BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 16.01.00



==================================================================================== NB. THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND NOT FROM AN ORIGINAL SCRIPT; BECAUSE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF MIS-HEARING AND THE DIFFICULTY, IN SOME CASES, OF IDENTIFYING INDIVIDUAL SPEAKERS, THE BBC CANNOT VOUCH FOR ITS ACCURACY. ==================================================================================== ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE: 16.01.00 ==================================================================================== JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. Have the Tories failed to provide a credible opposition to the government? I'll be asking their leader William Hague if he's letting Tony Blair off the hook and what would his Party do about the ailing NHS. We'll also be asking why some of our young people my soon be getting their university education for free while others will still have to pay for it. And reforming the House of Lords: what ARE they going to do? That's after the news read by Sian Williams. NEWS HUMPHRYS: The government's in a mess over tuition fees for students. The Scots won't be paying... how long before the rest of the country says: neither should we. And Tony Blair says this house is going to be democratic... so in that case why won't his reforms allow us to vote for all its members? But first the state of the opposition. When William Hague took over as leader of the Conservative Party it was in a bad way... trounced in the General Election, split from top to toe, morale at rock bottom and lacking any real credibility apparently in the eyes of the electorate. It couldn't get much worse they said. Well... it has. Or so many believe. According to Ken Clarke for one, the party still hasn't found its way. Its is certainly languishing far behind Labour in the opinion polls. And Mr Hague himself is getting most of the blame. Well, Mr Hague is in the United States this weekend for a meeting of centre-right parties from around the world and he's on the line now from Florida. HUMPHRYS: Good morning Mr Hague. WILLIAM HAGUE: Good Morning HUMPHRYS: No credibility - that's your problem. HAGUE: Er no, I don't think that actually is the problem we actually had an extremely good year last year in terms of winning elections and that is what we had to start to do. We won the European elections outright, we got about two thousand more councillors than we had eighteen months ago, we run fifty more town halls across the country than we did a year ago so we had a year of pretty solid progress on the ground that doesn't disguise the fact we have a lot more to do - we have an enormous amount of work to do but we have started the recovery of the Conservative Party and with the launch of the Common Sense Revolution documents and proposals that we put forward last October, and we'll be saying a lot more about in the next few months, we've also started to set out what we would do as an alternative government. HUMPHRYS: But Ken Clarke, one of the old war horses of your party says, and I quote, 'it's not yet started recreating itself as a credible party of government'. Well coming from somebody like Mr Clarke that is very damning. HAGUE: No, well obviously I don't agree with that but what I have to get on with is making sure that we are the opposition to the Labour Party not that we are having disagreements in our own party and when you look at what is happening for instance in the Health Service today there is an issue on which the Conservative Party is putting forward alternative proposals, is highlighting the terrible failures and betrayal of this government and it's the Conservative Party that does that, it's no other party that does that. So we've certainly become a credible opposition, anybody who comes down to the House of Commons any day of the week can see that the Conservative Party is what provides the opposition. I certainly accept that we now have to do more to take that case out to the country and that we have to win people over in the country - we've been winning the arguments in parliament but we also have to win them out in the country to do it around Britain and that's what we're going to be doing throughout this year. HUMPHRYS: Yeah - you do absolutely have to do that. let's look at your position on the NHS and your credibility in that respect. There's an ICM poll out, you probably won't have seen the newspapers this morning but you may have heard about the poll, the ICM poll in the Observer. Only one in four people trust you on the NHS to have the right policies. HAGUE: Well only one in twelve people think that the NHS is improving under the Labour Party so we can all quote...... HUMPHRYS: But twice as many people trust the Labour Party........ HAGUE: We can all quote opinion poll figures in every direction but the truth is it's the Tory Party that is now putting forward the actual practical proposals. We've launched the patient's guarantee to say that the most urgent cases should be dealt with first. We've put forward the proposals for a prostate cancer screening programme. We put forward proposals to change medical training so that more doctors would go into the Accident and Emergency Departments now. We've been suggesting how there could be more use of intensive care beds for instance in the independent sector in the current crisis in the Health Service which if that had been done a few weeks ago would have helped to alleviate it. So we're the ones making the constructive proposals now, we're making the running on this subject. Yes we have to persuade more people that we're doing that but we are actually doing it, we've started to do it. HUMPHRYS: But that's highly arguable isn't it because people are persuaded that you do not want to put in the money that they think is needed for the NHS because you are more concerned about keeping taxes down than putting money into the NHS. HAGUE: We are concerned about keeping taxes down but we're also concerned about proper financial provision for the Health Service, we also believe that as a country we need to spend a larger share of our national income on health in total and that means more public expenditure but it also means more private expenditure on health, it means enlarging the total amount devoted to healthcare in this country and that doesn't mean that you can't keep taxes down it means that you mustn't waste money on other things. We've called a debate in parliament on Tuesday this week about the Health Service but we've also called a debate about the waste of money in the running of government. We saw a report last week that the cost of government political advisors has doubled under this government. The total cost of running Whitehall has increased by a thousand million pounds in the last two years under Tony Blair which is enough to pay for a third of a million hip operations every year. So it doesn't mean, looking after peoples' health doesn't mean you can't keep taxes down or reduce taxes but you have to stop wasting money on bureaucrats and party apparatchiks which is what the Labour Party spend their money on. HUMPHRYS: But the trouble is what you've done is you've - apart from your patient's