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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE:
04.02.01
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. President Bush
wants a missile defence shield and he wants Britain's help. Will it cause
the biggest defence row since Cruise missiles? The Tories say they have
the solutions for the crisis on Britain's farms. But will Brussels blow
them out of the water? And what price higher education? Will ALL our
students have to pay more? That's after the news read by GEORGE EYKIN.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Britain's farmers have
never had it so bad. The Tories say they know what to do, but our European
partners may not let them.
And, the cost of
a university education is higher than it's ever been. But the colleges
say, students may have to pay even more.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: The Foreign Secretary Robin
Cook is off to Washington this week. Tony Blair's going a few weeks later.
They have some fences to mend with an administration they did NOT want
to see in power. There is something they can do to score a few brownie
points in Washington: help President Bush set up his missile defence shield
- son of Star Wars as it's called. When (or if) it's operating it will
need to use the Fylingdales Radar Station in North Yorkshire. Opponents
say that will make us a target and anyway the whole project is dangerous
because it will destroy existing Missile Treaties. It's already made both
the Russians and the Chinese very angry. The row in this country is building
up and Mr Blair will meet serious opposition if he comes down in favour
of what is called NMD.
Iain Duncan-Smith is the
Conservatives' Defence spokesman. Peter Kilfoyle was a Defence Minister
in this government until he resigned last year.
Mr Kilfoyle, what are
the arguments against NMD?
PETER KILFOYLE: Well very simply I think
you firstly have to define what the threat is and it has to be a credible
threat. Then you have to come up with an appropriate solution to that threat.
Now, NMD is based on a false premise it's argued and it certainly does
not yet possess the technology to do what it's said to do but under-pinning
all of that is the fact that it does make the UK a frontline threat. It
does destabilise relationships within Europe and further more it does destroy
the whole basis of the treaties which have led to the diminution of the
old doctrine of mutual, indeed mutually assured destruction, ie a huge
over-bearing stockpiles of nuclear weapons. Now, these are very very high
stakes indeed in order to feed what many believe is a degree of paranoia
amongst the new administration.
HUMPHRYS: Iain Duncan-Smith, let's
deal with that question about destabilising the world and destroying existing
treaties. That's a very serious point isn't it, the Russians themselves
say that's what will happen.
IAIN DUNCAN-SMITH: No, I don't actually think it
will, these are the same old arguments that used to be deployed at the
time when we were facing off the Russians or the Soviet Union as they then
were over the deployment of SS20s and people didn't want us to deploy Cruise
and Pershing. Almost exactly the same argument that Peter's put forward
and were put forward then.
HUMPHRYS: The difference is there's
not a threat from them though...
DUNCAN-SMITH: ..no there is a threat...it's
important actually. Let's just get back to this question of a threat, he's
quite right to say what is the threat. The threat is actually that there
are a large number of nations who through proliferation, regardless of
the non-proliferation treaties, have actually come by the technology to
create weapons of mass destruction. That's biological, chemical, as well
as nuclear and, and this is the critical bit, are also at the same time
developing the means to launch those through ballistic missiles. I'll give
you one example, Iran about two to three months ago test launched a missile
which was close on a thousand miles in range which is a huge quantum leap
from where they were as was expected by the west about a year-year and
a half ago.
HUMPHRYS: And by co-operating with
this system, by saying alright you can use Fylingdales, we are saying to
Iran or whoever else, which ever rouge state you happen to pick, we are
saying, fire them at us, we are the target. We are co-operating, knock
us out and you will do damage to the system.
DUNCAN-SMITH: Well let's actually cut through
all the silly nonsense that theirs is the only one system out there. What
the Americans are talking about and this is where we should have been giving
some leadership over this, they are actually talking about how you defend
against that sort of threat. The NMD system that President Clinton was
on about is not the only way of doing it, there are other ways and that's
the critical issue about bringing Britain to get leadership in Europe over
it, to bring that in. I mean the key thing is there is another system
called Boost Phase which is about knocking out missiles as they are launched,
over the place that they are launched from and that's an issue that the
American government, this present government is very keen to do a lot of
work on but would like, I know for a fact, would like the British to lead
to get a NATO programme with all the other European nations. If they stopped
playing silly games about this anti-Americanism, they'd actually be able
to come together to defeat this threat, that's the key.
HUMPHRYS: Peter Kilfoyle - anti-Americanism.
That's what it's all about, you're playing silly games.
KILFOYLE: Well this is the kind
of charge that's always made and again the arguments that are made are
wholly fallacious. It was a man called Robert Walpole, who's the National
Intelligence Officer for the Americans for Nuclear and Strategic programmes,
who said that the threat doesn't come from world states, it comes from
individual terrorists and they would not be dealing with by missile, they'd
be delivered in a suitcase or a container. Now, the Tories know this but
what they really want to do on the back of this is to destabilise our relationships
within Europe because they know full well, that there's great mistrust
about this throughout Europe, indeed Herr Schroeder made representations
apparently this very week to Donald Rumsfeld and I really think that they
have two very different agendas here, one of which is anti-European and
the other one is to favour the dollars which come in and out of the military
and industrial complexes, both in America and the United Kingdom.
HUMPHRYS: Iain Duncan-Smith, whether
you want to do that to Europe or not, you are certainly going to do damage
to NATO by supporting. If this goes ahead, we will see NATO split down
the middle, NATO is already split down the middle, Peter Kilfoyle talked
about Mr Schroeder there, he said: we should be working to encourage disarmament,
not the opposite.
