BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 20.02.00

Interview: STEVEN NORRIS MP, Conservative Candidate for London Mayor.

Talking about his policies for London.



JOHN HUMPHRYS: So here he is now - up and running I take it but you are a Conservative and London is a Labour city, increasingly a Labour city so you don't have much chance do you? STEVEN NORRIS: I don't think that's the impediment to be honest with you. I mean I think if ever there was a God up there He's smiling on us now because I mean what we have seen and what you were referring to in your introduction, the Ken and Frank Show, that really is glorious for us. I mean either you're going to have a candidate who's entirely lost the confidence not only of his own party leader but everyone who has ever worked with him in the form of old Ken or you're going to have Frank who frankly we know now, his own party members in London will have said 'No' to - so, you know, either way one of them is going to be carrying a very very big crutch into this election and I genuinely think that's the opportunity for us. HUMPHRYS: What do you think is going to happen ? NORRIS: You know.... we'll know in a couple of hours but I have to tell you that I can guarantee that there will be a continuing row. I guarantee that the problems for the Labour Party have only just started and not finished. This is the end of the beginning and the next phase is continued harassment of one candidate by the other seems to be almost inevitable. I mean if Livingstone wins can you honestly see Blair or any of the other people in government, in the Labour Party with senior positions who have worked with him in local government changing their mind? I mean Blair says he's a disaster. I may not agree with Tony about a lot but I'll stand by that - I think he would be. On the other hand if it's Frank well you know I'll be saying 'poor old Frank' from day one and I think everybody knows that he will be. He doesn't want the job. There was the old boy going around saying 'it's a non-job, I don't want to do it, I want to stay in health' and I think the deal was - 'Here Frank, would you like that or would you like the back bench?' and I think that's where he's come from. HUMPHRYS: You're not whistling in the dark to keep your spirits up are you - because they're beating you two to one in the polls and whoever wins ultimately, the party will swing behind him won't they? NORRIS: Ooooh be careful on that. I mean look at the Euros. If you look at the Euro elections we were actually neck and neck in London. I mean that's the sort of cephological background. I think anybody who assumes that this can't be done in London really hasn't read the Runes. But the other interesting thing, you know, is that whole business of an elected Chief Executive for a city is new politics, that's obvious, but I think it will make people think about what is actually at issue. What is at issue is not so much your party affinity but what kind of person you're going to be for the City. I'm always reminded of Guiliani in New York. Guiliani is a Republican Mayor in a City that's overwhelmingly Democrat. There are Democrats for Guiliani and what they all say is - 'We don't like his politics but he's a damn good Mayor', and my whole thrust is to say I am there to actually make this City work better. That's the one thing I'm in the race for and I think that will resonate with a lot of people. HUMPHRYS: Well if you're going to make the City work better you have to improve public transport. That, if there is a single big issue in this, then that is the single big issue. Now everybody, including the Tories, say public transport in London is a mess. Well guess who ran it for a very long time, four years, Steve Norris. NORRIS: Well I only wish I did. You know this is one thing we ought to start by saying right now - when you're a minister it's a terrific apprenticeship but it can also be enormously frustrating... HUMPHRYS: But you did run it didn't you? NORRIS: Well - I'll tell you. What a minister does with, particularly with a nationalised industry like London Transport is you sign the cheque but the Treasury fills out the amount and beneficiary spends the money. What it lead me to do was to certainly understand the system much better than anybody else around but it meant that I had the frustration of watching things happening that I personally would not have permitted to happen and I think one of the dynamics...... HUMPHRYS: I don't remember you saying so at the time...... NORRIS: Oh at the time I was doing the best that I could with the implements at my disposal and according to most impartial observers didn't do a bad job but I think the important thing is that the Mayor is going to be crucially different from a government minister - and this is whether it's a Labour government minister or a Tory, because the Mayor actually has some executive authority and if they get it wrong they won't be mayor for long, they'll be out at the next election. It's that kind of sudden death, that immediate authority to simply get things done, to say 'I'm going to back the policy that I think works, I'm going to cut through all the bureaucracy and just make it happen'. That's what's appealing about the whole concept of