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NB. THIS TRANSCRIPT WAS TYPED FROM A TRANSCRIPTION UNIT RECORDING AND
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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE:
11.02.01
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. Can the Government
put the Mandelson affair behind it - or is there more trouble in store
whatever the inquiry finds? We'll be reporting. Can we believe the Government
when it says our food is safe? I'll be talking to the Agriculture Minister
Nick Brown. And we'll be looking at our secondary schools... how will
the Tories make them better? That's after the news read by Matthew Amroliwala.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: The nightmare of mad cow
disease is said to be behind us... but can we be sure of that?
There are new rules
on party funding. But the Government's advisor on standards says Ministers
haven't done enough to stop people thinking politics is sleazy?
LORD NEILL: "We are disappointed that
they haven't gone all the way that we want to go."
HUMPHRYS: And the Government has plans
to improve our secondary schools... what have the Tories got to offer?
But first the continuing
saga of Peter Mandelson. The Government wants to close the book and Ministers
keep saying: "Let's wait to see what the Hammond Inquiry comes up with."
But Mr. Mandelson has other ideas and he's managed to keep his face and
his fight in the papers. How much support does he have within the ranks
of the Labour Party and how much damage might he be capable yet of doing?
Iain Watson reports.
IAIN WATSON: When Peter Mandelson was summoned
to the Prime Minister's inner sanctum eighteen days ago his opponents assumed
he was heading for political oblivion. But this spectre of spin continues
to haunt Downing Street and further horrors are on the way - for the first
time his political supporters have stepped from the shadows and are telling
Tony Blair it's in his own interests not shut out his old ally forever.
LORD SAWYER: Give him any portfolio, give
him any case to make, and Peter, if he gets behind it, will make it in
a, in a manner which is hard to equal in the Parliamentary Labour Party,
now from my point of view, in Labour Party politics, this is a big asset,
and it's too big to squander.
LORNA FITZSIMONS MP: It is very frightening that
people are actually starting to think that because the media have pre-judged
you, because there is a lynch mob, therefore you're guilty. And we don't
allow that either in some of the most severe instances in the criminal
justice system, so why are we doing it in politics?
WATSON: Just as Peter Mandelson
was being dispatched from the cabinet for a second time, Sir Anthony Hammond
- a former treasury solicitor who also served at the Home Office - was
called in to set up an Inquiry; in the old days, that would have been enough
to kill off an inconvenient story.
ACTUALITY FROM THE TV SERIES - YES MINISTER
JIM: Well at least an
Inquiry gives us a little time.
HUMPHREY: So does a time bomb.
JIM: Haven't you got a
disposal squad?
HUMPHREY: Disposal squad?
JIM: Couldn't we get the
independent inquiry to exonerate the department?
HUMPHREY: Do you mean rig it?
JIM: No, no, no, no, no,
no, well, yes.
WATSON: So Whitehall inquiries
were traditionally designed to conceal more than they revealed - to smooth
things over, not shake them up. Whatever New Labour's detractors say about
the lack of radicalism, when it comes to inquiries, they've certainly broken
the mould. The Hammond inquiry could actually cause more problems than
it solves - and heighten, not diminish, party infighting, ahead of a general
election. Now Labour may want to talk about education and crime, but when
this Inquiry reports, the future of one man will continue to dominate the
debate.
PHIL WOOLAS MP: We don't know obviously
what the inquiry will say - it's possible it will exonerate Peter Mandelson,
and if that is the case, I can't see any reason why, after the general
election, some time in the future, that he couldn't play a role in government.
GORDON PRENTICE MP: I don't think Parliamentary
Labour Party would swallow it, I don't think the wider Labour Party would
welcome it, no sane person would suggest for one moment that there was
any prospect of Peter Mandelson returning to front rank politics in the
second term, if we get it, of a Labour Government.
WATSON: The Inquiry under Sir Anthony
Hammond is due to report to ministers at the end of the month and should
throw light on why, or whether Peter Mandelson was right to resign. What's
not in doubt is that the Home Office were contacted - either by Peter Mandelson
or his officials - when he was minister for the millennium dome, to ask
about rules on British citizenship - following a query by the Hinduja
brothers. And they just happened to have pledged around a million pounds
in sponsorship for the Greenwich folly.
What is at issue is whether Peter Mandelson telephoned the relevant Home
Office Minister, Mike O'Brien, personally, and then exercised undue pressure
to speed up a citizenship application. If Hammond concludes that Peter
Mandelson acted dishonourably, then the punishment won't just be personal
but political.
ANDREW LANSLEY MP: I think that creates a backdrop,
alongside other things, in which people think increasingly ill of this
government, where they don't trust what they say, where they feel that
they came into office claiming they'd uphold the highest standards in public
life and they have completely failed to deliver on that.
WATSON: But Peter Mandelson is
saying through friends that he was browbeaten from office before the facts
were established. A memo from his most recent set of officials, at the
Northern Ireland office, and leaked last week, threw doubts on the Home
Office's account that Peter Mandelson had personally contacted the Immigration
Minister Mike O'Brien. So if there's no proof he even phoned the relevant
minister, never mind sought to influence him, presumably complete exoneration
isn't out of the question.
WOOLAS; If it says he acted honourably,
and that mistakes were made but not intentionally, then I can't see why
after the general election, there shouldn't be no role for him in politics
if that is what the inquiry does show.
PRENTICE: In the presence of colleagues,
I asked Mike and I said to him, "do you have a clear recollection of having
this telephone conversation with Peter Mandelson?" and he looked me in
the eye and he said "yes." So who do we believe? Mike O'Brien, a well
respected Home Office Minister, a solicitor, or Peter Mandelson?
WATSON: Well, if Sir Anthony Hammond
chooses the latter, then Peter Mandelson's reputation could be restored.
