BBC On The Record - Broadcast: 20.02.00



=================================================================================== 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 .................................................................................... ON THE RECORD RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE: 20.02.00 .................................................................................... JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. A couple of hours from now we shall know who's going to be Labour's candidate to be Mayor of London. I'll be talking to the man who'll carry the Tories' banner, Steve Norris, and two Labour MPs, one for Ken Livingstone and one for Frank Dobson. And whatever happened to the national changeover plan that was supposed to pave the way for Britain joining the Euro? That's after the news read by Fiona Bruce. NEWS HUMPHRYS: Can Tony Blair ever persuade a sceptical British public to love the Euro? Or is his Government in danger of losing its way over Europe. PADDY ASHDOWN: "Just as Europe has been the wreckage of previous premierships - Europe will be the wreckage of this one too." HUMPHRYS: And why the Lords are preparing to give the government another bloody nose over the election for London's Mayor. And that's where we begin, with the race to become Mayor of London. More on the Labour nomination later. But the Tories already have their candidate, not that theirs was exactly an easy ride. They first went for Jeffrey Archer and then suffered the massive embarrassment of having him pull out after he'd been forced to admit that he'd asked someone to lie in a libel case, so, Steve Norris, former Transport Minister, got that job instead - and even that turned out to be a bit of a farce, one minute the London Conservative Party said they wouldn't have him at any price- the next minute they were forced to change their minds. 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. HUMPHRYS: A little later in the programme we're going to be looking at why a vote in the Lords this week could cause more problems for Mr Blair in the election and might even mean the mayoral election being postponed. We'll also be talking to a couple of Labour MPs about their candidate, the Labour candidate. But first, a year ago the government launched its national changeover plan. If it passed you by, well, not to worry, it did most of us. The idea was to prepare the ground for Britain joining the Euro early in the next Parliament, just a few years from now perhaps. But what's happened to it? Well, not very much, and the reason for that? As Jonathan Beale reports, many people think it's because the government would prefer us simply to forget about the Euro, at least for the time being. JONATHAN BEALE: These bottles could one day be priced in Euros. It's a currency that's been adopted by eleven countries. Euro notes and coins are already in production. The Prime Minister has said he too wants to join a successful single currency. And he's asking British companies like Bass to prepare for the day, but Tony Blair hasn't told them yet when it'll happen. PADDY ASHDOWN MP: I think this would have been well recognised by Marshall Haig as a First World War strategy. They've sent businesses into the front line to conduct this bloody battle but the generals are still back at home in the Chateau. He has the capacity to show extraordinary courage and yet on this issue which he tells us is central to his premiership he has completely failed to show the courage that is necessary to give the lead, to take the country to the position he's told us he wants us to be in. BEALE: If there is any serious debate in Government about Britain's entry into the single currency, then it's only going on here behind closed doors. A year after the Prime Minister told business to prepare for membership of the Euro, they and the wider public are still wondering when it will happen. A year ago Tony Blair suggested it could happen very quickly. The National Changeover plan gave a timetable for companies to work to. It could take Britain just three years to join the Euro after a referendum. TONY BLAIR (23 FEBRUARY 1999): What we announce today therefore is not a change of policy. It is a change of gear. If we wish to have the option of joining, we must prepare. KENNETH CLARKE MP: It was a change of gear but I'm not sure what gear they're in at the moment. But it was a reaffirmation of their policy which happened to be identical to the policy of the Conservative Party before the last election. BEALE: Some British companies have already started to work in Euros. Bass runs hotels all over the world as well as producing beer and soft drinks. In most of Europe it's had to change computers and tills. Two hundred and ninety million people in eleven EU countries will be using the new notes and coins within two years. The Government also wants British industry to begin thinking in Euros. Most of Europe after all is already counting in them. ANTHONY STERN: In the United Kingdom we will be incorporating Euro facilities in our new tills. And so the changeover should be relatively straightforward. But we won't implement that changeover until there is a clear demand in the United Kingdom for use of the Euro. And that is most likely to be after the Government has decided that it wants to put the question of the Euro in a referendum and the British people have said yes they want the Euro. BEALE: The British Chamber of Commerce is carrying out its own referendum even if the government is not. It