guarantee which we'll get on to in a minute, you've also offered a tax guarantee, you are committed to cutting taxes not just even holding them where they are you are committed to cutting taxes over a parliamentary term so you cannot guarantee at the same time spending enough money, putting enough money into the NHS. You can't have both. HAGUE: No of course you can provided that you don't spend money in other areas and I've just mentioned (both speaking at once) No...no. There are two areas where we need to spend less money: One is in the administration of government the cost of which is rising dramatically under the Labour Party and which was held back at the end of the last government and the other is on welfare spending. We have been putting forward and we'll put forward more proposals but we've already put forward several proposals for real welfare reform for reducing welfare spending. We've put forward our 'Can work - Must work' guarantee that means that if you don't accept a job when you're offered a job when you've been unemployed for more than two months you would lose your benefits. We've put forward proposals to change the way industrial injuries benefit works. We've put forward new proposals for tackling fraud and we saw in the report of the Public Accounts Committee just this last week how this government have manifestly failed to tackle fraud and abuse of the welfare system so few oppositions in history have been as specific about where they would reduce government expenditure and that means we can entirely credibly say, and we certainly mean it, that we would have higher expenditure on the Health Service but we would also keep peoples' taxes down. HUMPHRYS: Everything you've just described about Social Security spending happened of course during the eighteen years when your party was in power but the important thing is this - if you are going to do both of those things, that is to say if you are going to cut taxes, not just holding them where they are but cut them and put more money into the NHS and other things as you're committed to doing like education and so on, that will depend on the economic circumstances at the time common sense dictates that and John Major himself, your predecessor, as he was leaving the party said 'you cannot deliver tax cuts' and I'm quoting again, 'in a recession unless there are swingeing cuts in health and education.' You can't do it. It cannot be done. HAGUE: No well that's not the case. I've just been setting out how we can reduce government spending in other areas. HUMPHRYS: No but what if there is a recession? What if the economy doesn't do terribly well as you assume under this government it's not going to? HAGUE: Let me explain about that, people say how will you be able to meet your tax guarantee to reduce the share of national product taken in taxation in a recession. Well the answer to that is that it's in a recession when it's actually the easiest to do that because the proportion of tax in the national income falls anyway.. HUMPHRYS: Yeah but the total amount going in can't increase can it, that's the point. HAGUE: That proportion falls anyway, tax falls proportionately faster when there is a recession. The challenge actually is how to hold down tax and spending when the economy is doing well because all governments have a temptation to raise..increase the amount of money they are spending, all governments have a temptation to actually take the brakes off in some areas when the economy is doing well and you can see it in the government's approach now to the costs of spending in the government itself, to the costs of running the government, you can see it in its approach to welfare spending. It said it would hold all these things down but it's actually spending billions of pounds extra. It's when the economy is doing well that you have to make sure that the tax burden of the country is not rising over time, and if we are going to compete. I've been talking to people from other countries in the world over the last twenty-four hours here. If we are going to compete with these countries over the next decade in the new economy, in the age of the internet, when businesses can to anywhere, to any location in the world, we are going to have to bring down the total tax burden in our country or we will find businesses, factories and jobs going elsewhere. HUMPHRYS: Let me remind you what happened in the last recession and I doubt that you will need much reminding. 1979-1983 when Mrs Thatcher was as she was then, Prime Minister, she raised taxes from thirty-three per cent of GDP to thirty-nine per cent. Now you, under your tax guarantee, if the same sort of thing happened to you, if you had a similar recession and as Ken Clarke has said you can't predict what the economy is going to do, if that happened to you, you would have, because you couldn't put up taxes, you'd have to cut spending by fifty billion pounds. Therefore you cannot possibly make the sort of guarantee that you are making, that is to cut taxes and simultaneously to put more into the NHS, common sense isn't it - to use a very popular expression of yours. HAGUE: No it isn't because the instance that you give when the tax burden was increased at the beginning of the eighteen years of Conservative Government was influenced not just by recession but by the fiscal condition of the country. Now we are in a completely different condition because of what was done under the last Conservative Government to create a growing economy and actually because of all the tax increases that we've seen under the current government. They have increased taxes in the last two years by about two per cent of our gross domestic product, by billions and billions of pounds, the tax on businesses has gone up by about twenty billion pounds. So, I tell you there is the scope there to reduce taxation, that we cannot go on as a country increasing taxation if we are going to compete in the world over the next decade, that that has to mean real welfare reform and it has to mean fewer politicians, fewer civil servants, smaller size of government and it has to mean in the Health Service we have to promote and encourage not only greater state expenditure but we have to find ways of encouraging the private sector as well. Just to finish that point, one of the mindless things this government did, was to take away the tax relief on private medical insurance for people over sixty, that has had the effect of doing what: of increasing the waiting list which the government are now struggling with and totally failing to.. what a stupid, spiteful thing that was to do. HUMPHRYS: I'd like to come back to the whole question of private medicine in a moment if I may, but stick with this thought for the moment of cutting taxes and simultaneously putting more money into the NHS. Ignore what I've just said, listen to what John Major again said, one word it's: mad. HAGUE: Well it isn't, it's not mad because I've just explained how it works. HUMPHRYS: Well I don't think you have, you see, you can ... Money here and there but you cannot cope if we have a recession. Clearly you can't cope if we have a recession, you cannot do both things. HAGUE: Yes you can, remember the commitment that we're making is over the life of a Parliament, it's over the life of a government, it