But this may have the opposite effect on the Prime Minister if he's seen
to have acted as judge and jury before hearing the evidence.
LORD SAWYER: As far as I can read, I mean
Peter did suggest that the Inquiry should be carried out first, but you
know you can see it from both sides here; you can see the kind of panic
that would arise in Number Ten at the thought of another kind of possible
misdemeanour from Peter - and oh dear me, you know this is the man who
resigned once, we reinstated him, and now we're in trouble again. So there
would I think be an element of panic about Peter, let's say potentially,
being in trouble again.
NORMAN BAKER MP: I don't think Mr. Mandelson will
be exonerated, its difficult to see how that can occur. If he is exonerated,
then that clearly leaves the judgement in the balance as to the role of
Alistair Campbell and indeed the Prime Minister who shoved him out of office
so quickly on that particular Wednesday morning.
WATSON: While Labour sources expect
Peter Mandelson to be cleared of influencing the Hindujas citizenship
application, they hope the verdict on the telephone call will look like
a fudge.
Peter Mandelson says he
can't recall telephoning the Home Office personally about any possible
citizenship application from S. P. Hinduja. But senior Labour sources
are confident that Sir Anthony Hammond's inquiry will establish that a
telephone call did indeed take place. But ministers don't expect Peter
Mandelson to be branded a liar - instead, less damning language could be
deployed - perhaps a reference to 'an inadequate recollection of events'
or maybe a mention of 'flawed judgment' so not so much a whitewash - more
of a grey area.
ACTUALITY FROM THE TV SERIES YES MINISTER
HUMPHREY It is characteristic of
all committee discussions and decisions, that every member has a vivid
recollection of them and that every member's recollection of them differs
violently from every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept
the convention that the official decisions are those and only those which
have been officially recorded in the minutes by the officials.
FITZSIMONS: The bottom line is the reason
he resigned was Mike O'Brien said he made the phone call and he couldn't
recall making the phone call. You know that is so...if you actually...history
will look on this as pathetic. The bottom line is the man resigned, one
of the chief architects of New Labour resigned over whether he could remember
making a phone call just saying I'm inquiring about policy. I mean let's
get this into context.
LANSLEY: I don't actually think
it was so much a matter of whether Peter Mandelson picked up a telephone,
the point was that he was engaged in raising an issue with another government
department on behalf of somebody from whom he was soliciting sponsorship
for the Dome; that was really what it was all about and that breached the
rules as far as I'm concerned
WATSON: So some people would find
a fudge far from satisfactory - but would it be enough to appease Peter
Mandelson? Although he's said he would accept the inquiry's findings,
his recent off the record briefings seem to have convinced Downing Street
of his volatility - any suggestion he's a liar could detonate a political
explosion
LORD SAWYER: To say that he made a mistake,
or he was indiscreet, or he perhaps shouldn't have done something that
he did, I think he would probably say: well look, fair enough, and he would
apologise for that. But I think that any implication that he purposely
set out to tell a lie in order to mislead any, either his colleagues, or
the Prime Minister, or civil servants, or anybody else, I think he would
find unacceptable.
BAKER: It's quite clear that Mr
Mandelson will not let this matter rest, and I think that's bad news for
Tony Blair and the government, they clearly want him to go quietly, he's
not going to do so.
PRENTICE: If the media becomes
fixated with Peter Mandelson in the run-up to a General Election and that
will obscure the real issues, that could do us real damage and I don't
pretend that it wouldn't, and I would just hope that Peter Mandelson puts
a lid on it
WATSON: The Prime Minister has
to handle Peter Mandelson with care. Tony Blair has to make it clear that
if Sir Anthony Hammond stops short of calling Peter Mandelson a liar, then
the door won't be closed forever on his former Cabinet colleague. The hope
is that this sort of incentive can keep Peter sweet through a General
Election campaign - although any ambiguity over his future status is likely
to be exploited gleefully by the opposition parties. But even within Labour's
ranks, this could prove controversial.
FITZSIMONS: You can't go on persecuting
him because you believe somehow he's got a flawed judgement or whatever
and if he is innocent then he should be treated as such and be as eligible
as anybody for promotion.
PRENTICE: I think Peter Mandelson
is in some sense in a state of denial, he cannot quite accept the fact
that his career has come to an abrupt end, I don't think there's any question
at all of rehabilitation
RECORDING OF "YES MINISTER":
JIM: "But Humphrey,
if these revelations are true..."
HUMPHREY: "Ah exactly, Minister,
IF... You could for instance have discussed the nature of truth.
JIM: "The Committee
isn't the least bit interested in the nature of truth. They're all MPs!"
WATSON: Whatever the results of
the inquiry, Peter Mandelson's future will be decided by predominantly
political factors. Some Blairites say he's needed to strengthen the Prime
Minister's hand against the overweening influence of the Chancellor, Gordon
Brown; while his opponents believe that, with the modernising gimmicks
behind it, the party can return to the task of appealing to its near-catatonic
core vote now that Peter Mandelson has gone
PRENTICE: I think even before this
happened there was a kind of recalibration taking place, that Mandelson's
idea of the project of course was to get really close to the Liberal Democrats,
coalition, snuggling up close to them, a kind of centrism which was dressed
up in terms of modernity. Now I'd say there's been a kind of stepping back
from that and the government now four years into its term is looking at
addressing the things that really matter to people in the industrial heartlands,
just the whole raft of policies that Peter Mandelson never concerned himself
with.
WOOLAS: I think what worries me
mostly about the affairs surrounding the Peter Mandelson resignation, is
the interpretation that somehow or other because Peter Mandelson had gone,
that the English public had all of a sudden become Bevanite Socialists.