wants to know what its one hundred and thirty thousand members think about the single currency and what they're doing to prepare. But even before the results have been counted it's clear that most business is holding back. IAN PETERS: The urgency really has gone out of preparation I think for most people in business. They prepared for the introduction of the single currency in the Euro Zone, but as far as UK entry is concerned nobody really is making the running at the moment; there's nobody putting pressure on business and quite rightly business isn't going to spend significant sums of money until it's more certain about whether we will enter or not. BEALE: Meanwhile the Tories are on the march. This week they kicked off their campaign to save the pound. The Tory Leader hopes the message will capture the public's imagination and he's enlisting all the help he can get. WILLIAM HAGUE: I'll hold it to the photographers but I'm holding it up to the people in St. Albans to remind them it's a rare thing to see a politician put his hand in his pocket and pull out a pound. It will never happen if Tony Blair wins the next election because he wants to abolish the pound BEALE: Conservatives are warning that the Government's National Changeover plan is costing the country millions of pounds. MICHAEL PORTILLO MP: I call it the hand over plan he was handing over our currency to Europe, he thought that by spending all that money he could create an impression that it was going to happen whatever people thought and they'd better get used to the idea. But actually the experience of the last year has been rather different. BEALE: The pro Euro lobby has put together a formidable team. Britain in Europe was launched four months ago. But so far they've hardly dared mention the Euro. TONY BLAIR: Once in each generation the case for Britain in Europe needs to be remade from first principles. BEALE: But Euro enthusiasts want the Prime Minister to talk more about the Single currency. ASHDOWN: They're a brave bunch of people who are doing the very best they can to counteract the argument. But I'm afraid they haven't made much success so far. If I can change the analogy, Britain in Europe reminds me a bit of Hamlet without to Prince. The act is going on but without the Prince it's meaningless. BEALE: Tony Blair and his Government's enthusiasm for the Euro seems to have changed with the seasons. In February last year when the changeover plan was unveiled the Prime Minister was said to be ready to take Britain in. But a month later not everyone was convinced. By spring even Mr Blair was said to be dithering. Come summer though he was apparently backing the Euro while the Chancellor was ruling out an imminent referendum. In the autumn the cabinet was united in support. But there were also reports of splits between the Chancellor and the Foreign Secretary. By winter the Prime Minister himself was championing the Euro. Later his Chancellor was apparently unsympathetic, while the Foreign Secretary was warning of the dangers of delaying. And by the start of this year the Trade and Industry Secretary was backing the Euro. CLARKE: I think their tactics are sometimes fairly peculiar. I don't believe a lot of the press reports about members of the Government going cool. I think they just argue amongst themselves about the tactics of getting to the desired end of a referendum to take us into the single currency if and when the conditions come right GILES RADICE MP: People say well the Foreign Secretary's saying one thing and the Secretary of State for Industry is saying another and the Chancellor is saying another and so on. There's not an absolute certainty of where the Government stands. Now I think the Government does know where it stands and it's just the way it says it needs to be agreed upon and then put over with renewed emphasis. BEALE: In Sweden the Government has also still to decide whether to sign up to the Single Currency. But unlike Britain, here the political debate is now out in the open. The Prime Minister and Finance Minister have both stated their desire to join the Euro and they've now embarked on the difficult task of persuading their party and the public. Sweden's taken the first tentative steps towards joining the Euro. It was only five years ago that people here narrowly voted to join the EU. The public is split over the single currency too. But the leading political figures believe they must now begin the task of turning around opinion BOSSE RINGHOLM: I think it's a very important step for Sweden and for my Social Democrat party of course. We have entered the European Union five years ago, and now we are ready for entering the European Monetary Union too. BEALE: Most Swedish industry too wants its economy to be in tune with the rest of Europe. Scania is one of Europe's largest truck manufacturers with factories in France and Holland. It believes a strong Euro will create an more stable economic environment in which to compete: URBAN ERDTMAN: The desire is naturally to be able to compete in the same way as our fellow competitors on the continent, which are basically working in the Euro today. And naturally in the long run we would like to have the same competitive possibilities as our major competitors on the European market. BEALE: But the Tories believe Britain's economy is doing fine with sterling: ....And they're still waiting to hear the Government present the arguments for the Euro. Polls suggest public opinion is hardening against the single currency. Even though it's yet to translate