DUNCAN-SMITH: Well there are two or three
points. The first is that the terrorist threat is always thrown at you
as the threat which you need to deal with. Of course you need to deal with
terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction but to prove one threat
does not disprove another and the second point about splitting NATO. Again,
exactly the same argument that we used back in the mid-eighties over Cruise
and Pershing. You know in Germany Volker Ruehe, the ex-Defence Minister,
a Christian Democrat, has called on NATO to work with the Americans, exactly
what William Hague and myself have been calling on for the last year. What
you see here is a split, is actually between governments of the left and
parties of the left who have this age old desire not to confront threats,
that's exactly the game here versus Conservative parties now who believe
there is a real need to deal with this. And if we don't get on with this
what will happen is in four or five years' time, as the threat grows hugely,
we will have no answer to it, so when people say you bring yourself under
threat, when they do threaten us we will have to say, yes sir, no sir,
because we won't be able to deal with it. That's the key.
HUMPHRYS: But what' extraordinary
about your position politically to many people, is that you have effectively
- you have signed up to it, you have said yes, okay, we will do it whatever
it is. because you don't even - well you don't know what the -
DUNCAN-SMITH: Oh, no, no no.
HUMPHRYS: The Americans don't know
what system they're going to plug for.
DUNCAN-SMITH: Our position is, that we
said that NATO - there should be a NATO programme. What we have said is
we agree with the Americans, there is a serious threat and it is growing,
and we want to lead Europe, NATO to actually go ahead and confront that
threat. And the way to do it is to work with the Americans, to talk to
them about how best it can be done so that such a defence could encompass
a defence of western Europe, and our allies by the way as many of whom
are in the Middle East. In other words to deal with that threat by working
with them to sort it out. If we don't do that all that will happen is
the Americans will go ahead but in an isolated way and not actually produce
any defence that we think is credible. That's the key, by sitting back,
by doing nothing, by playing silly games, you won't actually achieve anything
at all for us. By leading in this we will actually achieve a serious position,
one that is able to defend our people.
HUMPHRYS: Peter Kilfoyle, why isn't
that a reasonable position to take.
KILFOYLE: Well, it's wholly unreasonable.
You're dealing with an American administration which involves people like
Jesse Helms who's never agreed an arms limitation treaty....
HUMPHRYS: Well, he's not actually
in the administration but....
KILFOYLE: But he's a very influential
figure on Capitol Hill and within the Republican ..... Can I also say
that you have people like Donald Rumsfeld , who feels that the ABM treaties
of seventy-two is ancient history, but these are the things that underpin
modern security. They're talking about missiles being based all over the
world now.
DUNCAN-SMITH: You placed things set in
concrete twenty years ago. Of course all of this is due for re-negotiation.
The idea that once you've signed something you must never go near it,
it sits in a cupboard somewhere gathering dust but nobody dares discuss
it is absolutely crack-pot. I mean the Labour Party itself has supposedly
changed so why can't treaties that dealt with the situation with two super-powers
not be dealt with in the same say. Of course you need to re-visit them.
You need to change, you need to discuss a new threat, a different threat.
That's the key, not to sit around scared of dealing with the past like
you seem to be.
KILFOYLE: It has never been suggested
that treaties cannot be re-negotiated.
HUMPHRYS: Hang on -let him finish,
Ian Duncan-Smith. Peter Kilfoyle?
KILFOYLE: The position has been
made clear by the Russians and the Chinese, and indeed by our European
allies, that this de-stabilises the whole world situation, that it may
very well lead to a new arms race, that the Chinese already have expressed
their fears that it would be used for the defence of Taiwan, that the Russians
feared that it would be used against their own defence interests. That's
bound to spur them on to an arms race.
HUMPHRYS: Let me get - Iain Duncan-Smith.
The Foreign Secretary Robin Cook is saying this morning apparently: we
haven't made up our minds yet, we're not quite sure what we're going to
do. We want to wait and see exactly what is proposed, what are the terms
and all the rest of it and then we will consider. Isn't that the responsible
position to take. Isn't anything else playing politics.
DUNCAN-SMITH: No. Because in actual fact,
I know I have been talking about this for the last two years, and my visits
to Washington and my discussions with the previous administration who were
very keen on this and also the Republicans coming into power has made it
absolutely clear to me that this government is playing two games here.
Publicly here because they're worried about the response such as we've
seen here from the Labour Party and from some Europeans they're pretending
that they haven't taken a position, but privately they were telling the
previous administration that when they finally asked them, yes they would
agree to it. So they're playing two games and they're hoping they can
slide through this until the next election without any dispute, and that's
not leadership, that is being rather pathetic and the worst part about
that position is to do exactly what Peter Kilfoyle worries about, which
is to say to the Americans, what you want you get. What I'm calling for
is for us to say to the Americans, we agree there is a threat, let's work
together to find a defence not just for the United States but for Western
Europe and our allies as well.
HUMPHRYS: Peter Kilfoyle, you may
have disagreed with everything else that Iain Duncan-Smith has said this
morning, but you wouldn't argue with that would you, where he says in truth
Tony Blair has made up his mind, the government's made up its mind. It
know what it wants. The idea that it's going to say to the Americans,
clear off, is simply unthinkable. They just want to avoid a row, that's
true isn't it?
KILFOYLE: Well, I don't think it
is unthinkable. I really think that we ought to take an independent view
upon this. After all it does set us up as a target outside of the shield
that is currently proposed, no matter what Iain might say. And incidentally
Iain may take a somewhat sanguine view of these things but his leader William
Hague has already committed himself regardless of whatever may come out
of any re-negotiations that take place. He's affirmed himself as a supporter
of SDI-Two.
HUMPHRYS: But the idea that Tony
Blair- let me deal with the politics of it, that's what I'm trying to get
at - the politics of it is that Tony Blair who is desperately anxious apart
from anything else now to persuade George W Bush that we are good friends
as we always have been - the idea that in this first test of our relationship
he's going to turn round and say clear off! That's not on is it, he won't
do it for political reasons. He won't do it will he?
KILFOYLE: Well, I happen to have
said it before, but good friends are not uncritical friends, and...
