Briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Libya, Katharine Gun and Asylum/Tanzania.
Libya
The Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) advised journalists that Jack Straw had spoken to the Libyan Foreign Minister, Mohammed Abdulrahman Shalgam, earlier today. Mr Shalgam had reiterated the assurance he had given yesterday that Libya stood by the commitments it had given on both Lockerbie and the investigation into the death of Wpc Yvonne Fletcher.
Katharine Gun
Asked why the Government had dropped its prosecution of Katharine Gun, the so-called ‘GCHQ whistleblower’, the PMOS said that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) had put out a statement on this matter. He had nothing to add to it. In answer to a multitude of other questions, the PMOS said that his answer remained the same.
Asked if Ministers had been aware of a request from the US Administration asking GCHQ to monitor the activities of foreign governments at the UN in the run-up to the Iraq conflict, the PMOS repeated that he had nothing to say either about the case or any intelligence issues. Put to him that all these were surely legitimate questions to ask, the PMOS explained that he was unable to go further than the CPS statement because just as they themselves had said that it would not be appropriate for them to elucidate on the reasons, it was, similarly, inappropriate for him to comment. He pointed out that it had been the practice of successive Governments not to comment on intelligence issues.
Asked why the Attorney General’s advice on the legality of the Iraq conflict had not been published, the PMOS said it was a convention, stretching back over many administrations, that the Attorney General’s advice was not published. He reminded journalists, however, that, as a result of the legitimate interest about the legal basis for the conflict, the Government had, uniquely so he thought, set out a summary of the advice provided by the Attorney General at the time.
Asked if the ISC might want to examine why the prosecution of Ms Gun had failed and include the matter in their annual report, the PMOS said that what the ISC chose to consider was entirely a matter for them. Asked if any other body might want to investigate the matter, the PMOS said that the ISC was the Committee which reported to Parliament, through the Prime Minister, on the intelligence services.
Asked if Downing Street was concerned that people who leaked state secrets no longer needed to fear prosecution, the PMOS said that the case against Ms Gun had been dropped. As the CPS had said, they no longer believed there was sufficient evidence for a realistic prospect of conviction.
Asylum/Tanzania
Asked where Tanzania fitted into the UK’s policy on asylum, the PMOS said that this was a pilot scheme which aimed to explore with the Tanzanian Government ways in which we could help them process asylum applications which arose there. This was not about sending back people who had claimed asylum in the UK to have their claims processed in Tanzania. It was about helping Tanzania deal with the influx of people from some of the surrounding African countries by helping with asylum applications and protecting genuine refugees so that these people would be less likely to make secondary movements to the UK. In the same way, we were also exploring ways to help the Tanzanian Government deal with the issue of accepting there failed asylum seekers from here, i.e. Tanzanians or Tanzanians claiming to be Somalis. As the Prime Minister had said in PMQs today, this was just one initiative in dealing with the problem of asylum. It was not a ‘fantasy island’ - nor, he repeated, was it about moving claims from here to there.
Asked to comment on reports that the Home Office had been negotiating a £4m aid deal with Tanzania to take failed Somali asylum seekers, the PMOS said that as the Prime Minister had underlined in the House today, this was not about some crude cash-for-people policy. We had always used Government money to tackle migration and refugee issues through funding UNHCR camps, for example. The Tanzania pilot scheme was simply an extension of that policy. He told journalists to check with the Home Office on funding issues. Asked which other countries were being considered for similar schemes, the PMOS said he did not think it would be particularly helpful at this stage to name them. That said, if the Tanzania pilot was successful and we were able to expand it, the country/ies we were looking at could be in the same area. Asked how we would measure the pilot’s success, the PMOS said that we would be able to see whether the flow of ’secondary’ asylum seekers from Tanzania to the UK would slow down and whether the situation was being managed more effectively by the Tanzanian authorities who obviously had to deal with a difficult situation. The PMOS underlined, as the Prime Minister had done to the House, that this was not ‘the solution’ to the asylum problem, nor a substitute for the other measures we were taking.
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