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ON THE RECORD
MICHAEL HESELTINE INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 8.11.92
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JONATHAN DIMBLEBY: Mr Heseltine, the economy's in dire
straits, many people fear a slump, there is precious little confidence around,
there is the threat of an international trade war. Ministerial, indeed in
your case, presidential, rhetoric about Government economic policy creating an
environment in which industry can become world beating again sounds pretty
hollow.
MICHAEL HESELTINE: I think you've got to have objectives
but you also have to understand the world in which everybody knows we live and
trade. The world is going through the most difficult period that I can
remember over a prolonged timescale and it would be naive and would seen as
such if we didn't reflect the limits of what any one national economy can do
within that context. The very audience that you have been showing on this
programme would be the first to laugh hollowly if they felt that we'd lost
reality as an important part of our judgement. That doesn't mean to say that
we shouldn't be trying to see a way through it but not in a way that
misrepresents the contained restraints that effect any national economy.
DIMBLEBY: There are those who think that the
Government at the moment is going through so many hoops on so many fronts that
it's grasp of reality is rather tenuous.
HESELTINE: No I think that that is..frankly
reflects in all governments that I can see the state of the national and
international economies. Wherever you look, broadly speeking, the govenments
of the equivalent societies to ourselves are in difficulties and that reflects
the state of the economy.
DIMBLEBY: Let us take the first and most -
momentarily at least - overwhelming question which is the threat of an
international trade war. Now Britain is President of the Community, we claim
to be at the heart of Europe, we claim also to have a special relationship with
the United States - how did we allow ourselves to get into this mess?
HESELTINE: Well it's a gross misreading to think
that somehow or other Britain has been engineered into a position you describe
as a mess, the fact is that John Major is deploying every effort in order to
get these talks back on the road and I believe has now succeeded. Quite
obviously a whole range of conversations go on over the international telephone
wires, we do realise the severity of the situation, the fact is the clock is
ticking and that is a very dangerous situation.
DIMBLEBY: Does it mean that rather late in the day
the Prime Minister has managed to get the horses back in harness?
HESELTINE: No it doesn't, it means that he has been
keeping up this pressure, probably as more intensively than..I can't think of
any other world leader who's been so committed to this process as John Major
and I've seen what's been going on behind closed doors. He's not in the
negotiating seat as everybody knows, the European Commissioner is responsible
for that. But in truth there is a whole range of dialogue going on behind the
scenes and it has been consistently John Major who has put this thing back up
at the forefront and tried to keep world leaders in charge of events. If I can
just remind you this has been going on for six year, six years, long before
John Major was anywhere near the seat of power but he's now trying to drive it
to a satisfactory conclusion but it's extremely difficult.
DIMBLEBY: You, as this row broke out pointed the
finger at Jacques Delors saying that he has divided loyalties and he got pretty
cross in return. Is Jacques Delors now behaving himself in ways that you
aprove of?
HESELTINE: Well the Commission are now instructed
to carry through the views of the ministers, heads of Government, at Birmingham
and as I understand it that is what is going to happen and that is extremely
desirable. What I think..
DIMBLEBY: Wouldn't it have been desirable to have
instructed them to do that rather earlier?
HESLETINE: They have been instructed for six years
by the world political leaders.
DIMBLEBY: So he's just disobedient?
HESELTINE: No, the fact is that he has a balance of
restraints upon him as all people involved in these trade talks have and what I
think is absolutely critical now is that we don't get involved in trying to
open the personalities with disagreements. What we want is those
conversations, negotiations to proceed and I think that is what is going to
happen.
DIMBLEBY: Does that mean that you won't be saying
again that Jacques Delors has divided loyalties?
HESELTINE: I think there's no purpose in repeating
statements which, once made, perhaps ought to be allowed to stand. But the
fact of the matter is what we now want, what we now want is to cool the
temperature to get the dialogue going and there's no gain for anybody in trying
to exacerbate the situation.
DIMBLEBY: So if the statement should stand, we
still regard it as the view of the President of the Board of Trade that he does
have divided loyalties but there's no point in pushing that to its logical
conclusion?
HESELTINE: Shall we say it was a contribution to
the debate yesterday, it is not a contribution of the debate today. Today we
are trying to keep the temperature down and to get those negotiations underway.