doesn't mean that happens every year, it doesn't mean it happens in every circumstance within the life of a Parliament but I come back to my central point on this, which is if it's not going to be the central objective of British Governments in the coming years to reduce taxes and to reduce bureaucracy and regulation and the things that inhibit and restrict businesses over the next few years, then we are not actually going to succeed in the new world economy because it's countries that do that that are going to succeed. Here in Florida where I'm sitting, I'm going to see Governor Bush of Florida this afternoon. What he's doing is making sure that businesses want to come to Florida, a great silicon beach here in Florida and he's doing that by lower taxes and less regulation. We have to compete with places like that, we have to find the ways of doing that. There isn't going to be a choice about this, it does mean you have to tackle those areas of government spending that you can tackle but still make sure we're providing for people in need. HUMPHRYS: While you're there I hope you're having a good look at there health system because Tony Blair in his interview this morning said that what you lot want is a US style health care system. HAGUE: Well of course that's not what we want. We don't want a US health care style. We do want more of our nation's income spent on health. I have to say that what Tony Blair says about Opposition policies, which is invariably in the House of Commons and this morning, a total distortion of the truth, is just an attempt to distract attention from the stark and comprehensive failure of this government on the Health Service. It was an early pledge, an early pledge and they are nearly three years into it now, that they would solve the problems of the Health Service. They have failed totally, it is a betrayal of people who voted Labour, it is a betrayal of the people working so hard in the Health Service, it is a betrayal of the basic promises they made to the country and they have mismanaged the Health Service. They have pursued the political distortion of clinical priorities in a way that has done great harm to patients and angered staff throughout the Health Service and it is a stark and total failure. HUMPHRYS: But do you do want to spend more, you do want us privately to spend more of our money on our health care. Let me quote you what Liam Fox has said in the newspapers this morning: philosophically we have moved on. Insurance companies could cover conditions like hip replacements - Liam Fox of course being your health spokesman - insurance companies could cover conditions like hip replacements, and we could leave expensive treatments like cancer therapy to the National Health Service. Wow, that is a big philosophical move isn't it? HAGUE: No, what we're saying, certainly we are moving on, but what we're saying is people need to have more choice, they need to be able to choose the private sector if they wish to do so. We don't want anybody to be forced to do so. We wouldn't create any situation where anyone was forced to do so. We believe in the National Health Service. Liam Fox is himself the Shadow Health Secretary, and was a GP in the Health Service, he's totally committed to the Health Service. I use the National Health Service myself. The Conservative Party's commitment to the National Health Service is in no way in doubt, but I think everybody can see in the country now that we have to spend more of our national income on health and that that will require greater state expenditure but also greater private expenditure. We need to find ways to make it easier for people to have private expenditure, but we mustn't force anybody to do so. The availability of free health care for people is absolutely sacrosanct and we're not going to change that. HUMPHRYS: But he's saying leave the expensive treatments to the NHS. Let's look after ourselves when it comes to things like hip replacements. Do you agree with that? HAGUE: No, he's saying give people the option of doing that, make it easy. HUMPHRYS: Philosophically we've moved on. HAGUE: No, what he's talking about - he's been very clear about it, is help to create a market where people find it easier for people to insure themselves for such operations. But in no way do we want to force people to do that. Remember I've just been giving an example of how if we cut out the waste in Whitehall the National Health Service could do a third of a million more hip operations every year, so we don't need to say all those things should go to the private sector. We do need to say that the Health Service should carry out the most urgent operations first. It is ludicrous that heart by-passes, the lady who we've heard about this week who had a throat operation.. HUMPHRYS: Mrs Skeet.. HAGUE: ...Mrs Skeet, cancelled four times and it's now inoperable - it is ludicrous that those things are not being done, while the Health Service pursues the reduction of waiting lists often in more minor operations, important to the people concerned of course, but not as life-threatening as those kinds of operations. They've got to do the most important things first. HUMPHRYS: Right. HAGUE: And that's what's we say in the Patients' Guarantee. HUMPHRYS: Indeed you do, and the inevitable result of that, inevitably of course, because if you move some people up the list and some other people are pushed further down the list, the inevitable result of that is that there will be longer waiting times for things like hip operations, and that is going to force more people if they want to end their pain and get their new hip or whatever it may be, it's going to force more people to go private. That's the effect of your policy. HAGUE: No, that isn't the effect of our policy. There is rationing now in the Health Service. Let's face up to this. People are now finding that they have to go private in some cases in order to save their lives, and we've been hearing this morning, I think it's in one of this morning's newspapers .. HUMPHRYS: Yes, the Sunday Telegraph. HAGUE: ... that someone has had to re-mortgage their house in order to get a heart by-pass. You hear all the time about people who have to take their heart by-pass privately which is a very expensive operation, because the Health Service can't deliver it on time. Now that rationing is taking place anyway, so I think it's entirely fair to say let's make sure that the most urgent and the biggest operations are done first. Whatever we do at the moment with the current operation of the Health Service some people are going to find that they're saying, well I'm going to have to go somewhere else to get my operation. But it shouldn't be the most urgent cases. So when Tony Blair criticises me for saying the most urgent cases should be dealt with first because some other people would then feel under pressure to go private, what he's doing is making the most urgent and desperate cases go private. Now that cannot be right in the management of our National Health Service. HUMPHRYS: Let me move to another area where many believe you have a serious credibility problem, and that is Europe. Now, you want to amend the Treaty of Rome. Your Shadow Foreign spokesman has said as much, and you've said it yourself, you want to let each country decide