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RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE:
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. The
Conservatives seem to have touched a national nerve with their attack on
the liberal approach to crime. I'll be asking Ann Widdecombe if their
policies are more likely to stir up prejudice than curb the criminals.
We'll be reporting on whether
the government is reneging on its pledge to help old people pay for their
care without having to sell their homes.
And I'll also be talking
to David Trimble ... can he persuade his party that the IRA is really committed
to peace in Northern Ireland? That's after the news read by George Alagiah.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Tony Blair promised the
elderly that they wouldn't have to sell their homes to pay for their own
care when they needed it. Is the Government backing away from that promise?
And David Trimble
is fighting for his political life. Can he persuade his own party to trust
the IRA?
But first, law and order.
It used to be the province of the Conservative Party. Then the new Labour
government hijacked it for themselves, and now the Tories seem to have
stolen it back again. Their message is quite simple: tough on crime and
never mind the causes. Just lock 'em up. They've even said their own
approach in government was too liberal. Their critics say it's not only
morally wrong, it won't work. I'll be talking to the Shadow Home Secretary,
Ann Widdecombe after this report from Robin Aitken.
ROBIN AITKEN: The Tories are offering a
full-bloodied diet on law and order and asylum policy. Political red
meat of this sort satisfies the instinctive cravings of Tory Lionhearts.
Liberal commentators and political opponents accuse them of lurching to
the right; the party itself says the new policies are just common sense.
The Tory party has always had a hearty appetite for tough policies on
law and order and immigration so designing policies to please the activists
has always been straightforward. The problem is that what goes down well
with the core vote doesn't necessarily please a wider audience and the
critics are saying that what the party is now proposing will fail to win
back the mainstream voters they'll need at the next election and further
more won't work. We have the jails but the Conservatives say the system's
gone soft because of what they term the failed liberal post-war consensus.
They have a checklist to increase police numbers and reduce paperwork,
secure reception centres for all asylum seekers, increased mandatory
sentencing, more appeals against lenient sentences, no early releases
and possibly allowing certain crimes to be tried twice. But the measures
make some on the Tory left queasy.
ANDREW ROWE: One of the anxieties I
have is that we should not be allowed to be painted by our opponents as
being on the extreme right in British politics. We clearly aren't we've
never been there, we never win an election if we go in that direction and
we've got to stop doing it. I think that's one of the lessons of Romsey.
I think it's reasonable to suppose that some of the people we needed to
attract were put off us by a reputation that we're too right wing, too
hard line, too hostile to some vulnerable people. We've just got to change
the tone enough to make that no longer tenable.
AITKEN: The men at Norwich jail
are among Britain's sixty-five thousand prisoners. If the Tory proposals
become law there'd be a lot more people sitting down for their regulation
dinners. We already jail more people per head of population that any European
country bar Portugal. And yet our crime rates compare badly; though they
dropped in the mid nineties, they're on the rise again now. Critics say
that keeping people in jail is both expensive and ineffective.
PAUL CAVADINO: Many of the proposals which
the Conservative opposition are now putting forward appear to be based
on a desire to increase the number of people going to prison partly by
mandatory sentencing and partly by an approach which prevents prisoners
from getting out of prison earlier than the end of the face value of their
sentence. Looking at those proposals in combination I estimate that they
would increase the prison population to an extent that would require another
eighteen prisons roughly the size of Dartmoor; another three hundred and
seventy-five million pounds a year would be required to put those proposals
into practice and that is money which would, I think, better be spent
on many of the very effective preventive schemes and alternative community
sentences based on evidence about what works in reducing re-offending.
AITKEN: There's a common perception
that jail is too soft, sentences are too short and in part the Tories blame
the judges. Their remedy is to remove judicial discretion in certain cases
by imposing mandatory sentences. In doing so they'd be following current
American legal fashion - the "three strikes and you're out" school of
thinking and they would certainly be opposed by many in the legal establishment.
SIR MICHAEL DAVIES: I would be totally against
that. In fact I'd go further and I believe that discretion in the courts
should be increased. I am particularly thinking of the mandatory sentence
of life imprisonment in all cases of murder. Now every lawyer, let alone
every judge, knows that murder varies tremendously in its gravity and I
would like to see a judge in a suitable murder case being able to impose
a sentence less than life imprisonment, as happens in other countries such
as Australia.
AITKEN: Support for the police
is a staple of Conservative rhetoric and Mr Hague is currently offering
plenty for the party faithful to chew on. The officer on the beat, the
familiar guarantor of the public's wellbeing is a cherished icon for Conservatives;
increasing their number, supporting their work, these are the articles
of the faith. Since Labour came to power the thin blue line has become
even thinner. The Tories are now pledging to increase police numbers and
to free them from burdensome paperwork and other routine chores which they
say take them away from more useful police work. These are obvious and
easy points to make while in Opposition but the Tories' opponents say that
many of the problems the police service is now experiencing stem from the
time when the Conservatives were themselves in government. Bobbies on
the beat in Banbury offer a reassuring presence but police numbers have
fallen by more than three thousand since 1997. For the Tories that's a
useful stick with which to beat a government which has sought to establish
itself as the party of law and order. But the Tories' opponents say they
are open to exactly the same charge they lay at Labour's door.
SIMON HUGHES: In spite of John Major's
two promises that police numbers would go up from '92 to '97 they went
down. They continue to go down so it's at least partly the Tories' fault.
Of course the public, the police want more police. We have consistently
argued that for the last ten years. The Tories are right to argue it now
but it's being wise after the event.