HUMPHRYS: I'm asking you what
you think Tony Blair is going to say, that's the point.
KILFOYLE: Well, I've no idea what
he will say. I can tell you what I hope he does say, and that is that
he will question what is in our interests in all of this. What dos the
new President hope to gain by a missile system which as of yet does not
work against a target which is undetermined to put it at its mildest?
HUMPHRYS: So Robin Cook ought to
be going to Washington and saying: No, we're not interested
KILFOYLE: What he should be doing
is going to Washington and trying to ascertain exactly what the truth of
the matter is as regards the threat, and of deferring any decisions of
any sort until such time as that is clear and the proposed technology has
been developed in such a way that you have a credible alternative to a
credible threat if there is one..
HUMPHRYS: Ian Duncan-Smith, sensible
eh?
DUNCAN-SMITH: Well, the real problem that
they've got here is that William Hague has committed us to working with
the Americans, and I'm fully in favour of that and I think it's an excellent
position of leadership. The problem for the government is as you saw the
other day with Peter Hain who was the Foreign Office minister responsible
for any of the arms negotiations, he was absolutely and publicly opposed
to this system, and so for that matter privately is Robin Cook. You've
got a split here in the government. What Cook is have to do now is having
to do something that he doesn't like, which is to try and cosy up to the
American administration privately, whilst he's desperately hoping that
nothing blows on it The reality is that Robin Cook, Peter Hain and a large
chunk of the Labour Party are absolutely adamantly opposed to it , and
Mr Blair is trying to cover this all with a sort of band-aid.
HUMPHRYS: There we must end it.
Iain Duncan Smith and Peter Kilfoyle, thank you both very much indeed.
HUMPHRYS: Britain's farmers are
going through a bad patch. The Conservatives have a plan to rescue them.
But it means there would have to be big changes to the Common Agricultural
Policy, to the attitude of the Treasury and to the rules on importing food
into this country. And on top of all that, their critics say we'd also
have to join the Euro. David Grossman reports on the crisis for the farmers
and the problems for the Tories.
DAVID GROSSMAN: With allowances for the motorbike
and the baseball cap, this is a timeless scene of rural Britain. A shepherd
and his dogs tend the flock, a partnership of trust and respect that
achieves results far beyond what either could manage alone. For generations
this is how the Conservative Party has seen its relationship with the countryside.
But the BSE crisis and the ongoing problems of the farming industry has
left the Tories anxiously looking around for solutions to offer farmers.
Much of the Conservatives'
appeal to rural voters works on an instinctive level. Just as well say
critics because scratch the surface of the Tory farming policy and there's
not much underneath. No mention of farming for example in the Tories' recently
published spending plans. And worse; it's alleged that what the Conservatives
do promise to farmers, the party is completely incapable of delivering.
SEAN RICKARD: Farmers believe if they
hang on, maybe there will be a Conservative government, that maybe will
bale them out. Truth of the matter is that we saw under you know eighteen
years they weren't baled out under the Conservatives and they're not going
to be baled out under a future Conservative government because there isn't
enough money to do it.
COLIN BREED MP: Well essentially it's all
promise and precious little opportunity to deliver it if we actually look
at what they're saying and what they can actually do are two entirely different
things.
GROSSMAN: British farmers have
always needed several pairs of hands. In Norfolk, the Wymondham Young
Farmers Club is having fun at a juggling workshop. The sad truth is that
most of these young people have more hope of running away to join the
circus than they do of earning a full time living from farming.
When not attempting to
spin plates, Nigel Frost has to balance his love of farming with the need
to make a living. To pay the bills he has a full time job as a groundsman
at a local college, his paid employment bracketed by long hours on his
smallholding
NIGEL FROST: A normal day for me would
be to get up at half past five and start feeding the stock. Then I'd go
to my full time job until 4 and then come back here and working right through,
some evenings it can be half past eight, nine o'clockish time.
GROSSMAN: Nigel isn't alone in
finding farming economics desperately tight. According to the government's
own figures the average farmer's income is now only 8 and a half thousand
pound a year, a drop of 2 thirds since 1995.
FROST: On the small scale
on which I'm on it's very bleak unfortunately. However hard you like to
try and work and however much effort you like to put into it, it seems
to be to no avail really.
GROSSMAN: The great outdoors brought
into the great indoors of London's Earl's Court. The National Countryside
Show is a world away from pig pens in Norfolk. This is the cuddly countryside
with bags of traditional charm, a whole Disney film full of well behaved
wildlife, four wheel drive comfort to get about in and of course a minimum
of muck. When the ancestors of these mighty shires hauled ploughs across
the land we had an agricultural sector every bit as impressive. Nowadays,
unfortunately, the once massive horsepower of the British farming sector
has shrunk to the scale of a little runabout. And recently this far weaker
farm economy has had to carry the almost unsupportable burden of Sterling's
rise in value against the Euro.
RICKARD: 40% of farm incomes comes
from payments which are set in Euros in Europe and translated into pounds.
If the pound strengthens, then therefore the value of their payment goes
down. So, as a result of a strong pound, not only do they suffer lower
prices for what they produce, they also suffer lower price...lower value
for their direct payments. And this is why membership of the European Monetary
Union would be of great benefit to the farming industry.
DAVID CURRY MP: My views on this have always
been very well known and I think Britain should be ready to join the Single
Currency, if it's in our national interests and if it's endorsed by the
British people in a referendum. So I don't think the policy of ruling it
out for a particular period is actually a good policy. Now what is the
impact of that on farmers? - the level of the currency affects the actual
value of the supports which are paid. It affects the prices of imports,
it cheapens them. It affects the price of exports, it makes them more
expensive. So, from a purely farming point of view, had Britain been a
founder member of the Single Currency for example, then farm incomes would
be better than they are now.