mayors. HUMPHRYS: The trouble is and you'll be reminded of this many many times over the coming months, you don't like public transport. You told us so in 1995 you said, 'People like their cars. Cars are better. You don't have to put up with...' and I quote, '"dreadful human beings sitting alongside you"' NORRIS: Yeah. God somebody's been working on the cuttings file there they really have. HUMPHRYS: It's there. I'm afraid it's there...... NORRIS: What is not there is ever my suggesting that that was my opinion. What I was saying and it's actually something that John Prescott has found out many massively to his cost, is that if you're ever daft enough, and I mean stupid enough to construct a transport policy on the basis that it's simply anti car then you're doomed to failure. You're not only doomed to failure because it's electorally suicidal, you're also doomed to failure because it's wrong. What you actually want to do if you're working out in terms of congestion who it is ought not to be making the journey because you know that congestion is always the fault of the car in front of you, I mean that's one of the great truths of transport politics, then actually what you've got to do is offer people choices. You have to give people sustainable, decent choices. You have to give them the bus that actually is regular, is frequent, is secure and reasonably comfortable and arrives on time. If you can do that, if you can deliver that kind of alternative then actually people will make sensible choices for themselves. HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but you can't improve things if you're saying as you're saying, 'I don't want congestion charging'. You can't therefore raise money from that, that's a potential source of revenue, a potential source of a lot of revenue, you can't raise money from that so haven't got the money to do the improvements that you say need to be done. NORRIS: No, unlike both of the Labour candidates who want to tax Londoners more, I won't. I won't do it and I'll tell you actually John, any fool can improve things with several billion pounds to spend although from what I gather Ken Livingstone wants to use the proceeds of a congestion charge for at least half a dozen things including putting conductors on the buses and all sorts of ideas which are no doubt jolly interesting but don't actually solve the problem. What you've got to do if you want to make buses work is make bus priority work, is to get a ticketing system that actually works, to get an information system that actually tells people what they want. Most of this is actually fundable. A lot of it really should have happened by now. I remember launching one of the first...... HUMPHRYS: So we don't need any more money to improve London transport then? NORRIS: If you had a lot more money that would no doubt marvellous and in the best of all possible worlds every spending department got all the bids it ever made, but this is the real world where people also want to care about their taxes and I don't want to add to their burden. HUMPHRYS: But in the real world you'd do two things wouldn't you? You'd try and keep more cars out of London, which is entirely sensible because look at the streets and the way they're crowded, and you'd use the revenue you'd get from that to improve public services, public transport, which is precisely what a lot of sensible people are saying. NORRIS: The logic of road pricing, the idea that you use prices as a mechanism to reduce demand is unassailable...... HUMPHRYS: You can do two things with it...... NORRIS: Yes that's the point, you use price as a mechanism to reduce demand so you raise money and you reduce the number of vehicles on the road. I think people understand that. But you see that's not what's offer in London. What we're being offered in London is the opportunity for some sap of a Mayor, it sounds ideally built for Frank Dobson to be honest with you, to do the government's bidding to impose this charge on Londoners and not solve the problem because the money doesn't even go into the kind of schemes that would make things better for London. It goes down a black hole in the Treasury marked - 'Shortfall on Tube Funding'. And I'm not prepared to accept that. You know one thing I know about London is that Londoners are already paying something like twenty billion pounds a year more to the national exchequer than we ever get back. I mean the idea that we should now pay again for the Underground which we've funded God knows how many times to successive governments I think is really just daft. HUMPHRYS: Well now you've got a problem with the Tube haven't you because your party - a policy of your party is to privatise the Tube. You do not want to privatise the Tube so you are out of sync with your party in quite a big way there aren't you. NORRIS: No, let's be clear. What John Redwood when he was Environment.. Shadow Environment Secretary said was that he believed that if the Conservatives were in office they ought to move to a privatisation based on free shares for all Londoners. Now that's a recipe for government.. HUMPHRYS: Wasn't he speaking for the party? NORRIS: He was indeed and he was speaking for me too, but that's a recipe for government and I have to have a recipe for