
Hunting
Asked how the Prime Minister would be voting in tonight’s hunting Bill the PMOS said that the first thing to say was that it was a free vote and that had always been the case. Journalists could expect the Prime Minister to be voting for the Government Bill. Regarding amendments, Peter Hain had said that if the amendment went through, the Bill would have to be re-committied. The PMOS made it clear that that was not a threat, just a statement of facts - the Bill would require some additional tidying up in Committee. In terms of the Bill as framed, it outlawed cruelty effectively and was easily enforceable. It made clear that only exempt or registered hunting of wild mammals would be legal. It would end all cruelty associated with hunting with dogs, deer hunting, hare hunting, fox cubbing, hare coursing, using dogs underground etc. Obviously there were the two tests of principle, the tests of utility and of cruelty. In answer to further questions about a possible Parliamentary timetable and the Parliament Act the PMOS said that we had not the votes yet and it made sense to wait for them.
Margaret Hodge
Asked about comments made by Margaret Hodge that morning concerning the abuse of children in care the PMOS said that it was clearly the case that when you were dealing with children in care then, as Margaret Hodge had said, they could come from backgrounds which had been problematic. What the Government was focussed on and would be dealing with in its Green paper to be published before the recess was putting in place better structures to ensure that we dealt more effectively when there were difficulties and breakdowns. Clearly with the tragic Victoria Climbie case, things had gone very seriously wrong. There was the Laming report, the Green paper and the establishment of a specific minister with responsibility for this area indicated how seriously the Government took child protection issues. Asked whether Margaret Hodge should be Minister for Children given her experience in Islington council the PMOS said that the Prime Minister has put Margaret Hodge in charge of this particular portfolio because she was a capable minister whom the Prime Minister believed would do a very good job. Asked again whether Margaret Hodge was suitable to be Minister for Children the PMOS said yes. The Prime Minister decided who he believed should be in his Government and what job they should do in it, believed that Margaret Hodge would do a very good job as Minister for Children. Asked the reasoning behind the decision and whether the prime Minister had been aware of her background when making the appointment the PMOS said that clearly the Prime Minister made judgements about the ability of the people in Government. The Prime Minister did not take the decision lightly to put an individual in a particular job. Questioned further the PMOS said that there were obviously big challenges for the Government, social services and all those involved in child protection to make the system work more effectively. The Government was absolutely committed to doing that, which was why there would be a Green paper very shortly covering child protection issues.
BBC
Asked if there were any further developments in the dispute between Downing Street and the BBC with the so called "truce" this morning, the PMOS said that essentially this was not a question of the Government declaring a truce or backing down one inch. It seemed pointless to us to have further exchanges with people who were prepared to defend a story they couldn’t substantiate and which we knew to be untrue. We were now into Month Two of this particular story. Millions of words and thousands of hours of broadcast time later and still the BBC could not or did not want to answer the very simple question - the only question that mattered in all of this - were the allegations that they made true or false? The BBC might wish to pretend otherwise but they had not answered the question. Saying that "We stand by our story in as much as we accurately reported what we were told" did not answer that question. Saying "That the Government has confirmed when this was included in the September dossier" did not answer that question. Moreover trying to move the goal posts and shift the argument completely and turn this into a debate about the whereabouts of WMD - which was, granted a real issue - did not answer the question. And this had not been the issue that was subject of the correspondence between the Government and the BBC. So it was very simple. Were the allegations made by the BBC that we "sexed up" the dossier and knowingly included intelligence which we knew to be false and which the intelligence community knew to be so, True or False? The PMOS said he felt the BBC silence on that particular point - the one that mattered - was deafening.
Asked what other evidence Alastair Campbell had given to the Foreign Affairs Select Committee since his appearance the PMOS said Mr. Campbell had sent a fairly lengthy letter on Friday which answered the questions put to him via the clerk of the committee and did so with the authority and knowledge of the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee. It was up to the committee to divulge any evidence in their possession should they wish to do so. In answer to further Questions the PMOS said that Mr. Sambrook had said yesterday in his defence that the BBC had never accused the Prime Minister of lying. It had been repeated again as fact by the BBC this morning in one of their reports, with the addition that this was how the Government was trying to skew this whole argument. The PMOS said he thought that if you were accused of putting something before Parliament which you knew to be untrue, it was an accusation of lying. You could only imagine were a politician to adopt that particular defence how people would respond to it. Asked for some chapter and verse on when the BBC had accused the Prime Minister of knowingly putting something false before Parliament the PMOS gave two recent examples. John Humphreys on the Today Programme, on the 29th of May had said "Mr. Campbell will answer questions about allegations made on this programme by Andrew Gilligan, that the case for going to war was exaggerated, specifically that one of the dossiers presented by Mr. Blair had been sexed up to make it appear that Saddam was a greater threat to the West then the intelligence justified." Mr. Humphreys had also said, "Andrew Gilligan has found evidence that the Government’s dossier on Iraq produced last September was cobbled together at the last minute, with some unconfirmed material that had not been approved by the security services." Put to him that the first line said ‘allegations’ by the BBC the PMOS said he failed to see the point being made. He went through the quotes again. It was pretty clear what was being said about whom. The PMOS added that if Mr. Sambrook wished to mount the BBC’s defence on the way other the BBC’s story was subsequently picked up by other news organisations, as he had in his letter on Friday, it was the case that a very large number of news organisations and media around the world had certainly got the impression that that particular accusation was being made. The PMOS repeated that if a politician was to mount a similar defence given all that the BBC had said, people would be pretty critical.
Put to him that the Prime Minister’s silence on this issue had been equally deafening, the PMOS said that would be to ignore the comments the Prime Minister had made on this particular story in Poland in May, in Evian at the G8 and in the House of Commons. It was simply wrong to say that the Prime Minister had not mounted a vigorous case for the defence within 24 hours of these totally false allegations being broadcast. Questioned further the PMOS said that we denied the story to the Today Programme within an hour, a denial endorsed by the head of the JIC. If people did not want to take those denials at face value then fine. Perhaps there wasn’t much he could do about that. But people could not say we hadn’t made them in Kuwait, Iraq, Poland, Russia, France and London. The PMOS also said that the idea that the correspondent concerned had checked this story with the Ministry of Defence the night before as had been claimed was simply not the case. Geoff Hoon had made this crystal clear in a statement released at the weekend. Asked if the Government regretted relying on one source for its claim of 45 minutes in the dossier given that we were disputing the BBC’s single source the PMOS said that this was to completely misunderstand the nature of intelligence work. It was the Joint Intelligence Committee who made these judgements and as Alastair Campbell had perfectly and reasonably said if it was good enough for them, it was good enough for us. The JIC looked at the complete intelligence jigsaw. Some things they would judge are credible, some not. It was perfectly fair for the JIC to do that. He was not an expert in this field, quite the opposite, but he assumed it was quite possible for the JIC to make a judgement on the veracity of information from a single source depending on who it was. Equally they might get an identical piece of information from 40 different sources and judge it unreliable and part of a process of disinformation. In this instance a BBC correspondent broadcast these allegations without checking their veracity with anyone in Government prior to broadcast, and they were totally untrue. It was not unreasonable for the Government to point that out within an hour and to be slightly irritated - to put it mildly- when our denials were ignored. Asked what the timing of the ISC report was the PMOS said it was essentially a matter for them. Yes it reported to us but it was up to them how long they took. In answer to questions the PMOS said we would be happy for it to be published as soon as possible but they had to do the work. Journalists could rest assured that once we received it, it would not be sat on.
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