into a turnaround in Tory fortunes. PORTILLO: The government read opinion polls pretty well and they know that the vast majority of the population, moderate minded people who are not ideologically committed to a federal Europe are against scrapping the pound. The moderate majority in this country is in favour of keeping the pound and so the Government is wary of offending the moderate majority in this country and that is why they very often downplay the Euro in what they say. BEALE: The Prime Minister may find it increasingly difficult to keep his strategy on the single currency under wraps. The Conservatives are determined to make this an issue in the run up to the General election, and pro-Europeans believe if Tony Blair wants Britain to join sooner rather than later then he'll have to break his silence and start selling the single currency. ASHDOWN: I think this is the complete illogicality, indeed stupidity of the position which Labour will describe to you they're in.. They actually believe that by having the referendum beyond the election they will somehow immunise the issue of the Euro during he election. This is complete nonsense. The Tories have only got one line to play and that's the Euro and they'll play it through the election so there will have been a debate. But because the Government isn't prepared to come out and argue that case my fear is that although the Government will be returned at the next election the case for the Euro will be weaker as a consequence. All you hear today is Euro sceptics. They have the best hymns and they sing them the most loudly. CLARKE: I think the Government is deceiving itself if it thinks people are not going to regard it as an important issue. I think the Government should be more up front explaining why it is in favour of joining the single currency so long as the economic circumstances come right. RADICE: I think that the problem for the Government is that the issue will be raised during the general election and we will have to explain why it is that it might be in Britain's interests to join a single currency. We can't just assume that people will understand that as by osmosis. BEALE: Warnings that the British economy is about to be eclipsed by Euro-land are hotly disputed. The city of London is still Europe's financial capital and in the past year inward investment in Britain has increased. But campaigners for the single currency are worried about the consequences of the delaying a decision CLARKE: The Government does keep saying its preparing for a referendum early in the next parliament and that we will be asking the public to join if the economic conditions are right. And I think most businessmen I know say: well they'd better believe it I mean that had better be true. Because if anybody thought the Government had lost its nerve and was going to postpone indefinitely a decision on joining regardless of the economic circumstances, then in my opinion lots of Japanese, American , overseas and British companies would say: well I'm not investing any more serious money in manufacturing or delivering services in the United Kingdom, I'm off. ASHDOWN: What I'm clear about is, if Britain doesn't join the single currency then we will pay a very heavy price indeed; In jobs, in prosperity, in commerce and in political influence. And I greatly fear that if this argument is lost and I am much more pessimistic now than I was a year ago, then the consequences for our country will be very, very grave . If in the end Mr Blair can't grasp this nettle, then I fear, and I remember saying to him a long time ago, and he's heard if from other sources too that just as Europe has been the wreckage of previous premierships Europe will be the wreckage of this one too BEALE: For the time being though people are enjoying the good times outside the Euro. They've still to be persuaded that the single currency will be better for Britain. If Tony Blair really wants to take Britain into the Euro after the next election he'll have to start turning around public opinion soon. And he can not afford to hold a referendum without having won the argument. Supporters of the single currency are getting worried he may have left it too late. HUMPHRYS: Jonathan Beale reporting there and incidently, we did ask again for an interview on the government's policy towards the Euro with either the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook or the Europe Minister Keith Vaz, but, once again, they did not want to talk to us about it. So now back to the race to be Mayor of London. In just over an hour we will know who the Labour party has chosen as its candidate. Tony Blair's man, Frank Dobson or the man he's determined to stop, Ken Livingstone. The election is supposed to happen in May and I say supposed to because it can't take place until Parliament has voted on the election rules. And as Anne Perkins now reports, the House of Lords could be about to give the government a big fright. ANNE PERKINS: It's been a nightmare from the start. For more than a year the political show has been haunted by Labour's search for a candidate who wasn't Ken. They only thing they hadn't reckoned on was trouble in the Lords. But that's what they've got now. LORD RENNARD: The stakes are very high indeed because if the government isn't willing to show some compromise with the other parties then they run the risk of these elections not taking place at all. PERKINS: Ministers thought Tuesday's vote was a formality, the light at the end of the long long tunnel of the devolutionary process. Instead