................................................................................
ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 3.10.93
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good Afternoon and welcome to On The
Record.
John Mayor says he's beset by bastards,
and burdened by barmy backbenchers - some of them three apples short of a
picnic. But his critics say it's his government which is just one problem
short of a crisis. I'll be asking Douglas Hurd, the Foreign Secretary, what Mr
Major has to do to unite the party and regain the confidence of the voters.
Perhaps, a very considerably stirring speech to the Conservative Party
Conference this week would help. Can John Major deliver the goods? We have
some expert advice for him.
But first, the task facing John Major
and his government as they prepare for their annual conference in Blackpool.
They have less than a year to regain the confidence of the voters before the
council elections in May and the elections to the European Parliament in June.
If they do badly in those elections some senior Conservatives say Mr Major will
face a serious challenge to his leadership in November.
But the task of regaining popularity
will not be easy. The government must overcome some formidable obstacles.
There's VAT on fuel - the flaming Poll Tax, one backbencher called it. There
are still deep splits over Europe and how best to deal with the deficit.
There's the perception that the Government is failing to stem the rising tide
of crime - and above all perhaps, the question of the quality of John Major's
leadership. Michael Gove has been out in the grassroots listening to the Tory
faithful.
******
HUMPHRYS: Douglas Hurd, Kenneth Clarke said just a
couple of weeks ago, the government is in a dreadful hole. Do you agree?
DOUGLAS HURD MP: It's suffering from a political
resentment against government, against politics, against politicians, at a time
when the economic news is getting better, so we've got to get the political
feel in line with the economic improvement, that's our task.
HUMPHRYS: But you're still in a hole?.
HURD: We're still in a hole, a hole proved by
by-elections, by local elections, by public opinions, we're in a hole, we have
time and we now have the right circumstances, the right conditions to get
ourselves out of it.
HUMPHRYS: You say you have time, how much time?
HURD: We have time until the next general
election but of course one would like to be comfortable well before that. I
think we've been through of period of fever, of high temperature and some
people not least not in your own profession like that and they hate the feeling
that we're getting back to normal, when there's a government there are
problems, there's a government tackling problems. But that is the position
today, we've come out of the fever, there's no crisis today. We're back to the
business of government, getting the budget right, getting Europe right,
tackling the problems and that's the note which I'm sure will come out of
Blackpool this week.
HUMPHRYS: But you'd agree with George Gardener, in
that case, who said at the end of that film, time is not unlimited.
HURD: Well it's a little bit banal with
respect to George, time is never unlimited, I mean, there are watches, there
are clocks, it ticks. Time is never unlimited but we have time.
HUMPHRYS: I think perhaps the point he was making
is that you've got local elections coming up in six months time, you've got the
European Elections the month after that and if things don't start improving
before then, the government's in serious trouble. Mr Major, in particular, is
in trouble.
HURD: There are elections next year, there are
elections most years, there's nothing particularly dramatic about that. I
think in Germany they have twenty series of elections next year. We count
ourselves fortunate, but of course, we need to, we need to deal with the
feeling of political malaise. I find that almost everywhere in the Western
world, you have in America, you have it in Germany, you have it in France, and
we have it here. The discontent doesn't therefore play in favour of the
alternative government, no one is scampering to vote for the Labour Party. It
plays in favour of people like Ross Perot in America, like Paddy Ashdown here,
no one ever expects actually to be responsible for taking any decisions but who
are convenient receptacles for protest and that's what we have to deal with.
It's not easy to deal with, you don't deal with it, in my view, by great high
flown rhetoric, you deal with it by the effective tackling of the problems
which actually concern the citizen which are jobs, prices, to some extent
Europe, crime, the things we will be talking about at Blackpool.
HUMPHRYS: And the things we're going to be talking
about during this interview. But political malaise rather suggests that these
problems aren't of the government's making, they just come about, they somehow
emerge and people become disaffected with politics and politicians for reasons
other than your own actions.
HURD: To some extent that's true, I mean we've
had a period of great misfortunes compounded by some mistakes but as I say, I
find this... anyone can find this through most Western countries. There is a
feeling maybe because the great dangers of the Warsaw Pact, Communism, all
those tanks and armies, the dangers here of unbridled trade union power,
Scargill and so on, all the things we lived with say in the early seventies
when Ted Heath was Prime Minister, those huge dangers have been largely
removed. I think this does lead people to a certain feeling of lack of focus,
but we have to deal with that, just as President Clinton has to deal with it,
Chancellor Kohl has to deal with it. We have to deal with it, in a way it's
more difficult than if we were dealing with a really effective and threatening
alternative government which weren't not.
