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                                 ON THE RECORD 
                             PETER LILLEY INTERVIEW      
 
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1                                 DATE: 19.10.97
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JOHN HUMPHRYS:                         Peter Lilley, Frank Dobson said this 
morning, the Health Secretary, Member of the Cabinet, said this morning on 
television that the policy hasn't changed.  What Gordon Brown said, officially, 
on the record, in The Times on Saturday morning, yesterday morning, was the 
real policy.  So, that's all right, isn't it? 
 
PETER LILLEY:                          This is a Government which doesn't have 
policies it has media manipulation at its heart and its core and those who live 
by the leak are going to die by the leak.  All this is caused by their 
obsession with media manipulation and their contempt for Parliamentary 
democracy.  The correct thing to do is for Gordon Brown to come before the 
House of Commons and spell out his policies and make it absolutely clear and 
subject himself to Parliamentary scrutiny.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, he will do that. 
 
LILLEY:                                He will have to and he should do so 
sooner rather than later.  Ideally, he should recall Parliament early so that 
next week he can do it and clear up this confusion to the benefit of British 
industry, the financial markets and the political system. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Recall Parliament when, then? 
 
LILLEY:                                As soon as possible, early next week.
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, it's Sunday, what do you think? 
It's Monday tomorrow. 
 
LILLEY:                                Tomorrow or Tuesday. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Tomorrow or Tuesday.  You think he 
should recall Parliament then. 
 
LILLEY:                                Absolutely.  Absolutely.  To allow this 
sort of confusion to continue and to use as a justification the fact that 
Parliament isn't sitting is monstrous.  It is them that have had the longest 
recess since the war to try to keep Parliament out of the sphere so that they 
can massage the media rather than actually govern by correct Parliamentary 
process. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              It would look like a bit of a panic 
reaction wouldn't it, to recall Parliament?  People would get awfully excited 
about that. 
 
LILLEY:                                They ought to.  This Government has 
created immense confusion and it's done so through its characteristic method of 
operation.  First of all briefing the Financial Times, their favoured friend 
Robert Preston who on September 26th who quoted Ministers - and he's an honest 
journalist, highly respected - if he says a Minister said something it means a 
Minister said something.  If he says senior Cabinet Ministers are openly saying 
this, it means senior Cabinet Ministers are openly saying this, and that is the 
way he wrote his story.  Now they're disowning it but they're disowning it 
still by the same mechanism - through these spin doctors.  It's time we had a 
cull of spin doctors and got back to elected representatives telling us what 
the policy of the Government is and telling us in Parliament. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Well, that's not entirely true, is it?  
You say they're disowning it through spin doctors.  I mean, we had Frank 
Dobson, as I say, a Member of the Cabinet, going on television this morning and 
saying 'it isn't true' - what the spin doctors were saying isn't true.  He 
disowned it formally, officially. 
 
LILLEY:                                Why can't Gordon Brown disown his own 
spin doctors?  He refused, I gather, to come on this programme.  Every Treasury 
Minister refused to come on this programme.  The Minister for Open Government 
refused to come on this programme.  What sort of Government is it that is... 
that refuses to come on and lets a Health Minister who is gaffe prone, shall we 
say, put further confusion onto the shambolic attempt at a spin U-turn that has 
failed and gone wrong.  And what is damaging about it is that this affects 
financial markets and they're not just abstractions - I'm not worried about 
George Soros and the speculators.  This is money being invested on behalf of 
pensioners and savers which went one way, will now have to go the other way, 
and may be a considerable loss of money to some people - all because of the 
confusion sown by this Government. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Given that then, do you think he ought 
to make, the Chancellor, ought to make a statement today?  Because the markets 
are open in the morning.  Chris Haskin seemed to think it wasn't necessary. 
 
LILLEY:                                Well, that might well be the least bad 
option.  I would prefer him to make a statement in Parliament where he is 
subject to scrutiny.  In fact, I think we know from this Government that any 
statement they made today would not settle the matter unless it is a statement 
which is subject to scrutiny, where the Chancellor of the Exchequer can be 
questioned and cross-questioned in Parliament by both his own supporters and 
the Opposition, because his own supporters are equally bemused about this as us 
and until that happens confusion will reign.  And I fear - such is the nature 
of this Government - that even after that happens confusion will reign.  This 
Government will change its mind several times between now and the end of this 
Parliament on this big issue. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Which many people will say is precisely 
what happened under the last Government and they'll say all this kind of thing: 
they knew about it, we had it under the ... you had spin doctors, you had 
special advisers, you had people popping up here and there saying this and 
that; you had Ministers, Cabinet Ministers saying things off the record as well 
as on the record, just typical of the... it's the way it goes.                  
 
