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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE:
29.04.01
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. Farming
policy in Britain is about to undergo its biggest change for more than
half a century, or is it? I'll be talking to the Agriculture Minister
Nick Brown. The Conservatives still aren't getting their message across
to the voters. Could that be because no-one really knows what it is?
I'll be asking David Willetts, one of the people writing the Tories' manifesto.
And will LABOUR'S manifesto be brave and radical or timid and conservative?
All that after the news read by Sarah Montague.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: William Hague's trying desperately
to keep his party's election prospects afloat, but do the voters know what
the Tories stand for?
And Labour, the euphoria
of four years ago has faded away. Will their new manifesto inspire the
voters, or leave them disillusioned?
JOHN HUMPHRYS: Never has farming in
Britain faced such an uncertain future. The problems thrown up by foot-and-mouth
have made everyone think about what should happen to agriculture and the
countryside. And what makes this crisis different from others is that
the Minister of Agriculture himself is freely acknowledging that things
must change radically, that the future of his own ministry might be at
stake, that the whole system of subsidising food production and concentrating
on quantity over quality must end. Well Nick Brown is with me.
Before we get into those
sorts of broad areas Mr Brown, can we look at the latest foot-and-mouth
stories, of which there is still a great many. Sunday Times this morning,
the Sunday Telegraph this morning says, foot-and-mouth was caused by the
Army selling meat bought cheaply from South America to the piggery where
the outbreak began and that was the cause of it, is that right?
NICK BROWN MP: I don't think there's anything
in that at all. I mean apart from anything else, the virus strain that
is present in regions of South America as I understand it, is a different
strain. But in any event, the idea that somehow the armed forces caused
the disease, I think is just completely wrong.
HUMPHRYS: But they do buy meat
from areas from South America, some countries in South America, where foot-and-mouth
is endemic.
BROWN: The armed forces' beef contract
is a specialist contract for large amounts of frozen meat and so they do
buy on the world market. We've tried several times to see if we could
get the British industry to win the contract and have had some success,
but not..but mostly you're right, it is sourced overseas.
HUMPHRYS: Isn't that a bit daft?
I mean joined up government and all that, shouldn't we be able to say
for all sorts of reasons, shouldn't we be able to say, buy your....British
Army, buy your meat from Britain.
BROWN: No, it's a specialist contract
and it's got to be won...
HUMPHRYS: ...yeah but we choose
that...
BROWN: ...in competitive tender
and we've had several looks at this and have had some success as I say,
but I do not think that the Army's procurement arrangements are the cause
of this disease outbreak.
HUMPHRYS: But you're prepared to
take another look at those. I mean, you, you can't obviously, your ministry
doesn't have the power to do that, but government ought to take another
look at that whole arrangement, shouldn't it?
BROWN: There's no advice to me
that we should do so on disease control grounds.
HUMPHRYS: When, if that isn't the
cause, when are we going to know the cause of this disease? It's been
a couple of months now, it's been a long time.
BROWN: That's right and there is
work under way within government to make sure that we find out as much
as we possibly can. Not just about the foot-and-mouth disease virus and
how that got into this country, but how the classical swine fever virus
got into this country and caused the outbreak in pigs in East Anglia in
the Summer. These are very important questions. Has something made our
country more vulnerable to viral infections that clearly weren't present
in the country, or indeed in the European Union, before the outbreak started
and if something has made us more vulnerable, what is it, and how do we
bear down on it?
HUMPHRYS: When are we going to
get the answers to those questions?
BROWN: There is work under way,
but there are legal reasons why I can't put it in the public domain now.
HUMPHRYS: How do you mean, I don't
follow you? Why, if this is already in the public domain, I mean nothing
could be more clearly in the public domain than...
BROWN: ...no, the debate is in
the public domain, of course, but the work that is going on within government
can't be put there for the minute.
HUMPHRYS: But because the implication
of that is that you've got a pretty good idea who's behind it, who's responsible
for it, one way or the other, but you can't say because there might be
a prosecution taken out against those people. I mean, that's the only
reason I can think of that why you might be so reticent.
BROWN: You're right.
HUMPHRYS: So you do know, you just
can't tell us.
BROWN: No, I'm not saying that
I do know, I'm saying that work is under way within government, it is pretty
focused, but there are legal reasons why I can't put it in the public domain
now. You have, let me give you this assurance, as soon as I can, I will.
HUMPHRYS: But the implication of
what you're saying is that it isn't going to be very long because if what's
holding you back from saying anything at the moment is the possibility
of a prosecution, clearly you'd want to get on with that very very quickly.
BROWN: That's right. I mean I
cannot discuss individual cases, or matters that might come before the
courts and clearly that's a constraint on me, as it would be on any minister.
HUMPHRYS: But you can say that
you've got a pretty good idea where the disease originated, I mean we all
think that this particular farm in Cumbria is the source of it. You think
you know where it originated and your lawyers are looking into whether
there is a case against that particular or a particular farmer. That's
the situation.
BROWN: We certainly believe that
the first case was the Heddon-on-the-Wall farm and we've said so and that's
still the government's view. What I cannot do is to go on and discuss
the...how the disease got into the country in the first place because there
are number of enquiries that are continuing and I mustn't jeopardise anything
and you're quite right, I mustn't jeopardise anything that might come before
the courts.
HUMPHRYS: But as the police sometimes
say in cases like this, we are not looking for another suspect.
BROWN: No, I'm not saying that.
There are a range of things that are being investigated and we need to
get it right and of course once it is possible to put all this information
in the public domain, you have my promise that I will do so.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let's look at
the broader picture that I introduced you with, you are quite clear, everything
you've said over the last few days suggests that you see a real revolution
taking place in British farming. You've already said that you don't want
us to continue to subside the so-called barley barons, the great agri-businesses,
East Anglia, and all the rest of it, in the way that we have been doing
at the moment because most of the three-point-two billion pounds in subsidy
goes to them. Are you saying though, are you going further than that and
are you saying there is an argument for no subsiding of food production
which is what a lot of people believe?