HUMPHRYS: Well perhaps not but John Smith had a
pretty good conference and we'll see what effect that has but let's have a look
at some of those problems.
HURD: I don't think he did, I think the
predominance of the trade union movement, seventy per cent of the vote in the
conference sponsoring every single member of the shadow Cabinet.....
HUMPHRYS: Coming down to fifty, the end of the
block vote, individual membership, but we don't really want to run that all
over again but let's have a look at the kinds of problems that you say you're
now going to.. and let's look first of all at the European Elections which are
coming. Now the Euro fanatic problems, the Euro-sceptics problems have not
gone away, they are still out there and they're still going to make life
difficult for you aren't they?
HURD: But what's the argument about now? The
argument we had is over.
HUMPHRYS: Well Maastricht is over.
HURD: Maastricht is over, exactly that.
HUMPHRYS: But Maastricht wasn't the end of the
process.
HURD: No. I believe that ninety per cent of
Conservatives agree with the line which the Prime Minister and I have been
taking, we don't believe in a centralised, integrated Europe, we believe the
original vision was an admirable one but to push it because it means that
France, Germany and Britain are never going to go to war again, that was the
idea of the community but that to push that to the stage where more and more
decision taking is taken in Brussels, more and more power goes to the centre,
we reject that. But ninety per cent of Conservatives agree with that. The
argument was an argument about whether the Treaty of Maastricht was compatible
with that or not. Well we shall I think soon that we were right. But I don't
want to rub that in. The argument is about the future and I believe that the..
ninety per cent of Conservatives agree with what we have been saying about the
future, with the points the Prime Minister insisted on at Maastricht and since
then.
HUMPHRYS: That still leaves ten per cent.
HURD: That still leaves ten per cent.
HUMPHRYS: And in a government with a majority of
seventeen, that's a pretty big figure and you're not able to say to Bill Cash
and company, Maastricht was the end of it, no further now because it wasn't the
end of it, there is a long way further to go.
HURD: I believe that the Community has reached
about the right balance and that subsidiarity which is in the Treaty for the
first time and which we can build on, will actually reassure, as it takes a
grip, those people who understandably feel there is too much regulation,
too much interference. It's true from Whitehall, it's true from Brussels. The
Treaty of Maastricht should enable us to deal with it.
HUMPHRYS: So the Europe we've got now is the
Europe we're going to have in ten years from now?
HURD: No, it will change, it will enlarge.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed...but'll it change.
HURD: It will enlarge, it will include new
members, well that's a considerable change.
HUMPHRYS: Yes, but it will change also in the
sense that more power will accrue to Brussels over the years.
HURD: There will be more work between
governments, this is the new factor in the Maastricht Treaty. For example, on
foreign policy which I deal with. We will now work out more in greater detail
those areas where by agreement of everybody, we act together. But agreement of
everybody without the commission being the people who have the sole right to
make proposals and without any jurisdiction of the European Court. That is the
part of the Maastricht formula, we can use that.
HUMPHRYS: But this is where your political
problems come in.
HURD: Why?
HUMPHRYS: Because the sniping will continue
throughout this process. Bill Cash and the rest of them aren't going to sit
back and say, oh you have your chats with Brussels and we'll sit here quietly
and let it go on. They're going to continue.
HURD: Yes, they will continue, some of them
will continue but I think as they see what the shape of Europe is going to be
is, as they see the arguments which we have been putting forward as the British
government, as we see them actually taking hold, taking, I believe, increasing
effect in the Community, then some of the nightmares will disappear.
Nightmares about the Queen, nightmares about citizenship, nightmares about a
single bank and a single currency, and as the nightmares disappear the
argument, the temperature is lowered and the argument becomes more racial. And
that is the whole point, I mean what we are getting onto now, we're getting
away from the crisis atmosphere there's nothing... there's no cause, no
subject, no focus, for a crisis. Getting back to what I would call.....
HUMPHRYS: Well that isn't how they see it.