Labour has its majority and has the mandate of the British people because
we are the New Labour Party, and if Peter Mandelson's resignation creates
a vacuum that will cause us problems in the future and it's very important
that we reassert our New Labour credentials
WATSON: Most Labour Party members
will be delighted that Tony Blair has rid himself of the man they see as
his Rasputin. But some of those who played a key role in past General Elections
fear that Labour's campaign machine this time round will be less effective
as a result.
SAWYER: It was very disappointing
because he is such an important person to the Labour Party; he's particularly
important at Millbank and in a campaign centre - his brain and his ability
to get things right inside the Party is probably irreplaceable. I guess
most people would say he couldn't come back into government but as you
know you should never say never in politics
WATSON: The first reaction in Labour's
ranks to Peter Mandelson's departure was a near collective sigh of relief;
but some won't be breathing quite so easily now. Whatever the conclusions
of the Hammond inquiry, when it reports just weeks before an expected General
Election - Downing Street may find that the man who was once one of Labour's
greatest assets has now become one of its biggest liabilities.
HUMPHRYS: Iain Watson reporting
there. Later in the programme we're going to be looking at whether more
needs to be done to clean up our politics.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: But first MPs are going
to discuss food this week. How safe is it? Have we really put the tragedy
of mad cow disease behind us? Can we trust politicians and civil servants
to let us know if there are problems in future and to put the interests
of food safety above everything else? Is there really a new culture of
openness in Whitehall? On Friday the Agriculture Minister Nick Brown gave
the government's response to the inquiry into BSE but he left many of those
questions unanswered. Mr. Brown is in our Newcastle studio now. Good
afternoon Mr. Brown.
NICK BROWN: Good afternoon John.
HUMPHRYS: You're going to be using,
as I understand it, the BSE and the way the Tories handled it, to attack
them during the election campaign when it arrives, but you have a problem
here don't you, because you don't seem to think anybody is to blame, that
is to say, nobody is being punished for it, therefore we can assume can
we not, that nobody is to blame. Why isn't anybody being punished? It's
a question an awful lot of people want answered.
BROWN: Look, firstly I think the
electorate made their mind up on the Conservatives' handling of the BSE
tragedy at the last general election, the nineteen-ninety-seven general
election. The whole purpose of the government's interim response to Phillips
is to look forward, not to look backwards, and to make sure we put arrangements
in place so that something like this never happens again, or at least we've
taken every step we possibly can to avoid it.
HUMPHRYS: But I think if I were
a farmer whose livelihood had been destroyed, or even more, much more,
if I were the parent of a child who had died, I would say fine, that's
a perfectly good politician's answer, but I want somebody's neck on the
block for this, I want somebody to be punished for it, it's a completely
human response isn't it?
BROWN: It is a completely human
response. Look I don't intend my answer as a politician's answer, what
the government is doing is responding to the Phillips Enquiry, and Lord
Phillips was very clear on this question of allocating blame. He found
institutional failings which went right to the heart of government and
he found political failings as well, which is an indictment of the previous
government and the Conservative Party, but what he said on the question
of allocating individual blame was something like this. He said anyone
who has come to our Report looking to allocate blame will go away disappointed.
That was his finding, that's the finding to which the government has to
respond.
HUMPHRYS: But why, why do you have
to...
BROWN: ...now let me finish the
point. There are five serving civil servants who are criticised in Lord
Phillips Report, we've asked a Civil Service Commissioner to examine whether
those criticisms are serious enough to warrant disciplinary action, the
Commissioner has examined the case, has come back to permanent secretaries
and said that the answer to that is no. And given what Lord Phillips has
said, it's not surprising that the answer, when it comes to allocating
individual blame, is as it is.
HUMPHRYS: But somebody must have
been responsible.
BROWN: Well, you know, I think
it is very easy to say that. That is not the findings of the Phillips
Report and the government has a responsibility to find, to respond to what
Lord Phillips actually said, rather than what might have been more politically
convenient to have had him said, if you are looking at it from a narrow
sectarian party point of view.
HUMPHRYS: Well let's try not to
do that.
BROWN: Let me just say, I think
it is wrong to look at it from a party political point of view. This is
an issue of overwhelming importance, it goes to the heart of the way in
which we are government, it runs to structures of government and it is
there that the response should come. To turn the issue into a fight between
Conservatives and Labour along party political lines is a mistake.
HUMPHRYS: Oh no, I certainly wasn't
trying to do that, quite the opposite...
BOTH SPEAKING TOGETHER
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, and it might
well have been that it was civil servants whose necks should be on block
let alone -- politicians get punished at the polling booth apart from anything
else...
BROWN: ...I think that's exactly
right...
HUMPHRYS: ...yes, but civil servants
don't, they're still in their jobs.
BROWN: You know, all I can do is
to repeat what I've just said. Phillips looked at this question very thoroughly,
his findings are very clear, just in case there was any ambiguity about
it, we asked a civil service commissioner to examine the position regarding
the five serving civil servants and the outcome is as it is.
HUMPHRYS: Alright. The one thing
that Phillips was very, very clear about indeed, was that there had been
a culture of secrecy and that we didn't know enough about what was going
on when it was happening, that's the important point, when it was happening.
The problem you face now is that, the problem that we face now is we still
cannot be sure that, if there were, God forbid, to be another BSE or something
like it, we would for certain know about what was going on, because of
course, we are going to have a Freedom of Information Act, but what that
means, it's been so weakened, that ministers do not have to disclose the
advice that they get, so next time around we may be none the wiser.
BROWN: No, advice to ministers
is one thing, the scientific advice on which ministers are being advised,
on which we are making our decisions, is quite another. And John I give
you this pledge, the scientific advice that informs the ministerial decisions
that I make is all going to go into the public domain. Moreover, the
government has set up now the Foods Standards Agency, which meets in public
to formulate its advice to ministers, and they put that advice in the public
domain. These are very powerful safeguards.