co-habitation with Labour for at least the next eighteen months. Now this Labour Government has made it clear that they want privatisation but that they want part-privatisation and they've budged it, they've made a complete mess of it and what I've put forward is a coherent programme of part-privatisation which gets the private sector in where it ought to be, which is in the interface with the customer and reduces the overall cost to the passenger.. HUMPHRYS: ..happens to be in conflict with your own party. NORRIS: No it's not John, it really is not and neither I nor John Redwood when he was doing the job nor Archie Norman now would say that. A recipe for government is quite properly what the shadow spokesman at the DETR talks about. What I talk about is the reality of co-habitation with a government that has made it clear that privatisation is not on the agenda. HUMPHRYS: Right, well something else that is on the agenda, this I freely concede you cannot do a great deal about and that is whether Britain goes into the Euro or not. But nonetheless, it's a big factor in London because obviously the city of London is hugely important and the way London businessmen feel about this is important. Now you are supposed to be, the Tories are supposed to be the party of Europe but you do not want the Euro at any price. Therefore, again you have a bit of a problem, you have got to go to the City of London and say 'I don't want the Euro', most of them - the overwhelming majority of them say well we do. NORRIS: Interestingly enough, if you actually look for example the London Chamber of Commerce, they've actually produced statistics which make it absolutely clear that London hasn't suffered from being out of the Euro. I've never thought that was particularly surprising because... HUMPHRYS: ..only eleven per cent - this according to the latest polling figures - only eleven per cent are actually opposed to the Euro. NORRIS: I think a lot of business people are in the 'wait and see' category and I think that's perfectly reasonable. Very, very few of them, if any of them are actually suggesting that we should be joining now. HUMPHRYS: They want to keep the option open.. NORRIS: I think businesses are in the habit of keeping options open. HUMPHRYS: But you are not, you don't want to, your party doesn't want to. NORRIS: Well I am very clear that, you know, speaking for London and you are right to say this is not high up on the Mayor's agenda per se, getting the Transport system is a hell of a sight more important to Londoners than worrying about the Euro. There are afterall a lot of people in Parliament who can do that. But you ask me and it's a fair question, I have to answer, if I felt there was any impact that the Euro or our absence from the Euro was making on the City of London's health, then I would be obliged to express that proposition, but I don't see it. I genuinely don't. HUMPHRYS: So you won't be inviting William Hague in his slightly strange truck, his lorry, down into Threadneedle Street and standing on the platform with him, not that he actually stands on it, does he, but you know what I mean, but if he did you wouldn't would you. NORRIS: I'm enormously keen on trucks and.. HUMPHRYS: ..in your other job.. NORRIS: ..I've had other lives.. HUMPHRYS: ..in the day job. NORRIS: In the day job, in my ex-day job. But in all seriousness, yes he's very welcome because what he says.. HUMPHRYS: And you would stand on the platform with him? NORRIS: Oh certainly, being in Europe and not run by it and not for one moment contemplating what I regard.. HUMPHRYS: ..arguing against the Euro.. NORRIS: ...as an almost suicide Euro proposition I'd be there. No question, I'm there and I'm quite convinced and I think most independent opinion is that if you actually look at the impact of our not being in the Euro on the City of London, not only is there no evidence that we've suffered, there is actually some evidence, and I'm not sufficiently well qualified as an economist to judge it, but there is some evidence that we've actually prospered. Now you know it's not surprising when you think we are also the leading trader in most foreign exchanges all around the world without actually having to adopt everyone of them as our currency. It's perfectly possible for the city to retain its pre-eminence but you know what will really ensure that we go on having more American banks in London than there are in New York and that several of the leading European Banks actually have their headquarters in London, it's having a city that works. So my contribution to Britain's ability to make its choices when the time is right, is making sure that London is still the pre-eminent city in Europe for business. HUMPHRYS: You will not be saying to those business people who want to keep their options open on the Euro - me too - I'm with you, I'm going to keep mine as well. You are saying it's suicidal, it's bonkers. NORRIS: One of the things that distinguishes my campaign is action, not politics, what I am concerned about is getting things done in the bailiwick that I've been given. It's not, you know it's not playing a potentiary power to burble on about every issue, I'll leave that to people like Ken Livingstone who clearly believe that that's what