HURD: Well some people love a crisis, a crisis
makes headlines, a crisis sells papers, a crisis sells books, and so some
people can't bear to get back to normal. The patient is out, the temperature
is going down, we're in that phase now and I hope that the conference at
Blackpool will show quite clearly, here is a government getting on with its job
in an effective way, crisis over.
HUMPHRYS: But the problem is that many people in
your party don't see it like that so the perception of disunity continues and
voters don't like seeing parties, particularly the Conservative Party
appearing to be disunited.
HURD: That's entirely true, so we have to
bring that phase to an end and I think we can because there is no subject,
there is no matter, there is no focus for that kind of disunity. There are
individual discontents for all kinds of motives, there'll be arguments about
this or that, fine, but it can ball be now at a more rational reasonable level.
HUMPHRYS So what are you saying to the
disaffected in the party then?
HURD: We're saying let's get on with the job.
Ministers will go to the platform at Blackpool and explain how they are going
to do their particular jobs and I hope and I believe from what I know, that
what they say will carry conviction and will gain support, i.e. back to normal
effective Conservative government.
HUMPHRYS: But if they continue to make trouble, if
they continue to express their concerns, let me put it politely, are you saying
to them, "Look stop it"?
HURD: Indeed we are saying that, in your own
self interest as well as ours, because as you said a couple of minutes ago, as
the Prime Minister said at our last party conference, what we can't afford is a
continual bickering. We are agreed, I don't know of any huge matter of
principle which now divides the Conservative Party. Well let that fact appear
and let - encourage ministers to get on with the job.
HUMPHRYS: Because otherwise?
HURD: Because obviously a divided party is a
party which remains in substantial difficulty, I mean, you know, you don't have
to pin me down on that, that's self-evident.
HUMPHYRS: You say there aren't any substantial
areas of difference between you now. Let's look at a few that many people
would say are serious problems for you, and one of them is VAT on domestic
fuel. The country doesn't want it, many members of your own party don't want
it.
HURD: Well an extension of taxation will never
be popular, but there are two facts here. One is that as Paddy Ashdown was
among the first to point out, it's odd that fuel is not taxed. It's taxed in
most countries and there are environmental reasons for doing it as most
countries and the Liberal Party acknowledge, but the second thing is we are
running a very big deficit, partly because of the recession, partly because
there are some budgets like the NHS and Social Security which seem to go
relentlessly upwards. We can't go on at that rate. Some of it will be dealt
with as the recovery gets hold, but we do need to make sure that the revenue is
adequate, and that's why Norman Lamont introduced that tax, delayed it for one
year, in order that it shouldn't impede recovery, so the case for it is very
strong.
HUMPHRYS: But you've hadn't......got it across
have you?
HURD: That may well be true. The difficulty
is in introducing it. The difficulty is in introducing it and making sure that
those we are most vulnerable to it are protected. That's what we intend to do.
HUMPHRYS: And the problem with the way you've
introduced it is that you've added to your difficulties haven't you, because
here we've had an almighty row for what, six months. There's going to be
another almighty row for another six months and not a penny has gone into the
Exchequer.
HURD: And that's because Norman Lamont I think
quite rightly felt that he had to show, had to prove that we were serious about
public spending and not allowing the deficit to soar out of control, so he had
to show that what he intended to do, but not introduce it at once, because that
might well have hit the recovery on the head, it might well have impeded the
recovery, so I think that was a perfectly sensible decision on timing which was
taken at that time, but it is not sensible, it really is not sensible to say on
the one hand you've got to be tough about the deficit, we can't borrow our way
to the extent that we are and then say "And we ask you to scrub the VAT on
fuel".
HUMPHRYS: Well, that's all very well.
HURD: You say one thing or the other, but you
can't say both.
HUMPHRYS: That's all very well, but the political
problems, the political turbulence continues doesn't it, during this period and
is going to get worse. I mean look at the row you're having at the moment.
What's going to happen when the tax is actually introduced and then a year
later is doubled?
HURD: I think we have to stick to this.
HUMPHRYS: Come what may?
HURD: You see again, again, again, there's the
difficulty. People say they don't like the tax, but then they say you've got
to show leadership. You've got to take the decisions in the national interest
and then stick to them. In this case I believe this is a necessary decision
which we have to hold to and that if we abandoned it then confidence that we
were capable of gripping the economic situation would begin to go down the
plughole. There are two things that then have to be done. One is to make the
case effectively as you've just said, and the second is to make sure that
people who can't afford the increases are protected from them.
