Press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Spokesman on: World Cup, Franco-British Summit and Terror Legislation
World Cup
Asked if the Prime Minister would watch the England match against Paraguay tomorrow, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman (PMS) said yes he would. Asked if he had a big screen TV to watch it on the PMS said that she didn’t know.
Franco-British Summit
The PMS gave journalists a run-through of the Franco-British summit. She said that the British delegation included the Prime Minister, Margaret Beckett, Des Brown, David Miliband, Jim Knight and Malcolm Wicks. The summit would form part of the discussions in the run up to the European Council next week in Brussels which would be taking forward the Hampton Court agenda. Various issues would be discussed today, in particular European energy policy, focussing on security and diversity of supply. The European Commission had agreed in March that there was a need for an energy policy for Europe and this would also be discussed at next week’s Council meeting. In Paris today they would also talk about defence cooperation, the world trade round, Africa, and climate change following from the Gleneagles dialogue running up to the Mexico summit in October.
Asked if the energy policy was being discussed in the light of our increasing dependence on Russia gas and oil, the PMS said that the Prime Minister had set out the stark facts for the UK on energy in his recent CBI speech. He had said that be 2025 if current policy remained the same there would be a dramatic gap in our targets to reduce CO2 emissions and we would become heavily dependent on gas. Equally, with a switch to becoming 80-90% dependent on gas imports, whereas currently we are 80-90% self-reliant on gas supply.
Terror Legislation
Asked if the Prime Minister was concerned by the fact that because of delays in passing the Terrorism Act of 2006, those arrested at Forest Gate would have to be released next Friday, whereas the Terrorism Act’s provision for 28 days would have meant they could have been held a lot longer, the PMS said that it had been at Parliament’s request that a code of practice should be agreed before the new powers were implemented. Codes of practice had to go out for consultation. After the Act had received royal ascent, the consultation document had been published in order to meet parliament’s request. We expected a code of practice to be laid before parliament very shortly. Put to her that the code of practice could have been consulted on a lot earlier, the PMS pointed out that the Act had been passed on the 30th March and the consultation started on the 2nd May which lasted 3 weeks. That was much shorter than the normal 12 weeks. So there had already been a significant reduction in the normal timescale. However in terms of the detail of the process journalists should speak to the Home Office.
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