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ON THE RECORD
PETER LILLEY INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 5.10.97
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Peter Lilley, Mr Major stepped down very
soon. After the election he wanted you to have a new leader very quickly, a
new beginning, new chance, new hope, new everything else. Hasn't been like
that has it - why?
PETER LILLEY MP: Well, I don't think it's ever been easy
after a serious defeat - and this was a very traumatic defeat indeed. We've
got clearly to do a lot of thinking and a lot of renewal, before we can be in a
position to win back the trust of the British people. In terms of the
criticisms and so on that are thrown at the Party in general and that the
leader in particular they're exactly the same as happened to Margaret Thatcher
in the early days, Ted Heath in his early days and so on, and so too much
should not be made of that. I can remember going round the constituencies in
nineteen-seventy-seven, two years after Mrs Thatcher was elected leader, and I
was an aspiring candidate and talking to activists, and was astonished at how
much they'd just picked up and repeated the criticisms of her which were
prevalent in the press at the time. Now we remember that she became the
greatest Prime Minister we've known since Churchill.
HUMPHRYS: But things are going in the opposite
direction from which they ought to be going in aren't they? I mean new leaders
generally have at least a bit of a honeymoon, and people say nice things about
them in the newspapers and then some people pick them up and people say "Oh
well you know, it'll be alright perhaps". But .....polls on your man, four out
of five in a week, and that's your own people.
LILLEY: It's never been like that in the
Conservative Party. I was reading what people like Angus Maude was saying
about Ted Heath a few months after he was elected, that he was a disaster and
the Party was ceased to be irrelevant. Even Winston Churchill after the
nineteen-forty-five defeat said that the public wouldn't be interested in
hearing fvrom the Tory Party for two years. We have a task in front of us.
We've got to listen and learn from the lessons that the British people were
trying to teach us at the election, and that's going to be quite chastening
process, quite a difficult process, involve an awful lot of work and effort
before we can really realistically hope to win back the support and confidence
of the British people. One thing that has been happening during the summer - I
don't want to sound too complacent because that's the last thing I want our
people to feel - is we have been winning quite a lot of local council
by-elections.
HUMPHRYS: Mm. But if you look again at what's
been happening to Mr Hague. Dissatisfaction with him, if we're to believe the
opinion polls, and they've been notoriously accurate recently have they not.
LILLEY: No, they haven't...
HUMPHRYS: Well, they got it pretty right on May
the First, but anyway.....
LILLEY: Because they were saying we'd lose by
twenty per cent rather than thirteen. We lost very heavily, they were about
seven per cent out.
HUMPHRYS: Well, let's allow seven per cent, let's
allow that they get it wrong by seven per cent. What we're seeeing at the
moment is four out of five Conservative supporters think that Mr Hague is weak,
they're dissatisfied with his leadership, there is general discontent. Maybe
if you're listening as you say you are, you should be listening to that as
well.
LILLEY: Well, we certainly have to listen to
everything, but we don't want to jump to premature conclusions. I happen to
know William Hague probably better than most people in government and in public
life. He was a junior minister in my department, he became the most senior
minister in my department, and I recommended him to go in the Cabinet. I
worked with him very closely. I've always been convinced that one day he would
be the leader of the Conservative Party, and a very distinguished Prime
Minister of this country. He has manifestly those abilities. As you know I
had rather hoped that I would occupy both posts before he did, but he is a very
formidable character and a strong potential Prime Minister of this country.
HUMPHRYS: Well, potential maybe, but at the moment
are you not even slightly worried that there is a large number of people in the
Party who are beginning, perhaps only beginning to doubt his judgement, and
that perhaps they may be right.
LILLEY: I don't think so. I think obviously we
all learn as we go along. I think one of the things which showed very good
judgement on his part was when he was criticised for various things that
happened during the recess and offered the opportunity to blame it on others,
advisors and so on, he was man enough to say: if there is any criticism the
decisions are mine, I stand by and am responsible for the decisions I take.