DIMBLEBY: Are the Americans right to insist that
the new negotiator replacing MacSharry should in the words of the American
negotiator "have a free hand" as he does now?
HESELTINE: Well, he's obviously got to be empowered
to negotiate and that is something that the Commission must resolve and I know
that John Major again had a very long discussion with Jacques Delors yesterday
about this matter, quite rightly, and I hope that that will be now carried
through into a remit to Frans Andriessen to negotiate on behalf of the
Community.
DIMBLEBY: Now even if Jacques Delors is going to
control from now on his divided loyalties, the fact of the matter is isn't it
that the French and that's part of his divided loyalty - the French can pull
the rug out on this, they're making it clear they ain't going to go down the
journey.
HESELTINE: Well that is of course the position and
any nation state can be in that position but that's not my immediate concern.
My concern is obviously that the Community which is charged with this
responsibility and the Commission which has to discharge that responsibility
should now get on with the job of concluding a deal and what I know, because
obviously again one has a feel for why the negotiations stand there's a deal
there, that this weary process has gone on for six years. They're now very
close together, there's a deal that can be done and what we've got to do is do
it and then it's up to nation states to look at the deal that's been done. But
at this stage it's the Community and the United States that are negotiating.
DIMBLEBY: So there is only obstinacy and
intransigence that will stand in the way of a deal.
HESELTINE: Jonathan, Jonathan, you are now trying
to me back into the exacerbation of the process which I'm not prepared to do.
I'm now talking simply, clinically, factually about how close the two sides are
- there's a deal to be done.
DIMBLEBY: Meanwhile there are sanctions due to
come into force, now some twenty-eight days away. If the French continue to
say "non" would Britain be with the French saying yes to sanctions in
retaliation?
HESELTINE: Well that again is the sort of question
which provokes and exacerbates the situaion. Quite obviously I have talked
about the dangers of a trade war, I have said on this programme the clock is
ticking and we all know the dangers that come once I'd ...goes through with a
lot of sanctions, other people take action - counter-action and it deteriorates
very rapidly as confidence collapses and all those things, it would be a
disastrous situation. But the purpose, as I've said many times, is to stop
that happening and all our energies must now be focused on getting a deal, not
on looking into the abyss at what happens if we don't get a deal.
DIMBLEBY: On the assumption that we don't go into
that abyss because if we do go into that abyss the rest of this interview is
frankly, is a waste of time probably isn't it?
HESELTINE: That is true, that is true.
DIMBLEBY: On the assumption that we don't we have
another abyss that we've fallen into, it may not be of quite the same severity,
namely the abyss of devaluation. It was never part of the script up until
Black Wednesday that devaluation should be the route towards what you now have
to try and provide which is a competitive, industrial framework. Given that
we're there and there's no point in going back through how we got there - do
you welcome the opportunities provided for competition via devaluation, post
Black Wednesday?
HESELTINE: Well of course there's an opportunity
and there's a danger and it's very important that one doesn't just concentrate
on the opportunity and lose sight of the danger because there's nothing new in
the concept that if you devalue the currency you have a competitive advantage.
That idea has been around all my political life but the trouble is every time
we've done it in this country we've thrown away the competitive advantage
because we have allowed inflation to erode it.
So from the moment that we left the
Exchange Rate Mechanism I recognise, as everybody did, that here was a chance
to get out and sell British goods at a more competitive price, that's a
terrific opportunity and I'm personally deeply involved in the process now of
recruiting up to a hundred people from the private sector to help my Department
give that support to industry which the opportunity opens up - that's a hundred
per cent opportunity.
Now, we all know what happens if you
have a devalued currency, the price of imports rises and there is a danger that
that flows through into domestic inflation and so one has got to say to people
and this a very unpalatable message in the middle of a recession, look you've
got to contain those costs because otherwise the old phenomenon of the J curve
(phon) is back with is and we don't keep the competitive advantage.
DIMBLEBY: And the old phenomenon for those who are
not familiar with economics of the J curve (phon) is basically saying yes you
live now but you pay for it later because what you gain now you lose in
bucketfulls later.