GROSSMAN: Among Earl's Court's
urban cowboys is the Shadow Agriculture Minister Tim Yeo. Committing Britain
to a Single Currency is obviously not Tory policy. But there is something
Mr Yeo could promise to help farmers cope with currency fluctuations
at the same time as fighting to defend British tills against the arrival
of the Euro.
There now exists a programme
of European assistance to bridge currency gaps called agri-monetary Compensation,
but no government Tory or Labour has ever claimed it in full.
CURRY: Every single government
has always been hesitant about this. The way the British rebate works means
that if we do draw down all the compensation, roughly speaking two thirds
of that is actually paid by the Treasury in its complex way in which it
happens, that the Treasury stumps up about two thirds of the bill, Treasuries
don't like stumping up that amount of money. And so there's always been
the business of prising it out of the Treasury. This government is precisely
the same as the previous government in doing so and any future government
will be exactly the same as its predecessors.
PLUMB: With fifteen countries in
the European Union, in every single case, in every other country except
Britain, as soon as the Exchange Rate has divided to the disadvantage of
the farmers in any country, the agri-monetary system has been applied.
Now that means of course there has to be a make up of money from the Treasury,
as well as giving the benefits of the adjustment which is money that comes
from the commission or from the European Union.
GROSSMAN: At Brooksby Melton agricultural
college in Leicestershire, the students learn how to weigh the herd. But
if they do become farmers the weightiest matter they'll have to deal with
will be the Common Agricultural Policy. A behemoth of a programme that
governs most of what grows or grazes across half a continent. It tips the
scales at nearly 30 billion pounds a year - about half the EU's total
budget. All the main parties agree that the CAP is in desperate need of
reform and has to be moved away from production subsidies which are blamed
for a lot of waste and overproduction, towards wider support for rural
communities, environments and landscapes. But unlike our friends here,
the CAP promises to be a very difficult beast to tame and given the Conservatives'
generally Euro-sceptic philosophy, critics question whether the party would
be in any position to achieve reform.
BREED: We all talk about reforming
the Common Agricultural Policy, and it's absolutely essential, but it will
only be done by consensus and by agreement, by partners joining together
and agreeing together what needs to be done. The way that the Conservatives
handled Europe in during their eighteen years of administration, was to
isolate Britain, to make enemies of the people that are our partners. That
will be a disaster if we went back to those days.
CURRY: If you're going to deliver
CAP reform you've got to build coalitions. I mean Europe works on a consensual
basis. Our politics works on trying to define a difference and then deciding
which option we're going to take. In other words it's a confrontational
view of the way democracy works. The continental system is most consensual,
because you've got majority votes in the Council of Ministers you've got
to build partnerships.
GROSSMAN: It's also hard to see
how the Conservatives are going to build partnerships if they go ahead
with another plank of their proposals. At Brooksby Melton college the
students spend much of their day making sure the animals are healthy and
happy. The Tories say Britain's emphasis on animal welfare and food safety
is in stark contrast to much of the rest of the world. A Tory government
they say would ban imports that don't meet our exacting standards.
BREED: Well the Conservatives cannot
continue to tout a populist line by trying to suggest that we can ban French
beef or ban other products which don't meet our animal welfare standards.
First of all it's illegal and we are trying to ensure that what we do
in Europe this time, remains legal and is correct in all its terms, but
also it simply will just provoke a tit for tat operation. Somebody bans
our beef, we then say we're going to ban your products and this will roll
on, much to the detriment of British agriculture. And our farmers know
that.
PLUMB: I think it's tough talk
to say we will stop importing from those countries, but you have to make
sure that you try to work within the rules, within the rules of the business
of trade and because if once you start saying we will not import then of
course other countries can do the same and say well, tit for tat, you know
we will stop importing your stuff, if that is so with us, so I think rather
than do that, on a fair basis, I think British farmers will say I have
nothing to fear, I am prepared to compete with other countries either in
Europe or elsewhere in the world, as long as we're competing on a fair
basis.
GROSSMAN: Banning inconvenient
imports could be seen as part of the Tories' attempt to drum out a populist
beat with its farming policy. Another example perhaps came the summer before
last when the party latched on to the public opposition to GM crops - all
great at grabbing tabloid headlines, not so effective at helping farmers
steer a sensible course through what is a highly complex issue
CURRY: We are wrong on this. And
I think we're in serious danger of pursuing what is seen as a sort of anti
science, anti development policy which could have quite wide implications
and I recognise that there are.... some of the popular press is baying
in a hostile way to GM crops and I think some of our policies are rather
inclined to..than find what the Daily Mail says and agree with it.
GROSSMAN: At the end of a fifteen
hour working day there's one more job to do before Nigel Frost can hit
the hay himself. He'll listen to any politician who claims to have the
answers to his problems. But it won't be enough for the Conservatives merely
to proclaim that they understand the countryside. The party will also
need to convince farmers that their proposals will make agricultural life
in Britain at least a little better.
HUMPHRYS: David Grossman reporting
there.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Tim Yeo, you allege that
Labour has turned its back on our farmers, doesn't stand up for them either
at home or abroad, in truth, you're not going to be able to offer them
very much more, if any, than they're getting at the moment, are you?
TIM YEO: Well, first of all, it
isn't just me that alleges that, you go into any village in Britain today
and you'll find that the country people are saying exactly that. That's
what they feel after four years of neglect and even hostility from Labour.
Now what we will do first of all is to show that we're on their side.
We believe that the survival of farming is important to Britain's future.
It's important not just for our farmers, it's important for our consumers
and for our environment and to help that happen we will do five very straight-forward
things. We'll claim the cash that is available from Europe and we'll spend
the money which the government has said it's promised to farming. Secondly,
we'll cut the burden of red tape and regulation which is strangling all
small businesses in this country, but particularly farms. Thirdly, we'll
introduce honesty in food labelling so that consumers know what it is they're
buying, where it came from, and how it was grown. Fourthly, we will stand
up for Britain's interests in our dealings with the rest of the European
Union in a way which this Labour government has totally failed to do time
and again, plenty of examples there, and lastly, in the extreme circumstances,
if the health of British consumers is threatened by sub-standard food imports,
we will block those imports.