BROWN: Any payment that is made
to a farm-based business is either directly or indirectly a support payment
for the business. It's a subsidy but I do not think that the support systems
should be directly production related as they are now. It is a long journey
that we have to travel. We won't be able to get change over night but we
must embark on it and there are two reasons why I have renewed cause for
optimism. The first is, it is absolutely clear once this terrible disease
outbreak is over, we shouldn't try to go back to where we were before.
HUMPHRYS: This has given you the
opportunity in other words, this disease has given you the opportunity
to do something that you've wanted to do for a long time in effect.
BROWN: If good is to come out of
evil, we should take this opportunity to make absolutely certain that the
support mechanisms we put in place for farmers, certainly those in the
infected areas, for the future, help them get closer to the market place
and have a decent income for the work they're putting in, rather than lock
them into the desperate set of circumstances that they were locked into
even before the disease struck. And the second cause for optimism is that
the attitude of the German government towards the Common Agricultural Policy
has changed and this is a very exciting opportunity for real reform.
HUMPHRYS: But you'd still be spending..we
would still be spending a similar amount of money or would not - three
point two billion I think it was last year. Would we still be spending
that same sort of money?
BROWN: In the short term certainly
yes.
HUMPHRYS: Short term being?
BROWN: Well as we go through a
transitional period.
HUMPHRYS: Who knows obviously...
BROWN: Well yes, most certainly,
when it is for the European Union to set the rules for the Common Agricultural
Policy. That is an over arching framework which conditions this debate
about Agricultural reform in the United Kingdom just as it does everywhere
else in the European Union. We need to carry other member states with us
on the reform agenda and we are doing very well on that I have to say.
We have Sweden, Denmark, Italy in our Capri group as it's called, the reform
group, with both Germany and Holland taking a very close interest in what
we are discussing.
HUMPHRYS: So if in the short term
you say we'd have to spend a similar amount of money, the implication is
that in the longer term, some years from now, three, four, five years from
now, less money would go to farmers.
BROWN: I'm actually not sure about
that and I wouldn't want to assert a final outcome from the debate now.
It may well be the case that we will want to make sustained support payments
for things that the public values, to keep the countryside shaped the way
it is, to be able to enjoy it in the way we want as visitors. To make sure
that farm based businesses have a decent income and it's the income that
I want to support rather than the production, so that all the things that
we want from the countryside can be provided to us.
HUMPHRYS: So to be quite clear
about that then, in the longer term, although in quite the short term for
this first example that I'm going to give you, we would not pay big agri-businesses
to grow wheat and barley and all the rest of it per tonne, they wouldn't
get x amount per tonne, all of that would stop.
BROWN: Yes I am very keen on us
reducing the support payments that we make for production, that is why
the British government is making use of what is called modulation to take
some of the support payments into environmentally based schemes and....
HUMPHRYS: ..but you can only take
a fifth of the money to do that...
BROWN: ..we are actually taking
less than that and providing match funding for every pound that we take.
But it is a clear move in the right direction. Twenty per cent of the farmers
get eighty per cent of the subsidies. I do not believe that that is right
and clearly the amount of money going to those farmers would reduce over
time.
HUMPHRYS: Do you also want to get
to the stage where a farmer who farms sheep let us say, on a hillside,
isn't terribly well off obviously, would not be paid for the sheep in this
particular case but would be paid for as it were managing in an environmental
way, that bit of hillside.
BROWN: Yes, there are two main
support payments, one is the Sheep Premium and that is a European Union
regime which is still based on numbers of animals and the other is the
less favoured Area Scheme and most hill farms are in the LFAs and we have
moved that already from a headage payment basis, that's payment per animal
to an area based scheme and I think that is the direction in which the
other support payments are going to have to go. More than that I am attracted
to an idea whereby we make payments explicitly to the farmer, the person
who is managing the land for meeting certain series of test, but they would
be environmental tests, public interest tests and not to do with the production
of livestock.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so all the money,
all the subsidy would go in that direction. In other words, farmers would
become paid custodians of the countryside, except obviously those who get
the subsidy that is.
BROWN: John, I cannot say immediately
that all the money would go in that direction because..
HUMPHRYS: But that's your long-term
objective...
BROWN: ..that is certainly the
direction in which I want to move and I want to move as quickly as I can.
But I have to carry the Council of Ministers with me, the Common Agriculture
Policy is a Common Policy and if other member states would prefer a headage
based arrangement and I have to say the debate is moving away from that,
then clearly we have got to take their views into account and can't just
assert that what is best for us is best for everyone.
HUMPHRYS: But if you had your way,
the British Government had its way, we would ultimately see fewer farmers
as well wouldn't we because we'd see those farms that at the moment survive
because the food they grow is subsidised, we would see those go by the
wayside effectively, those farms where there isn't a great tourism value
or whatever it happens to be, so that we'd see bigger agri-businesses developing,
fewer of those farms therefore, but we would still see a large number of
the smaller hill farms in particular, in which case the farmers would be
treated, I use the expression caretakers, custodians, whatever you call
it, of the countryside. That's the picture that you have of farming in
Britain in years to come?
BROWN: On your employment
question I don't know the answer but I suspect it might be no. If you are
supporting the farmers' income for undertaking certain tasks that we wish
to purchase in as a society, as the government, then it gives him a better
chance to survive, he isn't having to earn his living from the over stocking
the hills for example, from the total number of sheep. I actually think
that is a good thing and might be quite an attractive lifestyle for somebody
who enjoys farming. So they may not go out of it, they may want to stay
in because the income support is more preferable. But you are right, the
general trend in agriculture worldwide is to a decline in the total numbers
employed in it...trend in our country.
