Downing Street 'wrong on Cabinet history'

Downing Street taught a history lesson
Yesterday's Cabinet meeting in Birmingham was not the first to be held outside Downing Street or Chequers since 1921, a peer has claimed.Lord Armstrong of Ilminster writes in a letter to the Times today that the Cabinet met in Brighton in 1966 in an "emergency meeting". Downing Street had claimed the Cabinet's first formal meeting for over 80 years took place at Birmingham's ICC conference centre yesterday. But Lord Armstrong claims a meeting took place in Brighton's Grand Hotel on the first day of the 1966 Labour party conference "to consider a proposal to activate statutory powers to enforce a freeze on prices and incomes". Lord Armstrong goes on to explain in the letter that the Cabinet approved the activation after the hitherto voluntary freeze was challenged in the courts. "I remember this well, because I was one of the members of the Cabinet secretariat who travelled to Brighton to take the minutes of the meeting," Lord Armstrong writes. Historical disputes over Cabinet meetings outside the prime minister's usual residences are set to fade away in the coming months as they become commonplace. The prime minister's official spokesperson said in a press briefing yesterday that further Cabinet meetings outside London are expected to take place in the future.