HUMPHRYS: Right, let me come to
some of those in a moment. Let's deal, the one bit you didn't deal with
there, was money. What farmers want is a bigger income, it really is as
simple as that, I mean, whatever else you talk about, that's what it all
comes down to in the end, because if they haven't got enough money they
go out of business and a lot of them are going out of business. You are
not going to be able to spend any more money, you do not intend to spend
any more money in total than is being spent at the moment.
YEO: Well, of course, farmers
do want more money, and who wouldn't if you'd had a drop of three-quarters
in your income over four years, but they don't want it in the form of government
handouts, they don't want to be dependant on the taxpayer for the cash,
they want the chance to earn a living in fair competitive conditions on
what they like to call the level playing field with other countries, now
there are two differences between us and the Labour Party on money, firstly,
we believe that the
agri-monetary compensation, a very technical term, that's the cash help
that's available from Europe, to compensate for the weakness of the Euro.
We believe that this year, the Euro is very weak, that farming is in an
acute crisis, the worst it's had for two generations, the two-hundred-million
pounds that's on the table in Brussels which could be claimed today by
the government and we've called on them time and again to do so, they should
take that money up and if the election comes on April 5th as I hope it
does, and if I'm the minister on April 6th...
HUMPHRYS: April 5th? Not May 3rd.....
YEO: ...well, the significance
of April 5th here is that the deadline for this money runs out on April
30th. If it is not claimed by April 30th it is gone, for good, we'll never
get it back.
HUMPHRYS: But the problem with
it is, it's not as simple as saying, ah, there's two-hundred-million quid,
we'll have that, thank-you very much indeed. The problem with it is that
the Treasury has to cough up, as we were hearing in that film, more than
two-thirds of it. Now if you're not going to spend any more money than
we are spending at the moment, how are you going to cough up all of that
extra cash. You can't.
YEO: Indeed we can. The
fact is that this is a decision which has to be taken each year on the
merits of the case and in the current year, for this purpose this year
runs until April 30th, the industry is in such an acute crisis that we
believe that this money should be claimed in full, and Michael Portillo
has authorised me to say that to make that pledge if we're in power before
April 30th, we will claim that in full. Now, what we do next year, will
depend on the level of the Euro, and the state of the industry, and so
on and actually, this money tapers off quite quickly over the next two
years, there's very little of it left, this whole system runs out, but
the fact is, it must, the decision must be made each year on the merits
of the case, and the merits this year are clear, the industry needs that
help.
HUMPHRYS: But let's be quite clear.
You are committing yourselves to what amounts to about an extra one-hundred-and-sixty
million pounds of spending on this particular issue, that's got to come
from somewhere, hasn't it?
YEO: Well, what we're committing
actually is a bit less than that. It's about two-thirds, about a-hundred-and-thirty
million, and indeed we are, that is a current year commitment, if that
money is not claimed...
HUMPHRYS: ...where's it coming
from?
YEO: ...if that money is
not claimed by April 30th it cannot be spent. The opportunity goes for
all time and actually it reduces the amount that is available in following
years. Let me tell you, that when Gordon, well there'll be a budget between
now and April 30th, the amount of extra surplus that Gordon Brown unveils
will dwarf a-hundred-and-thirty..., so it'll be petty cash, the tragedy
is, that if the government refuse to take this opportunity up, then it
is lost, and as I say, it reduces the amount that's available in future.
HUMPHRYS: So two things then, one,
if we have an early election and you're fortunate enough to win it, you
would be giving that extra amount of money in effect to the farmers, you
would be saying, a-hundred-and-thirty million pounds from the Treasury
will go to the farmers so that we can get that two-hundred million pounds
from Brussels. If it's later and you are in a position to do so, you will
not be giving them any more money. Am I clear about that?
YEO: No, what we will do
then, is make a judgement each year on the merits of the case.
HUMPHRYS: So you might give them
more money?
YEO: Well, we can't tell.
We don't know what the Euro's going to be doing over the next six, twelve
months.
HUMPHRYS: No, but if the Euro stays
where it is...
YEO: Well, we will assess
the situation. The farm incomes may have recovered as a result of some
other measures we've taken, as a result of world prices changing.
HUMPHRYS: May?
YEO: No government would
say, a year in advance, what it's going to do about claiming this compensation.
The present government is ten months into the current year, they still
haven't said what they're going to do about the current year. You can't
ask us what we're going to do in the future. As far as the general...
HUMPHRYS: ...I can if you're saying
we are committed to spending 'x' amount and no more, and at the moment,
as I understand it, from what you've said yourself, the overall, I quote
you, the overall spending level will not increase, but it jolly well would,
wouldn't it, if you had to shell out another hundred-and-thirty million
and then commit yourself in future years, given all these other factors,
I grant you, you might have to continue spending large amounts of money.
YEO: Well, as I say we
will judge the situation on the merits of the case. I believe and hope
that we will work within the MAFF budget and the spending under the English
Rural Development Plan which is a seven year budget which the government
has already agreed. There's another item here though, that it the money
that the government promised after the Downing Street summit in March last
year. A big package unveiled, the usual fanfare, spin doctors everywhere.
Two hundred million pounds of cash promised for farmers, less than half
of that has been spent up to date. The twenty-six million pounds for the
pig farmers to restructure, one of the most beleaguered sectors of farming,
not a penny of that spent ten months later. A small business advisory
service for farmers, only two per cent of that has been spent. The Redundant
Farm Building programme, all these promises, money that MAFF had in the
pipeline which they haven't spent, we believe that money should be spent,
it was promised to farmers, they expected it and they actually deserve
it.