PETER GAMMON: Well it's easy to make such
promises when you're in opposition and we have to look back and look at
the five thousand extra police officers that the last Tory government promised
and they didn't materialise. So, we will see I think - if they deliver
we'll be very pleased; but we will remember the promise that he's made,
if he ever gets back in government.
AITKEN: The Tory leadership
has also been feeding the party tasty morsels on asylum policy. The Tories
have set out a tough approach on asylum seekers designed partly to deter
people from coming to Britain in the first place. They want all asylum
seekers to be held initially in secure reception centres like this one
and the want to set up a special agency - the Removals Agency - which
would seek out and deport illegal migrants to the country. Their opponents
say these policies are xenophobic and unjust.
At the Tinsley House
detention centre at Gatwick Airport asylum seekers while away their time
waiting for official decisions. Many people here are judged likely to
abscond if allowed into the community. Numbers of asylum seekers have
been rising sharply more than 71,000 last year - up from 48,000 the year
before. The Conservatives say that detaining all arrivals will prevent
them from disappearing into society and will deter others from trying it
on. Their opponents say the language the Tories are using is stirring anti-foreigner
sentiment and damaging race relations generally
NICK HARDWICK: Of course these issues need
to be debated but the language they use, I am completely certain, is creating
a climate of fear for asylum seekers and refugees on the streets and I
think that's a very....I'm appalled that responsible, supposedly responsible
politicians are doing that.
AITKEN: And do you lay that
charge directly at the door of William Hague and Ann Widdecombe?
HARDWICK: I would say to Ann Widdecombe
I think you're making a very big mistake with the language you use. I'm
quite sure Ann Widdecombe doesn't intend to have this effect but I would
say to her when it comes back to us with all this filthy hate mail.
ANDREW ROWE: I'm concerned that the rhetoric
allows people who are a great deal further to the right than anybody in
our party to trade on the assumption that what they are saying is what
the Conservative Party agrees with. That's the danger. And I'm absolutely
dead against it. I mean if I thought that some of William's and other people's
rhetoric gave comfort to people who were engaged in racist attacks I would
be deeply alarmed. But the truth of the matter is that Ann Widdecombe and
William Hague are as hostile to racial attacks as I am.
AITKEN: This cannabis was seized
in Banbury. The Tories want to challenge liberal attitudes. Drug dealers
too - particularly those who sell to children - would face stiffer penalties.
But all these proposals have a price tag.
SIMON HUGHES: If the Tories were a party
which were saying never mind the cost we'll all just have to pay the taxes
there would be a logical, coherent public policy and economic policy but
that's not what they say. They're promising cutting public expenditure,
cutting taxes but increasing the bill. I can't see that that adds up and
they've never made it add up.
AITKEN: The Conservatives have
bared their teeth on law and order, social liberals say the new policies
are populist, expensive and tinged by racism. The party says their common
sense ideas challenge a failed progressive orthodoxy. In this high protein
political debate the participants may not yet all have had their fill.
HUMPHRYS: Robin Aitken reporting
there.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe, your solution
to crime then - lock 'em up?
ANN WIDDECOMBE: Not entirely no, I think that's
rather a caricature of what we're saying but what we are saying is that
if you're going to seriously fight crime first of all you don't just go
on reducing the number of crime fighters and secondly that courts have
got to have adequate powers of sentencing. One of the, what you caricature
as 'lock 'em up' proposals for example is actually to deal with young menaces,
twelve to fifteen year olds who can make their neighbours' lives a complete
misery and who laugh at the courts because the courts don't have adequate
powers. Now what you caricature as 'lock 'em up' in which I'm saying 'take
them into secure training centres' but when we've got them there what I
then want to do is to have proper regimes of education, of training, of
addressing behavioural problems, proper incentives linked to early release
and then if they stay out of trouble, to wipe the record clean before they
actually enter into adulthood - that seems to me to be the right combination
of carrot and stick. It isn't all just mindlessly lock 'em up.
HUMPHRYS: But I'm not sure how
much of a caricature it is. If you look at the different measures people
are going to be locked up and they're going to be locked up for longer,
more mandatory sentences, more appeals against lenient sentences, having
to serve the full term, transparency in sentencing, remove double jeopardy
and now there's another I read about in the papers this morning, tougher
sentences for paedophiles and those who download child pornography, add
it all up and there's an awful lot of people going to be locked up for
longer - that's what it amounts to.
WIDDECOMBE: Quite undeniably we are proposing
to make sentences severer for things, as you've just mentioned such as
paedophilia, for such crimes as actually distributing paedophile material,
pornographic material involving the use of children. I think that those
who are watching this programme won't find that an unreasonable proposition
and I would also put this to you that when we last went in for a policy
of a greater degree of imprisonment it did coincide with the first sustained
fall in crime for many decades so I am convinced that it works but, and
this is a very important point and one that I'm making all the time, actually
putting people into prison is half the story, you protect the public whilst
you've got them there but the other half of the story is what you do with
them when they're in prison to make sure you protect the public once they
come out.
HUMPHRYS: We'll argue about all
of that......
WIDDECOMBE: You don't need to argue do
you.......
HUMPHRYS: Well let me suggest this
to you because I want to come on to the question of how effective these
proposals are likely to be based on experience and all the rest of it but
let me suggest to you that what it actually amounts to is a bit of a populist
stunt. Clearly you said yourself the child pornography thing was going
to be popular - of course it is, I mean you can always win a few votes
by saying 'we're going to lock 'em up and throw away the key', I mean that
is an easy way of doing it. But the question is whether it is going to
cut crime, that's what really matters and it does sound very much like
a bit of populism, aimed at getting votes, and it's been very effective
too.