HESLETINE: Well, that is the danger and we've seen
it happen as I've said with devaluation after devaluation in the post war
world. It can delude people into thinking that that is in itself is enough, it
isn't because you have got to manage a domestic economy properly.
DIMBLEBY: Now, given that we've had the
devaluation that we've got I conclude from what you're saying that you wouldn't
be one of those who's saying "Oh, and a little bit more devaluation would be
rather nice because it would help us even more".
HESELTINE: Well, I'm not going to get into a
judgement which is essentially that for the Chancellor. He makes these
judgements and, of course, it's all tied up with the management of the economy,
interest rate policy and all those things. He must be responsible for that
side of our political judgement, decision taking.
DIMBLEBY: But you are sympathetic in principle -
if I have understood you correctly - to the fear that, that, that some have
expressed, most notably the Prime Minister, that devaluation is fool's gold and
an easy option.
HESELTINE: Well, I think we've explored that
question. What would worry me is the feeling that as long as you devalue, the
inflationary consequences that can flow are secondary. They are actually the
ingredients of where the next difficulties may lay.
DIMBLEBY: You would not be happy, however (or at
least I can't imagine that you would be happy from what you're saying), if the
pound, for whatever reason, continued to slide downwards. It would stand
square against what you've just been asserting very clearly.
HESELTINE: But everybody knows that there are
balances. There always have been, there always will be balances...
DIMBLEBY: But you think the balance point has been
reached and should go no further..
HESELTINE: I never said that, I never said that. I
said that there were balances and they all have to be weighed, and the more
that the pound goes down, the bigger the dangers of inflationary pressures
become, and that is a rule which is not within the gift of Government to set at
one side.
DIMBLEBY: Um, under those circumstances you, when
you hear those voices calling for rapid and deep interest rate cuts, are
inclined to say what to those voices?
HESELTINE: We all want interest rate cuts, but you
don't want interest rate cuts if that has an effect upon the management of your
economy, which is counter-productive. So, again, you are back to the
Chancellor's judgement.
DIMBLEBY: Now in that broad framework, am I right
to say that the logic of your position is that there is no real scope for large
interest rate cuts IF the consequence of that were to be the pound being driven
down very much further, with the inflationary consequences?
HESELTINE: But you see it isn't as neatly packaged
as that. You have a whole range of other judgements about public expenditure,
and the Macro economic management of the economy, that comes into the balance,
and so it's..you are left with a judgement which only the Chancellor (in
consultation with the Prime Minister) can take, because they alone have full
access to all the information and all the levers that have to be adjusted.
DIMBLEBY: But insofar as you're not a lion that
never roars in the Cabinet, one may presume that you have been making loud and
clear your views about the inflationary dangers, insofar as they need to be
made.
HESELTINE: Well, everyone else has been doing the
same thing, so I don't think it needed any great roaring. The Chancellor's
fully aware, and the Prime Minister's fully aware, of these conflicting
pressures that affect economic policy.
DIMBLEBY: You see there are others in the Cabinet
- I think particularly of Michael Howard, who is entirely consistent with what
you are saying in policy terms - speaking with rather greater enthusiasm than
you do about interest rate cuts; about the fact that we are no longer inside
the ERM and the opportunities that it gives. I see you when I ask you these
question as a man who's not terribly happy about all of what has happened, and
is very anxious indeed about what you describe as the J-curve. I don't hear
others going on and on about the J-curve like you do.
HESELTINE: Well, perhaps I've been in politics a
bit longer than some of my colleagues and I've seen these things happen before.
But there is no division between my colleagues and myself in the Cabinet on
these issues, and it would be quite wrong to suggest that that is the case.
The only reason I use the word "J-curve" is because I was in the House of
Commons (which some of my younger colleagues were not) when this was the
phenomenon, and everybody was saying - "Well, this is fine - we'll just devalue
the currency and everything's going to be alright". It wasn't alright for
the reasons that I've been stressing.
DIMBLEBY: Now, now given that if you are right,
the history of the economy since you've been in politics, and since the Second
World War, has been one in which devaluation has been the case, followed by
inflation, followed by devaluation, followed by inflation, what you're saying
is "I need to be jolly certain that this does not become the case again before
I'm going to be enthusiastic about what a lot of people are calling for".