HUMPHRYS: Well, alright, let's
assume that there is a problem. Might be something as serious as a BSE,
it might be something much less serious. But there is a problem. And
a middle ranking official, may or may not be scientist, comes along to
perhaps a senior official, perhaps to a minister himself, or herself, and
says, look, there's a problem here. I'm worried about this. Do we, the
public, get to know about that, at that time?
BROWN: Well, I assume the meetings
that I have as minister, are going to end up in the public domain, unless
there is something commercially confidential, or some other very good reason
why they should not. I intend to put all the scientific evidence on which
ministerial decisions are based, into the public domain. We publish a
great deal of information already, on the Ministry's internet site, and
as you know, I bring journalists in, specialist journalists, from time
to time, to brief them on some of the background to the more complicated
things that I end up having to deal with.
HUMPHRYS: So, but it's more than
just the scientific information obviously, because, I mean, we are not
necessarily, probably certainly not capable of divining of what that might
or might not mean, you'd have to be a scientist to do that. Are you saying
that if one of your officials comes along to you and says, look minister,
I've looked at this, and I've got some worries about it, here is what I
think you ought to do, you will tell us that? Without any doubt at all?
BROWN: If there is something to
worry about. Obviously the first question I would ask, and any minister
would ask, is why, what is the basis for the concern, and if that basis
is founded on a scientific study or some other contestable piece of technical
information then the information itself goes into the public domain.
HUMPHRYS: So, we could go along,
any journalist could come along to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries
and Food at any time in the future, and say: Look, tell us about what has
been going on in relation to x, y or z, whatever it may be, and we would
have access to the papers, we would have access to the advice which you
had been given. We'd know the whole picture.
BROWN: As far as the scientific
advice that informs ministerial decision-making goes, you don't have to
come along to the Ministry. You can access it all on the Ministry's internet
site.
HUMPHRYS: I was talking about more
than. I was talking about more than just the scientific advice.
BROWN: When it comes to the advice
that informs decisions over whether - take a controversial issue, whether
French beef should be imported into the United Kingdom, but that's a legal
question rather than a scientific one, although the food safety advice
comes from the Foods Standards Agency, and that is in the public domain.
The legal advice is in the House of Commons library, so that you can see
it there, every parliamentarian can see it there as well, in other words
it's in the public domain.
HUMPHRYS: But if one of your ministers
came along and said: It's a tricky area this minister, you know, it could
be very politically damaging for you, we think you ought to do this that,
or the other, would you tell us about that, and could we then come along.
I mean could I now come along and say, BSE in milk for instance, one
example, and I know there is stuff on the Internet as you rightly say,
scientific stuff on the Internet, but could we come along and say: Let's
have everything on that since the Election, since you've been in power.
BROWN: John, I'm quite happy for
you to have absolutely every bit of information we have about whether or
not BSE can be found in milk. The advice to me is that it cannot, but
we're still looking, but if you want to go through the research that's
been carried out so far I'm quite happy to have you talked through the
Ministry's research programme by the people who've undertaken it. There
are two choices for ministers on this question of secrecy. Either you
do what the last government did, which is to keep things - play the cards
very close to your chest - keep things secret in order to prevent there
being a panic when the science isn't certain - that's the approach the
Conservative Party took.
Phillips says they were
wrong to do that, and even if the science isn't certain, governments should
trust the public and I strongly agree with that. It is better to say there
is a debate around this area, we don't know for sure, but this is what
we know so far, and if the debate seems to be moving in a particular direction
as it clearly did with BSE, remember the discovery of the TSEs in cats,
the discovery that it was possible to get the condition into a pig by injecting
it in laboratory conditions into the animals' brains; all of these were
clear signposts that it's possible for the condition in cattle to jump
the species barrier. Now that should have gone into the public domain
and it should have alerted ministers to the need for powerful protection
measures.
HUMPHRYS: But what if your official
says to you: Look, this could - we don't think there's a great deal in
it actually, but there's enough in it for some of our scientists to be
a bit worried about it. However if this gets out it really could rock
public confidence in lamb or milk or whatever it happens to be, would you
tell us that?
BROWN: Well, your example about
sheep is actually quite a good one. There is a theoretical possibility
that BSE was present in sheep at least at their period of greatest infectivity
in the late 1980s, early 1990s, although of course we haven't found it
there, and there are no mad sheep. There are sheep suffering from scrapie,
and as you know the theory is that scrapie could possibly mask the condition,
the BSE condition in sheep.
We have said what the
theoretical possibility is, we're conducting continuing research into it,
both into whether it was present historically and whether we can find it
now. So far we haven't but we continue to search, but moreover we're devising
a contingency plan if anything is ever found and all of that work is being
put in the public domain. Moreover, I have on an extreme precautionary
principle devised a scrapie eradication programme which is to genotype
the sheep so that we eliminate scrapie, and although scrapie is said to
be no harm to humans, and I'm sure that that's right I want to eliminate
it anyway just in case on the very extreme possibility that it masks BSE.
Now a
previous Conservative government would not have wanted to discuss that
in public. I'm quite confident that in spelling out the nature of the risk
and what the government's doing about it, that will act as a reassurance
to the public rather than a source for food scare stories.
HUMPHRYS: If you were entirely
serious about this would you not follow the German approach., They now
of course have a new Agriculture Minister, and their slogan, if that's
what it is, their policy I suppose, is class not mass. In other words
we're much more concerned about the quality of the food we produce than
the quantity of the food we produce. You are still, because of course
you still support intensive agriculture, with all the potential risks,
and I emphasise the word potential that that involves, you're still more
concerned with mass than class aren't you?