That shows maturity of judgement in my mind..
HUMPHRYS: You're talking about the silly things
now, the baseball cap and all that sort of thing, or are you talking about more
important things like criticising Mr Blair for the way he reacted to the death
of Diana.
LILLEY: That in particular was the issue I
think, but there were a number of them. I wasn't around at the time so I
didn't see that interview, and I didn't see the baseball caps, and I'm not
convinced that baseball caps are the most important issue in British politics.
HUMPHRYS: No, that's not the point is it. That
really isn't the point. There were serious things, and the way he criticised
Mr Balir was taken by many to be a very serious error or judgement.
LILLEY: Well, as he said he is prepared to take
the criticism of that. I didn't see the particular interview, but I think it
is a sign of a strong leader that he takes criticism on himself and doesn't try
and deflect it onto advisors.
HUMPHRYS: Does he stand by that then. Does he as
far as you're concerned, stand by what he said. Or when you say he takes the
criticism do you mean that he has accepted that he was wrong?
LILLEY: That, you'll have to ask him, but what
he certainly didn't do is try and worm out of it as a weak leader might have
done.
HUMPHRYS: Has he learned the lesson then do you
think?
LILLEY: I'm sure one learns all along, and I'm
sure that as time goes by we as a Party will be learning the lessons of our
defeat and the messages the British people were sending to us.
HUMPHRYS: So you'd accept that - or you want us to
believe that Mr Hague is at least - has at least acknowledged that he made
errors of judgement during the summer, that he didn't get it quite right, and
that he is learning from those errors of judgement.
LILLEY: I'm certain that he - and all of us are
learning all the time.
HUMPHRYS: Let's look at some of the other areas
where some in your Party say he is getting it wrong, not in the past now but
this is a very important and current issue, and that's the reform of the
Party. We heard a great deal of it talked about then. He has asked the
membership to back him or sack him. Now, that isn't just him. That isn't just
me William Hague. He has said: I want you to vote on me and on the Party
reforms - the principles of the Party reforms, and give one answer to both of
those questions. And their reaction to that is: Well, we can't do that, and he
misjudges us if he thinks we want to do that. He is bouncing into something
we'd rather not do.
LILLEY: Well, that's the reaction of some
people, but imagine the opposite had happened, he'd said: "Here are my
principles of reform and here is me as a leader, you can reject the principles
of reform which I consider essential for the proper running of the Conservative
Party if we are ever to make the change back to being what we had ceased to be
- a Party which exists to serve the British people in Government." Supposing
he had said: "I will abandon all that if you don't like it," then that would
have been the sign of a weak leader, you can't have it both ways. You can't
say that he is wrong to be strong when he is strong and that if an opinion poll
shows that some people say he's weak he is weak.
HUMPHRYS: He didn't have to combine them at all,
did he? He could have said, look... I mean they knew, the Party knew ...
LILLEY: What you are effectively saying if you
don't combine the two, you are saying that he could have allowed that all to be
scrapped and thrown away and gone along with an unreformed Party or a Party
that wasn't reformed on the basis of six principles that he wanted. I think
...
HUMPHRYS: I am not saying anything of the sort, I
mean what he could have done - because people knew what he stood for, broadly,
they should have done after the election campaign and after his opening
speeches and all the rest of it - he could have just said: "Look, you know what
I stand for, broadly, now, d'you support me." That's what he could have done.
LILLEY: Well, that's basically what he's doing.
HUMPHRYS: No, he's not. He's ...