HESELTINE: Well, I'm going to be enthusiastic about
the opportunity that the lower parity has now produced. I'm going to do
everything I can to help British industry to export and take advantage of that
opportunity. That I'm going to do. That's my responsibility as a
Departmental Minister responsible for Trade. But as the President of the
Board of Trade in the Cabinet discussing Macro-economic policy, I have to be
very sure that I support the Chancellor of the Exchequer who is very aware of
the dangers that we've been discussing.
DIMBLEBY: Given you're a touch older than him - as
you said, you've had rather more experience, you are able to make this very
clear.
HESELTINE: I just, just use language which was
very well and very familiar some years ago, but has not been heard of for the
last decade or so.
DIMBLEBY: Let us, um - you touched on the need for
keeping costs under control. When we were inside the ERM inflation at four per
cent-ish, wages in the private sector going up at eight per cent, and you drew
attention to that, but there was then - allegedly - a discipline that would
bear down on that, namely, the ERM itself. What's the lever now?
HESELTINE: Well, you mustn't ask me to anticipate
the Chancellor's Autumn Statement - we're just a few days ahead of it and he
will put forward his whole approach to these very varied matters.
DIMBLEBY: There aren't many options are there?
HESELTINE: Well, but Jonathan, you and I both know
that it is for the Chancellor to cover these subjects and I don't want to have
to repeat this time and again in this programme. I'm not going to trespass in
any way on his responsibilities.
DIMBLEBY: But you could, for instance, within
your own framework, call upon the captains of industry themselves - and
politicians sometimes find it jolly good politics to do that because it gives
them a bit of kudos with people who aren't on the same kind of rates, but you
could join your, add your voice - or repeat if you wanted to - to captains of
industry, under these circumstances let's see no significant pay rises into
your own pockets.
HESELTINE: No, no. You could say all those
things, but they would immediately say well what are the Government going to do
about these things, and it's not for me to anticipate anything the Chancellor
may say.
DIMBLEBY: What the Government, of course, could
say is that....
HESELTINE: They could say all sorts of things but
you're not going to get me to say what I think they will say.
DIMBLEBY: No, I know. But just in broad terms -
and there's been this debate going on and we've heard Government Ministers,
even ones as cautious as you are in these matters, talk about the need for
pay restraint in the public sector. It would clearly make an impact on the
private sector if the Government, where it is the ultimate employer, was saying
"In our public sector we are going to have a freeze, we are going to have very
low wage increases AND we will bear the potential price of that, which could be
industrial unrest".
HESELTINE: Well, that's for the Chancellor's
statement.
DIMBLEBY: You have nothing to say about that at
all?
HESELTINE: Nothing, other than to recognise that
it's a fair question and is one the Government have to answer, but not on this
programme.
DIMBLEBY: Fair question. It would also be a fair
point to make that if there isn't something like that, then the anxieties that
YOU were talking about, the levers that there are available, will be sharply
diminished.
HESELTINE: Well, whatever we announce, or the
Chancellor will announce, I will do my best to argue and support it.
DIMBLEBY: Industry are saying - you've heard some
of the people in the film there saying - "In these circumstances, if not more
generally, give us a break Guv". Specifically, give us a tax break for
investment, capital investment, investment in research and development. That's
a powerful plea is it not?
HESELTINE: Yes, it is a powerful plea. They
perhaps have not fully taken into account that we've given them a huge break in
the language you use in bringing Corporation Tax down from over fifty per cent
to just over thirty per cent. A huge reduction in the burden of taxation for
the trading economy. But, of course, when you get into recession people look
round and say what more can somebody else do to help me, and they look and
quite obviously they say well, we want some more tax concessions. But again, I
mean we're trespassing on the Chancellor's prerogative.
DIMBLEBY: But you're not unsympathetic to their
plea, as they are bound to say.
HESELTINE: I have to take a judgement in the light
of what the Chancellor puts to us about the various ways in which money can be
used, and of course, I'm fully aware that you can forego revenue from taxes.
But that means you've got less revenue and there are consequences then on
other things that you might have to decide.
DIMBLEBY: Okay, they will note that and they'll be
waiting eagerly to see whether the Chancellor is..recognises that their plea -
you said it was a plea that it was a valid plea, or words to that effect.