HUMPHRYS: And in a word, we are
not going to go back to where we were before foot-and-mouth?
BROWN: We mustn't go back to where
we were before and we are not going to do so.
HUMPHRYS: Nick Brown, thank you
very much indeed.
HUMPHRYS: This has not been a happy
spring for the government. All sorts of things have gone wrong, not least
the handling of the foot-and-mouth crisis. So the Conservatives are riding
high. Well not exactly. On the contrary, the opinion polls suggest they
have made no headway at all. Why? Well perhaps because the voters still
don't know what the party stands for? The row they are embroiled in at
the moment over race is symptomatic perhaps of that. I'll be talking to
one of the people with the job of writing the new Tory manifesto, David
Willetts, after this report from Terry Dignan.
TERRY DIGNAN: The nation's adventure parks
are open for the summer season. Meanwhile the Conservatives face their
own version of a white-knuckle ride. And it fills some of them with dread.
Few Conservatives believe that after four largely fruitless years in Opposition,
a general election will turn out to be such an exhilarating experience.
Back in Nineteen-ninety-seven William Hague promised he, too, would set
the pulse racing. He'd excite voters with new ideas and innovative policies.
Some say all he's really done is confuse voters with constant changes in
strategy and endless U-turns in policy. With time running out, Mr Hague
has decided to fight the election on policies which will please diehard
Conservatives but do little, so it's argued, to win over anyone else. Plotting
a route back to power was the biggest challenge facing the new leader.
So he donned his baseball cap and took the plunge. He wanted the Conservatives
to be an inclusive party. Minorities, in particular, would be welcome.
But at Notting Hill, Hague and Ffion were mocked for their efforts. He
sought advice from George Bush about compassionate Conservatism. But the
strategy unsettled the party's traditionalist core.
LAURENCE ROBERTSON MP: I think there was some confusion
caused by using all these inclusive words and I don't think we should have
policies which are just to benefit any one sector of society.
PAUL WHITELEY: The trouble is this strategy
takes time. If you're impatient, and you want to see results within a year
or two, and there's pressure from the grassroots party activists to move
away from it, and you give way to that pressure, you produce the situation
we see now of no clear coherent strategy emerging at all, and the electorate
thoroughly confused as to what the Conservatives are doing.
DIGNAN: On a day out like this
it's possible to please everyone. Which is what the Conservatives have
been trying to do, it's argued, leading to accusations that William Hague
can't resist climbing aboard whichever fashionable cause passes by. He
was quick to support the fuel protestors and policies have been changed
to satisfy the cravings of focus groups.
MICHAEL DOBBS: I don't ever remember Margaret
Thatcher going off to a focus group and saying what should I think or what
should I say. Perhaps she might have gone off and asked how should I say
it, how should I communicate that. But she always knew what it was in the
first place she wanted to say, and that is the art of political leadership.
DIGNAN: And perhaps there's another
party leader William Hague could learn from. Before it became a themed
adventure park, Drayton Manor near Tamworth was home to Sir Robert Peel.
He was the first Tory leader to really define the true nature of Conservatism.
In politics the message is all. That's something Sir Robert Peel understood.
His Tamworth Manifesto set out what the Conservatives stood for at a time
of great political change. A hundred-and-sixty-seven years later and it
appears that many of today's voters have difficulty understanding what
the Conservatives are about. Which is a bit of a handicap for Mr Hague
so close to a general election.
ROBERT WORCESTER: There's almost nothing, that
you can see that's worked. But one of the things they've done is chop and
change. And without carrying on, for a while, the British public doesn't
catch on to what's going on in the Conservative party, or any other party,
unless they're consistent, and they've been very inconsistent during these
past four years.
WHITELEY: Many voters see Hague
as rather weak, not a strong leader at all, rather weak and vacillating,
doesn't know what he wants and so they don't know what the Conservatives
are standing for any more.
DIGNAN: Because of Hague's policy
changes, there may be a danger that the Conservatives and Labour seem too
alike with little to choose between them on issues like taxation and public
expenditure.
DOBBS: One of the problems that
I think that the Conservative Party has right now is that it does appear
to be too much like the Labour Party. It's adopted its expenditure plans,
its taxation plans aren't dramatically or radically different at the moment,
from those that the Government is proposing.
DIGNAN: The Conservatives, though,
have good reason to placate the British electorate following nineteen-ninety-seven
when they received a mauling. Yet they have discovered the voters are not
easily mollified. Changing policies has brought scant reward.
WORCESTER: If you ask the British people
if they're satisfied or dissatisfied with the performance of the Labour
government on delivering public services, they say they're dissatisfied.
Yet that doesn't seem to touch Labour's lead. Why? Because by two to one,
thirty-two to sixteen, the British public say, public services would be
worse, not better, under a Conservative government.
DIGNAN: But on one issue a gap
has been opened with Labour -Europe.
WILLIAM HAGUE MP: "There we are."
DIGNAN: And it's worked. In elections
to the European Parliament the Conservatives beat Labour on a platform
of saying no to Britain joining the single currency. Here uncertainty has
gone.
ROBERTSON: Understandably people were very
confused about what we really believed in. But now we do believe in retaining
the pound, we do believe in running our own economy and running our own
country.
DIGNAN: At Drayton Manor the residents
are restless. Will the voters feel as excited over the Conservatives' plan
to make Europe a big election issue? The polls have the Conservatives ahead
of Labour on Europe. But in a general election some doubt voters will respond
readily to a diet of Eurosceptism.
WORCESTER: If you ask the British people,
"Is Europe an important issue to you in determining how you're going to
vote in the next election?" Only twenty-six per cent say that it is. And
when you ask those twenty-six per cent, "Which party has the best policy
on the issue of Europe?" there's level pegging between Labour and Conservative.