whether it will in future apply new European legislation, so-called flexibility. John Major says, and I quote him again "that is absurd", because of course you would never get the agreement of all the other countries so to do, and you'd have to have it. HAGUE: Well, let's be clear about what we're proposing. We're proposing whether when new treaties are brought forward, and of course the Treaty of Rome is amended all the time when new European treaties are proposed - we're saying that when new legislation is brought forward, and that when that happens after new treaties have been signed, then countries should have a greater degree of freedom about what they adopt. And again when you think about it if the European Union is going to have twenty to twenty-five countries in it, unless you have a greater degree of flexibility it isn't going to work because if we say everybody's got to follow the same rules about everything across twenty-five countries stretching from Eastern Europe down to Spain and up to Sweden then it isn't going to work in practice. Countries should have to sign up to the core functions of the European Union: trade, the single market, the environment, things like that that should be dealt with at an international level, they must have a greater degree of flexibility. Now people say to me and you put in the argument, well, who else agrees with that, how can you win that argument? But that doesn't mean we shouldn't put the argument. There are many people in other countries who agree with that argument. I launched this proposal in Hungary earlier last year and I found a great deal of support for that argument in central and eastern European countries. If we're not prepared to put the argument, we're just going ever closer to a more centralised, more closely integrated politically centralised Europe that I think will be very cumbersome, that won't work in practice and will turn people away from the European Union. HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but you've gone much further than just saying let's sort of run this flag up the pole and see if anybody salutes. You said, if we do not get this, if they don't rally around and agree with me, then I, if I were Prime Minister, I would block the treaty, in other words block the treaty that would lead to the enlargement of Europe. You happen to be strongly in favour, as do many other people of the enlargement of Europe, so you'd be blocking a treaty that would bring about something that you want to happen. A weird position to be in isn't it? HAGUE: Well the enlargement of the European Union is not necessarily in the same treaty. We don't know what form these things are going to take. What we would be opposing is other ways of changing the way in which Europe works. Remember that we have on the table, we have the report of the so-called wise men in Europe who proposed great centralisation, who said that more things should be decided by majority voting, that countries should in effect lose a lot more of their independence in Europe. I tell you that if a British government signed up to that it would turn millions of people in Britain against being in the European Union at all, and the right argument for people who want to be in Europe and make a success of the European Union is we've got to make sure it is reformed in a way which British people will find acceptable and which will work in practice. So that is what we're proposing. We're not saying veto everything, but we're saying when it comes to changing the administrative arrangements this is what we've got to insist on, and of course then people will say, how will you insist on it. Well, they said to Margaret Thatcher when she went to negotiate the rebate at Fontainebleau, "You'll never get anywhere because other people don't agree with you". Well she came back with the rebate, and they said to John Major when he went to negotiate the opt out from the Single Currency, you'll ever get it because the other countries don't agree with it. Well he got it, and so we have to take the same approach, and Conservative governments are prepared to do that. This government's sell-out in Europe on a regular basis, they think you can't propose anything unless everybody already agrees with it, and they just go with the flow, and it's not in this country's interests, or Europe's interests. HUMPHRYS: But you've gone much further haven't you. You've said the next European Union Treaty must contain a flexibility clause or else I tell you there will be no new treaty. But you can't say that. HAGUE: Of course you can say that, because that concentrates people's minds on it. Other countries don't hesitate to say that they will insist on their way, other countries have no qualms whatsoever about saying we are going to get this into the Treaty and putting forward their point of view, sometimes aggressively. That's how the European Union works most of the time. So we have got to be prepared to do that, we have got to make a success of it. HUMPHRYS: Another area that's damaging your credibility I submit and that's the whole question of sleaze. Now when you took over as the leader of the Party you promised to turn the Tory party into something that was absolutely squeaky clean, everybody could see that it was squeaky clean, but you failed your first really big test. You said on this programme, when I asked you about Jeffrey Archer not very long ago, that he was a man of complete integrity, you had not doubt about that. You said that in the face of a great deal of evidence to the contrary. An awful lot of people saying: now come on, this isn't a man who ought to be running for Major of London, oughtn't to be the Tory Party candidate. You made a big mistake there, did you not? HAGUE: With hindsight, yes we did, yes and I take entirely the responsibility for that. But I think it was right to be have a democratic selection of our candidate for mayor. There is no way that we could have known at the time, there's no way I could have known at the time... HUMPHRYS: ...well there was actually.. HAGUE: ..about what subsequently came to light about Jeffrey Archer and in fact no amount of investigation about it would have brought that fact to light.. HUMPHRYS: ..not true.. HAGUE: ..well that is true because, unless.. HUMPHRYS: ..you were offered evidence, you were invited to look at a great deal of material about Jeffrey Archer which you didn't bother to. You didn't bother to refer it to your own Ethics Committee, your Ethics and Integrity Committee. Why didn't you do that at least? HAGUE: Nobody who offered any such material was prepared to put it even in writing and it's very difficult to deal with allegations about people that nobody is prepared even to write down or tell you what they are, and certainly none of these things concerned with the fact that subsequently came to light that spelt the end of Jeffrey Archer's mayoral campaign. So yes, that gave us a difficult few weeks at the end of last year, but we've taken that in our stride, of course it was very difficult for the Party at the time. We are selecting a new candidate, we are doing it by democratic procedure. At least our problem is trying to make sure that there is a ..that we have a mayoral candidate that actually commands democratic support and is actually popular among the