HUMPHRYS: But you're not going to be able to
protect everybody from it, because you've not said there will be full
compensation for all those who need it, so you're just going to have to grit
your teeth and ride it out, if you'll forgive the mixed metaphor.
HURD: There are plenty of people who will pay
more, there are plenty of people who can afford to pay more.
HUMPHRYS: Plenty of people who can't afford to pay
more...
HURD: Yes indeed and they have to be
protected, but the price of fuel in real terms has been going downwards, that's
to say the prices of gas and electricity and so on have not been rising to the
same extent as other prices and so you know, it's not going to be a huge
imposition if you look at it against the background of what the fuels have
actually been costing.
HUMPHRYS: Crime - law and order. Do you accept -
you used the words earlier, "there isn't a crisis here". Don't you accept that
a lot people see the law and order situation in Britain today as being in a
crisis?
HURD: I don't think it's in a crisis, I think
it's bad, not merely ....
HUMPHRYS: ...to a lot of people...
HURD: .. not merely, yes, I know, but the word
crisis is grossly overused. There is - it's a bad situation, better than in
most countries, I mean much better than America, but still that's no
consolation.
HUMPHRYS: And in terms of many European countries
much worse.
HURD: No, no, let's get in it perspective. I
don't think there should ever be a time when a Conservative Home Secretary sits
back and says "We've done everything we can in this field". Of course it's
difficult because government doesn't make or prevent the making or criminals,
government usually comes in once the crime has been committed, but there should
never be a time when the Home Secretary says that we've done all we can. There
will always be extra things which need to be done, new-age travellers from
example, bail bandits, persistent juvenile offenders. As theese become clear
as problems, as particular problems they have to be dealt with, similarly the
police service, similarly the prison service. We need to be absolutely sure in
both cases that the millions that the public spends on these public services is
properly used to protect the citizen, so it's a scene, must be for a
Conservative government, a scene of constant looking for new and better ways of
dealing with it, precisely because it is a scene, a problem which weighs quite
rightly very heavily on the citizen, it's real in everyday life.
HUMPHRYS: We have seen crime in Britain double,
double in ten years. We've had a Tory Party in power for fourteen years. Why
do you think people should believe you when you say we are now doing something
about it?
HURD: Well, we have always been doing
something about it...
HUMPHRYS: Well, there ....
HURD: ...there are what seventeen..sixteen
thousand, seven hundred more police officers than there were. Many many more
prisons, a big increase, not only in the sentences available for crime but in
the sentences actually passed for rapists and so on. So there has been a huge
effort in this direction, but not sufficient.
HUMPHRYS: But it hasn't delivered the goods.
HURD: It has, I'm sure, delivered the goods in
the sense that it is preventing the increase being greater, but it hasn't
delivered the goods in terms of having arrested the increase, occasionally it's
looked as if it's slowed down to nothing.
HUMPHRYS: .....to double.
HURD: These are the...you're talking about the
reported crime figures?
HUMPHRYS: Indeed I am.
HURD: They're not, as everybody knows the
portrait of actual crime.
HUMPHRYS: No many people say they don't reflect
the full extent of it because most..many crimes nowadays simple aren't
reported.
HURD: Indeed, and never have been. But a
higher proportion are reported now than ever were before, of domestic crimes,
for example. In the old days they were things inside the family, nowadays they
get on to the police books. So one can't be hooked on the actual crime
figures, but nevertheless, the portrait of deterioration is correct, there are
more as family life deteriorates, there are more and more juvenile criminals.
As the influence of the parent and the teacher is reduced, and the influence of
the media increases that seems to come at the same time as an increase in the
number of juvenile criminals.
Government can't guarantee against that,
it has to cope with the consequences and do its best to prevent, and this is
what consistently over the years we've sought to do, but as I say, no Home
Secretary, no Conservative Home Secretary can be satisfied, he's always
looking, as Michael Howard is looking now, at ways of increasing prevention,
increasing deterrents and getting the Criminal Justice System, right, as
between the victim and the criminal.
HUMPHRYS: If government can't guarantee against
that, as you put it, isn't John Major taking a considerable political risk by
putting law and order as the centrepiece, making it the centrepiece of the
next legislative programme.