they face another crisis, on the issue of whether the Treasury should pay for the candidates to send every voter a mailshot. PERKINS: In the political fairground, communication is everything. Finding ways of attracting the voters' attention takes a big slice of most parties' campaign budgets. In all national elections every candidate is allowed to send a leaflet free to every voter. KEN RITCHIE: While the media has got an important role in telling people about the election, about what the issues are, the candidates should have the opportunity of saying something directly to those who are going to vote. LORD MACKAY: If the government believe mayors are the way forward, then I think they've got to face up to getting the public involved. And one of the principal ways of getting the public involved is to ensure that each elector gets a piece of paper from each candidate. PERKINS: The democratic whirl leaves more and more people cold. The government's committed to finding ways of reviving interest in elections. The personal mailshot is reckoned to be a good way of getting a few more bodies into the polling booths. But there's never been a freepost for local elections. RITCHIE: I think it would be silly to regard London as a local election, London has got more electors than the whole of Scotland, there was never going to be any argument about Scotland being a local election, Wales was not a local election, when we had the European elections that again were London wide, there was a free post delivery for the candidates. Why we shouldn't have it here simply doesn't make sense. PERKINS: For smaller parties trying to clamber on to the political roller-coaster no free leafleting will be a body blow. The Greens are hoping for seats on the new greater London authority. LORD BEAUMONT: Trying to cover electorate for five million is very, very difficult, particularly when you don't have very large numbers of troops on the ground. Greens I think are going to come out in from all over the country to help with this particular election because they know we have a very good chance of getting very considerable representation, but nevertheless there are bits of London, Barking for instance is a green desert as far as we're concerned and unless we can get out there, get the information there, we won't get the votes that I think we deserve. PERKINS: But there's the cost, says the government. Depending on whether you deliver to households or individuals, and the number of candidates, it could be an open-ended commitment to anything up to twenty million pounds - enough to pay hundreds of extra policemen, argued one minister last week. RITCHIE: We believe you could reduce that down to something between perhaps two and four million if instead of saying that they all had their own delivery that we got the delivery co-ordinated that we simply had a single envelope. The different candidates if they wished to produce a leaflet it can be put into the envelope. LORD MACKAY: To be honest, I think if they're going to penny pinch on democracy, they shouldn't have started on this path at all, they should have left London with the kind of local government it had. They started this, they made a great big play of it, they've got to face up to the consequences. PERKINS: The government has another argument. Commercial interests - hamburger chains or a clothing store - might decide to pay the �10,000 deposit and stand, as a cheap way of buying a London-wide mail-shot. LORD RENNARD: This is absolute and complete and total nonsense. In fact the post office has a statutory duty to vet the material very carefully to make sure that no word appears on the election material that is not related directly to the election, so it's actually impossible for this to happen. PERKINS: The government blames political opportunism for this collision. Opposition peers, in another demonstration of their new, post-reform confidence, insist they're standing up for democracy. The crunch is at hand. The Lords vote is not on legislation which they could be made to reconsider, but on technical rules. That means that if the government is defeated, the May elections will crash. Would the unelected House of Lords really risk that? KEITH HILL: It would be an act of the grossest irresponsibility for an unelected chamber to seek to dictate electoral practice to the elected house and we will resist it. LORD MACKAY: The house is now the house the government wanted. they've got rid of most of the hereditaries, they've put a lot of their own people in, it's a new house and rightly I think the old rules, the old way we behaved is up for question. I think on this issue as a Labour MP said last week, when this was debated in the Commons, it's not so much the peers versus the people, it's the government versus the people and the House of Lords is on the people's side. PERKINS: The last time the Lords got the government on the hook like this was thirty years ago, over Rhodesian sanctions... This time, the opposition argues it's because the government itself is turning its back on constitutional convention. LORD RENNARD: As far as I'm aware it's unprecedented for one government to try and impose its view of the election regulations on every other political party. Normally the election regulations are agreed between the parties as far as possible or certainly between the government and the main opposition party, but it's unprecedented now that every single other opposition party disagrees fundamentally with the way the government is trying to change the way in which