members. The problem with the Labour Party it is actually trying to frustrate candidates. HUMPHRYS: So when is Lord Archer going to appear now before your Ethics and Integrity Committee, it's been a long time, why has he not done so, when is he going to.? HAGUE: The Ethics and Integrity Committee sets its own rules and timetable which is entirely proper, they don't take orders from me (INTERRUPTION) on who to...Well, I've called the Ethics and Integrity Committee in and they arrange their own meetings. They've got to be ..their report has to be independent of me and they will be proceeding with that over the next few weeks and I am determined to make sure that these problems are problems of the past. We have had a lot of problems at the end of last year, but they are all problems that came from the past and the party that I am building now, the party that I am rebuilding is a party that will be able to be absolutely respected for its integrity. Integrity not only in personal conduct but in political conduct, in political consistency because we are up against a government that says anything, that does anything in order to please people in the short term but doesn't have any real political consistency or integrity and people will find contempt for that over time. And I am presenting a party that is consistent in its views, in its principles and in what it says to the country. HUMPHRYS: But not seen as a truly credible Opposition, not doing enough work. I mean if we look at the way and this is another part of your credibility problem, you're going to be a tough leader, you're going to knock a few heads together to make sure that the Shadow Cabinet got down to it and really got stuck into the government, what we've seen at the start of this great NHS crisis story is Liam Fox, your Health Spokesman going off on holiday. Now, you're being quoted that, well he had an open goal there and he missed it. Is that true, is that your view, do you believe that some of your people simply aren't pulling their finger out, they're going off on holiday when they should be getting down to the hard graft. HAGUE: I think they're working extremely hard actually and remember we have changed almost the entire Shadow Cabinet. When I took over, since I took over I've had three reshuffles of the Shadow Cabinet and there are only two of us now you were in the Cabinet at the time that we lost the last General Election. The other twenty members of the Shadow Cabinet are new people who have been ..who I have brought on and of course then it's quite difficult for some of them at the beginning to get a public profile because they are not publicly known figures. And every party leader in this situation has this problem that first of all people saying why have you got all of those old faces in the Shadow Cabinet, then when you change them all they say, oh where are all these new people. Well the new people are coming along and they are working extremely hard and I think they are going to be extremely effective front rank politicians. HUMPHRYS: Quick thought about yourself then. Poll out again this morning says fourteen per cent, 14 per cent think you'd make the best Prime Minister, sixty per cent say that Blair would make the best Prime Minister. You've got a problem yourself haven't you, he's got the confidence of the country and you haven't. HAGUE: You can forgive me for not proceeding on the basis of opinion polls. We should never be put off by opinion polls. I was shown opinion polls, we've probably talked about them on your programme about a year ago which said no way could we win the European Elections, that we were twenty-eight points behind in those European Elections, that a breakaway faction from our party was going to do almost as well as the official party. All of that turned out to be complete nonsense. We've won the elections outright, we've had the biggest swing to the opposition in any election since the first World War so I can be forgiven after that for not taking too much notice of opinion polls and for getting on, steadily, with rebuilding my party and winning support, which is what we are doing. HUMPHRYS: William Hague, in the United States, thank you very much indeed for joining us. HAGUE: Thank you very much. HUMPHRYS: When the government set up a Scottish parliament lots of people said: they'll be sorry. Well it seems at last one of the chickens is now coming home to roost... tuition fees for students at university. The Scots are expected to announce this week that they'll abolish them.. which is fine for the Scots. But what about everybody else? As Paul Wilenius reports, the government's going to come under an awful lot of pressure to do something for the English, the Welsh and the Northern Irish. PAUL WILENIUS: It's a New Year and It's a New Term. For student Ben Ricketts. The car's packed and there's one more farewell before heading back to university. Like hundreds of thousands of other British students, the holiday's over and it's back to his studies. But it's also back to worries about money. On the drive from Merseyside, it's a time for reflection. The students at Ben's university in Newcastle come from all over the UK. But now Scottish students are set to get a far better financial deal from their newly devolved government. In 1998, Tony Blair's government introduced tuition fees and scrapped student grants, despite fierce opposition from some Labour MPs. But the Scottish coalition government is poised to overturn this policy. This will put pressure on Westminster to do the same, as there are many Labour MPs who fear their constituents will be getting a bad deal - compared to the Scots. JIM COUSINS MP: I think people will find these proposals very attractive, what will worry people is why we aren't having them across the United Kingdom as a whole? PHIL WOOLAS MP: You will have students studying on the same course having different financial support systems because one's from Scotland, one not from Scotland. And that will cause parents and students themselves to ask their representatives how to justify this. WILENIUS: Power was handed over to the Scottish Parliament last year, and there were high hopes this would be great boost to the nation. But the coalition government is still finding its way. Scrapping of university tuition fees was the prize sought by the Liberal Democrats and Labour was reluctantly forced to look into the issue. The report commissioned from lawyer Andrew Cubie is expected to form the basis of a deal. PAULINE McNEILL MSP: I think in finding a solution I think the Cubie Report will be the foundation for it but I think that part of the process will incorporate the principles that Labour adheres to which is we are looking for wider access in higher education. We feel there are too few people from low income backgrounds and the principle of the Liberal Democrats which they find offensive and that is the issue of student fees. So it's a combination of some of those principles that I think will find it's way into the final conclusions. WILENIUS: Few thought that Andrew Cubie would come up with a workable solution to the problem, which would please both sides. But he consulted widely throughout Scotland and concluded that paying tuition fees up front at the start of higher education was a problem. He found it