WIDDECOMBE: Well if what you actually mean
is that we're addressing concerns which a large number of people have and
that we're addressing those concerns in a way which both we and they believe
will work then yes we are doing that but really you know, your profession
wants it both ways: If we didn't address those concerns you would say
we were dismissive, arrogant, out of touch and when we do address their
concerns you say, 'Ah, playing a popular card', come on.
HUMPHRYS: But you see what Mr Hague
says you're doing is you're following your instincts, I think that was
the word he used, your instincts, but that of course gets you into difficulties
then doesn't it. I mean the sort of approach that you took with the Norfolk
farmer. He gets a life sentence. You then adopt his case, effectively,
because that's what the public wanted you to do, at least that's what all
the opinion polls and everything else told us and here was a man who was
actually sentenced for murder so you can see the kind of problems this
can get you - a mandatory sentence no less.
WIDDECOMBE: May I invite you to rewind
the clock six months ago long before this man got a life sentence or was
convicted of murder and you will see me actually say in my party conference
speech that those who defend their person or property against criminal
invasion should be able to do so without fear of penalty at law providing
they do so within reasonable limits, so I'd already said that. That was
already party policy......
HUMPHRYS: ....within reasonable
limits.....
WIDDECOMBE: ....within reasonable limits
and we have been working on that. Now what the Tony Martin case did was
to do with that one sentence in a party conference speech didn't do which
was to bring out into the open the very widespread concerns that people
have, they don't want to be allowed to shoot people who come onto their
premises but they do want to be allowed to defend themselves and the fact
is that for every Tony Martin there are a huge number of lesser cases where
individuals have defended themselves, the burglar has had the gall to complain,
and they find themselves on the wrong end of a police investigation and
that's wrong.
HUMPHRYS: But that's the difference
isn't it....
WIDDECOMBE: No it's not a different matter
at all.....
HUMPHRYS: .... But you said 'reasonable
force' and that's the crucial point here and if somebody shoots somebody
that then becomes murder and that then qualifies for a mandatory sentence,
that's the contradiction in your position.
WIDDECOMBE: No there's no contradiction
in our position because both William and I have said two things: First
of all that we do not want to comment on the merits of that individual
case because that is better left to the courts but we're commenting on
the issue that it throws up. The second thing that I have said is that
where you end up with somebody dead or even somebody very seriously injured
or maimed then probably you do have to test that in the courts, so we're
not saying we should have just done nothing at all.
HUMPHRYS: Rhetoric, obviously,
is not expensive. Rhetoric is very cheap but the sorts of actions that
you're proposing are indeed very expensive.....
WIDDECOMBE: ...they're going to cost money.....
HUMPHRYS: They're going to cost
money - right. No I'd like to go through them if I may, the three key
areas as I've identified them and that's prisons. You've agreed that you're
going to send more people to jail. It's going to cost a lot of money,
three hundred and seventy million pounds a year to run the eighteen new
prisons that would be needed. Those are the figures from Paul Cavadino
of NACRO, you heard him in that film there. A lot of money.
WIDDECOMBE: Well they're the figures from
Paul Cavadino, of course they are not our figures.
HUMPHRYS: You're really disputing............
WIDDECOMBE: Yes, can I finish, you're asking
me a serious question and I think people listening want to hear me answer
not just be interrupted. Perhaps you get a bonus for interruptions I don't
know. But what we have costed our law and order programme at is about,
and it's not precise because you have to make assumptions about deterrents
and assumptions about the number of people who would be convicted. But
we have costed the law and order programme at about two hundred and sixty
million. Now, what we did when we introduced minimum mandatory sentences
for burglary and for pushing hard drugs was to phase it over time and we
got it exactly right because indeed although we had a change of government
it came in, in just one month later than that which we had predicted we
would be able to start to phase it in. So we will build the extra prisons
that are necessary but we will accept that there will be a period while
they are being built and all these things will be properly phased in and
there is no question whatever of just making wild statements and not sitting
down and doing the costings and working out the phasing and working out
what is demanded. But I do dispute that particular figure - you just can
take one..
HUMPHRYS: What is it then..
WIDDECOMBE: I've just given it to you..
HUMPHRYS: No, but I thought you
said that was a global figure, that's just the prisons is it?
WIDDECOMBE: That is our law and order programme,
that includes not just the prisons, it also includes - and I suspect Paul's
costings do as well - the secure training places for young people.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so four prisons,
we're talking about two hundred and sixty million as against his figure
- that is just prisons - as against his figure of three hundred and seventy
million?.
WIDDECOMBE: Yes. That also includes our
proposals on conditional discharge which I take it he has worked into his
prisons as well. When you come up with just a wide quote and a large number
of jails, that frankly doesn't ring true bearing in mind the new number
that we had to build just for minimum mandatory sentences so we have some
experience, we know what it's about, it doesn't ring true. I am not going
to play to a set of costings that I have not agreed to. I am telling you
what our costings are.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let's look at
the cost of police because you want more police officers of course, you'll
know what the government's position was, that they were going to recruit
enough police officers to replace those who were leaving the force. Not
actually add to the total number of police officers. Now what are you saying,
that you are going to add to them?
WIDDECOMBE: Our pledge is very straightforward,
it is this. Whatever number of police we inherit from Labour when we return
to power if that number is lower as it is very likely to be, than the
one that we left behind we will make up the difference. So at the moment
we would be faced with making up two thousand three hundred. We will have
to see what we have to make up when we have got them out of office which
I hope will be in a year's time.
