Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Rendition, Inter-Faith Meeting, Education, Reshuffle and Afghanistan.
Rendition
Asked if the Government had any reaction to the recent report on rendition by the Council of Europe, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that he had nothing to say since there were no new facts in the report to respond to. Asked if the UK would be cooperating with the Council of Europe’s investigation as Mr Dick Marty MP of Switzerland had asked, the PMOS said that we had already gone further than that.
Jack Straw had published the facts as we knew them. Put to him that there were well documented cases of rendition that had gone through Europe, the PMOS said that we had dealt with the facts with respect to our own jurisdiction, other countries would deal with the facts in theirs. Asked if we had ever explained why we had, in the past, turned down two requests for rendition, the PMOS said no and added that it was not normal practice to comment on such matters.
Inter-Faith Meeting
Asked what the Prime Minister might be saying in his speech this evening, the PMOS said that he could not give too much detail as the launch was being primarily driven by Lambeth Palace and had been set up as a result of work initiated by Lambeth Palace. The Prime Minister was going along to support it. The Prime Minister would however take the opportunity to express his sadness at the death of Dr. Badawi and pay tribute to him. Dr. Badawi had been a scholar with an international reputation and a pioneer in the area of inter-faith relations.
Education
Asked if the Prime minister welcomed the remarks by the Chancellor on Education this morning, the PMOS said of course the Prime Minister welcomed the Chancellor’s remarks. Asked about local authority control over Trust schools, the PMOS said that he would not get into the detail of the Bill before it was published. However the Prime Minister had set out his approach yesterday, which was that we should build on what the experience of the past few years had shown to work.
As Andrew Adonis had re-iterated in the Guardian today, City Academies, in the most deprived areas in the country, had shown a 73% improvement in results. That suggested that the City Academy approach of giving schools more flexibility, did work.
Asked how relations between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister were given that the Prime minister had openly mocked him at his press conference yesterday, the PMOS said that their relationship was as good as ever. The Prime Minister had not mocked the Deputy Prime Minister. The Prime Minister had been taking on a particular line of argument rather than making any remarks about individuals.
Reshuffle
Asked if the Prime Minister was expecting a busy afternoon tomorrow, the PMOS said that he had a sense of where this question might be heading. To put it another way, so far he had had a relatively quiet week and nothing as yet indicated that it would not continue to be. But he could be wrong.
Afghanistan
Asked if we were expecting an announcement concerning the deployment of troops in Afghanistan, the PMOS said that he was not expecting anything this week.
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