Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman on: Israel/Palestine, Iraq, Education Bill and Asylum Seekers
Israel/Palestine
Put to him that President Mahmoud Abbas had accused the US and the UK of being complicit in an Israeli raid on a Jericho prison which US and UK troops were supposed to be guarding, the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesman (PMOS) said that since the details were still coming in, the FCO would respond to this later.
Iraq
Asked about a leaked memo by John Sawers describing the administration of Iraq immediately after the war as an “unbelievable mess” and if the Prime Minister agreed with that description, the PMOS said that first of all he didn’t comment on leaked memos. As some people will recall the Prime Minister had said quite openly that mistakes had been made in the early days in terms of issues such as Baathification so that was nothing new. But he had nothing to say about an alleged leaked memo.
Education Bill
Asked if the Prime Minister believed he had enough Labour MPs to vote through the education Bill, the PMOS said that he would not give a running commentary on how people might vote. In response to encouragement by journalists, the PMOS said that although it was a tempting offer on a quiet day like today, he didn’t think it would be wise. As he had said yesterday, the Government took nothing for granted on this issue and would continue to argue the case right up until the vote. In terms of clarifications, they had been set out by Ruth Kelly and remained the basis on which the House would vote.
Asked to confirm that the Prime Minister wanted to see the first Trust schools up and running by the end of 2006, the PMOS said that we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves, we should get through the vote first and then see where we were. Questioned as to whether the Prime Minister maintained the position that it would be bizarre for him to resign if the Bill only passed because of Conservative votes, the PMOS said that again we should wait for the vote. He had no doubt that questions about the results, no matter what the outcome, would come up the following day.
Asylum Seeker
Asked for a reaction to the Select Committee report on Asylum, the PMOS said that the Prime Minister’s response had already been released to the news wires. However to summarise, we recognised that there were improvements still being made. First and foremost people should note that this was a report about the situation 2 years ago, not about now. A lot had happened in those 2 years. There was not one single factor, but you could look at how we had reduced the “pull factor”; how we were dealing with 80% of applications within 2 months; the introduction of bio-metrics; how we had tightened the system with measures mentioned in the report such as electronic tagging; the development of memoranda of understanding with other countries, then you could see that each step along the way the system was being tightened and the number of applications last year was fewer then at any year since 1994.
That should give some idea of the progress which was being made. Put to him that some of that reduction could be accounted for by Accession countries joining the EU, the PMOS said that whilst Eastern Europe was a factor, but the economy needed people from Eastern Europe in any case, so that was another part of it. Equally if you took issues such as Zimbabwe they had increased problems as well.
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