HUMPHRYS: So it might be two thousand
three hundred, it might be two thousand five hundred, but...
WIDDECOMBE: ... or it might be less but
there will be a cost..
HUMPHRYS: ..but there will certainly
be a cost. And that is a commitment, there's absolutely no question about
that, you will...
WIDDECOMBE: That's a commitment. To get
it back to the numbers that we left....well before you say it like that,
we were already affording those numbers and it's only three years ago.
It isn't as if we are saying look we're going to do something totally new
that no government's ever done before. We are going to go back to the numbers
that we were already affording.
HUMPHRYS: But it's going to be
a lot of money.
WIDDECOMBE: There is going to be a cost,
a cost that we were already meeting.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but we'll come
to that in a moment, but I'm just trying to itemise each of the bills as
it were and add them all up. We haven't actually got a figure for that
because we don't know precisely how much it's going to be because we don't
know precisely how many. But there is the other factor there on top of
that police pay. We've heard the government saying, I think they said it
just this morning that police officers in London particularly should earn
more money. Do you agree with that?
WIDDECOMBE: We haven't made pledges on
police pay and I'm certainly not going to make them on the hoof. What we
will do is we are going to have to look at the whole package at the moment
that goes with policing. We need to look not just at numbers which you
are focusing on but I would say at something vastly more important - let
me get there - which is police functions because you can have all the extra
policemen in the world but unless they are spending their time actually
fighting the criminal then it is a pointless exercise. So one of the things
that we are pledged to do is to have a complete review of police functions
with a view to taking away inessential tasks. So that is the first thing.
We will then have to look at how that plays into, and pay and moral and
everything else plays into recruitment. We will have to look at that but
I am not going to deliver you a pledge on pay this morning.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, but I've heard
Home Secretaries promising that for twenty to twenty-five years and...
WIDDECOMBE: You're now hearing me promising
it and I intend to deliver.
HUMPHRYS: Okay, alright. But you
are not going to get those extra police officers, it's difficult enough
to recruit police officers as it stands, especially in London, especially
the right sort of people without extra money, are you.
WIDDECOMBE: I am not going to just pledge
something on the hoof today. Of course pay will have to be taken into account.
HUMPHRYS: Okay. Asylum seekers,
we heard in the film there what you're going to do. You're going to lock
them up as well in secure institutions. That is going to cost more money.
At the end of it all you will have to put something like a hundred thousand
people in these secure institutions at the moment, there are only nine
hundred - by the end of that it will be two-thousand-five hundred, again
a lot more money.
WIDDECOMBE: No, we actually propose to
save money through our proposals. Well, let's look at what's happened
in the past. When we introduced our Asylum and Immigration Act which was
specifically designed to have a deterrent effect applications for asylum
actually fell by forty per cent immediately, four-o per cent. Now we think
that if the message which goes out is, look when you come to this country
you won't just be able to walk around and disappear, you won't be able
to work illegally, or you won't be able to spin our your case and then
avoid removal, which is what the vast majority do at the moment, they avoid
removal if their case fails. We will know where you are, we will be able
to return you. And I think if that deterrent message goes out, then a
lot of the magnet which this country has for asylum seeking will decline
as we were right with our previous Asylum and Immigration Act. We got
an immediate decline. Now, if we can do that again then far from increasing
the cost of asylum the cost of asylum seeking will decrease, and indeed
that is one of, though certainly not the total aims of what we're doing.
The more important aim is that we must get the asylum system back to what
it was intended to do, which is looking after people who are fleeing persecution,
death, torture, whatever it might be. They are the biggest losers at the
moment, they're clogged up with a hundred thousand - you've rightly said
with a hundred thousand other people - they're indistinguishable from them
and they're not getting a quick and settled haven to which I believe they're
morally as well as legally entitled.
HUMPHRYS: But you see when you
were running that particular department it was taking twenty-three months
to process asylum seekers.
WIDDECOMBE: Well, we had a backlog of fifty...
HUMPHRYS: That costs money.
WIDDECOMBE: We had a backlog of fifty thousand
which was too high. Now the backlog under this government is a hundred
thousand. Now, no matter how quickly you turn cases round, if they are
still coming at record rates it is going to be very hard to get on top
of the problem. I believe in tackling it at source. We have to deter
abusive applications at source.
HUMPHRYS: Alright. Well, let's
add up the bills as we've been itemising it, and we've got the prisons
where you acknowledge there is clearly going to be more money. We've got
police where clearly there is going to be more money. People dispute your
assumptions about asylum seekers, they say it is actually going to cost
a great deal more money. Either way we are - you would be - a Conservative
government would be spending more money on law and order.
WIDDECOMBE: We will spend more money on
law and order.
HUMPHRYS: Absolutely clear. But
now you are also going to be spending more money on health. You're also
going to be spending more money on education and other things, and yet
you tell us, you guarantee us that we will be paying less tax at the end
of the Conservatives period in office, at the end of the first five years
of you in government than we are at the beginning. What an extraordinary
trick that's going to be.
WIDDECOMBE: No not really. You see I think
it really is a counsel of despair and defeatist to say if we spend more
money we've got to go and levy the populous. At the moment ... may I finish,
thank you, at the moment, you've just lost another bonus - at the moment
there are seven billion pounds about being wasted on Social Security fraud.
HUMPHRYS: That was ....