LILLEY: He's saying: "What I stand for are six
broad principles, I believe that the Party has got to be reformed." That's
going to be quite a difficult process, reforming a Party which has existed for
a century and a half is a very difficult process. It's something that was
clearly necessary as a result of our defeat and the decay in our organisation
that was going on while we were in power. What would worry me would be if we
had ducked that issue or if there weren't a heated discussion about the changes
that are necessary, it shows that the Party actually is taking it seriously and
that is very important indeed. We have got to get it right, we are going to
get it right. It's going to be quite a long process, there will be a Green
Paper, which by definition means that it can be subsequently altered and
amended and changed in the light of discussion that will take place both at the
conference and in the months following; it will then be revised and the revised
version hopefully will be broadly supported and endorsed by the Party as a
whole.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, I want to come to that in a bit
more detail in a moment, if I may, but just to finish with this point about his
judgement. People like Ann Widdecombe, Richard Shepherd, this morning, say we
feel as if we have been manipulated by being forced to give this - and they are
very experienced MPs - by being forced to give one answer to these two
questions. Do you not think, with hindsight, that that was bad judgement?
LILLEY: No I don't. As I said, I think perhaps
it would be worth asking them, I don't know whether you did and didn't show the
answers, what would have happened if the two questions had been separated and
William had been defeated on the six principles.
HUMPHRYS: We needn't have had the two questions at
all at that point - that's the point.
LILLEY: Well, we've got to get on with reforming
the Party. No one's saying that they should have been at different times but if
the six principles had been defeated then, surely, William's position would
have been untenable. He is simply saying: I believe that we have got to reform
the Party, these are the principles on which there should be reform, I want
your backing then I can be the sort of leader you want, one with a reformed
Party and your endorsement.
HUMPHRYS: Well, let's look at the sort of reforms
that you are talking about and this is a problem for Mr Hague as well, isn't
it? What he has been doing is promising the Party members that they are going
to have real power within the Party in the future, it is not going to be the
way it used to be. His difficulty is that the Party bigwigs - some of the most
important, powerful people in the Party - aren't going to let him give them, if
he wants to give them it, as much as they had expected, therefore they are
going to be feeling pretty cheated. Many of them already are.
LILLEY: Well, we don't know what the outcome
will be but we know ...
HUMPHRYS: We know what's in this last version of
the Green Paper, don't we, and there have been nine drafts after all, as Laura
Trevelyan was telling us there.
LILLEY: I never produced a major policy proposal
in Government which went through less than seventeen drafts so that doesn't
seem to be terribly surprising, but you - what was the underlying point apart
from the number of drafts it has been through?
HUMPHRYS: That they are going to feel cheated -
that the Party members are going to feel that they have been cheated because
they were promised something that Mr Hague actually isn't going to be allowed,
I mean, his own Party bosses to deliver.
LILLEY: On the contrary, there are two key
things that have got to be reconciled. First of all, the ordinary Party
members out there - they're not ordinary, they're extraordinary, good people -
who join the Party have got to be able to participate in the selection of a
Leader and in other key decisions, like ratifying lines, broad lines of the
Manifesto, and so on.
HUMPHRYS: And, the degree-
LILLEY: Now-
HUMPHRYS: -of participation is absolutely key?
LILLEY: When it comes to the Leadership, the
other thing that we've got to take into account is the fact that, de facto, a
Leader has to have the support of his Parliamentary Party. We are a
Parliamentary democracy, a Leader who had the backing purely of his Party in
the country and not of his Party in the Parliament would not, effectively, be
able to lead. So, we've got to have a system and the proposal that originally
came from the Party in the country was that there'd be a collegiate system,
with a slug of votes for the Party in the country and a substantial number for
the MPs, so that we can simutaneously have the direct participaton of members
of the Party and assure that the Leader has the backing and support of the
Parliamentary Party.
Now, getting those proportions and
mechanisms right is difficult but it's got to be done and it will be done.
There's no question it won't be done.
HUMPHRYS: And, when it's done and when you've
arrived at that proportion, are you, then, going to say to the Members of the
Party: now, are you happy with that? And, give them the opportunity to vote
again on that?
LILLEY: My understanding is that the -after the
agreement on principles - if we get that on Tuesday - there'll be the
publication of the Green Paper, which we seem to have got already. There'll be
discussion over that and, then, that will go to a special meeting of the Party,
with representatives of the Party from all parts to endorse or not the revised
version that will come up.
HUMPHRYS; Is this the Convention that we were
talking about?