ANDREW ROWE MP: I'm not sure that saying other
than, let's keep the pound or whatever it is that that the party wants
to say, just keep it quite simple, but to hammer hammer hammer on Europe,
will I think be a mistake because I think that although the party activists
are pretty solidly behind the party line, I'm not sure the country is as
solidly behind the party line as, as we might think.
DIGNAN: But having scored a direct
hit in the European elections, the leadership has tried to ambush Labour
on so-called populist issues like crime and asylum. Caring Conservatism
has made way to a more, some might say, gung-ho approach.
So, when all else has failed, William Hague has decided to concentrate
on those policies which he believes have Labour on the defensive - Europe,
crime, asylum. It's a risky strategy. It may warm the hearts of traditional
core Conservatives but what about all those other voters Mister Hague has
yet to convince and without whom he can't win.
ROWE: I believe it would be best
if the party made itself out to be a rather kinder party. I think that,
I just have an instinctive feeling that people don't like Conservatives
yet very much, even if they respect what they must stand for and, and admire
what they believe in and so on. They're not, we're not perhaps very likeable.
ROBERTSON: Mass immigration actually threatens
race relations, actually makes the situation worse and it makes the country
more difficult to manage. That's what people want to hear, they, they do
not want to see bogus asylum seekers coming into the country, they don't
want to see mass immigration because they know that these cause problems
for the country. We are a crowded island and we also have the right to
retain our Britishness and to speak up for Britishness - we have the right
to do that.
DIGNAN: Some Tories can't banish
memories of the last election. One, Michael Portillo, believes the Conservatives
came across as harsh and uncaring. And he still wanted to put that right
as recently as last autumn.
MICHAEL PORTILLO MP: We are for all Britons. We
are for Black Britons, we are for British Asians, we are for White Britons.
Britain is now a country of rich diversity. We are for people whatever
their sexual orientation.
DIGNAN: So caring Conservatism
has attempted a comeback - confusing the voters, some say. Many in the
party aren't having it.
ROBERTSON: We don't have to stomp around
the country saying, oh we're very compassionate and we're very caring.
That's not to exclude people who don't have families or may be homosexuals,
but it is to say that the vast majority of people would support us when
we say the family is the cornerstone of society.
DIGNAN: But some argue that William
Hague has ended up overlooking the voters he needs most. Not core Conservatives,
but those whose pressing concerns aren't Europe and asylum.
WHITELEY: One strategy stretched
over the lifetime of the Parliament would have been to establish loyalty
from the core vote by being strongly Conservative, at the beginning of
his leadership, establishing support among core voters, but also party
activists. Motivate them and then shift to the middle ground to capture
the wider electorate. Now it seems to me what the Conservatives have done
is the exact opposite.
DIGNAN: Like the lions of Drayton
Manor the needs of Tory MPs are simple. They hope to gorge on Labour's
enormous majority. But according to speculation some Conservative MPs are
plotting to topple Hague should the party perform badly.
ROBERTSON: I do understand that these reports
in newspapers that can be very unsettling, particularly for our workers
on the ground who work so very hard for the Conservative Party, and to
them it is very, very annoying.
DIGNAN: At Drayton Manor there's
a hint as to what may await the Conservatives. This ride requires nerves
of steel. And that's what many voters appear to think William Hague lacks.
WHITELEY: It's very important to
be seen as a strong leader. Actually Mrs Thatcher was an interesting case.
She was seen as being a very strong leader by a lot of voters, even though
many of them didn't like her. But it was much more important to be seen
as strong than to be liked. Now the trouble is, is with William Hague is
that he's not liked, and he's not seen as strong either.
DIGNAN: Four years ago William
Hague, to the surprise of many, reached the dizzy heights. Since then he's
given the Conservatives an experience some of them would rather have done
without. Both on strategy and policy he's veered one way, then the other,
leaving many voters confused as to where he's taking the party.
HUMPHRYS: Terry Dignan risking
life and limb there.
JOHN HUMPHRYS: David Willetts, you do have
a problem don't you, because, chopping and changing is the sort of language
that we heard over and over again in that film. You have been all over
the place in the last four years, haven't you?
DAVID WILLETTS: Well we also have an opportunity
now because the electorate have not been paying much attention to what
we've been saying in Opposition. They have been...
HUMPHRYS: ...interruption...
WILLETTS: ...and the election is
an opportunity for us to talk to the electorate about what we believe and
the reason why the election campaign is so important for us is it will
indeed enable us to resolve all those questions in your interview. We
will show that we believe in giving people greater control over their own
lives, and we'll also show that we value the national identity that holds
us together on these islands.
HUMPHRYS: Going to be very difficult
in the space of a few weeks to resolve the sorts of dilemmas that you have
been confronting unsuccessfully, judged by your own answer there for the
last four years.
WILLETTS: Well you say dilemmas,
I don't think these are dilemmas, I think that...
HUMPHRYS: ...differences, whatever
you want to call them...
WILLETTS: ...Conservatism, throughout
its two-hundred years history, seems to me it had at its root two principles,
the first is the principle of freedom, giving people the greatest possible
control over their own lives. The second is the principle of pride in
our nation, which involves celebrating the institutions that are an essential
part of our identity as a nation. Those remain the two key Conservative
principles. Now what we have to do in this election campaign is express
those in a language that is persuasive and attractive to people who have
probably not really focussed on the Conservative Party since they booted
us out four years ago.
HUMPHRYS: But don't people like
to think that their party has an ideology to which it cleaves. so that
they can understand...
WILLETTS: ...yes...
HUMPHRYS: ...ah, well you see,
you say yes to that, that's interesting, because both Mr. Hague and Mr.
Portillo told me just a few weeks ago that it doesn't have ideology any
longer, that's gone, we don't need it any longer, indeed, you know, that,
I questioned them quite closely about it, they volunteered that fact.
WILLETTS: Well, the nineteen-seventy-nine
Conservative Manifesto had as its opening sentence, the foreword by Margaret
Thatcher, the statement that what mattered for the Conservative Party,
was not ideology, but serving the interests and...