BROWN: John, I am passionately
committed, you and I have discussed this before, to the reform of the Common
Agricultural Policy and to shift that policy away from the production supports
which of course, do as you say, which underpin mass production rather than
look at the environmental issues or indeed get farm businesses closer to
the market place. And I am strongly committed to the reform process...
HUMPHRYS: Well give us a target
then like the Germans have..
BROWN: John, let me finish. I've
got the disadvantage of hearing you down the line from Newcastle...
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, of course I apologise..
BROWN: I've got the disadvantage
of having to work with the Common Agricultural Policy as I found it. I
believe there should be a Common Policy across the European Union but not
as currently structured and you and I don't disagree on these matters as
much as it may seem.
HUMPHRYS: Well it's my job as you
know to ask the questions. What..the reason that I raised the Germans and
I'm sorry if you couldn't hear me down the line there. Is that they have
actually set a target. They have said twenty per cent of organic food,
effectively organic food by the year 2010. We don't have that sort of target
do we?
BROWN: No, but I was discussing
the possibility of having an action plan with the Soil Association earlier
on this week. I'm not going to set targets, it's not for Government to
tell people which type of food they should eat, the government's responsibility
is to ensure that it is safe and that the trading practices within the
food industry are proper and as they should be. However, the government
is committed to seeing organic farming flourish and we're doing it for
three reasons: it's good for the environment; it's what consumers want
and it's an economic way forward for farmers. The last Conservative government
was spending half a million pounds a year on this when they left office,
we're spending a hundred and forty million pounds over the next seven years
and what's more, we're looking at whether we can devise an on-goers scheme
as well as a conversion scheme for the future. So we are keen on supporting
organic farming but not telling people that they have to eat organic food
or setting artificial targets.
HUMPHRYS: Giving them a choice
is not telling them they have to eat and a hundred and forty divided by
seven isn't actually all that much is it. The short answer is you're not
prepared to go as far as the German government has gone.
BROWN: We certainly go further
than the German government currently goes although you are right that the
arrival of the new minister means a change in policy. It is not possible
I think to support organic farming alone without looking at the structure
of the Common Agricultural Policy and supporting more radical reform of
that. I believe that that should be done and I hope that German policy
evolves in a similar direction.
HUMPHRYS: Nick Brown, thanks very
much indeed.
HUMPHRYS: This week new rules
on how we pay for our political parties come into force. They include
a cap on how much the parties can spend on elections and they force the
parties to identify donors who give them more than �5,000. They're an
improvement on what's gone before but are they enough? And have the rules
already been overtaken by the events of recent weeks? Paul Wilenius has
been taking a look at the world of politics and big money.
PAUL WILENIUS: Everyone loves the high
life.But to taste it, takes money. The rich have lots of it, which can
help them get closer to powerful politicians. Yet some observers know
the dangers of mixing the worlds of politics and wealth. Ministerial links
with the Indian Hinduja Brothers brought down Peter Mandelson and other
heads may roll. So On The Record decided to take a look at the way parties
and Ministers rub up against the wealthy and set out for one of the biggest
political fundraising balls of the year.
When Tony Blair came to
power, he promised to sweep away Tory sleaze and bring in new cleaner politics.
But it's taken four years to bring in new laws to cap election spending
and to open up political donations to public scrutiny. And there are fears
this may not be enough to achieve his aim of making politics purer than
pure.
Most people were shocked
by the sleaze of the cash-for-questions affairs, which tarnished the Tories
and even Parliament itself. When spending on the last election accelerated
to a record �58 million, Tony Blair asked the Committee on Standards in
Public Life to try to regain public confidence in politics and halt the
party spending arms race.
LORD NEILL: We had quite a lot of evidence
from witnesses who thought they'd been some extravagance; it was overspending,
there were posters going up that in retrospect people thought might have
been better if the money hadn't been spent that way - and that was thought
to be excessive.
MIKE O'BREIN: I think there was serious
public concern about the level of funding and the costs of an election
and therefore people wanted to see some cap on the overall expenditure
of political parties.
WILENIUS: The Electoral Commission
will be set up under new laws which will come into force this week . Its
job will be to see that the Tories or other parties spend no more than
�20 million on an election campaign over a full year. This will be a �15
million limit, if Labour Party leaders decide, as expected, to go for an
election in May this year.
But party supporters won't
take this limit lying down. Big unions and wealthy businessmen can lavish
almost a million pounds each on their own campaigns, avoiding the overall
spending cut.
SAM YOUNGER: It does leave grey areas and
areas for interpretation and the staff of the Commission have already been
in very detailed discussions with the political parties themselves to try
to get some consistency into the guidelines as to what constitutes campaign
expenditure and what doesn't and how things are going to be calculated.
I think we're all aware we're not going to get it to work absolutely perfectly
and consistently first time around.
LORD RENNARD: There is a real danger I
think that some organisations may get round the limits, for example Euro-sceptic
organisations with the support of a few extremely rich people could perhaps
club together to promote their campaign in support of the Conservative
Party. It's quite possible that the trade unions, in addition to giving
money directly to the Labour Party, could use their financial strength
to promote the cause of the Labour Party in other ways and they could of
course co-operate together to do that.
WILENIUS: Because of the fear that
some party supporters will be able to get around the limit, there's mounting
pressure to make sure the �20 million overall cap on election spending
is trimmed even further.
TONY WRIGHT MP: I think I would probably
shave about five million off the figure that we are now talking about.
I think that would just help. I mean I can see why the parties don't want
to do it because you know they're into the business of fighting elections
at that sort of level. But it will help on all these issues about how you'd
manage party funding I think if you took the pressure of the total spend.
LORD NEILL: My view is that it should be
looked at to see whether people really need as much as the twenty - or
it's going to be fifteen million I think for this forthcoming election
- is it too much?; if it's over the top, cut it down.