LILLEY: Yes, the convention.
HUMPHRYS: Right, well, yeah, the trouble with that
is that it's going to be mostly Party Chairmen at that convention. That's not
going to be One Member-One Vote. Why not give the whole thing back to the
membership and say: look, so important - as you, yourself, say - we value what
you think on this. You have a vote on it.
LILLEY: I'm not sure what the structure-
HUMPHRYS: Well, that is the structure.
LILLEY: Well, no. You're talking about the
Convention that's proposed in the Green Paper. By definition, the Green paper
won't ben enforced in time for the convention.
HUMPHRYS: What I'm talking about is the final - in
case people get confused about this - what I'm talking about is the final say,
when all the detail - and, the Devil is always in the detail in these things,
as you know, better than most. When it's all been sorted out and you have a
firm, clear set of proposals that you, yourselves, have agreed, are you, then,
going to say to the Party membership One Member-One Vote on that set of
proposals and if not, why not?
LILLEY: My understanding is that it will go back
to a convention, which will be representative of all members of the Party.
HUMPHRYS: Not One Member-One Vote, then?
LILLEY: Yes, I suppose, that's an alternative
option that would not allow the final discussion, I suppose, that can take
place at a convention. I don't think there's much to choose between the two.
What is important-
HUMPHRYS: Really?
LILLEY: No, I don't think there is. I think,
what is important is that the document clearly that emerges from the
discussions on the Green Paper that take place does have the broad endorsement
of the whole Party.
HUMPHRYS: The only way to find that out is to ask
them - individually.
LILLEY: We can either do those things through a
Convention which is representative of democracy, or direct democracy, as the
case may be and I wouldn't go to the stake for either of those two methods.
But, it is important that we do have the broad endorsement of the whole Party.
HUMPHRYS: Let's look at where you're going to
stand, in the long run, in relation to the Labour Government as Her Majesty's
Opposition, in policy terms. Now, are you going to be setting out to recapture
the centre ground which is what some people we heard think ought to happen, or
are you going to be carrying on, if you like, the Thatcher revolution?
LILLEY: The concept of a centre ground is an
ambiguous one. If by the centre ground you mean working out what the two
Parties stand for and, then, one of them halving the distance itself and the
other that is not an attractive recipe. If, however, you mean what is the
centre ground of the British people's political instincts, then, that is
precisely where the Conservative Party always has, does and should aim to
stand. What we have done is brought the Labour Party onto the same ground as
us. That's both a great success and a cause of the dilemma we face because
they used to be way up to the left of what was acceptable to the British
people.
They've now, at least in their rhetoric
- and, indeed, in some of their policies - moved onto our ground. What would
be silly would be us - just in order to create differences - between ourselves
and them - to adopt policies in which we didn't really believe and which
weren't really acceptable to the British people. But, that other than the sake
of logic is not really a position that anyone is putting forward as one of the
choices we should make.
HUMPHRYS: So if then, and you seem to be saying,
correct me if I am wrong, if the Labour Government is on the centre ground now,
it makes it awfully difficult for you to oppose doesn't it?
LILLEY: Well it is in some ways a great strength
because we are where our roots are, we are believing in the sort of policies
that we pursued and which were successful during the Eighties which are based
on a belief on individual liberty and personal responsibility, in national
unity and independence, in constitutional authority. The Labour Party - at
least Tony Blair has tried to come on that ground, he's...
HUMPHRYS: Well he did tell me he had gone on that
ground and....
LILLEY: To some extent he had, he has certainly
adopted a lot of our rhetoric, he has adopted some of our policies but still he
has a Party and he and his Party have instincts which are not rooted in that,
which believe automatically that the government is the solution to all
problems, that higher spending is the solution to all difficulties, that more
regulation and laws are the way to deal with things and they will increasingly
find themselves dealing with problems for which we have not provided the
benchmark....