HUMPHRYS: ...you said ideology
mattered...
WILLETTS: ...but what matters,
is I would prefer to call it principles. What matters is, and the two
Conservative principles, that are as relevant now as they ever are, was
being first, freedom, and secondly, national identity and national, and
national, preserving the national interest. Now, what we have to do, and
the importance of this election campaign, is unlike I think some of the
analysis that we saw in your TV film, is it, the problem is not that floating
voters have wildly different views than core Tory supporters on a whole
range of issues like crime and tax and Europe, the views of the floating
voters, they're not sort of middle of the road wishy-washy, they're quite
robust, but the floating voters are probably not very interested in politics,
they've not been interested in the Conservative Party for the past four
years, so what they haven't done is register that we've got the policies
that will address their concerns.
HUMPHRYS: And they haven't registered
it, because, as I say, you seem to be all over the place on all sorts of
issues and that won't do will it? And you can't sort that out now in the
remaining few weeks. Let me if I may quote to you from your own very interesting
pamphlet, that you wrote just a couple of years ago, you quoted approvingly
Winston Churchill, you remember it, "It's not so much a program we require
as a theme, we're a lighthouse, not a shop window." Now the problem for
the voters, and it was exemplified, it was made very clear in that film
by Terry Dignan, is they can't see where that beam is going. It seems
to be here one minute, it seems to be there the next, the next, they don't
know where you are.
WILLETTS: Well, I think that the
lighthouse, which is indeed what the Conservative Party should be, that
the lighthouse is saying, first of all, people are fed-up with nannying,
regulating, interfering, bossy government, and that's why they want more
control over their own lives, and it links together education, where the
Head teachers are fed up with all the interference and the regulations,
through to tax, where people are fed-up with the stealth taxes, and the
second thing they want is a party that will stand up for our national interest,
which both means battling for Britain in Europe, it also mean protecting
a constitution which has worked for centuries. Now it seems to me that
those are good robust Tory themes, but we're living in two-thousand-and-one,
and we need to express them in a language and embody them in a set of policies
that reach out to the people that we saw in your film, and that's what
we're going to do in the election campaign.
HUMPHRYS: You do indeed, and you
mentioned tax there, so let me turn to the economy, you chopped and changed
on the economy so often that it's positively bewildering. The minimum
wage, you were opposed to it, it was going to destroy jobs, you now approve
of the minimum wage. The Bank of England, ridiculous thing to do to give
it its independence over interest rates, you now have signed up to that.
You've also signed up to the Labour Party's, the government spending program,
a program that Mr. Portillo himself described as irresponsible. What is
the voter to make of all this?
WILLETTS: We have not signed up
to Labour's spending program, what we have said is...
HUMPHRYS: ...well almost all of
it. A mere smidgeon you have got to chop off...
WILLETTS: ...we have accepted their
plans in areas such as health and schools, but we've identified eight-billion
pounds of savings, and we are going to put those into tax cuts...
HUMPHRYS: ...of nearly four-hundred
billion?
WILLETTS; And that's the tax cuts
for two-thousand-and-three, two-thousand-and-four, let's hope they can
be bigger after that. But it actually ties in with the analysis in your
film, because it's a very good example of how the Conservative Party stays
committed to lower tax, but the way we express that has changed. We used
to focus entirely on the basic rate of income tax, and when the base rate
of income tax is thirty-five per cent, obviously cutting it is high priority.
Now that the basic rate of income tax is lower, we are offering cuts in
income tax in a different way. There are tax cuts for families, particularly
for the one-earner couples that Labour doesn't value, there are tax cuts
for pensioners and there are tax cuts on savings. So this is the traditional
Tory commitment to cutting income tax, but expressed in a different way
to take account of current problems.
HUMPHRYS: But these are tax cuts
right at the very margin. As you say, you're talking about spending eight-billion
pounds less than the Conservatives out of a total of nearly four-hundred-billion
pounds, so according to my arithmetic, that is two per cent that you're
going to knock off people's taxes. Two per cent. It's hardly fundamental,
is it?
WILLETTS: Well, I would love to
see bigger tax cuts as the next Conservative government proceeds, and as
we get a grip on public spending, and of course, under this government
it's planned to rise much more rapid in the economy, as we get a grip on
public spending the size of those tax cuts can grow. But it's very important
that what we offer is credible, and carefully costed and people believe
that we can deliver it. Now I would rather that we build up gradually,
rather than promising more than we can deliver, because after all, we've
seen with Labour the problem of a government that raises expectations in
order to get elected, and then leaves people disillusioned and fed-up because
they fail to deliver on their promises.
HUMPHRYS: But it's not exactly
a great rallying cry is it? You know, this image of a light-house, this
very powerful image of a light-house, it's more a sort of flickering candle,
you know, if the breeze is in the right direction and it doesn't blow the
flame too much, we may be able to give you a couple of percentage points
off this or that or the other, but maybe not, depending on where it's going
to go. Maybe next time we'll be able to do a little bit more, but maybe
not, doesn't seem as if you believe passionately in this does it?
WILLETTS: Well, the income tax
is part of a wider story, and what everyone says, there is a common theme,
what everyone says is, whether it's stealth taxes, or it's beaurocratic
red tape in the health service and in education, or it's the sheer burden
of regulation on business, particularly small business, everybody says,
they're fed-up with this government because they interfere so much in people's
lives and businesses. And what will hold together the Manifesto policy
proposals, will be that theme of getting government out of the way, because
we as Conservatives are optimistic about what people and businesses can
achieve, if government doesn't tie them down with all this nannying, bossying
red tape, that's a very powerful theme which strikes a chord...