HURD: I believe that there are, as I've said,
certain areas where new measures are clearly needed, squatters, new age
travellers, bail bandits, that's to say people who commit crimes when they're
on bail. So this is not rhetoric, these are specific measures which Kenneth
Clarke, and now Michael Howard, have carried through and are preparing, and
I think it's perfectly reasonable in response to the reasonable public anxiety,
to say here are the next steps, here are the things which we are now going to
do.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, but....
HURD: I don't think there's anything rash or
difficult about that..
HUMPHRYS: No, no, but my point is that Mr. Major
cannot guarantee, to use your own words, he can't guarantee a political
dividend, can he, so his political problems are going to continue with it,
because people will say we want results and you're not going to be able to
deliver the results.
HURD: He can't guarantee there'll be no more
crime.
HUMPHRYS: Or that there'll be less crime.
HURD: He can't guarantee these things, because
they're not directly under the control of government, that's perfectly true.
There will be less crime when society changes, and when parents and teachers in
particular, feel able to exercise a more effective control over their children
and guide the children on the way they should grow up, and that surely is the
key. And that's not something that can be dictated by government. What
government can do though is show that it is awake, show that it is responsive,
show that it is dealing, taking those measures which it can do where there are
particular groups, particular types of crime, which have increased and can be
dealt with.
HUMPHRYS: Let's looks, fairly briefly if we may,
at one of the other difficulties that John Major is facing, and that is the
division in the party, between the taxers and the cutters, to put it very
crudely. Now that is a problem and again people see the party as being
disunited on that.
HURD: It's a problem but I'm glad you put it
that way, it's not a crisis, it's a Chancellor having to make a budget
judgement. Now this year for the first time, and not before time, we have the
spending and the taxing looked at at the same time, and announced at the same
time, and we have too big a deficit, the Chancellor has to see to what extent
the recovery is dealing with that, he then has to look at the problem that
remains, he has to look at the public spending, we've set ourselves a very
tough target because some public spending goes up inexorably by Act of
Parliament, some Social Security benefits have to be uprated, and therefore if
that is so and you're trying to keep to the target then other things have to be
cut. So those who want cuts are not going to be disappointed. But at the end
of the day he has to decide, well is this enough or is he going to have to
increase the revenue. Quite rightly, he and Michael Portillo are keeping their
options open on that, quite rightly, and no Conservative Chancellor can or
should be pinned down in advance on the Budget judgement.
HUMPHRYS: Brendan Bruce, former Tory Director of
Communications says, 'if John Major doesn't get it right, isn't seen to
be getting it right very quickly, by the European elections, the men in the
grey suits are going to come and get him'.
HURD: Well, that's, you know, that's what
communications gentlemen tend to say. I think that the Prime Minister is, has
exactly the right gifts for this particular phase. I mean I've seen him in
action. I suppose abroad as well as at home, and abroad more closely than most
people, and for actually mobilising decisions, getting decisions taken and
getting them through, I think he's unmatched and for this kind of phase, you're
coming out of crisis, into the kind of problems you and I have been discussing,
and trying to get firm, reasonable answers to them, I think he's right, I can't
think of anybody who would be better.
HUMPHRYS: This kind of phase, you say, that rather
implies that for another phase he wouldn't be the right man.
HURD: Well, we are where we are, we have the
Prime Minister we have and I believe he is apt, he is actually exactly
right for the task which we've got in the next two or three years. And I think
you see, this business about leadership, I think it's a phoney argument,
produced by people who love the atmosphere of crisis. There's no crisis about
Europe, there isn't really a crisis about taxes and spending. But we've got to
have a crisis, so let's have a leadership crisis, it's bogus, it's bogus.
HUMPHRYS: Is Lady Thatcher right when she says
there should be no challenge to the leader of the party when he is Prime
Minister?
HURD: I think she is right about the rules,
and I said so at the time.
HUMPHRYS: So there should be a rule change?
HURD: I think there should be a rule change, I
think there are two ways in which Conservative Prime Ministers should be
defeated. Either in Parliament, if that's the will of the House of Commons
openly expressed, or at the polls, and I remember vividly being with her in
Paris in 1990, on those days, and feeling then and saying then, this is not the
way in which the Prime Minister of this country should be changed. It is wrong
for Britain that it should happen in this way.
HUMPHRYS: And in a word, is that John Major's view?
HURD: I have no notion, but it's certainly my
view.
HUMPHRYS: Douglas Hurd, thank you very much.
HURD: Thank you.
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