WILENIUS: From the very beginning
Labour's hopes of keeping politics clean ran into trouble. There was a
string of scandals involving Ministers and wealthy businessmen.
PETER KILFOYLE MP: I just think that Ministers
are only people and most people would find that kind of attention seductive.
Ministers of course, some ministers did find it extremely seductive. That's
why, before the election, the Labour Party and opposition tried to run
courses to forewarn us about the dangers. There's nothing new in these.
But of course given the long time that we spent in opposition, all of the
best will and the best causes in the world was not going to stop one or
two of my former colleagues from becoming seduced by the trappings of power.
WILENIUS: So the charms of big
business have caused problems for Tony Blair's government. From Formula
One to the Dome it has tarnished the new Labour brand.
Some senior Labour figures
feel the only safe choice is for the taxpayer to fund political parties,
as this will protect them from charges of corruption. But for Tony Blair
throwing state funding into the mix is too radical, as he feels the voters
would just not swallow it. So instead party coffers will still need filling
up from the pockets of rich donors, unions and pressure groups.
PETER KILFOYLE: I think a very good case
can be put to the people of this country that it's in their interests to
take out these rather influential and unaccountable people by having some
form of state funding and it can be elective state funding, in the sense
that, there's no reason why when you cast your vote, you can have a box
which says, you know, "Do you want - I dunno - a pound of your tax over
a year to go to political funding? Yes or No."
MIKE O'BRIEN: The government's view is
certainly that there is not the support for State Funding, and that we
do not, as a government favour it. The Neil Committee was against it, but
in the long term future let's see how this debate develops.
WILENIUS: Both major political
parties have clearly not taken a shine to state funding, as they fear it
could be unpopular with the voters. But a growing number of Labour MPs
and smaller parties feel there could be another solution to impose strict
limits on the size of donations.
WRIGHT: The bit that we haven't
yet done and the Neill Committee wouldn't recommend this, but I think
we ought to do it, is to have a cap on individual donors, I would say a
figure of about a hundred thousand pounds.
WILENIUS: Transparency is the aim
of the new law, which will make public the name and size of any donation
over five-thousand pounds. But there is growing unease about the sheer
size of the recent gifts to the big parties. The Tories got the dazzling
offer of five-million pounds. This followed three eye-catching donations
of two-million pounds each to Labour. They're the sort of sums party leaders
will find it hard to walk away from.
LORD NEILL: I think the problem is big
donors means big influence. We had a recommendation, which the government
did not follow up, that there should be tax relief for small donations
up to five-hundred pounds - we thought that was an excellent plan to widen
the contribution to a much bigger field. That's been rejected.
O'BRIEN: Some have said that, that
sunlight is the best disinfectant, in order to clean up the sleaze in British
politics, what we need to ensure is that we have openness about the way
in which political parties are funded. There is however some public concern
that particular individuals might seek to influence political parties.
We'll have to see how that debate develops over the coming months. The
Electoral Commission can obviously revisit it.
WILENIUS: So even Ministers acknowledge
the dangers of relying on big cash gifts, and that they might eventually
have to do something about it. But cutting the size of donations may not
be enough to keep Labour looking neat and clean. Some influential Labour
MPs want much greater openness about meetings between Ministers and other
organisations.
KILFOYLE: Well what's fascinating
I think is that you do end up in a situation where you meet various business
people. I don't have a problem with that in itself, but it's who you meet,
and how they are determined as requiring access as opposed to other people
who don't. You suspect that there are networks that are going on, which
you are only faintly familiar. I always thought that that was rather unhealthy
frankly, mainly because these people, despite all of the rules, despite
all of the codes of conduct, they had interests very often which were inimical
to those of the government.
WILENIUS; Now there are moves to
tidy up the rules on Ministerial contacts. The Commons Committee on Public
Administration is to call for the creation of a public register, to pin
down Ministers' formal and even informal links with outside interests.
WRIGHT: There should be a register
kept inside departments of when ministers have contact with lobbyists,
and thinking particularly here of business lobbyists, so that when questions
are asked there is a lobby, there is a register that you can turn to.
I mean anything legitimately counts as a contact that could be construed
as any kind of lobbying.
LORD NEILL: I think there's got to be a
great deal of awareness now that private side of business, and the private
field is mixing very much with government on joint enterprises. And what
needs to be known is that this is taking place; what contribution the private
side is making; what they're getting out of it. And I think transparency
is absolutely critical here. We're talking about straight sponsorship,
my Committee is very much against any idea of the sponsor getting a kickback,
or some reward, for doing it. We really don't think it should be a sort
of contract, I scratch your back and you scratch mine, shouldn't be like
that.
WILENIUS: Raising money for political
parties has always been a serious business. And at this glittering event,
speculative investment in long term political futures is the name of the
game. In these glamorous and relaxed surroundings a thousand well heeled
guests can have fun mingling with the political elite in the Conservative
Party.
This is the Tory Party's Annual Winter Ball, the place where the worlds
of politics and business collide. Even though I have been preparing all
day, I'm still not allowed in. Like many similar Labour events, it is
strictly private and the media is banned.
For politicians wanting to promote a cleaner image, this is where the
real danger lies. Although they normally thrive on photo-calls and soundbites,
on fundraising and links with outside interests they go camera shy. And
if this persists, then the major parties will still find it hard to avoid
allegations of sleaze.
The biggest problem for new Labour is that voters expected so much. Ministers
hope that the allegations that they are just as sleazy as the Tories, won't
have a big impact at the next election. But there are fears that if they
can't shake off this image, they will eventually pay a high political price.
WRIGHT: I think there is a deep
cynicism about politics and politicians, I think there is a widespread
belief that collectively they are up to no good. That they will get their
nose in the trough if they are given half the chance. The only real way
to answer it though, is to make sure there is such transparency and such
openness, that these accusations cannot be levelled and that if they are
levelled people have protection against them.