HESELTINE: Oh, no, it is - I can understand why
they do it. That doesn't mean to say it's the right judgement for Government
to make.
DIMBLEBY: On industrial policy itself, we come to
- that's the broad economic framework, the potential for action that there is
and there isn't. You have a role. Now you aroused great expectations when
you came in - "Hezzle's coming" people said. Now they're feeling a bit let
down. Can you reassure them that you are the new broom that they want you to
be?
HESELTINE; Well, if I can sort of plead in aid
(sic) the experiences of urban policy, I think I can claim some credit for
having moved significantly the urban policy of the Government in the Eighties.
When I became responsible for it in 1979, it was one sort of policy. When I
left in '83 it was a quite different sort of policy, on the ground virtually
nothing had happened. That is a time-scale in which changed policies,
investment decisions, actually take. By the end of the decade, there was no
comparison between the programmes then and the programmes at the beginning, and
it has been the subject of much interest on a world-wide basis - what we did
about urban policy in the Eighties.
Now, I say that, because I have never
believed that there was a short-term fairy-godmother gimmicky policy which
would enable the President of the Board of Trade, or any other Government
frankly, to transform the atmosphere in which the trading economy operates.
There are things that the Chancellor can do about tax rates and all of that,
and there's been a major change in the 1980's in that direction. But in terms
of the sort of, what I believe in as an industrial strategy, you're in the
business of long-term changes, and it's a delusion to pretend that it is
anything other than that that is on offer.
DIMBLEBY: But do you still believe and articulate
with the same ferocity as you used to that, given the restraints, the DTI has a
key role to play in helping make British industry, British manufacturing
industry, more important - and is that top of your agenda?
HESELTINE: Yes. I believe it, I've always believed
it. Every other Government practices it and the hope I have is that I stay
there long enough to put it into place.
DIMBLEBY: And this is a new partnership. When
you talk about a new partnership, you know, not to beat about the bush..we
know, everyone knows that your predecessors there wanted to empty the in-tray -
they said so publicly. You don't want to empty in-trays.
HESELTINE: Now, look, I mean, the thing is we
discuss these things in headlines, you know - intervention, non-intervention,
whatever it may be.
DIMBLEBY: I know you hate headlines.
HESELTINE: Well, I don't create headlines I have to
say. You might say I do, but I don't make them, I don't write the things
anyway, and they are often grossly misleading.
The fact of the matter is, I mean, just
your programme - it's said that there's been this dramatic slash in the budget
of the DTI. Well, that's true. Do you know why? Because we no longer have
loss-making nationalised industries, and I think it's something in the region
of over three billion pounds a year which, when we became the Government, was
showing as money in the DTI had gone, and so the budget has come down. But
that's a positive benefit to the economy.
DIMBLEBY: You say it's a positive benefit to the
economy, but you are saying, making it clear, that you don't want more money.
You've intimated that you're perfectly prepared to have less money in your
Department - a very unusual um, position for a, for a spending Minister to
take. Now, if industrialists were to be enthused, they would want to hear you
saying - I'd like more to spend; I'd like to have, relatively speaking, the
same kind of money that the Germans have.
HESELTINE: No, not the sort of industrialists that
I talk to. Of course, there are lots of people who say I have a problem, I
would like some Government money, I want to invent this, I want to develop
that, I want some Government money - there are those people, and you'll also
find where we do help such people, they say you don't help us fast enough, and
those who don't get the money say you didn't help us at all. So you'll get all
that wherever you draw the frontiers of public/private expenditure. You'll get
people on the fringe saying the Government got it wrong . But that is not
the..that's not the issue that preoccupies me. The companies in this country
that are world class - I speak to their Chairmen and their export managers and
their directors all the time - but what do they say to me - "we don't want any
money, what we want is your support where it matters."
DIMBLEBY: But what about the companies that are
not yet world class. One of the people in the film was talking about picking
proven winners and ..
HESELTINE: Yes. And what he then said, and what he
then said we don't want to go back to the 1970's, when what he wasn't asked:how
are you going to choose, in his language, winners unless the civil servants do
it and if the civil servants do it how are they going to do it better now than
they did it in the '70s.