HUMPHRYS: Well, but we've heard
it before, that's the trouble, we have heard that before and it hasn't
necessarily been delivered upon. Indeed Michael Heseltine himself admitted
that he didn't have the great bonfire of red tape that he wanted. But
let me just remind you again abut what you said and about what Michael
Dobbs said, the former Party Deputy Chairman, said in that film. You said,
look, do not try to copy the Government, it confuses your friends and doesn't
win over your enemies. Michael Dobbs said that's exactly what we're doing,
you're copying the Government.
WILLETS: I don't know how he thinks
that we're copying the Government.
HUMPHRYS: Look at your policies.
WILLETS: Well, what we have to
do as a responsible opposition is that we can't simply say everything
that this government has done since May 1997 we will repeal because that
would simply mean that the next Conservative government would spend its
time passing legislation which is entirely preoccupied with what this Government
had done and not with implementing our vision. So you do have reluctantly
to accept that when a government has been elected and is in office some
things that it does sadly cannot be reversed, but we do have a vision of
a better Britain, a responsible society where people can have more control
of their own lives, but also, and this is the other part of the story,
where they can feel proud in a country, in Great Britain in a sense of
national identity that's not, and I know that this is very important because
there's such a lot of confusion on this at the moment, this is nothing
to do with race, but it is all to do with loving our country because we
love the institutions which have given us one of the most tolerant societies
in the world.
HUMPHRYS: Well, fine, but the trouble
is that it has, this argument has become one whether we like it or not,
has become one about race, and you do have a very serious problem here,
because it's another one of those areas where people don't know where you
stand. You give out one particular message, you say we want this to be
an inclusive nation and it's all sort of warm and cuddly stuff, on the
other hand you play the immigration card in a very, very powerful way indeed.
You play the asylum card in a very, very powerful way indeed. Now people
don't know what you are on about here, they don't know whether you want
to be tough on asylum as you say, or whether you want to be inclusive as
you say and you might say, well, of course we can be both. You know we
can be tough on dodgy asylum seekers, bogus asylum seekers, but it's the
message that you're giving that confuses people.
WILLETTS: Right, well, the message
of Conservatism throughout its history has been very clear. As William
was saying the other day just as we are the first party to have a Jewish
Prime Minister, the first party to have a woman Prime Minister, he thinks
we could be the first party to have an Asian Prime Minister. So we're as
a party and Conservatism is all about celebrating and protecting the institutions
which hold us together on these isles, which enable us all to rub along
together and which are the root of so much tolerance in British life.
That is not the sort of blood and soil nationalism that you see sometimes
on the Continent. That has never been the stuff of Conservatism and so
that is absolutely clear and William has made it clear.
HUMPHRYS: So why then do we hear
people like Lord Taylor, who is perhaps the most prominent black member
of your party saying as he said again this morning on the radio, you want
to have it both ways on these issues.
WILLETTS: Well, we don't want to
have it both ways if that's the expression he used.
HUMPHRYS: Those were exactly his
words.
WILLETTS: We are clear on it.
What the problem is that the Labour Party are afraid that our message on
asylum which is genuine and robust, that there are too many asylum seekers
reaching this country when they're travelling across the other member states
of Europe where they ought to be taken and looked after and their cases
assessed - that because there are so many asylum seekers entering this
country which is a legitimate source of popular concern, Labour are trying
to intimidate us from raising the issue.....
HUMPHRYS: ..no, but this is John
Taylor, he's a Conservative.
WILLETTS: ... by deliberately confusing
it with racism. It is nothing to do with racism.
HUMPHRYS: Well, then it's John
Taylor who must be confused then. And he's a man who knows a thing or
two about this. I mean what he says is you want to have it both ways.
What they're saying is that whatever you say people from the minority,
the ethnic community, the minority community simply do not believe you
on race. You're not even prepared to listen to them. Apparently John
Taylor, I heard him say it myself this morning, he said he's offered to
talk to William Hague about it, he knows a thing or two about the subject,
he went through a very bruising election didn't he, in Cheltenham, very
unpleasant indeed. Mr Hague hasn't even said, come and have a chat with
me. He's just not interested in talking to him.
WILLETTS: Well, I think that if
you look at William Hague's record, not least securing us two British Asian
Members of the European Parliament, the first two Asian MEPs in this country...
HUMPHRYS: Members of the British
Parliament.
WILLETTS: ....and I hope and believe
and are proud of the fact that we have got more candidates from a variety
of backgrounds this time than ever before facing election, but the important
point is that for us in the manifesto we will paint a vision of our country
which both offers people the prospect of greater freedom, greater power
over their own lives and also shows that we as Conservatives are proud
of our country and don't like the way that both through European federalism
and also through an ill considered constitutional agenda this country is
destroying some of the things that make our country distinctive.
HUMPHRYS: Can I ask you who you
would prefer to have in your party, John Taylor, a black member of the
House of Lords, or John Townend, retiring Conservative MP, who says the
sorts of things that so upset people like Lord Taylor and indeed many other
people.
WILLETTS: Well John Taylor is a
valued member of the team in the House of Lords. John Townend, who has
served for a long time as a Conservative MP but what John has been saying
recently is completely unacceptable.....
HUMPHRYS: So who would prefer to
have in the Party.
WILLETTS: Well let me just finish
on John Townend, it's not the view of the Conservative Party and I think
that what John has done is...
HUMPHRYS: Which one, Townend....
WILLETTS: Sorry what John Townend
has done has played into this Labour trick of trying to confuse the legitimate
question of asylum seekers with a completely separate question
of race.
HUMPHRYS: So who would you prefer
to have in the Party, which of those two would you prefer to have in the
Party?
WILLETTS: Well John Taylor, so
far as I know, has taken the Conservative position within the House of
Lords. John Townend in his recent remarks has not been speaking for the
Conservative Party and I don't believe that what he says in any way reflects
the Conservative Party..