NEILL: We are disappointed that
they haven't gone all the way that we want to go, we would like to have
a public register so that you could find out who was lobbying to achieve
what. The government I don't think wants such a register to be publicly
available, maybe they'll rethink it, but at the moment we haven't persuaded
them, and that, I find disappointing.
WILENIUS: For politicians the trappings
of power depend on popularity. So if they fail to shake off the impression
of sleaze, the time will come when the humble voters will take it all away.
HUMPHRYS: Paul Wilenius coming
down to earth there.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Tomorrow the government
will publish its plans for the future of secondary education in England
and Wales. But as ever we know what's going to be said because the Education
Secretary David Blunkett has already told us. One of the immediate problems
is how to recruit more secondary school teachers, but the overriding issue
is how to raise the standards in secondary schools generally. The Tories
say they know a better way than the government's. Theresa May is the Shadow
Education Secretary.
The problem for you I
suppose, Theresa May, is that the voters seem already to have decided because
you have actually lost ground on your education policies since you were
in opposition.
THERESA MAY MP: Well I don't think the voters have
decided and that's certainly not the message that I get as I go around
and talk to parents and governors and teachers in our schools. I mean if
we look back at the May 1997 Election the government..the Labour Party
came into government promising that education would be a top priority.
I don't think many parents thought that four years down the road of a Labour
government they were going to see schools having been on a four day week,
threatened with a four day week. Children being taught by unqualified staff,
children being taught by a never ending stream of supply staff and the
Chief Inspector of Schools warning that standards would be damaged.
HUMPHRYS: And yet people rate them
more highly when they're asked by the opinion pollsters. They were nineteen
per cent ahead they're now twenty-eight per cent ahead on education specifically,
inspite of all that.
MAY: Well on opinion polls
generally John, I don't tend to pay attention to one opinion poll or another,
they go up and down.
HUMPHRYS: I think you'd probably
slit your wrists if you believed them all.
MAY: Well I prefer to look
at what happens in the ballot box and of course opinion polls generally
have been putting us down as a party but in the ballot box recently we've
been doing rather well. So I prefer to actually listen to what people are
saying and hear what teachers and parents and others are saying about how
disillusioned they feel with what the Labour government has failed to deliver
for them in schools.
HUMPHRYS: Well let's look at the
policies. Teacher shortages; you've attacked them consistently over teacher
shortages. In fact, they fell under you, the number of teachers fell under
you, they are beginning to rise again now under the Tories, they are dealing.....under
the Labour government. They are actually dealing with it aren't they.
We heard what - you shake your head but we heard what the Education Secretary
David Blunkett said this morning. They are planning to pay off teacher
loans, student loans, that's going to help isn't it. And that's the trouble
with it, they are nicking your clothes.
MAY: Paying to train teachers
tomorrow is not going to solve the problem of shortages in our schools
today and the one problem that the government is completely failing to
address is that this isn't an issue just about recruiting more people into
teacher training for some stage in the future to come into our schools.
Schools today are in crisis. I was visiting some schools on Friday, one
Head said to me 'our education system is on the brink of disaster, We
can't get the teachers we need.' Heads say they can't get the calibre
of teachers. Heads are moving heaven and earth to cover up for their teacher
vacancies. I saw a letter yesterday from a Head to parents of a school
in Bexley Heath, saying that they are very sorry about all the things they
are having to do to cover up the vacancies and maybe they'll have to go
to a four day week. This is damaging children's education today.
HUMPHRYS: Yes but that's precisely
what the government is doing, is dealing with that by persuading more youngsters
to become teachers. That's what David Blunkett was all about this morning..tomorrow.
MAY: No, it isn't. The
problem that the government is failing to address and one of the reasons
why we've got these real shortages in our schools today is that teachers
are leaving the profession in droves and one of the reasons that they leaving
the profession, the over-whelming reason they give when they're asked why
they are leaving is that they are fed up with the work load, the bureaucracy,
the red tape and paperwork imposed by this government. Until we have a
government that gets to grips with making teaching genuinely an attractive
profession again, so that teachers can get on with the job of teaching
children and raising standards, then sadly we will see teachers continuing
to leave and we will see the problems that we have today and standards
will be effected.
HUMPHRYS: The overriding reason
that they leaving is pay, they reckon they don't get paid enough. You wouldn't
be able to pay them more.
MAY: Well the survey shows
actually that pay is not the overriding issue. The overriding issue is
bureaucracy and workload, that is what is making teachers leave because
they feel they can't actually get on with the job they are there to do
which is teaching children and raising standards and inspiring children
to achieve at their highest potential. Until we do something about that,
until we get rid of that bureaucracy, until we set the schools free, let
the teachers get on with teaching again, then I think we will see teachers
continuing to leave the profession and children's education will suffer.
HUMPHRYS: This expression 'setting
the schools free' it's a bit of a nonsense in a way isn't it because you
talk about abolishing or getting rid of most of the things that the LEAs,
the Local Education Authorities do. That would load a lot more bureaucracy
onto the individual schools which (a) they don't want and (b) they're not
capable of handling.
MAY: Well what would happen
under our Free Schools first of all is that we would get rid of a lot of
the unnecessary paperwork that is loaded on schools and teachers today.
Paperwork that has nothing to do with raising standards in classrooms and
has nothing to do with improving the quality of teaching of our children.
So we would remove an enormous load of bureaucracy from the teachers. We
would get - and by getting rid of that bureaucracy we would be able to
get more money down into the schools and give the schools the freedom to
decide how to spend that money in the interests of children in their classrooms.
HUMPHRYS: You talk about five hundred
and forty pounds per pupil but again that's a meaningless figure isn't
it. I mean it sounds as if it's something you've sucked out of the air
because it assumes that all of those things that are being done at the
moment will not have to be done in the future, they will, they'll just
have to be done by different people.