these elections have, are being conducted. PERKINS: So who will blink first? Both sides are gambling that with the elections so close, their opponents won't take the political equivalent of the nuclear option and risk delaying or even cancelling the whole show. The government could chance running the vote under existing local election rules. But that would probably be challenged in the courts, triggering more confusion and delay. The opposition alleges gerrymandering, claiming the government is trying to fix the rules in its own interests. LORD RENNARD: I think what the government was really worried about was that Ken Livingstone might have been standing as an independent against Frank Dobson as the official Labour candidate and what they wanted to do was to try and handicap his campaign by making sure there was no free post. But they've been rumbled and all the other opposition parties are united in saying that the government should not be able to impose its will on every other party in this way. It's fundamentally undemocratic. MACKAY: I know a little bit about how government works. I think they'll take us right up to the wire, but I would be surprised if they don't back down. But perhaps they think we're kidding and I just have a message, we're not kidding. PERKINS: The twist and turns of Labour's experiment in devolution is not over yet. However the party spins today's choice of candidate the House of Lords is determined to continue its trial of strength with ministers' nerves. HUMPHRYS: Ann Perkins reporting there, and we did ask the government whether they wanted to respond to that film, but they didn't. JOHN HUMPHRYS: Well the whole campaign to elect a Mayor of London has been a combination of farce and foul-up for both parties. The Labour Party leadership has been trying to impose its favoured son as we've been hearing, Frank Dobson, over the people's choice, Ken Livingstone. Neither of those are saying anything until the vote's been announced but the papers this morning are full of threats from Mr Livingstone, some more veiled than others. The general message is that if Mr Dobson wins by a whisker which is the prediction, then he will challenge the result. Well Diane Abbott is one of few MPs who support Mr Livingstone and she is in our Westminster studio with another MP who is supporting Mr Dobson, Stephen Pound. Mr Pound, would you agree that whatever happens here it couldn't have been much of a worse advertisement for the Labour Party this whole past few months?. STEPHEN POUND: It's been a bit of a pantomime, I can hardly pretend to deny that, but the point is that if you're going to have a democratic process it's going to be messy anyway. It would have been far simpler if the leader of the party had simply said, x or y is going to be the candidate. But you could imagine what everybody would have said then. No, I mean this is democracy in action. It's messy but it's democracy. HUMPHRYS: Is that what it is Diane Abbott. Is it real democracy do you reckon. Has it been a free and genuinely free and fair? DIANE ABBOTT: Sadly it's not real democracy. It would have been a lot simpler if we'd had a one person one vote ballot. Instead we've had this electoral college and the facts which we know even now is that every single Trade Union that's balloted Ken has won two to one. Ken has got the majority of party members' votes and if Frank Dobson however emerges from the electoral college as a victor, I do not believe his position will be sustainable. HUMPHRYS: Well, let me come back to that in a minute, but pick up that point with you Stephen Pound. The charge that's been made many, many times that it has been basically rigged against Ken Livingstone. I mean you were the only MP at one stage supporting Glenda Jackson and then they put the squeeze on you didn't they. The Party bosses put the squeeze on you and you switched to supporting Mr Dobson. POUND: Well there were actually two MPs supporting Glenda Jackson, you're forgetting Glenda. Well, they're quite.... HUMPHRYS: I assume that she had her own support. And they tried to put the squeeze on her too, but she said no and you said yes. POUND: No, the whips didn't put the squeeze on me. I mean I'm far too insignificant to be squeezed. What I did was I balloted the membership of my party and Glenda came a very, very poor third and I reflected, I had discussions with the party membership. I mean it may suit the press and the media to have this marvellous image of sort of Machiavellian whips skulking round in Guy Fawkes hats in the lobbies breaking people's arms. But you know life isn't like that. If anything had happened like that it would have been on the front page of all the papers. HUMPHRYS: I thought that Mr Livingstone had actually won that ballot of your party members. POUND: Ah, yes, any other questions? HUMPHRYS: That rather makes my point I think. Anyway, there we are. (good heavens! quite extraordinary). If he does, let's move forward - there's no point in going back over that too much. If - although I'm intrigued why having balloted them you didn't... POUND: I can tell you - sorry I was allowing mirth and mischief to break through there. HUMPHRYS: Mustn't do that.. POUND: .. Good Lord no, I'm afterall a serious and sober person. No, what happened was that my party general committee took a decision that I would not be mandated by the membership vote. That was their decision and I didn't prompt that. Anybody who knows anything about Ealing North constituency Labour Party would know that you can't twist them. HUMPHRYS: Or