the office is. I believe the office is making Londoners' lives work better and I'll leave others to pontificate about the Euro. HUMPHRYS: Well let's look at the people of London. A very large proportion of whom, about a third of the voters in London, are ethnic minority or minorities of some sort. Now your policies, particularly on something like policing, stop and search, of which you approve, are not popular with those people, broadly, a sweeping generalisation I know, but nonetheless true. NORRIS: I don't believe it is true John. If you look at for example where ethnic minority communities are centred, the crime that is committed in those areas tends to be committed by people who belong to the same ethnic minority groups. Most of the responsible ethnic minority leaders that I talk to and your right that it's around one in four in London who come from an ethnic minority background are actually very keen to see the policy do their job properly and they're very keen to see people stopped and search if there is evidence of burglaries going on and people are in places where they might actually have been involved in that. HUMPHRYS: But they see black people as being disproportionately stopped. NORRIS: Yes and that is I think the whole, if you want to draw thread for people who perhaps don't really understand what Lawrence was all about, what the aftermath of what Stephen's killing was all about, what the McPherson report was all about, it's about the absence of respect and I think you know that crucial word respect, respect for every citizen in London, regardless of their colour, their race, their age, their creed, their sexual orientation, their gender. You know that is something that perhaps the Metropolitan Police have recognised now that it's lost sight of. But I think too many young men dashing around in panda cars losing the ability actually to talk to the members of the public whom the police have to search. HUMPHRYS: But that is a slightly different.. the Lawrence's family lawyer, Imran Kahn, says the lessons of McPherson have not been learnt. NORRIS: Well I heard him say that but I also heard Bishop John Sentamu, who's the black Bishop of Stepney say.. HUMPHRYS: ...who himself was stopped and searched. NORRIS: Who was himself stopped and searched and nonetheless said in answer to Imran Kahn that actually he believed the police were making very good progress in London on the back of the McPherson Report. And I think he made the point that you could hardly expect the entire culture of a force of you know well over twenty, nearly thirty thousand men and women to be changed over night and I accept that. I'm not..I wouldn't criticise the entire force because of one single bad apple that was not yet ejected. But be clear that this business of respect really is at the heart of policing in London. I think the idea that we should be saying no, you know forget any of the sensitivities of the ethnic minority community, stop and search is the answer, that would simply not be acceptable in a city like this. HUMPHRYS: You say you are a man of action, judge me by my deeds, in other words, if people look at the candidates that your party has chosen for the assembly in London, the new assembly, they will discover that there is not a single black candidate, there is an Asian candidate who has a reasonable chance of winning, not in his own consistency, but because of the list system. That isn't very impressive is it, out of all those candidates, only one has a chance of winning. NORRIS: Oh I wouldn't say that funnily enough because I think we have at least one other black candidate who is very very likely to win on our analysis and that will be two, you want to compare that with the Liberal Democrats who don't have any .. HUMPHRYS: ..but I'm talking to you as a... NORRIS: ..but I'll tell you what unites both, I mean that is that we are a completely open and democratic party, that means my party shun things like special, you know positive discrimination in favour of people from ethnic minorities. It's shun the idea of special black sections and lists and the price you do pay for that is yes, you make progress less quickly.. HUMPHRYS: ..because you're run the blue rinse brigade as you put it yourself. NORRIS: Well I don't know that we're run by any brigade but certainly.. HUMPHRYS: But that was the expression you used wasn't it.. NORRIS: Certainly it's a price that one pays and that's not something that I regard as acceptable in terms of the way the mayor will run this city. I've made it plain for example that I will want to see among the twelve senior executive posts that the mayor is appointing and that laid down in the Act, I will want to see exactly at least the proportion of ethnic minorities among those twelve people that there are in London. I want to say to people in London that as far as I am concerned, if you are not a mayor, for the whole city, for all of the thirty-three ethnic groups in this city that have got more than ten thousand people in, nearly a hundred groups of nearly five thousand people here, if you are not a mayor for them all, then you are not going to be doing the job competently. HUMPHRYS: Steve Norris, thank you very much indeed.
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.