MAY: Well it's not assuming
that things won't be done. What we've done quite simply is said how much
money today is being spent by local authorities that we can think would
be spent better if it was down at the school level and how much...
HUMPHRYS: It'll still be spent.
MAY: Well and how much
money is being spent by government that would be better down at the school
level where heads and teachers and governors are making decisions for their
own school. And one of the problems today with the way money reaches schools
and schools have something like thirty-seven different streams of funding
to cope with. One of the problems is that that brings an enormous workload
of admin and bureaucracy and Heads often find that these different funding
streams are constrained so that they are given so many thousand pounds
and they are told what they can spend it on. And Heads will say, well I
don't want to spend it painting the staff room for example, I'd rather
spend it on books.
HUMPHRYS: Well in that case, why
do we have people like John Dunford who runs the Secondary Heads Association,
saying and I quote "schools don't want to take responsibility for a whole
range of things, school buildings, transport" They don't want it and the
smaller schools, the primary schools simply can't do it. They don't have
the resources, they don't have the ability, they don't have the training
to do it.
MAY: We've been here before
in a sense with our Grant Maintained Schools and what we saw from Grant
Maintained Schools is that having the money, having that freedom actually
enabled the people in the schools to come alive, to take control of their
destiny of the schools. In many Grant Maintained Schools, suddenly parents
got more involved than they had been previously. And what we saw was a
real ability with that freedom and the money to get on with the job of
raising standards, to offer extra courses, to have more teachers, more
equipment, whatever the school decided. Now in our proposals for Free Schools
we would get the budget direct to the schools, all of their budget, on
the basis of a national formula so that we could even out some of the discrepancies
and differentials that currently occur across the country in funding per
pupil and give the school the freedom on that budget. But, they would be
able to buy in services from elsewhere and we already see..I visited late
last..at the end this last week, I visited a primary school in Gloucestershire
and I met a group of Head teachers who have clustered together and one
of the things they tell me they're doing is buying training for their staff
and they're buying training for their staff more cheaply than the Local
Education Authority is providing it.
HUMPHRYS: Adding to their workload
though isn't it. And as the Audit Commission says, I quote again, small
school heads have limited time to increase their financial expertise.
If they have limited time for the training, there's no point in offering
them the training, is there?
MAY: No, there is every
point in offering them the training...
HUMPHRYS: Let's see......
MAY: Let's just look at
what, because I'm not saying to you that I think that the schools should
buy that training. What I'm saying is there was a group of Heads who themselves
had got together and said, we can do this better. Heads of small primary
schools who were actively saying, we're exercising freedom, we want to
be able to do that to decide what is right for our teachers, and because
it's right for our teachers, right for the children in our schools.
HUMPHRYS: ...well I much prefer...
MAY: ...and rather than
taking that opportunity away from schools like that, I want to increase
those opportunities to schools, so that all schools are able to make judgements
about what works for them, not what the local authority or government thinks
should work for them.
HUMPHRYS: I'd much prefer to see
the head teacher of the little local primary school worrying about what
the kids are learning, rather than having to sort out the bus timetables
or whatever it happens to be. That's not what they're meant to be doing.
MAY: But it would be up
to the Head Teacher to decide how they spend their money...
HUMPHRYS: ...right, so if all of
them said, if lots and lots and lots of them said, we don't actually like
this idea very much, we go back to the old system, so we'd have two tiers
of bureaucracy would we? We'd have one lot of schools being run by your
old hated bureaucrats, and we'd have the other lot doing it for themselves.
MAY: Schools will be free...
HUMPHRYS: ...it's a bit like a
pensions policy, choose which one you want.
MAY: No, schools, well
schools, choice is fundamental for schools, that's what I think is wrong...
HUMPRHYS: ...but it is adds to
bureaucracy, as David Miller's admitted on pensions yesterday.
MAY: What is, what is wrong
with the current system is that the schools are being overloaded with paperwork
that bears no relation to improving standards in the school. They're being
overloaded with decisions that are being taken by central government as
to how money should be spent, or by local education authorities that hold
money back, spend it on bureaucracy when it should be being spent on education
of children.
HUMPHRYS: ...has to be done anyway,
I mean somebody has to do these boring...
MAY: ...but a lot of it
doesn't have to be done John, that's the problem today...
HUMPHRYS: ...a huge amount does...
MAY: ...that's the problem
today. That's the problem today. There is, are circulars, a teacher coming
into teaching in January two-thousand, within six months would have received
one-hundred-and-forty circulars from the Department for Education and Employment.
Now a lot of that bureaucracy is bureaucracy that isn't necessary. But
when I talk to heads about the change that can wrought in their schools,
when they have the freedom to make decisions for themselves, and sometimes
it is freedom, not just about education in the classroom, but about things
like school meals, and the provision of better catering and better food
for the pupils. Heads who want to say, I want to lead my school, I have
a vision for my school. I may not as a head want to spend all my time
on admin, but I will either use part of the budget to employ somebody else
to do that, or cluster together as the primary schools I suggested to do
that...
HUMPHRYS: ...just in thirty seconds...
MAY: ...but the school
will choose...
HUMPHRYS: ...but just in twenty
seconds now. We'd still have the LEA's, Local Education Authorities doing
a great deal if the schools didn't want to do it themselves.
MAY: Schools will be free
to choose. We'd be setting schools free and fundamentally, we'd be letting
teachers get on with the job of teaching children, rather than spending
too much of their time on unnecessary paperwork.
HUMPHRYS: Theresa May, thank you
very much indeed.
HUMPHRYS: And that's it for this
week. If you're on the Internet, don't forget about our web-site. Until
the same time next week, good afternoon.
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