WIDDECOMBE: Hang on, let me finish, let
me finish. And there are two billion pounds more than when we were in
office being spent on spin doctors and bureaucracy and administration.
Now,...there are....
HUMPHRYS; I know I'm not meant
to interrupt you at all, but really that's a daft figure for spin doctors!
WIDDECOMBE: No, I didn't say just spin
doctors. If you listened to me, spin doctors and bureaucracy and administration,
in other words the cost of government are up by two billion. Now, what
we have said is that we will make savings both in Social Security, where
Ian Duncan Smith first, and then David Willets set out very clearly the
savings that could be made on fault, and we have said also that we will
cut the layers of spin and bureaucracy and all the rest of it. Now, that
will itself yield money, but before you say we're promising this and we're
promising that, we're promising the other thing, yes, we are promising
more money on law and order, but our promises on health and on education
and the other things are to honour existing promises of spending, so it's
not that extra.
HUMPHRYS; Alright, final thought
- this is part of the populist test here that I began, that was - with
which I began - Mike Tyson is going to be invited back into this country.
Now there is a populist view on this. What's yours?
WIDDECOMBE: I think the Home Secretary
had a massively difficult decision. I would have had a difficult decision
had I been in his place. I think I would have been swayed by the argument
however, that just because you're a celebrity doesn't mean that you can
evade laws which apply to everybody else. However my main wish with Tyson
now that the decision has been taken and is going to be implemented, my
main wish now is that we don't see what we saw last time which is an awful
lot of taxpayers money being poured into the policing of Tyson publicity
demonstrations.
HUMPHRYS: But you'd have kept him
out, given a choice, a clear choice, right at the start of this process
you'd have kept him out?
WIDDECOMBE: I think probably, marginally,
that is where the argument comes down, but I acknowledge Jack Straw had
a difficult decision. This isn't one where I'd have gone for easy politics
on it, it was a very difficult decision to make, but I think probably the
argument is against letting people off normal laws just because they are
celebrities.
HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe, thank
you very much indeed.
HUMPHRYS: One of the things that seriously
damaged the last government with Britain's older voters was the way they
had to pay for their own care when they could no longer afford to look
after themselves. The rules meant that many had to sell their homes to
meet the cost. Labour said it would change all that and Tony Blair himself
made a promise. That was three years ago ... so what's happened. Well,
as Terry Dignan reports, they set up a Royal Commission but they HAVEN'T
done the most important thing that advised them to do.
TERRY DIGNAN: At an exercise class run
by Age Concern in York, elderly citizens work out, slowing the process
of physical decline. They've paid their dues and expect to be treated fairly
if they do succumb to frailty or disability. To add to their disappointment
over small pension increases, there's resentment too that under Labour,
they're still being forced to run down their savings and sell their homes
when they do need long term care.
MURIEL: If you work hard all your
married lives, you're thrifty and you've managed to save a little nest
egg, you're penalised and you have to pay.
VERA: You have worked and saved
for it and it should go to your children.
DIGNAN: The Government's long-awaited
decision on how to fund long term care is certain to affect its ability
to regain the confidence of older voters. They expect Labour to keep its
promise to end the injustice caused by the way care is currently paid for.
Labour came to power in Nineteen-Ninety-Seven promising to address the
biggest grievance of many older voters.
BLAIR: I don't want a country where
the only way pensioners can get long term care is by selling their home."
BURSTOW: Since he's come to power
over a hundred thousand people have had to sell their homes, and I think
many people quite rightly feel betrayed. The promise before the election
was very clear. The promise has not been acted upon and it looks now as
though we won't get any delivery from this Government on long term care
this side of a general election.
DIGNAN: If nursing care in a hospital
is, rightly, say older voters, provided free of charge by the National
Health Service, then why should they have to pay for it in a nursing home?
Those needing nursing care are means tested to decide what they should
pay towards the bill. Assets - such as an individual's home - and savings
are assessed. Anyone with more than sixteen thousand pounds' worth must
meet the full cost.
SQUIRE: I think it's a fundamental
injustice that someone who has a chronic illness like dementia, Alzheimer's
disease, is expected to pay for their nursing care, because inevitably
the disease means that eventually they will need nursing home care, whereas
someone who is termed as having an acute illness like cancer, which may
nevertheless require several years of nursing and medical support and care
is entitled to entirely free NHS provision.
DIGNAN: Charlie Squires has Alzheimer's.
The NHS won't pay his Devon nursing home's three hundred and fifty pound
a week bill. And nor will social services because Mr Squires owns a house
worth more than sixteen thousand pounds. His son intends persuading the
courts it's morally wrong that the health authority won't fund his father's
care.
SQUIRES: My father has worked all
his life, paid his dues, never complained, as far as I can recall never
had a day off work, he's never been unemployed and now at the, in his last
remaining years he's being stripped of his assets and told that he's got
to pay for something that everybody else receives completely free of charge.
DIGNAN: Labour set up a Royal Commission
to find a solution to the problem. It said residents of nursing homes
should continue to pay towards their accommodation and living costs. But
the means test would be less stringent. The threshold for taking assets
and savings into account would rise from the current sixteen thousand pounds
to sixty thousand pounds. But the Commission agreed no one should have
to pay for their nursing care. It would be free, as it is in hospital.
The Commission then went further, arguing that the costs of personal care
should also be met - this meant care involving touching such as combing
hair and helping with dressing and bathing. The Commission estimated it
would cost in total up to one point two billion pounds in extra public
spending to provide free care.