HUMPHRYS: So you are promising
to do all of that but you are also promising to do a lot more and I have
a little list here of some of the things that you are going to do; an early
retirement scheme for farmers, that would cost eighty million pounds over
three years; compensating diary farmers for Bovine TB, another fifteen
million pounds; subsidies for hill farmers, eighty million pounds over
three years. Adds up to a lot of money doesn't it?.
YEO: Well, the retirement
scheme for tenant farmers, we've actually said will be funded from the
English Rural Development Programme. That is one of the aims of expenditure
which that programme..
HUMPHRYS: ...eighty million over
three years...
YEO: Well the programme
is one point seven million pounds over seven years and even Labour haven't
gone into detail about how they are going to spend it all over the whole
seven years. So that is one of the areas where there is discretionary expenditure
which has not yet been predetermined and that is one of the things that
we will use it for. We believe that tenant farmers are in desperate need
of retirement help as they come to the end of their working lives. They
don't have an asset to fall back on. In the case of the hill farmers, the
promise is to continue the level of help which the government has done
over the last three years. We have been having sixty million pounds a year
assistance for hill farmers, it comes on a slightly different form in the
future. On the money for the Bovine TB problem, that is a very serious
problem, it is a serious threat to animal health...
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, but it all costs
money is my point. Each of these three things costs a lot of money which
you have not got - you're not going to increase expenditure. That's what's
puzzling me you see. Nobody argues the value of these things that you are
proposing, jolly nice and every farmer would say yeah, very sensible. But
if you've committed yourself not to...to spending no more money, the overall
spending level will not increase, I don't quite see how you square this
circle.
YEO: Well, I've just been
trying to explain how we square the circle. We have identified areas of
expenditure in the current government's budget which were not even being
spent. There are other areas as well, there is research that has been
taking place on things like genetically modified crops. We believe the
cost of that should be borne by the industry which will benefit from it.
We believe that the, as I say, the ERDP, English Rural Development Programme,
is a very substantial expenditure programme, the details of which have
not all been written in and we will want to look at the priorities. Our
priorities are likely to be different from those of the present government
and that is how we hope to fund things like the tenant retirement scheme.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let's look at
something that is going to be even more difficult and this really is a
mountain of a problem isn't it, CAP reform. The Common Agriculture Policy.
Now, if you were going to change anything substantially, the CAP has to
be changed but nobody is going to listen to you in Europe because you are
so confrontational and it's all about consensus in Europe these days isn't
it, maybe it always has been. But you have got a problem here, you say
we will to change this fundamental thing against which so many people have
difficulties with, with which so many people have difficulties, and you
are approaching them, if I may say so, swinging your handbag, if you had
one that is, you would be..
YEO: Well, I don't think
that actually is really borne out by the evidence. The fact is that the
present government have cosied up to Europe in the last four years, with
what result? What has being nice to those French Ministers done for British
Beef farmers, absolutely nothing. When the French government imposed its
illegal ban on British Beef exports after the European Commission had certified
that they were absolutely safe. What did Nick Brown do by way of protest,
he didn't utter a whisper in public, in fact on your programme, on the
Today Programme, he admitted he hadn't even rung up the French Minister
to talk about the issue. When we had the Anglo-French summit at Downing
Street, hosted by Tony Blair, the main issue between the two countries
at that time was the French illegal ban on British Beef. It wasn't even
discussed during the whole day. What I am saying is that the idea that
taking a firm line in defence of your national interest somehow makes it
harder to get your way in Europe, is not borne out by the facts. Margaret
Thatcher negotiated consistently and successfully in the 1980s, getting
good deals for Britain on things like the budget rebate. By rolling over
and asking for the European Commission to tickle our tummy or the other
ministers in the Council of Ministers to walk all over us, that actually
sends just the very worst possible signal.
HUMPHRYS: The trouble is that you
are talking about a firm line and we don't really know a firm line on what
because you haven't told us yet what changes you want to make.
YEO: Well I think it was
sad that since the reform of the CAP is probably one of the absolute prerequisites
for the enlargement of the European Union, if we are going to bring in
those other farming countries in Eastern Central Europe. It was a pity
it had so little attention at the Nice Summit which was supposed to be
about enlargement last December. Of course there are a lot of specific
areas which need to be very carefully examined. We have already made clear
that we think milk quotas should be scrapped as soon as possible. We believe
that the way in which farming is moving towards a much more environmentally
conscious industry that the payments under the CAP, which at the moment
have to be made for production, should also be allowed to be made for environmental
purposes.
HUMPHRYS: That's very broad brush
stuff though isn't it. You've got to have much more detailed proposals
than that.
YEO: Well it's very very
important. I don't think you'd expect us in opposition to publish in advance
every detail of the kind of...
HUMPHRYS: But you told us you were
going to.
YEO: Well we've said we
believe that the CAP should be fundamentally reformed, I'm just starting
to suggest some of the ways in which that should happen. As it happens,
another, a very important aspect of this is to see which decisions that
are currently made under the CAP might be better taken by individual governments.
We think that the one way traffic of decisions always going from national
governments towards Brussels should sometimes be a two-way traffic. We
think the scandal of five hundred million pounds of subsidiaries to tobacco
farmers in Greece should be ended. Those are very specific suggestions.
HUMPHRYS: And many of them have
been made by many people over the years. But let's deal with this question
of the one-way traffic. At the moment we are importing a lot of food, obviously
from Europe. You are saying you want to ban food that does not meet our
Animal Welfare Standards and various other standards that we have. Sounds
fine and everybody said quite right too. But again, you can't do it because
the rules, the laws indeed, of Europe do not allow you to do that.
YEO: Well on the contrary,
actually very specifically this is one of the misleading statements that
was made on the programme by Colin Breed, it's been made in the House of
Commons by Nick Brown. The fact is under the European Treaties, just as
under the World Trade Organisation rules, it is possible for the government
of one country to put a block on imports if they believe those imports
are dangerous to the health of their people and for a whole series of reasons
as well.