DIMBLEBY: Well, let me put another question back
to you then. The Germans who proportionately as a .. as part of their public
spending, spend six times as much in directly that fashion - do they know how
to do it and we don't?
HESELTINE: No, you see this is the, when you get
into these figures you have to look to see where the money is being spent and
in which programmes. What you'll find for example, is that we have a major
defence industries capability, larger than the Germans, and we've put a huge
amount of money into supporting that industry. So there is Government support,
there are Government schemes but it's wrong to see this as the panacea. So
easily people....
DIMBLBY: Ok then, let's go back to your own
point. How do you do it, you answer your own question, how do you do it. You
are spending some money presumably on making those decisions, these are proven
likely winners, you're not doing lame duck rescues.
HESELTINE: No, no that is right. I mean that is a
very important distinction. We are not in the business of picking up companies
that are in trouble and giving them handouts and supporting them through their
loss.....
DIMBLEBY: If you can do it effectively, if you can
do it effectively as you're saying you do do it with the money you've got.
What on earth stops you saying I would like to have more because there must be
more companies out there that could benefit from it?
HESELTINE: Well if you have .. the obvious
constraints of public expenditure, you have the obvious questions you have to
ask about whether you want to put money on a bigger scale into a range of
programmes. I think it fair...
DIMBLEBY: But you've lain down first Michael.
You've lain down on the matters that I don't want any more money thank you.
HESELTINE: No, no that is not quite what I've said.
What I'm interested in doing within my Department frankly is getting much more
flexibility - it's the way I use the money. I'm not looking for increases in
the money. I've got a large programme. What I want to be able to do is to use
it more flexibly where I think it will actually help, as opposed to having a
range of small schemes across a whole frontier of activity. But the question
that seems to me important in these things, which again came up on your
programme. It's wrong to see the interface with industry as just through the
DTI. Much the largest interfaces that exist, as far as trade and industry are
concerned, are outside my department as indeed your programme pointed out.
The Chancellor is obviously critical
for the creation of the background. The Department of Education and Science is
absolutely, the educationalists, absolutely fundamental in providing the
quality of young people that industry requires. The ..William Waldegrave's
programmes in Research which we're now looking at comprehensively - very
important indeed and Gillian Shepherd's training programme is very important.
DIMBLEBY: Ok. Now just let me come back to this
central point about intervention in the way in which we've just been discussing
it. You're saying, if I've now got you correctly, yes I can intervene with
money and I do. What I actually do is pick winners, so you are in the trade
and you're just saying you're in that trade of picking winners and what you're
saying is - I'm actually quite a good picker of winners because I'm not going
to make the mistakes of the seventies.
HESELTINE: Well, the fruit of the fact is that all
through the Eighties schemes have existed in which specific decisions were
taken as to where public money should go. They're taken in the research field,
they're taken in the industrial support field, they're taken in the inward
investment field, they're taken in regional policy and all these things are
actually happening and so...
DIMBLEBY: So there's no change there, in that
process.
HESELTINE: Well, the fact of the matter is there
hasn't been a change except in scale, but the process of industry advising
civil servants, advising Ministers determining whether or when grants should be
give specific companies, in one degree or another has been consistently there.
What I'm not persuaded of is that that is where we should expand the public
sector interface with the private sector today. That doesn't mean to say I'm
trying to cut what I'm doing or anything of that sort but I have never believed
that what we should be doing is doubling or tripling that sort of activity.
DIMBLEBY: It's a little different from the where
there's a will Michael Heseltine in Opposition who was.. who was
banging on endlessly about the Government market power, the effect it can have
on the welfare of key British companies, let's not underestimate that.
HESELTINE: No, no I mean you showed the H101, the
helicopter well I.. my Department is hoping to finance that as and I was
actually the Minister that negotiated the launch aid for it. So of course
there is this range of activities (particularly in the aerospace field) where
we do play a critical role in helping the finance and development. The airbus,
for example, is a triumph for British industry, we have a role in supporting
that. So you have not got a black and white doctrinal position of no and yes.
you've got a whole range of different judgements being made and all I have
argued, in my book I argued - Don't let's suggest that this is something that
can be dealt with in a philosophical sense because no Government in the world
is dealing with it in a philosophical sense.