indeed knows about democracy. But let me try and move this forward a bit. Now if, and this is the prediction, if Mr Dobson squeezes in, if he wins it but only by a little, less than the eight per cent that we'll come back to in a minute, do you think that the party is really going to swing behind him, united swing behind him.? POUND: Those people who care about the Labour Party, those people who are serious about the Labour Party and what we intend to achieve will of course - one vote is enough, point one per cent of a vote is. Those people who want to cast themselves as perpetual victims will find this is yet another excuse for whinging victimism, and they will say it's been a stitch-up. Well, you know all I can say is that if Ken is the candidate, I didn't vote for him, but I will go out there on the streets delivering leaflets and knocking on the doors for him and I hope to God that Ken - well I think the only announcement he's made is that he's off to the pictures this afternoon, but when he comes back from seeing the "Blair Witch Project" or whatever it is that he is going to see I hope that he will consider the fact that the party is more important than individuals and the City of London is a damn sight more important - the whole city - than any of this internal squabbling. HUMPHRYS: But you do think there'll be people that will not swing in behind Mr Dobson under these circumstances? POUND: People have left the party already. Some of my colleagues who were supporting one candidate or other have lost members from their party. Of course that will happen. The Socialist Workers Party must be rubbing their little hands with glee at the thought of Ken not getting the nomination, because you know this is happy days for the Trots. But for the rest of us who actually don't care about this irrelevant sort of stuff on the sidelines, who actually want to do something about the traffic in London, actually want to do something about policing, want to do something about our city, we will move on. Sensible democrats will move on. HUMPHRYS: Alright, Diane Abbott, what do you think about that. Do you think they'll swing behind Mr Dobson?. DIANE ABBOTT: Stephen is right. The party is much more important than any individual and the fact is that Ken has got the majority of individual trade unionist votes by two to one. He has the majority of party members' votes and in those circumstances if Frank emerges as a candidate he'll be in the same position as Alun Michael... HUMPHRYS: In Wales, yeah? ABBOTT: Yes, he'll be in the same position as Alun Michael in Wales who won his electoral college but was not the popular choice and in the end his situation unravelled and as I say Frank Dobson - if it is the case that Frank Dobson has won the electoral college with its peculiarities, but Ken has won every single ballot I don't believe that Frank's position is sustainable. HUMPHRYS: So, do you think he will stand, you think he should stand down clearly. Do you think he will stand down? ABBOTT: Frank must consider. He must look at what happened to Alun Michael in Wales and he must consider to go forward in London under the spotlight of the national media when the world knows that you lost every single ballot of individual party members is not a happy position. HUMPHRYS: What if he doesn't. What if he says: Look I've won, that's it, those are the rules. ABBOTT: I don't believe that Ken should run as an independent. I don't think Ken wants to run as an independent, but there was no doubt given his massive support amongst party members and given the fact that he's led in the opinion polls for two years despite the fact that the party has thrown everything at him except the kitchen sink, there's no doubt Ken will be under pressure to run as an independent. And there's also no doubt in anybody's mind that if Ken runs as an independent, Ken will win. HUMPHRYS: You don't seem to be saying under no circumstances should he do that. I mean you made the point earlier that the party is bigger than any one member, but from everything you've said it seems as if you're saying: I could perfectly well understand if he stood as an independent? ABBOTT: I'm just stating the facts. I do not believe Ken should run as an independent, I think it would be a tragedy if someone with Ken's talent and his ability to communicate with the public, as his basis of support in London will last to the party, but there is no doubt that he will come under tremendous pressure if, because of the quirks of the College, Frank emerges as the candidate whilst he does not have the mass support of party members. HUMPHRYS: So under that.... those circumstances, if he didn't and if Mr Dobson got a lead of less than eight per cent, in case people are puzzled about that, the significance of that is that those are the unions who did not ballot their members, those are the block votes as it were against which New Labour is supposed to be opposed. If that happens you're saying that he would be sort of justified in taking that action? ABBOTT: I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying that he will undoubtedly come under a lot of pressure to run as an independent. HUMPHRYS: From whom? ABBOTT: Well - from the public. You know the public are big supporters of Frank and have supported him all along and of course you don't have to look far to see what would happen in these circumstances. Dennis Canavan was forced to run as an independent for the Scottish parliament in Scotland. Sadly he didn't want to leave the party but he was forced to run as an