LILLEY:                                No, they have, I mean they have got 
three times as many spin doctors as I had.  If I had a spin doctor, if I had an 
employee who said something which was out of line with my policy, he would not 
have remained in my employment.  Now these people have said two mutually 
contradictory things.  One of them must be out of line with the Government's 
policy.  You cannot employ people who say contradictory things and you ought to 
disown them.  There should be a cull of these people and get back to proper 
Government.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, you, yourself, were a Treasury 
Minister and you know how market-sensitive - to use the jargon - everything 
that comes out of the Treasury, as an official Treasury spokesman - especially 
the Chancellor of the Exchequer, himself is - so, therefore, to use the people 
in the background - to leak a little bit here and a little bit there - just to 
deliver a bit of a message, to nudge things one way or the other, that's the 
kind of thing that has been going on for a long time.  And, you may say, is 
actually necessary - given the sensitivity of the markets and all the rest of 
it.   
 
LILLEY:                                Because we knew markets were sensitive 
we made sure that officials from within the Treasury who knew about markets, 
who, themselves, were steeped in the experience, handled the information side.  
We didn't hand it over to untrained spin doctors, who'd just come in after 
years in Opposition, dealing with other matters, to deal with sensitive, 
financial matters like this and this is why we didn't get into this sort of 
confusion.   
  
HUMPHRYS:                              If, indeed, the policy has changed and 
they are now saying: we would not go in to Monetary Union, we wouldn't dump the 
Pound for the lifetime of this Parliament, what they've done is adopted a 
rather harder line than you, yourselves, in the Conservative Party than the 
Shadow Cabinet has. 
 
LILLEY:                                Well, we don't know what their position 
is.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, if that is the position that would 
be the case, wouldn't it?   
 
LILLEY:                                Our position is clear.  We will not be 
going in for the foreseeable future.  I spelled out at some length in my Party 
Conference speech the reasons for that, the rationale for that and I believe it 
commands support way beyond the Conservative Party - that one should wait and 
see whether this experiment - as experiment it is - this gamble, pays off 
before you can even start considering then the political choices that need to 
be made, over and above the economic ones.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              The problem with foreseeable future it 
could mean whatever you take it to mean, couldn't it?  It could mean not for 
the lifetime of this Parliament, it could be not in the lifetime of the next 
one.  It could be next week, next month!  We don't know.  
 
LILLEY:                                Well, I-I made it quite clear that it 
was going to be years before you could see whether, for example, the British 
economy is going to come into line in terms of the economic cycle with those on 
the Continent.  And, that's one of the features which even Gordon Brown has 
said is the reason we can't go in now.  Actually, we've been out of line for 
living memory and getting more out of line, rather than closer together for 
some reason.  No one knows quite what causes the economic cycles, let alone 
what causes one economy to be out of line with another.  But, you really ought 
to be sure that we were not totally out of line with the people we were trying 
to link our economic fortunes to.  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              But, if the spinners were right and this 
is the new policy, you have to harden up your policy, won't you?  You'll have 
to say: alright, not for the foreseeable future and that means, at least, the 
future, the lifetime of this Parliament.  Won't you have to do that? 
 
LILLEY:                                We certainly won't set our policy on the 
basis of trying to differentiate artificially from the Government.  We shall 
set our policy and do set our policy on the basis of what's in the interests of 
the British people.  But, meanwhile, the British Government can't-should not be 
setting its policy on the basis of Party political considerations and they've 
made it clear that their primary consideration is in terms of winning the next 
Election, rather than setting an economic policy which they believe to be good 
for the country.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Tell me a Government that doesn't want 
to win the next Election. 
 
LILLEY:                                Oh, it's a perfectly legitimate aim - 
you should not subordinate the economic interests of this country to that.  If 
they believe that entering the Single Currency is right, then they should put 
it to people..the British people in a referendum.  If they don't they should 
spell out why.  We'll understand why and from the knowledge of those reasons 
we'll have a clear view of the economic and political future of this country.  
They won't do that.  Instead, they're so in confusion - in a way in which is 
very damaging to financial markets.  One thing I think is needed is now an 
inquiry into what has happened and the damage that's reported. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              By an inquiry, you mean a public 
inquiry? 
 
LILLEY:                                A public inquiry by the Bank of England 
or SIB, whose job it is  
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Securities Investment Board.. 
 
LILLEY:                                Securities Investment Board whose job it 
is to oversee the probity of the financial markets. If any private individual 
had misled markets in the way that this Government has done that would be a 
very serious offence.  We must know who the Ministers are who've been briefing 
the Financial Times, in the way that caused the biggest movement in financial 
times-ah, financial markets- for many years.  On Monday, we may see a reverse 
movement.  And, now anyone who brought that about as a private individual would 
be subject to investigation.  We should have an inquiry into who has said what 
that has caused this from within Government.   
 
HUMPHRYS:                              And, that is your official Party 
position: you're calling for an inquiry.  
 
LILLEY:                                Yes. 
 
HUMPHRYS:                              Peter Lilley, thank you very much, 
indeed.  
 
LILLEY:                                Thank you. 
 
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