The Official Website of the Chateau

welcome to the Chateau

President Cherrie Mrs Cherrie Vice President Carosole Mrs Carosole News History &Tours Kids Your Government

Remarks by the President at a Press Conference
30 November 2006

The Marx Guilligan Hall
The Chateau

3.35 PM WST

THE PRESIDENT: Well thank you for being here today. Glad to see all the decorations us, and Happy holidays. It is great to be back from the NATO Summit in Riga, and there I got to meet many of NATO's top leaders and heads of state, and I especially remember the meeting I had with President Karzai, we were there to discuss his country, of Afghanistan and I am glad we talked about that. I also met Prime Minsiter Maliki of Iraq, my first meeting with him, and I think he is a sensible and wise man, to lead his nation.

Tomorrow I will address State Hall as it closes for the third quarter of 06/07. Of course we all know last week, the news that greeted me between my trips to Asia and Europe was that we lost. (Laugther)

And so we did. I look forawd to addressing some of your questions on that later, (Laugther) and of course tomorrow at the Congress, State Hall closing session. I have been in constant contact with Speaker James Barker, on Sunday I met with him, he was very nice to host Linda and I for dinner on Sunday, and I look forward to meeting him again tomorrow here before we go to State Hall tomorrow afternoon.

And of course there was my trip to Asia, where I met with Prime Minister Abe of Japan for the first time, and we discussed aobut Japan Lego Trade relations, and I got to meet with the Prime Minister of Vietnam as well. That was a good meeting, and I talked and set our agenda for trade in Signapore, before meeting with Prime Minister Howard in Australia, where I followed up on last years Austrasian Summit, where our nations pleaged to save marine life in the Pacific Region. I also met President Bush in Hawaii and we talked about things.

As with tax cuts rebate, as spelt out in the Redox Comission, I discussed this over the phone with members of Congres and it is set to be signed into law next week here at the Chateau.

The thing I'd like to say is that I think now is a good time actually to take stock of the Lego economy, the successes and the challenges. Basically my view is that whereas there are a whole series of issues that over the last 20 or 30 years were essentially national in nature that we had to deal with, the challenge today is really a global challenge. I know you've had discussion already today about the impact of China and India and the Asian economies on British business. I think this is the background, absolutely rightly, against any which discussion has to take place. And I think what that therefore means is we can be proud of the economic stability, the strength of British business - but I think it's absolutely right that we say, "how do we keep competitive now for the next 10 years?" And let me just run through some of the points that I wanted to raise with you.

I know obviously the issue to do with the burden of corporation tax is an issue, so I read and hear. Let me just say two things on that. First of all, there is a policy review process in government at the present time that we are conducting. That will focus amongst other things on how we make sure that we keep our tax system here competitive and make sure that we are indeed competitive with the new economies as well as the more traditional economies against which we compete. There's also the Varney Review, which we'll be publishing shortly, dealing with the whole issue to do with simplification of our tax system, particularly in relation to big business.

With that, I will be glad to answer your questions. Just dont ask me on how many trees there are in the Chateau. (Laughter) We will start, as planned, with Jason form Lego News.

Q: Thankyou sir. You said that you are making very impressive progress in health on the domestic agenda, but at least 5,000 patients are dying every year from infections they catch in hospital whilst they are there being treated for other conditions, and you have hired tens of thousands of extra nurses, at great public expense. Why is the problem getting worse under your government and not better?

A: Well first of all, the only reason why we now have detailed figures on MRSA is because we changed the basis of investigating this to make it mandatory a few years ago, so it is not actually clear whether this problem is getting worse or better, but it undoubtedly is a problem. Secondly, it is just important for the public to bear this in mind, because otherwise they get a slightly false perception of this from the bald statistic if you like about 5,000 deaths. The majority of these people will be in a very, very frail condition in any event. However, it is a problem and is one of the reasons why we say yes there has been tremendous progress on the National Health Service, but there are still challenges we have got to overcome. Now we believe that by a combination of expanding capacity, greater focus on hospital cleanliness, making sure that we employ not just better methods of hygiene, but also better methods of research as to how MRSA is caused, then we will deal with this issue. Toby, then Linsey

Q: Thankyou sir. I would like to ask on Drink Crime, which was discussed last week at State Hall. Drink fuelled violent crime has risen dramatically. Can you guarantee to communities that are suffering from this problem that 24 hour opening, albeit with phased closing times, will not make things worse?

A: Well I think that is a very good point, but I will tell you what I would say. I would say that it should be perfectly possible to have more flexible opening hours without people going on the rampage and beating other people up. And the fact is why should the vast majority of law abiding people be denied flexible licensing because of a small minority who end up, frankly whether the pubs and bars stay open more or not, are out for mischief. And the way of dealing with this I think is not actually to restrict opening hours, but is to make sure that we come down really hard on this. Now the police under the new powers that we have just introduced have got for the first time the powers to close pubs and clubs which are regularly the scene of fights and problems, and they have also got the ability, through on the spot fines, to fine people for being drunk and disorderly, and you know as a result of the measures that we have introduced also in making sure that we are cracking down for example on pubs and clubs that are irresponsible in the way that they sell drink to those who are under-age and so on, we have a whole panoply of powers that can be used. And I think one of the things we need to do over the next few months is in communities up and down the country, get the police and the local people together and say here are the problems on anti-social behaviour, of which this alcohol-related violence is one, and these are the powers and this is how we are going to tackle this problem. And what is interesting is there are places around the country where this is now being tackled properly. Lindsey

Q: Sir, Are you examining the possibility of sending British forces to Sudan?