DIMBLEBY: In these very difficult circumstances,
industry's asking (a) that you spend more money, (b) that you - particularly in
the case of exports - that you encourage and help more with export credits.
Are you sympathetic to that?
HESELTINE: Yes.
DIMBLEBY: Would you like to see more of that?
HESELTINE: Yes.
DIMBLEBY: Can you do more of that?
HESELTINE: Yes.
DIMBLEBY: Are you intending to do more of that?
HESELTINE: Yes.
DIMBLEBY: How much more?
HESELTINE: I'll tell you when we tell you.
DIMBLEBY: But you're going to provide export
credits for.. for British industry to protect it from the dangers and risks
that it faces out there.
HESELTINE: To protect it I will induce - to enable
it to seize some of the opportunities. That undoubtedly is a priority. It's
very important to realise that we I think, I think if I remember correctly, we
have to write off seven hundred million pounds a year now for export credits
which went wrong in the past. It isn't a one-way street this thing.
DIMBLEBY: But you're going to get it right and
you're going to make them far more available than they are at the moment.
HESELTINE: You're pushing me. I have gone as far as
I intend to go.
DIMBLEBY: Well, that is, that is interesting and
some people - because people are never grateful - will say it's a bad time too
and..
HESELTINE: And others will say it's not enough,
that's absolutely right.
DIMBLEBY: Let me come to you, to the rhetoric.
That one thing aside (and you're not able to say and won't say how much it is)
that phrase, now a memorable phrase around your neck, of intervening before
breakfast, lunch, tea, dinner and all the rest of it.
HESELTINE: It's rather good don't you think?
DIMBLEBY: It's not a bad phrase, it's not a bad
phrase but I don't .. I'm not sure that it adds up to very much. It seems to me
that you rearrange the furniture inside the Department; you send out a few
search parties around the world to find out how the rest are doing; and you
have a lot of fireside chats with fellows who are like minded. That's hardly
intervention the way in which the people out there are longing for it.
HESELTINE: What a hundred more people from the
private sector helping us to boost exports.
DIMBLEBY: If you can get them.
HESELTINE: We'll get them.
DIMBLEBY: And what will they be doing?
HESELTINE: They will help boost exports because
they will come with the expertise that the private sector's got and they will
dramatically increase the scale of effort that my Department puts behind the
export drive.
DIMBLEBY: But would you recognise..
HESELTINE: That's just one thing and we could go on
to all sorts of other things ..
DIMBLEBY: But would you recognise in general what
people believed of you when you said "I am an interventionist" is not as
persuasive in the public mind as what people now think of Michael Heseltine
when we used the term intervention, namely..namely - just let me finish the
thought - namely, that intervention is seeking to close down thirty-one pits
and failing to do so. That the balance now is quite out of kilter.
HESELTINE: No, the truth is the word intervention
is the subject of a huge debate and enormous political reaction, knee jerk
reactions in many cases. It means all things to all people, quite different
things - there is no consistency interpretation. What I mean by intervention
is doing whatever I can to so order the priorities of Government as to help
British companies win, now that is not just about the DTI, that is about first
of all knowing what our competitors are doing, knowing where we're ahead,
knowing where we're behind and trying to work out how we change that.
It is about talking to my colleagues
generally across Government wherever they are interfacing with the wealth
creating sector, and to try and influence them in a way that will help the
wealth creating sector, and it is about talking to the wealth creating sector
about their problems, working out where we can help and the people that I talk
to (and there are a lot of them) and some say what you say but a very large
number of others,and some of the leaders of our biggest and best companies, say
what you're doing is absolutely right.
DIMBLEBY: And if the once imagined great super
M nistry of the DTI is in practice a bit of a shrimp, that doesn't matter?
HESELTINE: Well you come and have a look at it,
you'll find it isn't a shrimp.
DIMBLEBY: And you're not a lion tamed, albeit not
on the hearth rug yet?
HESELTINE: I love all these phrases. You know I
don't care about the phrases I have to tell you. I know that what we're doing
has to be done and I know that it will in the end prove right.
DIMBLEBY: President of the Board of Trade, thank
you.
HESELTINE: Thank you.
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