HUMPHRYS: So the French were right
to ban our beef then.
YEO: They had a legal basis
for which they could do it and at the time that the whole of Europe argued
that our beef...
HUMPHRYS: ...we've taken them to
the European Court...
YEO: ..well hang on a bit.
At the time when the European Commission had said that British Beef was
dangerous, then there was a legal basis for the ban on British Beef exports.
Once the European Commission had said, ah now, British beef has gone through
all these changes, it's now safe, as they did in 1999 and France maintained
the ban. Then that ban at that point became illegal. But what I am saying
is, we don't allow substandard motorcars to be sent here, there are rules
about that, we don't allow substandard toys for children to suck, there
are rules about that as well. There is a framework and we will use that
framework, the question is whether when we know that French meat pies are
coming in here which have been processed from cattle which are over thirty
months old. When those are happening unchecked and when the consumer doesn't
have any information on the label to warn them this is a French meat pie,
then you've got to be prepared to take action and defend your consumer.
HUMPHRYS: All right, ten seconds
to deny what David Curry says which is and I quote "some of our policies
are rather inclined to do what the Daily Mail says.
YEO: Well David of course
is well known for being a very strong pro-European. The fact is that we
have an agenda which will support the British farmer, which will make sure
that the burden of red tape is lifted, which will do things like ensuring
there are separation distances where you've got genetically modified crops
so you don't destroy conventional organic farms. There's a whole series
of specific measures in our policy document and I hope all farmers will
see it next week, which actually set out what we are going to do.
HUMPHRYS: Tim Yeo, thank you very
much for joining us this morning.
HUMPHRYS: It costs a lot to go
to university these days. Unless you're a Scottish student going to a
Scottish University there are tuition fees to pay and they've done away
with maintenance grants to all but the poorest students. But the universities
in England and Wales say they still don't have enough money to give a proper
education to all those who qualify for it. The universities' solution?
Top-up fees. They might raise a lot of cash but, as Terry Dignan reports,
politicians from each of the main parties say they're not necessary and
they know a better way.
TERRY DIGNAN: In higher education governments
of all colours have gone for rapid growth. But politicians haven't been
so keen on providing the money to pay for the vast increase in student
numbers. That's put our university system under unprecedented strain.
And that means that funding is top of the agenda at the latest meeting
of Vice-Chancellors in England. Some are now demanding that universities
should be allowed to set their own tuition fees.
No one here expects
Tony Blair or William Hague to find more money for universities by promising
at the next election to put up taxes. So the leaders of our institutions
of higher learning are looking at another, no-less controversial, suggestion
- asking the better off to make a bigger financial contribution to the
cost of their university degree. Even though politicians run scared of
the idea, some warn there may be no alternative.
PROFESSOR SIR HOWARD NEWBY: These days parties really don't want
to say, vote for us in an election and we'll put up taxes, in order to
give more money to universities. I don't think we see that as a realistic
proposition.
DIGNAN: After four hard years of
Labour, these Vice-Chancellors may now have something to look forward to.
From April, Labour intends spending an extra ten per cent on their universities
over a three year period.
BARONESS BLACKSTONE: In this next funding round there's
another one point seven billion pounds, that is a lot of extra money, as
well as another billion for research. For the first time since 1986 the
actual amount of money that universities will have per student is going
up, so I think that's an enormous step forward.
PROFESSOR TIME O'SHEA: It doesn't get us back to the sort
of funding the universities had fifteen years ago and if you just do an
audit, and you just look at it and see the state of university buildings,
the state of salaries, that ten per cent will help, but it will not get
us where we need to be.
PROFESSOR GILLIAN SLATER: Many universities have buildings
that are falling down for lack of maintenance. So there is a long way
to go, in terms of increased funding.
PROFESSOR JOHN TARRANT: It varies a lot from subject to
subject, institution to institution, but in my institution the average
staff student ratio is now almost twice as bad as it was about ten years
ago.
DIGNAN: A university education
is no longer the privilege of a few. Forty years ago less than two hundred
thousand students were in higher education, just five per cent of young
adults. By 1987 the proportion was up to fifteen per cent. There were
a million full time students when Tony Blair came to power. Today thirty-six
per cent of young people are in higher education - Labour is aiming for
fifty per cent.
But the money going into higher education has failed to match the massive
increase in undergraduate numbers. In nineteen-eighty-five average spending
per university student was almost eight-thousand-five-hundred pounds. By
nineteen-ninety-seven - with the polytechnics having gained university
status - the money was being spread more thinly and the average spend per
student was down to just over four- thousand-seven-hundred-and-ninety pounds.
The decline in funding has continued under Labour although that's about
to end.
PROFESSOR ALAN SMITHERS: One of the mysteries to me is
why successive governments have seemed determined to destroy higher education
as we knew it. The amount of funding universities receive has been reduced
by about forty per cent over the past decade. At the same time they've
been asked to undertake massive expansion, this has had all sorts of consequences
in terms of the quality of student experience, the amount of money available
for libraries, for general facilities for cleaning and portering and so
on.
DIGNAN: The Government expects
the older research-intensive institutions to compete on a global scale
for the best students, academics and research. Yet these are the universities
- whose courses tend to be the ones heaviest in demand amongst undergraduates
- that often feel hardest hit by the decline in funding.
SIR COLIN CAMPBELL: The big universities in the
States have access to hundreds of millions of dollars or billions of dollars
and we can't match that. Now if we want to really invest in heavy, expensive
science as we do as a country, to be internationally competitive, we need
access to much greater sources of funding.
DIGNAN: While the universities
want more investment for research, technology and teaching, the Liberal
Democrats' would rather concentrate help on students, especially those
from poorer backgrounds. They'd abolish tuition fees and re-introduce
maintenance grants.