HINCHCLIFFE: Nobody objects to paying the
board and lodging costs, the accommodation costs which would - the food
costs which would normally be - would apply any set of circumstances but
the personal care should be supplied free as it used to be within the original
concept of the welfare state and the NHS.
DIGNAN: But two members of the
Royal Commission disagreed. Their minority report said making all care
free would be too expensive. Whilst accepting nursing care should be free,
they said personal or social care should continue to be means tested.
And whereas the Commission's majority said the threshold for paying the
full bill should be raised from sixteen thousand to sixty thousand pounds,
the minority proposed thirty-thousand. The majority's proposals would
require an extra one point two billion pounds from the Government. The
minority's recommendations, at a hundred and ten million pounds, would
only be a fraction of that cost. The minority report said if all care
was made free, only the better off who currently pay for private nursing
care would benefit. The poorest have to rely on what social services can
afford. And that's not much.
LIPSEY: The trouble with free care
for all is that it is extraordinarily expensive and all the money goes
to people who are relatively well off at the moment, none of it goes to
poorer people, and more important none of it goes to the improved services,
which is really what the, the old people in the greatest need are crying
out for.
RACHEL SQUIRE MP: The present system hits hardest
those who worked all their lives, paid their taxes and national insurance,
put some money aside, many sought to buy their own, own home, but are just,
aren't particularly well off, but are just two or three pounds a week maybe
above the line on which they could qualify for free care or for falling
below the means-tested limit.
DIGNAN: Here at the Department
of Health, ministers and their civil servants have been trying to distinguish
nursing care from personal care. Those who are sceptical of ministers'
motives believe the whole exercise is being driven by the Treasury just
across the road. The aim, it's argued, is to find a definition of nursing
care which minimises the cost to the Government.
PAUL BURSTOW: I think the Government is
not so much in search of a, a definition. It's in search of the way to
spend as little money as possible on this problem. The definition they're
likely to be going for will be so tight that anything really to do with
the basic intimate care of a person whether it be bathing, helping them
get dressed, helping with feeding and so on, essential elements of what
people would think should be provided free will not be provided free."
DIGNAN: Many frail elderly people,
like this man, live in their own home. The Royal Commission wanted more
money to be spent on helping people stay in their own homes. But the minority
claimed this would be impossible if all care in nursing homes was made
free.
LORD LIPSEY: The most severely disabled
old people living at home get just four hours help a week from their local
councils with their care. That's palpably inadequate for all their various
needs and that should be greatly increased. But the money to pay for it
has to come from somewhere, and it has to come in my view largely from
Government, and that's why we can't afford to do that and to do free care
too.
DIGNAN: In York one solution to
the problem is being tried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. When
you buy a home at Hartrigg Oaks, you are guaranteed nursing care - if you
ever need it - at no extra cost. The idea is to take away the anxiety many
elderly people feel about how they will pay for care. And, importantly,
the emphasis is on care in your home. A year after buying her property,
Verity Grob had a stroke. After a spell in hospital and Hartrigg's care
centre, she's now back at home because help is available to her.
VERITY GROB: After being away months, in
hospital for months and then over there for months, it was wonderful to
get back to my own, my own bed which I was longing to get back to.
DIGNAN: Lunch is only a short walk
away for those who want it. Hard-pressed local authorities can't provide
the kind of service on offer here.
UNNAMED MAN: "Well. look, I've got ten
pounds."
UNNAMED WOMAN: "It's alright I've got plenty of
change."
DIGNAN: But inadequate home care
does not save money overall, it's argued.
RICHARD BEST: People are getting admitted
into hospital much earlier than they might have done, the number of emergency
admissions of older people has gone shooting up. People who just have something
relatively minor like flu can get into serious difficulties if they are
not getting attention and help in their own home. .That is a great cost
to the state. So there are false economies in not spending money on care
in the community which is where we think the main emphasis of new spending
should be.
DIGNAN: The first signs of sunshine
have brought the veterans of bowls out on to the green. Cornwall has a
large elderly population. If they are to live at home as they get older,
it will require higher levels of taxation. That's what happens in Scandinavia.
HINCHCLIFFE: We have a situation in this
country where there's a consensus around low taxation. We get lower public
services, we get - we lessen the ability to enable people to remain independent,
to have choice in old age or in disability, that is afforded to people
in other countries such as Denmark.
LORD LIPSEY: Something like sixty per cent
of national income goes in taxes. Six pounds in every ten you earn going
in taxes, in the Scandinavian countries, um and it really doesn't seem
that that is politically possible in this country and therefore we face
hard choices that they don't face as to whether it's to be better services
or free services.
DIGNAN: Making available to all
the care on offer at this nursing home may well require Scandinavian tax
levels. The minority members of the Royal Commission suggested an alternative
- private insurance. The better off could then pay for their care and leave
money to their children.
LORD LIPSEY: It's absolutely right if people
want to leave an inheritance to their children that is their, their right.
What is not reasonable is that they expect the State to subsidise that
inheritance by making all their care free. If they want to leave an inheritance
they can do so but they should insure themselves privately for their care
costs so they can leave their money in full to their children if that's
what they wish.
SQUIRE: In that most privatised
of health care markets the United States, only five percent of the population
have insurance to deal with long term care. You're talking about very expensive
premiums and frankly you're talking about a market that isn't interested
in anyone who has any kind of blemished health record.
DIGNAN: Retirement brings with
it new opportunities, the chance to learn new skills. At the last election
many elderly voters changed their political colours. But they've been disappointed
with recent pension increases and fear the Government may fail to design
a fairer system for paying for care in old age.
