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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 16.2.97
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. The Government says it
cares greatly about the environment. I'll be suggesting to the Environment
Secretary, John Gummer, that he may be green, but his Government is definitely
off-colour.
Can the Government get its act together
in the Commons this week? I'll be asking the Welsh Secretary if they can win
the argument over BSE tomorrow and devolution on Thursday.
And Labour versus the Law: the battle
coming soon to a Chambers near you. That's after the News read by MOIRA
STUART.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: John Gummer - Environment Secretary,
says he's steering the Government towards a greener future - but is his hand
really on the tiller? Or has his course been altered by his colleagues?
And Labour says the legal profession is
a law unto itself. They're threatening to clip the lawyers' wigs - but it may
be that their objections will be overruled.
But first - this week MPs will debate
the constitution - at Mr Major's behest. He thinks there's a lot of political
mileage to be gained in drawing attention to Labour's plans for a Scottish
Parliament and a Welsh Assembly. But that's on Thursday. On Monday, MPs will
vote on whether to censure a Minister - and possibly bring about a vote of
confidence in the Government. Mr Blair himself appears less than confident
that he'll win. What about the Conservatives?
William Hague, the Welsh Secretary is on
the line, Mr. Hague, good afternoon.
WILLIAM HAGUE: Good afternoon.
HUMPHRYS: Are you going to win?
HAGUE: Yes we will win the vote and deserve to
win to vote. It's a bit of a desperate tactic by the Labour Party, pretty
incompetently executed. The real debate this week is going to be the debate on
the Constitution that you just referred to, and incidentally, them moving this
motion has nothing to do with any concern they have about agriculture - it's
the first sign of any concern for farming that the Labour Party has shown, it's
just a political tactic.
HUMPHRYS: But we know of course why you will win
the vote, if indeed you do, it's because you've bought off the Ulster
Unionists, you've bribed them.
HAGUE: No, ..we've not bribed or bought off
anyone to my knowledge and indeed I have no idea how the Ulster Unionists will
vote in the division, but there will be a very good turn-out of the
Conservative Party to sustain the Government and to make sure that we actually
get the credit for what we have done for agriculture in this country. We have
sustained agriculture through an extremely difficult time, with no assistance
whatsoever from parties on the other side of the House and I think that will
become very clear in the debate.
HUMPHRYS: Well, it's the Ulster Unionists
themselves who are saying that you bought them off. John Taylor was talking
this morning, just a few minutes before we came on air, about two further
advantages emerging to their benefit, and one of course we know about already,
which is that Mr Major has done a deal with the Unionists by agreeing that
there ought to be a partial lifting of the ban on the sale of cattle, which
would of course benefit Northern Ireland farmers. It's what they wanted all
along - Mr Major said he wouldn't do. Now, all of a sudden, with this vote in
the offing, he's doing it.
HAGUE: Well we're working all the time on
lifting the ban for the whole of the United Kingdom.
HUMPHRYS: But you'd always set your face against
this particular approach. Now you've changed your mind.
HAGUE: We're fulfilling the part of the Florence
Agreement, the conditions of the Florence Agreement which we said we would
fulfill, we look to other countries to fulfill their side of the deal to lift
the ban for the United Kingdom, and of course if there are any steps we can
take along the way to get parts of that ban lifted, we will do that as well.
Douglas Hogg will set out the full position in the debate tomorrow. We're
certainly not buying anybody off.
HUMPHRYS: But we do have a change of policy then,
a partial lifting of the ban is now favoured, whereas before it wasn't.
HAGUE: No, we've always said that we would like
to see the ban however we could for, let's say, certified herds first of all.
Of course, something like that might benefit Northern Ireland. Northern
Ireland (INTERRUPTION) has had far fewer problems with BSE than many other
parts of the United Kingdom. Nobody is being bought off for the debate, we
will win the vote. It is a ruse by the Labour Party and it will be exposed as
such.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, let's assume then that you are
going to win that vote, you've very confident about it. Then you have the
debate on devolution in a couple of days' time. You want to show that the
Labour Party is in a mess over devolution and that its policies are wrong,
obviously. In truth you have your own serious problems over devolution, don't
you, because it seems to be great confusion amongst you in the Cabinet over
what you would do if it came about.
HAGUE: No, I think you and I cleared up this
confusion on the radio a couple of days ago.
