Press briefing from the Prime Ministers Official Spokesman on: Education Speech, Bill Clinton-Iraq and Whitehall Expenditure
Education Speech
Asked what the Prime Minister hoped to achieve today and what his message was to members of his party who still remained unconvinced, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that what the Prime Minister had set out to achieve today was first of all to recognise the improvements there had been in the education system in the last few years. He had set those out in detail in the speech. Secondly, he had wanted to recognise two things. One that even with those improvements there were still many children who left school without 5 good GCSEs and that there were still too many children in deprived areas that were not getting as good an education as they should. Two, in the globalised world that we lived in we needed to raise the skill and educational base of this country.
This was why, as he said himself, he was restless not just to keep the improvements that there had been on track but to take the educational achievement to a different level for this country. This was not just for the good schools but for every single pupil. Those not yet convinced should look at the White Paper in detail and deal with the reality of what the White Paper said and not the myths that people had heard about it. The reality for instance on admissions was that there was no change in policy. If anything there was a strengthening of the adjudicator’s powers in the sense that the adjudicators ruling would now last for three years rather than one.
Put to him that some labour MPs were saying that the admissions policy should stay with the local authorities as such, and was there any possibility that before this legislation was published that would be incorporated, the PMOS said that the person who ruled on admissions policy was the schools adjudicator. That was the system we had at the minute. That ruling only lasted for one year, under the White Paper it would last for three years. New schools could not change their admissions policy for three years. So the safeguards were well and truly there. Asked then if there would be no change from the White Paper to the legislation on this crucial issue, the PMOS said the proposals were there and the whole purpose of the parliamentary process was to have a debate, but we should have that debate on what the White Paper actually said.
Put to him that the White Paper said that admissions policy would be given to the schools, but MPs were saying it should stay with the local authority, the PMOS said that the person that oversaw how schools operated their admissions policy on a set system would still be the school’s adjudicator, as at the moment. The schools adjudicator power would be strengthened not weakened.
Bill Clinton-Iraq
Asked if the Prime Minister agreed with Bill Clinton on Iraq, the PMOS said the important point to recognise was that in the constitutional referendum 10 million Iraqis voted, in the January election 8 million people voted. We now had more parties than ever registered to vote in the December election. This now included Sunni parties. None of that could have happened if Saddam had still been in power. Asked if he was saying Clinton was wrong, the PMOS said that rather than commenting on other people’s speeches we should deal with the facts. They were that, painfully admittedly, slowly but surely a democracy was being established in Iraq. The Prime Minister himself had said there was aspects of what happened that could have been done differently, such as de-baathification. That did not take away from the real progress that had been made.
Whitehall Expenditure
Asked if there had been a £1bn overspend by Whitehall departments and if that was true what did it say about the Government’s economic stewardship, the PMOS said without knowing where that figure had come from keeping departmental spending under tight rains remained a big priority for this Government. It would continue to do so as outlined in the spending review.
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