HUMPHRYS: If your analysis is right but, I mean,
to ascribe the motives to Tony Blair that are concealed is a bit bizarre, in a
sense, isn't it? I mean, we have heard what Tony Blair - we've seen what he's
done, we've seen how he's in control of his Party, we've seen all that in the
last few days - particularly in the last few days.
LILLEY: Yes, and to get his Party where it is
and himself where it is he was obliged to abandon overt allegiance to all the
things which he entered politics to do - or we assume he did, unless ...
HUMPHRYS: Perhaps he never believed them in the
first place - anyway.
LILLEY: Well maybe not, but I'm not that cynical
about people. I think by and large people in politics enter because they
sincerely believe the broad lines of the Party they choose.
HUMPHRYS: Right, well let's look at some of the
policies then and we've discussed them in that film: tax and spend - the
perhaps the key issue. Do you still, does your Party, still want to get and
keep and drive further below forty per cent the amount the nation spends of its
wealth, is that the ambition?
LILLEY: I think there was much less difference
between what John Redwood and Ken Clarke were saying than your interviewer
implied. Basically our position was to get the share of public spending below
forty per cent, and that's an extremely difficult task as Ken Clarke was right
to point out, you can only do it over a period of time. When you've got there
then it's sensible to set yourself a new target, but until you've achieved your
previous target it's not very sensible to set a new one.
HUMPHRYS: You understate what Ken Clarke said
there, don't you. I mean what he said is it is not deliverable ... No, let me
finish the quote because it's interesting.
LILLEY: What? What was not deliverable?
HUMPHRYS: Well, "it".
LILLEY: "It"?
HUMPHRYS: Getting below forty per cent.
LILLEY: Substantially below. In the short-term.
HUMPHRYS: Yes, but what you are telling me is that
you first want to get below it and then you want to get further, you want to
set a new target.(INTERRUPTION) Now, what he said, let me just finish the
quote: "It is certainly not deliverable in a way that the British people would
find acceptable, or ..." And let me finish the quote.
LILLEY: But you are leaving people out there who
are watching this programme with an undefined question. You are refusing to
define "it". What was "it"?
HUMPHRYS: "It" is getting substantially below
forty per cent.
LILLEY: Right, substantially below. It's not
impossible to get below it, perhaps, but first of all we have got to get to it,
we haven't got to it yet.
HUMPHRYS: Yes, but he says it is not deliverable
and - more importantly perhaps - in a way that the British people will find
acceptable or "ought" to find acceptable. In other words, Ken Clarke is quite
clear - I don't believe that ought to be our ambition. If there is extra money
to be spent ...
LILLEY: No, he said it ought not to be and it
certainly isn't acceptable to me, to Ken Clarke, to any Conservative I know to
achieve those objectives by means which leave anyone who is dependent on the
help which we deliver them through the state at risk or in need, or suffering.
We as Conservatives have a primary obligation to help through the state or
whatever means we can devise, those who need the help of those of us who are
fortunate enough to be healthy, fit, well-off, in work, and so on. And that's
our primary objective and he's absolutely right to say we shouldn't sacrifice
that and no-one in the Party that I have ever met would want us to do so.
HUMPHRYS: Low tax for its own sake has gone as a
political aim - do you agree with that?
LILLEY: Well certainly high tax is something
that one adopts at one's peril as we saw at the last election. The Labour
Party had to say that they would not raise taxes, even taxes on the better off,
they had to say that they wouldn't spend more than the Conservatives would
spend if they were even to get into the ball park where they were open for
consideration by the British electorate again, and they said that, not us, so
clearly we cannot...all the evidence is the British public do not like high tax
Parties, we have got to be a Party that will most credibly offer lower taxes
and the best value for money. If you don't keep cutting tax rates under our
system, the burden of tax goes up because of what technically is called fiscal
drag. Each year more people are moving up into higher tax bands, they're
paying more tax and so one ought, in a prosperous economy, to be able to reduce
the rates of tax and the burdens of tax on people as they get richer -
everybody will want to get richer - and still not sacrifice the Public Services
and the defence of the realm and the defence of Law and Order, which has to be
organised through the State.