HUMPHRYS: ..but he hasn't had the
whip withdrawn from him because your leader says well, it would just be
a gesture. But it would be a gesture that people like John Taylor very
much want to see. So you would prefer, I mean you are quite clear, you
would prefer, if I may put words into your mouth just to save a little
bit of time, you would prefer Lord Taylor in the Party than John Townend
in the Party.
WILLETTS: Well I don't accept what
John Townend is saying and William has made it clear that he will not accept
what John Townend is doing and William has not ruled out further action
if that proves to be necessary.
HUMPHRYS: Ah, he hasn't ruled out
further action.
WILLETTS: He has not ruled out
further action if that proves to be necessary...
HUMPHRYS: And what would cause
it to be necessary, I mean he keeps doing the things you don't want him
to do, so, I mean if he pops up on another programme tomorrow and says
the same sort of thing, then that's it, three strikes and you're out, is
that it?
WILLETTS: All I can say is that
what John Townend has been saying over the past few weeks is not the view
of the Conservative Party and the view of the Conservative Party is why
we fight an important battle on asylum and asylum seekers, that battle
must not be impeded by people from the Labour Party or elsewhere trying
to claim that somehow that means we are racists. That is not the case.
HUMPHRYS: In that case why don't
you refer him to the Ethics and Integrity Committee because it was Mr
Hague who set that up and he set it up in order to prove that he was going
to be tough with people like this. Why doesn't he do that, he's done nothing
you see, apart from saying I don't like what he's saying, well big deal.
WILLETTS: Well so far that has
been what William has taken..has taken the view that it will be to raise
the profile of a subject when John Townend is going to cease to be a Member
of Parliament within the next ten days but we will have to see whether
these continuing problems lead to further action...
HUMPHRYS: Lord Taylor thinks it's
he hasn't ruled out further action, now it's important because Lord Taylor
seems to think he hasn't done anything so far because he's afraid of the
Right-wing of the party.
WILLETTS: William is a tough and
powerful leader and what William has been doing in the face of the adversity,
taking over a Party after it has suffered one of its worse landslide defeats,
we have been reorganised, we have produced..we democratised the Party,
we have produced a draft manifesto on which the party has voted and we
will be publishing a full manifesto when the election is called which will
show that we have a direction for our Party that will appeal not just to
our core supporters, important though they are, we will show how our messages
are equally relevant to the people whose support we must win back. We lost
them in 1997, we are committed to winning them back.
HUMPHRYS: David Willetts, thank
you very much indeed.
WILLETTS: Thank you.
HUMPHRYS: Of course, the Labour Party
has a manifesto to write as well. They have to impress the new supporters
they gained last time around but they've also got to persuade their core
voters that they are still a radical, reforming party and there is a strong
suspicion that the manifesto will try too hard to be all things to all
people and that it will end up satisfying no-one. Iain Watson has been
talking to some of the people who are closest to Labour thinking on what
kind of future the party's manifesto might promise.
IAIN WATSON: With the General Election
looming, Labour apparatchiks are busy redrafting the manifesto, to give
it a bit more impact. But in the end, will they offer the prospect of
consolidation or change?
If Labour ARE granted
a second term, will Britain look a very different place in the future?
Well perhaps with a little bit of help we can try to find out. But there
are those within Labour's ranks who say the government isn't embarking
on an exciting enough journey.
MATTHEW TAYLOR: The reality is that even if Labour
was to spend all the money that it's committed to and the economy was to
stay in good shape, in four or five years we would still be in Britain
the most unequal of the major European economies and we would still have
the lowest level of public investment. So I think that I'd like to see
Labour's manifesto sensible, prudent, incremental but signalling a sort
of Utopia, where do we really want to get to in fifteen or twenty years,
what does a good Britain feel like?
LORD SAWYER: I don't know that you make
lots of promises, you give people confidence that the second term will
be a term of good and sound economic management and that you'll do what
is necessary to maintain high levels of employment, low inflation and all
the things that people expect from government.
WATSON: Labour 's policy wonks
at Number 10 have been searching far and wide to try to find something
as rare as a sighting of Halley's Comet - the elusive big idea. But in
the end they've decided to settle on a theme which links together a constellation
of bright, but small ideas; this unifying vision will apparently be of
a meritocratic society - expressed in the rather more populist phrase,
'opportunity for all'. But there are some influential thinkers within the
Labour Party who say this just isn't nearly enough if Tony Blair is to
deliver on his promise of a second term more radical than the first.
MICHAEL JACOBS: When people have the opportunity
to earn wealth they then accumulate it for themselves and they pass it
on to their children and you've no longer got a meritocracy. So meritocracy
constantly requires the redistribution of wealth, the redistribution of
opportunity and sometimes it sounds like what you want to do is create
opportunity for this generation but then the next generation will not be
meritocratic.
PHIL COLLINS: The drawbacks of the idea
of meritocracy is that it tends to leave people behind and policy has to
address those people at the bottom. It will be even worse for people who
are in disadvantaged positions to be told that they're there on merit.
VOICE OVER. Labour will now have a majority
of 64O.
WATSON: If we go back to 1945,
it's obvious radical ideas can win elections. But don't count on a repeat
performance. Some Labour insiders are stressing that the 2001 contest will
not be 'a transformative election'; instead we should expect evolutionary,
not revolutionary change - in line with Labour's mantra 'a lot done, a
lot still to do'. But just in case that isn't very inspiring, Labour will
set out longer term aims looking far into the future.
Many of Labour's ambitions
have a rather generous time scale for fulfillment. Only if we travel forward
to 2010, do we enter a Utopian world where British productivity has risen
faster than our competitors; where the number of children in poverty has
been cut by half; where there are millions more in higher education; where
fuel poverty has been banished; and there are homes 'fit for all'. But
just before you get too enthusiastic, I should point out that Labour are
saying reducing world poverty by fifty per cent will take five years longer.