was better to ask students to pay later once they had jobs and could afford it. ANDREW CUBIE: We have concluded that the position in Scotland as far as tuition fees is indeed, as we've described it, discredited. Where we stand at the moment in Scotland is clear that the existence of tuition fees, whether paid or not by individuals, is seen as an impediment and particularly an impediment to those from disadvantaged groups who under our terms of reference were encouraged to find ways to get into higher education. WILENIUS: But for Ben in Newcastle, if Cubie's proposals are accepted it opens up dramatic inequalities. This is Alex Holt, Ben's friend from Edinburgh. If the deal is agreed soon, he'll not have to pay the tuition fees up front. Ben will still have to pay because his family comes from England. Both of them say it would be much better to pay later, once they have got jobs and good salaries. Now Ben, just describe to me, I mean the importance of tuition fees to you, when it comes to you, you know you student living expenses. BEN RICKETTS: When it comes to finances I get about twenty seven hundred a year from the government in student loans, a thousand and twenty-five pounds of that goes straight out again back to Her Majesty's government. I don't see a penny of it. It means if I add up my rent and my tuition fees alone it actually exceeds my student loan. It's impossible to be at university without a lot of help, financial help from my parents. ALEX HOLT: We're hard pressed as it is as students, and therefore not being clobbered with that three thousand pounds at the start, but rather deferring payment will be something that I would be quite happy to do. WILENIUS: Alex and Ben relax before getting down to the hard work of lectures this week. Many students have to take out large loans as they no longer get maintenance grants. Some finish up with thousands of pounds of debt. In Scotland it's feared this is putting students off university. If Tony Blair is going to meet his ambitious target of getting half of all school leavers into higher education, Andrew Cubie thinks grants will need to be revived. CUBIE: The present arrangements in Scotland provide only for loan assistance. We, in our work, became clear that on an assumed access basis of four thousand one hundred pounds, to fund a student for thirty eight weeks, that some of that, for certain priority groups, should be available by way of bursary support and frankly that is simply because there is evidence that from disadvantaged groups, loan arrangements only are a material deterrent to access. The bursary provision if implemented we believe will remedy that. WILENIUS: So giving extra money directly to poorer Scottish students in grants or bursaries will make the divide between Scottish and other UK students even wider. It then becomes a matter of geographic chance, whether or not you get government help. Having two different systems running side by side will divide students into winners and losers. BEN RICKETTS: There's a lot of people at the moment having great financial difficulty and I would count myself amongst them to a certain degree. I'm going to have to work part time next year and that's no good at all when you're trying to study full time as well. It's just not working at the moment. HOLT: It's just not working at the moment., we have the same rents , we have the same living costs, and yet we are getting a better financial package . If this is the case for Scotland then I think certainly it should be spread for the rest of the education authorities. WILENIUS: Scottish politicians said it was inevitable that devolution would throw up sharp differences in policy. The Westminster government has tried to minimise those differences over tuition fees, but any solution that appears to give the Scots a better deal is bound to anger many students and their parents south of the border - and put pressure on their MPs. JIM COUSINS: Of course it's a big political problem - it'll be a big political problem for English, Welsh and Irish MPs, who will have the difficulty of explaining why students from their areas don't have the same funding system and support system that Scottish students have. And incidentally it's a double problem because most of us think the Scottish proposals are really, really good, and take the whole discussion about student finance forward in a very sensible and creative way. WOOLAS: If there is a perception amongst the non Scottish students and their parents that the non-Scottish system is unfairer, is not delivering a fair crack of the whip, if that perception is real and we don't yet know if that will be the case , then it would be very difficult for politicians such as myself to justify to my constituents the difference in the system, but that is a consequence of devolution . . WILENIUS: : But Ben's dad , Vic, knows all about the figures. He's head of maths at a school in Birkenhead . Tuition fees have a big impact on his and Ben's finances and he feels the government could suffer politically if they ignore people like him. VIC RICKETTS: It's going to cause a great deal of irritation because the thousand pounds that we are paying for tuition fees would then be a thousand pounds that Ben would have to actually supplement his living expenses - so at the moment he is finding life very difficult to make ends meet and he has spent his loan and he borrows as much from the bank as he can and that thousand pounds is a lot of money for him and that's being paid now in tuition fees. If the boy next door to him is not having to pay that and therefore has got the thousand pounds to spend, that's going to make a considerable difference and it's bound to cause irritation in the very least. And I think there will be a price to pay in the ballot box , if the government wants to think that way. WILENIUS: Alex and Ben know that student life isn't all fun and games. When they get back to their studies this week , they'll face the harsh realities of finding money for rent, food, and books. Many Labour politicians North and South of the border feel the Scottish proposals are a winner , and should be adopted to give students from all parts of the UK a better deal. If the Westminster government agrees to this, it would delight students like Ben. MCNEILL: I'm satisfied we will end up with a better system in Scotland . I think if that means that there is not such a good system in England , if that is the case then that is entirely a matter for Westminster to look and see what is required as a solution outside of Scotland . I do think that the Cubie report means that there are sections of that particularly around student hardship and student poverty. that can be easily translated and I think probably would be a UK concern for students all over the UK. COUSINS: The Scottish Parliament has looked at this issue and come up with something that is really sensible. It's a tribute to the whole process of devolution , it's a tribute to decentralising government, modernising it , getting ideas in from different sources . So okay these are good ideas, let's pick them up and look at them for the United Kingdom as a whole. WILENIUS: Ministers here in Westminster are worried because it would be very expensive to adopt the Scottish policy across the whole of the UK. Even