DR EVAN HARRIS MP: What we would expand significantly
is the number of people from poorer backgrounds who are bright, who are
able to benefit from higher education, who have been prevented from applying
or staying in the system by the government's mean-minded decision, which
wasn't in their manifesto, to make them even poorer by cutting their grants.
DIGNAN: The Conservatives say their
policies will address universities' needs. But not through higher taxes
or spending. They'd release higher education from dependence on Government
funding. Every university would be eligible for a lump sum endowment raised
from the proceeds of future privatisations. But the Tories concede it
would take many years for all institutions of higher education to benefit
from this policy.
THERESA MAY MP: The sums required to endow universities
are significant and it will take time to provide for all universities,
but I think the university sector needs a new approach, the funding arrangements
we have currently are not working for all our universities and we need
to move our universities on to a new approach where they can rely on endowed
funds and they can be free to bring in more private sector income.
SLATER: The sums involved would
need to be very very large because I don't believe it will be acceptable
to provide endowment funding for ten universities, and leave the other
ninety without.
DIGNAN: Universities want the politicians
to be realistic about funding higher education. If higher taxes or a bigger
share of public spending are ruled out that leaves the option of extracting
more money from those who benefit from higher education. And that could
mean allowing universities to set their own tuition fees.
All students in the UK - except for Scottish students in Scotland - are
now sent a bill for tuition to be paid up-front. But only the well-off
pay in full, about a thousand pounds. Here at Nottingham, the Vice-Chancellor
says students could afford to pay more, given that they stand to benefit
considerably from a university education.
CAMPBELL: People who can afford
it should pay, up to a modest limit. They are beneficiaries to the extent
of four-hundred-thousand upwards in their life time, they can afford to
pay, they should pay.
PROFESSOR SIR HOWARD NEWBY: I think most people now accept that
people who go through higher education have some moral obligation to put
something back. Our graduates do benefit in terms of employability and
higher incomes later in life and of course they do put something back
through the tax system but I think also most people would accept that they
should make some direct payment as well.
DIGNAN: If universities are allowed
to set their own fees, that might deter more students from poorer backgrounds.
It's why Scotland abolished fees. One answer would be to delay paying
until after graduation - with repayments rising only in line with income.
PROFESSOR SANDRA BURSLEM: There is I think a real barrier against
people from lower socio-economic groups coming in to higher education.
That's not justifiable. So I think that we've got to be very careful
about how we expect those sorts of students to contribute to their higher
education.
DIGNAN: But universities like Nottingham
say they need the money now. They want to ask for extra up-front payments.
Students from poorer backgrounds would be offered scholarships. The burden
of paying the extra fees might well fall on middle-income families - which
may explain why the Conservatives are against the idea, an attitude which
sits oddly with their promise to set universities free.
MAY: There is legislation
that restricts the fees that universities can charge. I think it's important
that endowed universities are on a level playing field and therefore endowed
universities, alongside the other universities, will not be able to charge
top up fees.
UNNAMED MAN: The concept of a transfer
function.
DIGNAN: Labour, too, believes that
the Government, rather than the universities, should continue to decide
the amount students should pay in tuition fees - outside Scotland, that
is.
BLACKSTONE: The Government doesn't think
it would be right for them to charge students according to their particular
view of what they can afford. It is far better to have a regulated system
of fees which we introduced. It is then possible to have a national system
that is understood, rather than have a free market where people are confused
about what different places are charging. So the government is, in fact,
confident that the system that we've introduced is a fair one, it is getting
more money into the universities and I wouldn't want to go down the differential
top-up fee route.
CAMPBELL: I think the hard question
is for Baroness Blackstone and her colleagues because they will be asked
the question increasingly - are you investing adequately to maintain the
universities to be internationally competitive and to give first class
education to the brightest of the young generation? Now the answer to
that is no, so something will have to give, I think it will give after
the election.
DIGNAN: In Manchester the Vice-Chancellors
who attended the meeting of the Higher Education Funding Council are all
members of Universities UK. It has a working party looking at a range
of options to increase funding. Even though top-up fees feature prominently,
ministers say there's no consensus among Vice-Chancellors in their favour.
BLACKSTONE: I think the majority of them
are not in favour of top up fees, so I think that the advice that we will
get from them will be consistent with the way we view things at present.
DIGNAN: But amongst Vice-Chancellors,
there's a potential premier league which may not allow the majority of
less prestigious universities to make policy on their behalf.
UNNAMED MAN: "Ladies and gentlemen."
DIGNAN: The top UK universities
may grow increasingly frustrated if they're not allowed to exploit their
market strength.
SMITHERS: There are universities
that would be able to attract students because they have many more students
than they have places, being able to charge their own fees, to price their
own courses, would be a considerable advantage to them in the quality of
the higher education they could offer. Universities that aren't able to
fill their places at the moment would wonder whether it would be even more
difficult in future circumstances.
HARRIS: For the government to ignore
that threat, not put the funding in that's required, will lead inexorably
to top-up fees. Significantly they refuse to rule it out for the whole
of the next parliament, they just say they have no plans, that's the same
language they used within a year of implementing tuition fees and scrapping
grants when they said they have no plans.
CAMPBELL: It is established government
policy that they're not going to change the position for the time being.
But I think after the election, when whichever government has another
four or five years to look ahead, they'll have to confront this issue,
it's inescapable.
DIGNAN: Despite the cuts to university
funding over many years, this country remains in the world elite of higher
education, but for how much longer? Politicians fear students' parents
would be furious if universities introduce top-up fees. Parents could
of course demand to pay higher taxes instead, but few Vice-Chancellors
take that prospect seriously.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Terry Dignan reporting.
And that's it for this week. If you're on the internet don't forget about
our website. Until the same time next week. Good afternoon.
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