independent and he got the biggest personal vote of any candidate in the elections of a Scottish parliament. HUMPHRYS: What sort of support do you think in those circumstances Mr Livingstone would get from the Labour Party whether officially or.... Well clearly not officially but you know what I mean. Officially or unofficially, I mean, from people like yourself or from people who kind of keep their heads down but would vote for him anyway. ABBOTT: If Frank is the Labour party's candidate I will be supporting Frank one hundred per cent. But as far as Labour party supporters, on the council estates, in areas like Hackney, even areas like Ealing, I'm afraid that very many of them will come out and vote for Ken and you know you can rig a selection but you can't rig the election in May. HUMPHRYS: So we could see quite a serious split in the party? ABBOTT: I don't know about splits and it need not come to that. I think Frank has to consider his position. I hope that Ken will hold on and won't run as an independent but the facts are plain - he has won every single ballot. If this had been a simple one person - one vote election, Ken would have swept to victory. HUMPHRYS: Let me ask you Stephen Pound about the point Diane Abbott raised there; If he's returned as the candidate without having won a single popular test at all - whether in the trade unions or anything else, his position is very very difficult isn't it? POUND: No, I don't think it is, He wins the majority of the vote. He wins the majority of the vote - it's as simple as that. HUMPHRYS: Except that the vote has been rigged. POUND: No it hasn't. If it had been rigged there wouldn't have been a vote at all. HUMPHRYS: Well you know what I mean by rigged. I mean your party was supposed to be opposed to block votes and yet here you resurrect the block because if you'd allowed the popular vote to stand, if you'd allowed one member- one vote, as indeed you were going to do right from the very beginning, there's no doubt that Ken Livingstone would have swept it. POUND: Well there is a fair bit of doubt. I mean one of the extraordinary things has been the way that votes and ordinary party members have in fact been moving from Ken to Frank particularly since Christmas. But this is the same system we used to elect the leader of the party and when we had the leadership campaign we had John Prescott, Margaret Beckett and Tony Blair. None of them were complaining about it. I mean nobody complained about the mechanism then and Margaret Beckett and John Prescott rode in behind Tony Blair afterwards. I hope that Frank does.... er that Ken does. HUMPHRYS: Well as far as Tony Blair was concerned it was rather different wasn't it. I mean the trade unions did select according to the ballot of their own members. I mean there was not a trade union block vote in the case of Tony Blair. He made the point himself it was the same system - it wasn't the same system, it was a different system. POUND: Some unions balloted, some unions didn't. But it's extraordinary, I mean the people on the left of the party, including Ken for years and years and years have been talking about the importance of the trade union vote. When it suits them, the trade unions are very important. When it doesn't, suddenly it's the forces of reaction, it's Arthur Deakin all over again. Well you can't have it both ways. HUMPHRYS: Diane Abbott - you can't have it both ways? ABBOTT: I've been a member of the London Labour party for over twenty-five years. I'm looking to the election in May. This selection process has been a fiasco and very damaging to the London Labour party but it is not too late for the party to come behind the popular choice and everybody knows, even Steven that the popular choice is Ken Livingstone. HUMPHRYS: So to what extent has Tony Blair himself been damaged by all this in your view? ABBOTT: I don't think people necessarily blame Tony Blair for the way the thing has been run but although he's perfectly within his rights to express support for his chosen candidate I don't think it was necessarily appropriate for the Prime Minister of this country to get so involved in what was, after all, an internal party election. HUMPHRYS: Just a quick thought from you Stephen Pound: Is Tony Blair damaged at all do you think? POUND: I think to a certain extent you're damned if you do and damned if you don't. When the Labour party used to choose candidates in the seventies and eighties who were widely reviled, you know, you think of Greenwich, Glasgow, Govan - the party was accused of being weak because it didn't impose candidates. If the Prime Minister, the leader of the party had refused to actually express an opinion he would have been seen as vacillating and weak and Hague-like. The fact that he has means he gets flack from the other side. I think that he's made the honourable and decent and reasonable choice and said that for London, of the candidates on offer, Frank Dobson is the best - not just for the party but for London. HUMPHRYS: Well we shall know very soon whether it is Frank Dobson or not. Stephen Pound and Diane Abbott thank you both very much indeed. And the result of that election, whether it's going to be either of those two men or indeed we know that there is a third candidate of course, Glenda Jackson, but the result will be carried live on News 24 at about half past one. That's it for this week. A quick reminder about our web site where you can find all our latest films and interviews - good afternoon. 24 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.