worse, they fear it would be portrayed as an embarrassing U-turn, but Tony Blair's government is being urged to accept , not reject, this product of the new politics of devolution. CUBIE: I hope the strength of the devolved arrangements we have, and particularly as they apply in Scotland, will be that good ideas can go from one part of the United Kingdom to elsewhere. I don't know how others will view our report elsewhere in the United Kingdom, but I would hope, given that the wider community, the civic society in Scotland, has welcomed our report, that some of that may echo across the border. WOOLAS: We don't yet know what the political consequences of devolution are. We're into new territory. If we can justify the different systems or the different financial support systems for students on the basis of: well, some students are from Scotland, they have different priorities, different systems, then so be it. But if it comes to the harsh economic realities and students from England are saying, this is not fair, then we don't know whether we'll be able to carry that. That's why this new political period is such a fascinating one and a very tough one. WILENIUS: For Ben it's getting tougher. This term he needs a job to help pay the rent and stop the debts piling up He can only look on enviously at the Scottish proposals, but many MPs say there's no excuse for not finding the seven hundred million pounds needed to help students like him. COUSINS: It's a bit hard for Gordon Brown, as a Scots MP himself, whose constituents are, are going to be benefiting from these excellent proposals, to say to the rest of us that, that we can't have them 'cause there's no money. WILENIUS: So money is the key. Ben and thousands of students like him need more of it , but will the Westminster government agree to follow the Scottish lead and fund it If they don't it could lead to long term political trouble and future generations of the government's supporters could well just walk away. HUMPHRYS: Paul Wilenius reporting there. This week we shall know what Lord Wakeham and his team have concluded after spending the past year looking into how the House of Lords should be reformed. We've already got rid of most of the hereditary peers, but that's only the first step. Tony Blair talks about a "democratic" second chamber... or, at least, he used to. As Terry Dignan reports, the question is HOW democratic... and how the government will justify a chamber in which only a small number are elected... if any. TERRY DIGNAN: Finding a way through London's Hampton Court Maze can be bewildering. This week politicians hope to find their way out of a puzzle - what to do about the House of Lords. Whichever way they turn, they find it hard to escape from one of the biggest quandaries in British politics. How to make the Lords more effective without making it too powerful. In Opposition Mr Blair said Labour had always favoured an elected House of Lords. But in Government he has shown little enthusiasm for elections to the Second Chamber. His critics say it's because an elected Lords would be more willing to stand up to the Government. That's left the Wakeham Commission with a dilemma. A proposal for electing the Lords could face opposition from Mr Blair. But an appointed chamber could be too weak to do its job properly. LORD RICHARD: I don't think it's legitimate enough to be able to, to do it's - one of the prime jobs that it's got, which is checking the power of the Executive. I mean, when a government has a majority of nearly two hundred in the House of Commons, then it is pretty powerful. And if the Opposition is as supine as the present one is, well then, some, somewhere there's got to be a check and there's got to be accountability, and I think that, that the only place you will find that now is potentially in the second Chamber. MEG RUSSELL: It's very important that the second Chamber however it is devised has the support of the public in order to be able to do its job properly and isn't ridiculed when it tries to raise issues with the Government on the basis that it's not representative, it's not elected, and its views should just be simply ignored. That's what we've seen with the House of Lords in recent years. We want to move away from that towards something which can intervene in a meaningful way in the policy process. DIGNAN: The Lords in all its pageantry represents more than tradition. Nearly all government legislation must be approved here. Having removed peers with inherited titles, stage one of reform, the Government won't explain how to make the chamber more democratic, stage two. The Lords' composition is important because of its powers. In using these powers their Lordships plot their moves carefully. They can scrutinise and revise Government legislation - their main job. The Government can be forced to retreat and rethink if the Lords believes legislation is flawed. If ministers resist changes to Bills, the Lords can delay legislation for a year before it becomes law. The long period of Conservative rule when for the most part Conservative Governments had big majorities in the House of Commons, persuaded many in the Labour Party that the country needed a strong Second Chamber. That meant electing the Lords because only through elections would the Second Chamber gain the kind of democratic legitimacy it needed to act as an effective check on Government. Mr Blair fears that electing the Lords could make it too powerful and may undermine the principle that in our political system the House of Commons is supreme. PROFESSOR KEITH EWING: The reform process should come up with a method of composition which does not undermine the primacy, or the pre-eminence of the House of Commons in our Constitutional system. That is a matter of great importance which we hope the Royal Commission will fully reflect in its recommendations. LORD RICHARD: That's not the issue, as to which is the dominant Chamber, and all too often, you see, the argument that there well, you'll upset the Commons. What it really means is you'll upset the Executive because the Executive of course has the majority in the Commons. I mean there is very little check now on the power of the Executive and that can't be healthy for democracy. DIGNAN: These Labour peers have been appointed by successive Prime Ministers. The party's official view is that a wholly-appointed House might be as good at curbing Government excesses as one which contained elected members, especially if so-called Crossbench or non-party peers were included. But the Opposition argues only elections to the Second Chamber will guarantee its independence. LORD STRATHCLYDE: The proposal for a wholly-appointed House is really saying we must not trust the people to make the right kind of judgement, they cannot do it. We - the Party - will be able to decide who should sit in the second Chamber. Now I think that that is absurd and I think it is wrong. We are the only parliament in the civilised world where the only way into the House of Lords today is because the Prime Minister says you can. That must be wrong. It is ridiculous and the sooner it is done away with the better. PROFESSOR EWING: Because a chamber is not elected it doesn't follow that it must therefore be, that it must therefore lack independence. There are different ways