JACOBS: I think ambitions for the
year 2010 are probably a bit too far distant for most ordinary voters,
but there's a very easy way to marry those to what voters can recognise
now, which is to say well what will we have achieved by the end of this
Parliament, on our way to a target at 2010.
WATSON: As well longer term ambitions
and challenges Labour's manifesto will also include a series of pledges
in each policy area - to be fulfilled during the lifetime of the next Parliament.
But these new, improved pledges will apparently be very different in nature
to those they put on offer back in 1997.
TAYLOR: If you look back at the
'97 pledges there pretty micro and arguably they're not terribly good policy
I think the waiting list policy for example was a bit of an albatross round
the neck of Frank Dobson when he was running health after '97. So I hope
that if there are pledges this time that there broader and that there more
about ultimate objectives and less about particular devices
LORD SAWYER: I don't think they are necessary
in the second term, I think pledges can lock you in to decisions that you
don't need to make at the time. Look the world is changing rapidly, you
go to any business - not very many businessmen these days give pledges
for three or four or five years.
WATSON: On the basis of information
from recent drafts, it now appears as though Labour's manifesto will be
split into five main sections - broadly speaking these would encompass
the economy; welfare and work; investment in public services; anti-crime
measures to build stronger communities; and Britain's international role.
But Labour are perhaps being just a little coy about how to pay for their
policies - because, as well as offering targeted tax cuts when affordable,
'On the Record' has been told that they're going to repeat their pledge
not to increase the basic or higher rate of income tax; much to the disappointment
of some of their, usually loyal, supporters.
LORD SAWYER: I don't think that any pledges
need to be made on taxation either way, I think people need to, the government
has now got sufficient support and sufficient confidence amongst the voters
to be able to say, you know we're going into the election, it isn't our
job to put the taxes up, we think people already pay enough taxes but if
there are circumstances that are unforeseen then we might have to make
changes in the taxation system.
TAYLOR: I would hope that Labour
doesn't tie its hands too much in relation to taxation. Partly because
I think actually, you want to have flexibility because you know, who knows
where the economy's going to go in the next few years, but also because
if there is a growing public appetite for Labour to go further in terms
of investment and justice, and if that begins to look as though people
are saying look actually we recognise that there's going to be consequences
for tax, well then I think one needs to respond to that public mood.
WATSON: A critical section of the
manifesto will concern continued investment in public services; by the
end of a second term, for example, Labour wants to see our health service
catch up with some of the best in Europe; but some Labour-supporting thinkers
say if they won't grasp the nettle of tax, to make public services better
- then a radical option would be an up-front commitment to make greater
use of the private sector in the NHS.
COLLINS: There is scope for greater
private involvement in the provision of health care There's still an ideological
Rubicon to be crossed here. It's been crossed in education but I still
don't think it has been in health care and if there's a real hostage to
fortune in the next term of Labour government it will be this: What will
happen if the promised money doesn't yield the benefits which we hope for
it?
WATSON: If Labour wins the next
election, newborn babies will be given a hand up and a handout by government,
which they can draw down in adulthood. These 'baby bonds' - announced
last week - are the first in a series of family friendly pledges. But Labour's
former policy director, who generated some of these new ideas, says his
party shouldn't be too cautious in the manifesto when it comes to offering
more rights to working parents; standing up to business wont be harmful
economically or electorally.
TAYLOR: I think that on the issue
of work, life, balance that probably, that business is probably hectoring
government, it's exaggerating the damage. I actually think that a better
set of work life policies would be good for productivity and other European
countries have gone further and there's no evidence at all of problems
resulting from that.
WATSON: Cast your mind back to
nineteen-ninety-seven and you may recall the phrase 'new Labour, new Britain'.
Constitutional reform helped define Tony Blair's government - but it won't
form a central section of this manifesto. There'll be plenty of rhetoric
on giving power back to people; Labour will offer regional assemblies where
there's demand, and, despite the Ken Livingstone fiasco, will create more
city mayors. but some criticise this piecemeal approach.
JACOBS: I think
we do now need an overall constitutional blueprint which brings together
reform of the Lords, which is very much unfinished business, with a regional
government for England which is the unfinished business of devolution,
with an improvement in the powers and status of local government which
is absolutely crucial to deliver high quality public services, I don't
see how you can do that without having an overall plan
WATSON: So, if Tony Blair really
wants to see a more meritocratic nation by two-thousand-and-five, radically
different from the Britain took on, will he be able to put an inspiring
package to voters now, in his two-thousand-and-one manifesto which will
also fire the enthusiasm of his own supporters?
JACOBS: I think many people confuse
new with radical, and that what people are asking is that Labour should
have lots of new things, perhaps rather gimmicky things which don't add
up to much, when in fact the ideas and ambitions and objectives it's got
are radical. Think of European levels of public service, think of full
employment, eradicating child poverty, these are not new but they're certainly
radical if you look at the state of the country at the moment and the country
that Labour inherited.
TAYLOR: I think the reality is
this, at the end of Labour's first term, it's a general view of progressives
is, if it's the first chapter it's not a bad first chapter, we're looking
forward to the rest of the book. If it was the whole of the story it would
be a disappointment.
WATSON: But some say Labour's ambitions
are limited by space and time; they want to maintain into the future the
grand coalition of support they built in nineteen-ninety-seven; so 'big
vision' politics can be counterproductive.
COLLINS: Every coherent tale that
you tell about a government deliberately marks out enemies; it defines
you against someone else, and in so far as this term of government has
been an attempt to avoid doing any such thing then incoherence has been
its friend.
WATSON: Losing the prize of an
historic second term has been something of a worry for Labour party members;
they dare not risk a journey back to the political wilderness. But some
say the government needs a clearer sense of direction, with a leadership
more radical in its outlook; otherwise even after two terms, future political
historians may say - Tony Blair. Who?
HUMPHRYS: Iain Watson reporting there.
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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