HUMPHRYS: Let's look at Europe and your position
on the Single Currency - EMU. Mr Hague ruled it out for ten years - at least,
that's what I understood him to have done - but now though we learn that the
Shadow Cabinet's position is not in the foreseeable future. Those two things
don't square, do they?
LILLEY: Well, all you can foresee, as a
politician, is the next Parliament.
HUMPHRYS: Well, he did more than that. He ruled
it out for ten years, he said. He said not this Parliament nor the next - he
foresaw it.
LILLEY: If you add that together that makes ten
years. That's how the people deduced it.
HUMPHRYS: Oh, come on!
LILLEY: No! No, no, no!
HUMPHRYS: He said the first ten years of-
LILLEY: No, actually, he didn't. He refers to
the next Parliament. Other people did the arithmetic for him.
HUMPHRYS: Two Parliaments. Two Parliaments.
LILLEY: Yes.
HUMPHRYS: That's ten years.
LILLEY: That's the next Parliament. Plus this.
That's absolutely his position. There's been no change in that. Two
Parliaments, or ten years. It's not a sort of running ....
HUMPHRYS: But, there has been a change if we're
now saying that the Shadow Cabinet's view is not in the foreseeable future
because the foreseeable future - as Ken Clarke made it clear there - is pretty
well what you want it to be. Ken Clarke talked about two or three years after
which who knows what might happen? So, are you now saying that if things were
right - all the things that you want to be right - assuming you ever wanted to
go in - that it is possible that you would say: yeah, ok, two or three years is
alright. So, ten years?
LILLEY: I think, there's a consensus emerging
within the Conservative Party, which I predicted would emerge. We saw today
the article by John Major, saying that we shoudn't enter - again, he used the
phrase 'the foreseeable future' - we shouldn't enter a Single Currency. There
are people who approach it from different angles. There are those who approach
it primarily looking at the pragmatic pros and cons economically and they,
increasingly, think that we shouldn't go into Nineteen Ninety-Nine - which is
the first option - because our economy is out of phase with the cycles on the
Continent and, clearly, that's not something that changes in short term.
It's very unlikely that it will change
in the lifetime of one or even two Parliaments but it would take time to change
because, as Tony Blair says, they have got very inflexible labour markets and
we have got very flexible. It took us eighteen years to get flexible labour
markets. It's not something that doesn't change overnight.
HUMPHRYS: No, I understand that but I'm still
puzzled.
LILLEY: So, even the pragmatists say we shoudn't
go in for the foreseeable future. The constitutionalists are worried over and
beyond that that the move to a Single Currency would itself lead to political
changes, which would lead to, effectively, having a Single Government. Ken
Clarke doesn't think that will happen. Others fear that it would inevitably
happen and, indeed, obviously, it's the motivation of some of those who backed
the Single Currency project.
HUMPHRYS: Right, and you, yourself, have had
concerns along those lines.
LILLEY: I approach it-
HUMPHRYS: Indeed. So, are you saying, therefore,
and is Mr Hague saying and is the Shadow Cabinet saying, because of those
worries it is not going to happen within ten years. Is that the position or is
it not?
LILLEY: William Hague has made it absolutely
clear that he does not think and he does not want us to enter in the next
Parliament - that's where you get your ten years from.
HUMPHRYS: Right. So ten years, then.
LILLEY: He's, also, made it clear that our
policy issue on that and all other issues on that will be put to a referendum
of the Party, if you like - at a vote of the whole Party we will put to them
the broad principles of our - what lie behind our Manifesto, ahead of the next
Election. So, subject to that we will reach that position but I think it will
be one which has the broad endorsement of the British people. I think, it
would be restless to give up the Pound at a time when practical people think
it's bad for Britain and those with concerns about our Constitution mean that
it will be end of Britain's ability to govern itself.
HUMPHRYS: Peter Lilley, thank you very much indeed
and that's it for this week until midday next Sunday, Good Afternoon.
..oooOOOooo..
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