White House-style press briefings scrapped

Downing Street has scrapped plans to launch new White House-style press conferences, despite spending £2.6 million on renovating a venue to host them.

The new facilities at 9 Downing Street will now be used by the Prime Minister and officials.

The plan to hold televised press conferences, similar to those seen in the United States, was announced by Boris Johnson last year after he determined that the daily televised coronavirus briefings being held at the time indicated that the public wanted ‘more direct, detailed information from the government’.

The PM's media chief Allegra Stratton was set to host the briefings, which were due to begin in October 2020, but she has now been given the job of the government's spokeswoman for COP26 climate change conference.

According to a Freedom of Information request from the Press Association, the total cost of the refit of the briefing room £2,607,767.67, largely excluding VAT. Costs included £1,848,695 for the ‘main works’, £198,024 on ‘long lead items’, and £33,395 on broadband equipment.

Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, commented: “Boris Johnson is clearly running scared of scrutiny and questions about Tory sleaze and dodgy lobbying. Instead of wasting millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on a pointless vanity project the Prime Minister should have used the money to give our NHS heroes a pay rise.”