A: We are not at that stage. The situation in Sudan is very serious indeed. In Britain however, let me just make it clear to you, Britain is the largest cash donor, even above the United States which is the second largest cash donor, to Sudan. I will be speaking to Kofi Annan about this later today. We are working very closely with the Africa Union and the European Union, and what we need to do in the short term is get the government of Sudan to take the measures necessary to control these militias and to make sure that the aid and assistance gets through. Now we rule nothing out, but we are not at this stage yet. So some of the headlines on this are somewhat premature. John, AFP.

Q: Thankyou Mr. Presidnet. Just to follow up on that. Do you think that if the Sudanese government doesn't meet its commitments, the West has a moral responsibility to intervene, if necessarily militarily, in the way that we intervened in Kosovo, and in the way that we didn't intervene as it were in Rwanda. Do you think ultimately if this sort of slaughter and starvation goes on, we have to as the West intervene?

A: I believe we have a moral responsibility to deal with this and to deal with it by any means that we can. But I think we need to work very carefully with the Africa Union because after all they are the regional political body and there is no point in doing things unless you have got very clear support in the region. And we just have to wait and see how it develops. We have a strategy at the moment, but as I say this is something we are absolutely focused upon and what is happening there at the moment is unacceptable, and of course we have got a moral responsibility to do what we can. Lawrance? yes.

Q: Asylum care sir - in General - Why do you and your government insist on forcing through plans for an asylum centre in the countryside near Bicester, it has been condemned by the Red Cross, the Refugee Council, the Law Society, BMA, Save the Children who all say smaller urban centres would be better. The government did promise on the floor of the House that they would abide by the planning process, yet the Deputy Prime Minister over-ruled the planning inspector. Shouldn't you now pull the plug and scrap this unwanted and unpopular scheme?

A: Look, everyone wants us to deal with asylum and no-one wants us to set up centres in their community. I totally understand that, but the reason why the asylum figures are now running actually below what we inherited in 1997 on a monthly basis is because we are taking tough action. We have withdrawn benefits from failed asylum seekers, we have got all those procedures along the French coast now that is stopping people coming in through Eurostar, we have been targeting countries where we are getting a lot of asylum claims from and we are actually dealing with them in a far faster and more effective way. But the accommodation centres and the detention centres I am afraid are a vital part of dealing with this, but there is no other way that we are going to be able to deal with it. Peter, then Jose -

Q: Caldecott Question -

A: Then you should ask Nathan. (Laugther)

Q: Given that Lego forces are now serving in probably more overseas ... than at any time for 20 - 30 years, given that you have also announced swingeing cuts in the British Armed Forces, is it sensible to be thinking of deploying them to another hotspot in Africa? And could I just ask, as you said you hope to see these five year plans through, is that now the signal that you intend, if you win another general election, to serve a full term?

A: First of all, I have to take issue with you about swingeing cuts in our Armed Forces. The frontline troops are actually not being cut. It is true that in order to reconfigure our forces there are some support staff that are going, it is true that there is some equipment that is going, but it is also true that there is other equipment that is coming in and there is boost to the forces in some of the areas like logistics and intelligence and so on. I would also just say to you, we have got I think at any one time about 20% of our troops deployed, I think it is around about 20%, we have got 9,000 troops in Iraq. We are very conscious of issues to do with overstretch, of course we are, but the Armed Forces do a magnificent job and we have got now, as indeed I think the Chief of Defence Staff was pointing out in the newspapers this morning, we have got the opportunity of what is really a 7 year sustained period of defence expenditure increases. And we have got to be very careful, and I think some of the reporting of this has been a little bit naughty in suggesting that all there is is just cuts. What they are doing is they are reconfiguring their capability, that is sensible, they need to do that, they are going to be doing different things. And Jose, you're last.

Q: On the pay of civil servents - Every year since 1999 the Treasury has promised cuts in Civil Service numbers and they have then risen. So why should anyone believe the latest set of promised cuts?

A: I am not sure that I entirely agree with that description that they have said that every year. I think people recognised we had to take certain numbers of people on for issues to do with pensions and prisons, but there are programmes now, I have been working on them myself, in the main departments that will significantly slim down the centre. And actually if you look at Civil Service numbers, a better point to make would be that they do tend to go up and to go down, and then to go up again, and there are actually fewer Civil Servants employed today than ten years ago. In 1994 there were more Civil Servants employed than today. They then went down, they have then gone back up again, and now they are going to come back down again. And actually if you really want to look at this, I think the most important aspect of what is happening is that as a result of some of the technology we are putting in, we should have a reduced requirement overall for people to do the work that we want. Anyway you can judge in two or three years time whether it has actually happened or not. Thankyou and happy holidays.

END