UNNAMED WOMAN: "I changed from being a Conservative
and I voted Labour for the first time expecting, you know, to get a better
deal from them because they promised so much but unfortunately it hasn't
materialised."
SQUIRE: Their perception and their
feeling is we don't feel that we've received what we paid for all our working
lives and I think that section of the population who have a lot of votes
will be looking very, very keenly at what the Government's decision will,
will be.
DIGNAN: Even though many elderly
people try to keep fit and active, they may still need care one day. When
it set up a Royal Commission, Labour raised expectations it would address
their anxieties over how to fund long term care. If Labour disappoints
those expectations it risks sending many older voters back to the Conservatives.
HUMPHRYS: Terry Dignan reporting
there.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Next Sunday the eight hundred
and sixty members of the Ulster Unionist Party's ruling council will meet
to decide whether to follow their leader, David Trimble, accept the deal
on offer from the IRA and go back into a devolved government with Sinn
Fein. Or to throw the whole thing out and force Mr Trimble to resign.
Well then what? Mr Trimble is in our Belfast studio. I think it's Saturday
in fact Mr Trimble of course isn't it..
DAVID TRIMBLE: Yes it is.
HUMPHRYS: And the way the council
feels at the moment it seems unlikely that you are going to be able to
pull it off doesn't it?
TRIMBLE: No I don't think that's
right. The reason why we've postponed was simply that it had taken so long
to sort out some details, important matters too, with the government that
the whole picture didn't stabilise until Wednesday of last week. So we
felt and indeed people were telling from all levels in the party that as
our opponents had been out spreading an awful amount of misinformation
around that it would be better if we took more time to give people the
chance to think things through to explain them to them. There's no reason
why we should rush things to satisfy other people in some arbitrary deadline,
we thought it was better that we should take our time so that we could
have a serious dialogue and that the council will, on Saturday as you say,
then come to a balanced and considered decision.
HUMPHRYS: But the meeting was originally
called and then postponed wasn't it. The explanation many people give is
that it was because you simply didn't have the support.
TRIMBLE: Well I've given you my
explanation and as I took the decision I can tell you the reasons too.
HUMPHRYS: Okay. Your message then
next Saturday is going to be quite straightforward is it. You are saying
I had my reservations, my reservations about the IRA offer and all the
rest of it but the questions that I was asking have now been answered so
I accept Republicans' offer. That's going to be your message is it?
TRIMBLE: It's going to be slightly
different actually to that. I am going to say to them as I have said over
the course of the last week or so that there are some new things in this
IRA statement and I have to say too, had the IRA said this in January it
wouldn't have been necessary to suspend the institutions. But I do think
it was only because the institutions were suspended that we got this further
advance and on this further advance the key thing is that the IRA are saying
that they will - not could not might - but that they will completely and
verifiably in an incredible manner put their weapons beyond use. Now, I
still have some questions because we don't know precisely when they are
going to do this and there are still some points that we expect General
De Chastelaine and his commission to sort out about the methodology but
I have to say to people that the only way that we are actually going to
achieve the objective of bringing about a society at peace and free from
the threat of paramilitary organisations - Republican and Loyalist - is
to go and put this offer to the test, holding back gets nothing, whereas
going forward and putting it to the test will produce progress. I hope
it will produce progress quickly and smoothly and cleanly but if it turns
out that people let us down, well then I mean we know what to do and from
February what pressure actually works.
HUMPHRYS: The fact is of course,
they may let you down. It is a promise of something that they will do rather
than you being able to act on something they have already done. So therefore
what you are saying to your members is look, trust me, trust my judgement
of the IRA's intentions.
TRIMBLE: Again I would put it in
slightly different terms. I would say to my colleagues: trust yourselves,
trust yourselves, you do not have to do anything other than through your
own free choice. And you can make a judgement now, you can make a judgement
later as to whether people are complying with the promise that they have
given. But I have to also say, let us bear in mind what the objective of
all of this is. And it comes back to some very basic things: It comes back
to the agreement that we made two years ago. Do we think that that was
important, do we think that was worthwhile, do we think that it offers
the opportunity for a better future for everybody in Northern Ireland?
I still think it does and I think it's still worth pursuing with. It gives
us the opportunity of producing a society free from threat and where everybody
can feel at ease with ourselves. I think that's still worth working for.
I know it's not going to be easy, it hasn't been easy over the last few
years and nobody said that it would be easy. But you have to consider what
alternative is there. I know there are people with grave reservations about
it, I know people who feel very hurt about aspects of the arrangements
and how they have operated. But at the same time we have got to look at
this carefully and coolly and there is no practical alternative being
offered. My critics have nothing to offer. Nothing at all, no achievement
to point to, no hope to point to for the future either. This gives us
hope and we know what we have achieved and what we can achieve. So I say
to my party and my council be confident in yourself. Be confident in yourself
and let us put other people to the test. We've done it before, we can do
it again and we know that we can carry this through successfully.
HUMPHRYS: But you are actually
going a little further than that, indeed quite a lot future than that aren't
you. You are saying now the IRA campaign is finally over.
TRIMBLE: What I am saying, again,
I put it in slightly different terms.
HUMPHRYS: It thought you wrote
that this morning.