HUMPHRYS: You may feel that Mr. Hague, I don't
think that I did.
HAGUE: There is absolutely no confusion about
division in the Conservative Party. One hundred per cent of the Conservative
Party is one hundred per cent against the Labour Party's proposals to divide
our country, to set a separate Parliaments in Scotland and Wales, useless
regional Chambers around England. We have made clear how we would regard the
situation if this disaster were to come about. Michael Forsythe and I have
made very clear that we would be stuck with these things for the foreseeable
future. Now is the time for the other Parties to make clear what they would
do and how they would answer the fundamental anomalies they would create in our
constitutional arrangements if these Parliaments were set up. It would mean
that Robin Cook, as an MP for Edinburgh, could vote on everything affecting my
constituency in Yorkshire, but neither I nor he could vote on what affected his
constituency in Edinburgh. It would be a ludicrous situation and they have to
start answering that question.
HUMPHRYS: But here is the odd thing about this,
isn't it - your Prime Minister, the Prime Minister has told us that this would
be cataclysmic for the United Kingdom, it would destroy a thousand years of
history, it would break up the Union; and yet, if you come back into power
after this has happened, you are prepared to say now "Well, we'll leave it be
for the foreseeable future". Now, this is going to be something that'll
destroy the Union. Surely, you'd want to sit there this morning and say "And
by Golly, if we get back into power, we will restore the situation to the
status quo".
HAGUE: We live in a democracy and what we've
said is: of course, we would respect the outcome of a referendum. But, we've
also of course, had to say that we can't guarantee that we could put any of the
other arrangements that concern Scotland and Wales back together again as we
would have left them. Scotland and Wales benefit tremendously - financially -
from the current Constitutional arrangements. They benefit from
over-representation in the House of Commons, they benefit from having seats at
the Cabinet table with the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales. None
of us can say how long those advantages for Scotland and Wales would survive
the creation of a Scottish Parliament or a Welsh Assembly.
HUMPHRYS: If,-
HAGUE: There are great dangers for people in
Scotland and Wales as well as the whole United Kingdom in this ludicrous
scheme.
HUMPHRYS: If you have such respect for
referendums, then, presumably what you would say is: if it comes about, as a
result of a referendum, we could not get rid of it without a referendum. There
would have to be another referendum to get shot of it.
HAGUE: Well, we are now going to the far
future.
HUMPHRYS: Oh, but this is hardly a profound
question here. I mean, this is pretty basic stuff isn't it?
HAGUE: Oh, well, we are - we are going into the
far future of future Parliaments. And, I think we've gone as far as any party
ever has in saying how we would deal with something that might arise but to
which we are opposed in a couple of Parliaments' time. It's not really for us
to defend arrangements to which we are absolutely opposed and which are
proposed by the Opposition.
HUMPHRYS: Well, but-
HAGUE: It is for them to say - it is for them
to say how they think these things would work. They're trying to gloss over a
lot of... Their plans for English regional chambers, that's something they
sneaked out a few months ago, hoping everybody would forget about it until
Polling Day - that also raises fundamental questions about the future of the
country but I'm not wanting to talk about it but we're going to make them talk
about it in debates such as next Thursday's.
HUMPHRYS: They-
HAGUE: They have to answer the questions about
their own proposals.
HUMPHRYS: They didn't sneak it out, as far as this
programme is concerned. We reported it at some length. But, look, return to
the point I made a minute ago. This is cataclysmic for the Union, you said.
How can we, you ask me, discuss something that may not happen for another
couple of Parliaments. But, surely, if it is something that threatens the very
United Kingdom itself you would have given it thought. Why not share those
thoughts with us?
HAGUE: But, it is so serious, it is so
cataclysmic that our point is we don't know how it would ever be possible to
repair the damage. That is the very point that we are making. Once you change
those financial arrangements, those arrangements for representation in the
House of Commons, once you break up the Government of the United Kingdom and
the equality of the Scottish and Welsh and English MPs in the House of Commons,
we don't know, and nobody knows how we would ever put it back together again.
That is the seriousness of the issue. That is why it has to be treated as an
extremely important issue in the coming Election campaign and people have to
wake up to the scale of what the Labour Party are proposing and the damage it
would do to our country.
HUMPHRYS: William Hague, thank you very much,
indeed.
HAGUE: Thank you.
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