by which independence can be secured by a chamber which is not elected. You can have composition which includes members who are independent in the sense that they don't take a party whip in the second chamber. So you have independent members which is one of the great virtues of the system which we currently have, the presence of so many crossbenchers. DIGNAN: So, says Labour, an appointed House - which is really what we have now - will be able to do its job properly. The Opposition warns it'll put this to the test, predicting Ministers will have to use the Parliament Acts more often to override defeats in the Lords. LORD STRATHCLYDE: We respect the Supremacy of the House of Commons, that's important, and of course that is enshrined in legislation through the Parliament Acts, which haven't been used a great deal over the last twenty years. They have used - been used - a little bit, but not a great deal. In the future, I would imagine Parliament Acts being used rather more. ACTUALITY: My Lords, Amendment Number 42c, the Lord Ashley of Stoke. DIGNAN: When the Lords does take on the Government, over disability benefits last year and, now, trial by jury, Ministers complain. 'We're the elected Government and you're not entitled to obstruct our legislation' they say. That's precisely why many peers want elections to the Lords. LORD RODGERS: If it is a choice do we prefer the risk of a democratically elected Second Chamber challenging the Commons, or do we prefer the certainty that a nominated Second Chamber will not be democratic, will not be representative, and indeed could be a creature of the Prime Minister. LORD RICHARD: I do think that, that you do lack credibility and you do lack democratic legitimacy. After all nobody elected me. I mean I was appointed by, by Mrs. Thatcher on the recommendation of Neil Kinnock. It was very kind of Kinnock and Mrs. Thatcher to put me in the House of Lords, but for me to claim democratic legitimacy, really isn't on and therefore in a sense if you are engaged in a dispute with the Executive you start off with really your best arm tied firmly behind your back. RUSSELL: An appointed chamber dares not challenge an elected government which has a majority in the elected Lower House and the Canadian government...the Canadian second Chamber doesn't do so and is also very much discredited with the public and rather unpopular. DIGNAN: A year of wandering through a maze of blueprints for reforming the Lords has ended. The Wakeham Commission's chair, Lord Wakeham and his deputy, Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, have been reported as favouring an appointed House. That's the wrong path to reform, say those commission members who want elections. So they've turned towards a compromise - a mixed chamber with a majority of peers appointed - four to five hundred - and a minority elected - one to two hundred. But Labour's evidence to the commission expressed concerns about moving towards a chamber containing two kinds of peer. EWING: We need to be careful about this, in the sense that we've just come out of a regime, in which we've had two classes of members in the House of Lords. We've had hereditary peers since 1958, we've had Life peers, and so far as I understand, I mean that relationship has not always been an easy one, and I think we need to be careful that in the future we don't reproduce the difficulties which may have existed in the past. DIGNAN: That's why doubts persist that Blair can live with the commission's proposals. They'll go to a committee of MPs and peers. Will the Government let the debate drag on while the report gathers dust? STRATHCLYDE: We know what the Government wanted, which was a wholly-appointed House. We know that they didn't want to set up the Royal Commission but they were obliged to do so. We know that they have set in means the process by which they can ignore the Wakeham Commission and make sure that we never get to a second stage. ROGERS: I don't think the government wanted any more reform - I mean I've said that, I think that the present transitional House may very well last for an extra ten years, or longer. We shall certainly be pressing for a very early appointment of the all party committee representative of both houses of parliament to take the argument further but I think the forces of conservatism exist in the government as well as on the Conservative benches when the crunch comes. MACTAGGART: I think it could happen because as I have said in many countries when they come to a half way stage where they have resolved the biggest problems they get stuck. And there is a danger that we will get stuck here because we haven't necessarily, we don't let, can't necessarily create a consensus around Wakeham. DIGNAN: Many Labour MPs are against leaving the Second Chamber as it is, according to an On The Record survey on the membership of the House of Lords. Of the hundred and twenty one Labour backbenchers who answered, two-thirds wanted at least some members elected. Of these twenty wanted only a minority elected with the rest appointed, which is said to be Wakeham's preferred option. Sixty-five wanted to go further and elect at least half the members. Only eleven supported a wholly appointed Lords. Sixteen supported some other option. Nine said they hadn't decided. MACTAGGART: The point of government is that government should belong to the people and the way in which we enable people to own the government, to make sure that it is an expression of their view is through democracy and it is the best way to do that. DIGNAN: Even if Mr Blair finds a way out of his Lords problem by agreeing to elect a minority of peers, there'd be criticism from those who believe that a mainly appointed Chamber would lack the necessary clout to act as an effective check on the actions of Government. ROGERS: We're a Parliamentary democracy, and democracy involves electing your own Parliament, and as a second chamber of Parliament we ought to be elected. So ideally we should have a elected, or predominantly elected because there, there ought to be room for the cross-benches, the so called Independents - independent of a political party - but I think that the proper course would be to head towards a predominantly elected second chamber. RUSSELL: I think that the idea of having a largely appointed Chamber with a small number of elected members is really quite a strange one, and I tend to think, time would tell but I think that would suffer from the same kind of legitimacy problems as an all-appointed Chamber. DIGNAN: This week politicians will get the chance to escape the perplexity of Lords reform. But even if Tony Blair accepts the Wakeham compromise, many believe it's unlikely to give the Second Chamber enough democratic legitimacy. HUMPHRYS: Terry Dignan reporting there and that's it for this week. And don't forget, you can keep in touch with us through our website, the address should be on your screen now. If you missed any of today's programme you can watch it again there and get transcripts of all our interviews with the leading politicians. Until the same time next week - good afternoon. ...oooOOOooo... FoLdEd
NB. This transcript was typed from a transcription unit recording and not copied from an original script. Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy.