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Good afternoon Mr Hague.
WILLIAM HAGUE: Good afternoon.
HUMPHRYS: A decent , a good European
result from your point of view. Not bad local elections. But you do have
this enormous mountain to climb, as evidenced by the opinion polls, and
they're the worst we have ever seen. How are you going get up it?
HAGUE: Well, I've never minimised
my part in it. We do have a lot of work to do, we've known that since
the last general election because we had a very heavy defeat at the last
general election. But I notice you say well they've - although they've
had one or two election successes we're still down in the polls. The election
successes have of course been the main thing this year, and we've won the
European elections even though we were about twenty-eight points behind
in the polls at the time the election started, we're now neck and neck
with the Labour party in local elections as the analysis of local elections
out just this morning shows. I'd much rather be doing well in elections
and badly in opinion polls than the other way round. I wouldn't swap that
for anything, and we've won the first nation wide election that we've won
for seven years this year. So I think you'll find the party in Blackpool
buoyed up that and knowing that they're winning on the ground again, and
it makes a big difference to a party to know that.
HUMPHRYS: But one of the big problems
from your point of view with the polls is that people tell them, tell the
pollsters that they prefer Labour policies to you on everything, everything
except Europe as it happens. You're trying to persuade them that you've
got better policies on things like health and education, but they don't
buy it, they simply will not wear it. They prefer Labour's education policy
by two to one, health policy by three to one. This is a serious problem
isn't it?
HAGUE: Well, let's take that at
face value for the moment. As I say you can't always believe opinion polls,
and opinion polls are sometimes given far too much importance, but they
do say that now people prefer the Conservative Party on European issues,
and the whole issue of this country's relations with Europe. Now that
is one of the most fundamental issues, that's one of the most important
issues facing this country. Our task now is to speak with the same clarity
and conviction about a whole range of other issues as we've spoken about
Europe earlier this year, and that is precisely what we're going to be
doing. I'm going to be launching our policies in the morning - alternative
polices to the policies of the Government. It will really be the most
comprehensive statement of the direction of our party that we've had for
many years, and it is about policies based on the common-sense instincts
of the people of this country. The document I launch tomorrow and the
title of the conference is a common-sense revolution, which is actually
applying common-sense solutions to the problems of rising crime and a deteriorating
Health Service and schools that don't get any better, and these problems
that people have almost given up on politicians doing anything about..
So yes, people had thought the Labour Party were going to deal with these
things, and yes they preferred the Labour Party on these things, but they
haven't yet heard us set out the alternative case, so they're now going
to hear.
HUMPHRYS: Well - yeah, I mean the
common-sense solution. The trouble is, common-sense seems to tell most
people that actually, when you analyse it there isn't a great deal of difference
between you and them, and they prefer what - at the moment what they have
to offer, and when you do things like - we've read a bit in the newspapers
this morning of some of the things you're planning to do, they seem merely
to be a kind of mild extension of policies that the Labour Party itself
is already following. Now, they may well be things they they've stolen
from you in the past, but that's neither here nor there now, because they're
identified with the Government, and you don't seem to have anything substantially
different from the Government to offer, and that the difficulty for them.
HAGUE: I know some people think
that and it's a perfectly fair question, but I don't think at the end of
this week anybody who has followed proceedings will be able to say that
any more. There are very clear differences already between the parties.
Our approach to Europe, our commitment to keep the Pound I've already
mentioned, and that's obviously what.....
HUMPHRYS: But it can't be a single
issue party.
HAGUE: No, no, and that's why we're
now going to the other issues as well. Our commitment to English votes
on English laws in the British constitution that has now changed is extremely
important. But let me give you an example of some of the other things
that we'll be proposing. On the Health Service we're going to be putting
forward our Patients' Guarantee, which is about setting the priorities
of the Health Service according to clinical priorities, so you don't have
the people I meet waiting for their heart by-passes for months and months,
being forced to go private if they can afford to go private and to wait
if they can't afford to go private while less urgent operations are carried
out. We're going to be putting forward our Parents' Guarantee which is
saying to parents, if your schools is inadequate then you can do something
about it, you can actually call for an extra inspection of that school
and you can get the management of it contracted out if that is what you
want. So we'll be putting forward policies on education and health that
respond to the virtual despair of people when they heard all that empty
rhetoric last week at the Labour Party conference about crime and welfare
and the Health Service. But they know when there's a crime it's more
difficult to get a policeman than it used to be, and they know that when
someone in their family is ill they're waiting over a year to see a hospital
consultant, and they still know somebody down the road who could work but
doesn't work and actually sponges off the system. They want those things
dealt with and we're going to put forward the programme to deal with them.
HUMPHRYS: But again you see they
will use their common-sense, and they will hear you talking about wanting
to cut taxes, because it all comes down to money in the end. If you want
a better Health Service, you want better education and so on you've got
to spend more money on it, that is the common-sense answer to that is it
not. And they hear you saying, we want to cut taxes. They therefore say:
Hang on, if they're going to cut taxes they're not going to spend the money
that needs to be spent therefore, or as much extra money as needs to be
spent, on the public services, and they see you as a tax-cutting party
in that context when it doesn't help you.
HAGUE: Well, I think people also
realise that it isn't always about more money improving a service.
HUMPHRYS: Usually.
HAGUE: Sometimes it is, but what
I've just said about the Health Service is about the better management
of the existing resources. I think they'll also know that a huge amount
of money is being wasted. At the moment people are paying higher and higher
taxes but they're not seeing any better services for it, and the cost of
government is going up. The cost of running Government departments has
gone up by over a thousand million pounds a year since the Labour Party
took office. There are more ministers, more politicians, more advisors
of every kind than there have ever been before. We need to have fewer politicians
and fewer bureaucrats, and the other area of course where less money should
be spent and where the Labour Party promised less money would be spent
was on the whole Social Security and Welfare system, and now we're seeing
the costs of that going up and up, and they're now going up far faster
than they were a couple of years ago and that is where all the extra taxes
that people are paying on their petrol and their pension and their marriage
and their mortgage, that's where all those things are going. They want
to put a stop to that too.
HUMPHRYS: So they'd be right to
think you would not be spending as much on the public services as they
are now spending, as this Government is proposing to spend?
HAGUE: No, no, they wouldn't be
right to think that at all because I've nothing against spending money
on education and health and in fact we said we agree with the government
spending plans on education and health. But I am not in favour of spending
as much money as is now going into the Social Security and Welfare system.
I'm not in favour of spending as much money on politicians and bureaucrats
and rules and regulations as is now going into that.
HUMPHRYS: Relatively spending those
are details though aren't they, relatively speaking. When we look at the
massive budgets, the Health Service, the Education Service and all the
rest of it. That's where the big money is and what is going to happen,
as you well know is that the government is going to have this great big
war chest, or at least you tell us it's going to have..people tell us it's
going to have this big war chest and when it produces its spending plans
in a couple of years time, or whenever it happens to be, a lot of that
money is going to go into health and education, no doubt because no doubt
it will help it to win the next election, if that's what happens. You
are not then going to be able to say, or are you, well perhaps we won't
be able to cut taxes, or will you insist on saying what you have been saying
consistently which is we will cut taxes. And people will then think, that's
their priority again, they are a tax cutting party and not one that wants
to spend the money on the public services.
HAGUE: We will certainly cut taxes,
we will certainly..
HUMPHRYS: ...and do all these other
things..
HAGUE: ...as a share of national
income over the life of a parliament and will make it impossible for governments
to levy stealth taxes of the kind this government have brought into, maintaining
they are not increasing taxes but actually being much sneakier about it
than they have ever been before. But yes we are in favour of spending
more money on public services when they need more money...
HUMPHRYS: ...both, so you will
cut taxes and spend more. You see common sense, because that is the theme
of your conference. Common sense says it doesn't work like that.
HAGUE: No, it doesn't. Common sense
says you take the money, you stop the rapid growth of the welfare budget
in this country and that you cut the number of bureaucrats, politicians,
rules and regulations. I know you say it's a detail and people might think
it is a detail..
HUMPHRYS: ...relatively speaking..
HAGUE: But actually for the cost,
the increase cost of running government departments over the last two years
you could do a third of a million hip operations in a year. It isn't just
a detail, it is the decisions that you make at the margin about how to
spend money that make a huge difference and this is exactly common sense.
People say the common sense thing to do in this country is to spend less
on social security and politicians and to put it into the education system
to invest in people's future and to make sure we don't have to pay extra
stealth taxes all the time. And that is exactly the sort of thing that
the common sense revolution that we will have advocating is about.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let's test your
belief, the Conservatives belief in public services. Peter Lilley, your
then deputy, made a speech in which he said or tried to convince us that
there were limits to what the private sector could do, very controversial
speech at the time and his reward was that you sacked him.
HAGUE: It wasn't because of any
disagreement about that speech and that I reshuffled the Shadow Cabinet
in June, it was time to move on a generation, it was time to bring in new
people and that's why I asked Peter Lilley to leave the Shadow Cabinet.
It wasn't because there was any disagreement between me and him over that
speech. Conservatives believe that public services are very important,
that people are being very seriously let down at the moment because they
were promised that there would be wonderful, substantial increases in the
performance of our education and health services that have not now materialised,
that don't look like materialising. We believe that people should have
a choice in the provision of those services, there is always a role for
private provision but that the state will always provide for people as
well. And again that is the common sense thing, but it is the common sense
solution to the problems of our Health Service and Education system to
actually let the people who are running these things on the ground, have
the responsibility and have the power to do so, and let the users of these
services, have the power to hold them to account. And again that is what
the policies we will be putting forward tomorrow will be about.
HUMPHRYS: You talk about choice
and you've made your choice, you had a little operation, was it last year
and you chose to go to a NHS hospital. You have told us just this week
that if you have children you want them to go to a state run comprehensive
school. You have made that choice. Now are you saying that is the right
thing to do, for someone in your position.
HAGUE: It's the right thing to
do for someone in my position because that is the best way, as far as I
can see, to achieve good services for myself and my family. But I defend
to the death the right of people to chose to do something different and
a diversity of local educational provision is absolutely crucial to raising
standards. Yes I want to see a good strong state education system but I
don't believe all the state schools should be the same. I think schools
should be free to specialise. I think schools should have different aptitudes
and be able to set their own priorities much more than they can do at the
moment, because wherever I have seen a huge improvement in school performance
on all my travels around the country or in my experience as Welsh Secretary
in the last government, it's the head teacher that's brought it about,
or it's the governors and the teachers working together who have brought
it about. It's never been an order from Whitehall that brought it about.
Yet this government thinks that centralising everything and sending out
more and more directives from Whitehall automatically improves the public
services, it doesn't.
HUMPHRYS: You say it's right that
people should have a choice but your party has gone further than that you
see. You want actually to encourage people and this is the kind of language
that you use consistently, you want to encourage people to make provision
for themselves to relieve some of the burdens on the taxpayers, now if
that's right for other people, why wasn't it right for you. I mean afterall
you could afford to make your own provision surely.
HAGUE: Of course people should
try and make provision for themselves, and of course all of us who are
able to do so should save for the future..
HUMPHRYS: So why didn't you do
it..
HAGUE: ..that is exactly what I
am doing and I'm sure that is exactly what all those well paid BBC interviewers
and presenters are doing..
HUMPHRYS: As far as the NHS is
concerned, you chose to use the NHS. You could afford to save up..
HAGUE: ..people should be able
to chose to use the NHS. Let me give you an example of what I am talking
about. You see at the moment, you meet people who are losing their homes,
losing their assets, who always thought they were going to be looked after
by the Health Service, or by the state in some way in old age. And now,
in order to buy residential care for themselves in old age they lose their
home, they lose their assets. It is some of the most distressing things
I have seen in my constituency surgery and travelling around the country
are cases like this. Now, I say we should help people who help themselves.
We should say to a new generation, for every pound you buy of insurance
to cover the costs of such things in old age, the state will protect one
pound fifty of your assets so that you won't have to lose your assets
in old age if you provide for yourselves. I think we should do things like
reduce the rate of tax on savings. The starting rate of tax on savings,
which at the moment is ten per cent higher on savings, under this government,
than it is on earned income, than it is on the income that people are getting
from wages or from their pension. Now, that means that these policies
are about rewarding people who are doing the right thing. Who are trying
to put money aside for the future. The current government have made a
terrible hash of savings policy. People are saving much less in this country
than they were a couple of years ago and we've got to put that right.
HUMPHRYS: But again, my point is
that you're going a little further, you're saying to people 'if you can
afford it, opt out of the NHS'. If you can afford it - Obviously the NHS
has to be there for those who can't afford it, but you're saying if you
can afford it opt out of the NHS, relieve the burden on the taxpayer.
HAGUE: No we're not saying that,
we're saying.....
HUMPHRYS: You're not encouraging
them to do that?
HAGUE: No we're saying people can
relieve a huge burden on themselves as well as on their fellow citizens
by providing properly for the future by putting money aside for their future.....
HUMPHRYS: No, I'm talking about
the NHS now specifically.....
HAGUE: We're not saying people
should opt out of the NHS but we are saying the NHS has got to look after
people properly and that's why in the Patient's Guarantee we say there
should be a waiting time that is set by the National Health Service, so
that if for instance you need a heart by-pass operation there would be
a waiting time of say two weeks or whatever it is, people are waiting months
at the moment, set according to clinical priorities and if the Health Service
didn't.... if the local Health Service couldn't carry out that operation
within that time, they would have to buy it in from another health authority
or from the private sector.
Now that is the sensible
use of the National Health Service and the private sector together and
running the Health Service according to clinical priorities not the political
targets which have totally distorted the clinical priorities of the Health
Service over the last two years.
HUMPHRYS: Terrific, but you're
not actually saying to people then, and I must have misunderstood you.
You are not saying to people 'I would like to see more private money going
into the Health Service so therefore those who can afford to make private
provision to relieve the burden on the taxpayer shouldn't do so'? I'm
a bit puzzled here now because I thought that was your position.
HAGUE: We're encouraging people
to make provision for themselves to relieve the kind of problems in old
age that I've just been describing.....
HUMPHRYS: You keep saying old age,
I'm talking about the NHS now today not in......
HAGUE: We're not saying to anybody
'you must opt out of the Health Service'....
HUMPHRYS: No but you're encouraging
them to do so.....
HAGUE: ..... or 'you must opt out
of the state education system'. We want a very strong and very successful
state Health Service and state education system but they can be run far
better and with much greater diversity of choice and power for the patient
and for the parent than they are today and unless they're run with that
kind of philosophy, that kind of common sense approach, then they're not
going to be improved, they're not going to be improved just on the say
so of civil servants and politicians who think they can order everybody
around and set targets and hey presto it will be achieved. That's what
the current government think. It needs a radically different approach
and we'll be setting that out.
HUMPHRYS: Can I offer you another
reason perhaps why the voters, according to the polls, haven't rallied
to your cause as you might have hoped they would have done and that was
sleaze. You had a serious problem with that in the last government while
you were in government, not you personally but the party, the government
did. You now have another problem building don't you and that is with
the choice of Lord Archer to run as your candidate to run for the Mayor
of London. There are many questions being asked about Lord Archer. He
is going to be a problem for you in this sense isn't he?
HAGUE: Well it doesn't look like
a problem when he's just won an election. Remember we chose our candidate
for Mayor for London in a way that the Labour Party haven't yet dared
to do. I don't know when they're going to decide how they're to do this.
We let the members decide, we had an open race, open to anyone who wanted
to apply and let the members decide who the candidate would be. So Jeffrey
Archer has been through an election, he's just been through weeks, months
of an election in which anything that could be said about him was said
about him and all the attacks that could have been made on him were made
on him, but he won an election in which over twenty thousand people voted
and now I think he has got the energy and the talent and the enthusiasm
and the creativity to make a success not only of that campaign but of being
Mayor for London and I will back him all the way.
HUMPHRYS: Do you think he is a
man of integrity?
HAGUE: Yes I do, yes I do and I
think he has been tested out in an actual election and I don't think there
is any substitute for that. I don't think tittle-tattle in newspapers
is any substitute for saying to somebody - right, you go out and fight
an election. You go out and actually endure everything and take it all
on and let's have an actual election and let people vote and let the people
who live in London decide who the candidate is going to be so we've now
got a candidate chosen by Londoners, the Londoners have decided on who
our candidate is going to be, I hope every other party will have a candidate
chosen by Londoners instead of forced on them by the party leadership.
HUMPHRYS: You say tittle-tattle:
Some of the allegations that have been made and the questions that are
still being raised over and over again are not tittle-tattle, they are
very serious questions that get to the heart of the man's integrity. Is
it not going to be very difficult for him for the rest of the campaign?
We saw on Friday that he went to a news conference and refused to answer
any questions, most unusual for that to happen at Conservative Party Central
Office. Can he go for the rest of this campaign dodging the questions
that a lot of people are trying to put to him about the things that have
been raised over the past years that they believe have not adequately been
answered. He can't keep doing that can he?
HAGUE: Well I must say I've seen
him answer thousands of questions, there may not have been question answered
at the particular meeting you were talking about on Friday......
HUMPHRYS: Well no questions were
answered then. He didn't want to answer them this morning on the radio.
HAGUE: I've seen him answer thousands
of questions. I've seen him do interviews for months on end so I don't
think that is going to be a problem. What all parties need in this election
for the Mayor of London if we're going to make a success of that position,
is candidates who can really represent London with passion and creativity
and enthusiasm and we've got one and I'm going to stick up for him and
we are now going to get going on this election and get campaigning in this
election whilst other parties still haven't even chosen their candidates
or decided how they're going to do so.
HUMPHRYS: It is going to make it
difficult isn't it that if he is dogged by these questions, and you know
some of the people I'm talking about who will raise these questions over
and over again. I wonder why and a lot of people I think wonder why he
doesn't try to kill this whole thing off. Why does he not sue for libel
those people who are raising these questions? Why do you not say to him
tomorrow morning - 'Look Jeffrey we do have a problem here, there's no
doubt about it the questions are going to continue to be raised, they've
been raised again over this weekend, why don't you just say - look you've
done it in the past, you've gone to court, why don't you kill these things
off for once and for all'? I mean we're talking about a man who could
potentially be running the most powerful city perhaps in the world - one
of them.
HAGUE: I'm not his legal advisor.
I may be many things John, but I'm not going to start giving legal advice..
HUMPHRYS: No but you're the leader
of the Conservative Party and you could help him to clear it all up....
HAGUE: My responsibility as leader
of the party has been to make sure that we have a candidate for London
chosen by the people who live in London by an open, fair, democratic process.
The most open fair and democratic we've ever had in our party or in any
other party and I have made sure of that and I think that the candidate
who's been selected by that process by tens of thousands of people deserves
the support of the whole party and he's going to get it.
HUMPHRYS: But it is going to run
and run this isn't it? It's not going to go away unless he tries to clear
it up once and for all.
HAGUE: And also what's going to
run and run is a Conservative campaign to elect a Mayor for London who
will be a good
mayor for London and a Conservative campaign to present the common sense
revolution that I'm going to set out in Blackpool tomorrow morning.
HUMPHRYS: You've also got to persuade
people that your party is not split. They still seem to think it is split
and when they see the kind of shenanigans we've had in the last few days,
what with Major, Mr Major and Lord Lamont calling each other names and
heaven knows what. This morning, Lady Thatcher, apparently according to
the Sunday Telegraph and there are some fairly senior sources quoted there,
saying unkind things about you, calling you Wee Willy in a disparaging
way and all the rest of it. This is a problem for you too, isn't it.
HAGUE: I think you are talking
about the Sunday Times, not the...
HUMPHRYS: The Sunday Times, you
are quite right.
HAGUE: ...the senior sources are
somebody who heard something at a dinner party or something like that.
I think Lady Thatcher will be saying exactly what she thinks over the next
couple of days and it doesn't bear any relation whatsoever to anything
people might have read in a newspaper this morning. But all...anything
about splits in the party. I notice now is all about the past. You know
it's all about people talking about what happened eight or nine years ago.
And I suppose that's interesting and it's history and we should all read
history. There's got to be some party leader with some knowledge of history
because we didn't see much of that last week. But, that may be interesting,
it is not about today. Today we are going on to the future. This conference
is about going on to the future and I'd much rather be in a situation where
all the talk is about..talk about division is about what happened before
and not about what is happening now.
HUMPHRYS: But tell you what is
happening now or is about to happen in the future is Mr Heseltine and Mr
Clarke are going to appear on platforms with Mr Blair. Now that is in the
future, that is a split, that is a problem.
HAGUE: It isn't a problem at all
when this thing is talked about. Every time I have been on a programme
over the last few months, ah but Mr Clarke and Mr Heseltine are about to
appear with Mr Blair, never actually seems to happen this event. When it
does, there will be, of course there will be divisions across parties about
whether the country should abolish the pound and join the Single Currency.
There will be Labour politicians campaigning with me to save the pound
and not to join the Single Currency. So there will be some divisions across
parties. But we fought that European Election campaign in June and won
it, as a united party. People said for months and months beforehand: 'of
course the Tories can't do well in the Euro elections because they've not
been united on Europe'. And we are a absolutely united and disciplined
party and Ken Clarke and Michael Heseltine caused no difficulties at all
for the party in that election.
HUMPHRYS: Would you not welcome
a period of silence now, as I believe people once said, from people like
Lamont and Major and so on. Wouldn't it be rather helpful to have a period
of silence from them all.
HAGUE: I'm not going to stop anybody
from writing their memoirs. All politicians write their memoirs in the
end. That's fine, that's fine and we will all get round to reading them
when we have got a spare weekend. But it's not going to take over our conference
or effect what we are doing this week. Because we are very busy setting
out the alternative policies for this country, setting out what we are
actually going to do and I think what people are interested in is what
happens next and where the Conservative Party goes next, not what we were
talking about how ever many years ago.
HUMPHRYS: And as far as that is
concerned, many in your own party think you're responsible or at least
in part, for the low poll ratings that the party is suffering at the moment.
We've looked at that at the beginning of the interview. But tell me this,
if you thought that somebody else, another leader, whether it is Mr Portillo
or whoever it is. Somebody else could be a better leader than you, that's
to say improve the party's standing and relieve some of these problems
that you are facing at the moment, would you say, fair enough I'll stand
aside and let him have a crack at it.
HAGUE; That's not actually the
situation that we are in, as you know, so hypothetical questions like that
may be very interesting but they are not what we are actually dealing with.
I am very happy to take responsibility for the position of our party and
where it is after the last couple of years, completely reformed, made into
a democratic party with nearly two thousand more elected Conservatives
in councils in the European Parliament and so on, than we had about eighteen
months ago, with our first nationwide election victory under our belt for
many years. I'm very happy to take responsibility for what's going on
in our party.
HUMPHRYS: William Hague, thank
you very much indeed.
HAGUE: Thank you very much.
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