TRIMBLE: I'm putting it in slightly
different terms just to put it into perspective. I'm not saying the future
is going to be entirely free from violence. I think the organised coherent
campaign that the IRA operated for thirty years is not going to come back
again. There will be problems, there may be still be violence and the violence
may come from dissident elements, it may even come from elements within
the IRA and indeed we still have occasional attacks and shootings coming
from all paramilitaries and we want that to stop. What I am saying is that
the major organised campaign has gone because, and the truth of the matter
is, that it was beaten. Now it may not be diplomatic to say that but the
terrorist campaign failed and it failed primarily because the security
forces were effective and society as a whole was determined that it wouldn't
succeed. So that campaign isn't going to come back and I think people needn't
worry about that. But there are still problems with groups and individuals
and there's potential problems until the weapons issues is resolved properly.
HUMPHRYS: So, just to repeat my
earlier question then. The IRA campaign as we understood it, the Provisional
IRA campaign is over as far as you are concerned?
TRIMBLE: I don't think it's going
to come back again and I don't even think we're likely to have a Canary
Wharf type incident again either because they discovered indeed from the
popular reaction to the Omagh incident, which was the work of dissidents
that there is no future in that sort of campaign at all, so they know themselves
that terrorism isn't going to work and indeed it will destroy their political
objectives, their political project, so I think we don't have to fear that.
But that doesn't mean that we have no problems. We have problems through
the racketeering that goes on, from the criminality that's associated with
it and from paramilitary bosses wishing to exercise power in particular
neighbourhoods, so we still have problems to tackle there and that's why
it's important that we keep the focus not just on weapons but on the need
for paramilitarism as a whole to end and for us then to get on to try and
clean up the racketeering. There's a big clean up job that's going to
have to be done in this society and the only way it's going to be done
is through us moving forward with the Assembly, having security functions,
having police and criminal justice functions devolved to it and doing the
job ourselves. If we wait for the Northern Ireland Office to clear up
society in Northern Ireland it will never happen. The only people that
can do it are the people of Northern Ireland, their elected representatives
working together.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but your problem
next Saturday is going to be that many of your members believe that the
focus should be kept on weapons and they believe that promises from the
IRA are all very well but they will not believe the campaign is over until
they see weapons being destroyed, actually destroyed, being got rid of.
TRIMBLE: Well what I'm saying to
them is that what we're proposing to do will achieve that but that what
they're proposing to do will not. I mean my critics have no plans or no
proposals and no ideas as to how in practice decommissioning can be achieved
and paramilitarism actually ended. They have no proposals, they have no
idea, they have no way to point out how it can be done. What I'm saying
is that this path that we're following will do it but I'm not saying that
it's going to do it easily and quickly, it will probably require continual
effort on our part but then by virtue of our efforts so far we have moved
the IRA to the point where they are promising to do it - now that's a long
way from where they were a year ago when they were saying there would be
no decommissioning by the front door, the back door, and not a bullet,
not an ounce and all the rest of it. They've moved on a long way from
that, those statements are no longer being made. Now they're saying that
they will put weapons beyond use completely, verifiably and in a credible
manner.
HUMPHRYS: There is another reason
why your council may not agree to letting you go back into the Executive
and that is the RUC. They have passed unanimously a resolution saying
that the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary must be retained and you
don't have that undertaking to give them.
TRIMBLE: What the Council wants
and what the Council said at its last meeting was that it wants to see
that the proud name of the RUC does not disappear. I don't think it will.
I think that we will see that as we move into new arrangements that the
honoured name of the RUC will be kept in perpetuity, it may not be used
on a day to day basis......
HUMPHRYS: No. It won't be a working
title will it....?
TRIMBLE: That may be a working
title but that doesn't mean that the name will disappear - it will not,
of that I'm quite confident but we'll put all the matter before that.
You see what Council was after, what the ordinary Unionists felt about
this, and it's quite a simple matter but quite an important matter. Republicans
have been going around and other people who are sympathetic towards them
or try to understand them kept saying to us that with regard to these arrangements
for decommissioning and all the rest of it, we mustn't humiliate the paramilitaries,
we must allow things to appear that they haven't been defeated and then
at the same time, nationalists are turning round and saying, 'we must inflict
a defeat upon the police force', because that is what the business about
stripping them of their proud title of the Royal title of the crown and
of the flag - that's what it means. It's a symbolic defeat which for some
reason, for some pique within Nationalism they wish to inflict upon the
police force and of course people feel that, they feel that they've been...
they're going to be humiliated and what they're insisting with regard to
this resolution is 'we will not be humiliated'.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, and your own.....
TRIMBLE: That is not going to......
I must now...... I'm now satisfied that the government has learned the
lesson of the folly that was in Patten and that it is now very anxious
to ensure that the police and their families do not feel humiliated and
they're going to reflect that in the future arrangements with regard to
the name and with regard to the badge.
HUMPHRYS: Your own deputy..........
TRIMBLE: ....and I think that when
the Council see that they will see that as a meeting the need that they
had.
HUMPHRYS: Just a very quick final
thought and that is if you don't succeed, one of your strongest supporters
has warned, that there will be a joint administration between London and
Dublin - that will be the result of it. I'm sorry we've only got twenty
seconds. Can you deal with that? Is that likely in your view?
TRIMBLE: I don't like proceeding
by some form of blackmail and furthermore I don't actually think that that's
going to happen in any formal sense but we do know that there is a close
working relationship and people had better bear in mind who are going to
take the decisions if we don't take them?
HUMPHRYS: David Trimble, thank
you very much indeed.
And that's it for this
week. Just a reminder about our web site for those of you on the Internet.
You can find all my latest interviews, the whole of the rest of the programme
there. I'll be back here at the same time next week, until then - good
afternoon.
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