................................................................................
ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 9.7.95
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. Michael Heseltine -
Deputy Prime Minister - the most powerful man in the government next to Mr.
Major himself. What will he do with that power. I'll be asking him On the
Record after the news read by Jennie Bond.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: It didn't
take long for Mr. Major to get his job back before everyone was concentrating
on the dog who didn't bark: Michael Heseltine, first secretary, Deputy Prime
Minister. Everything suggests that he will have enormous influence: his title,
his place in the party, the loyalty he showed to Mr. Baker, to Mr. Major and so
on. But how does he intend to use that influence? When I spoke to him in
Oxfordshire this morning I asked him whether he saw his new job as an
opportunity to influence a whole range of policies.
MICHAEL HESELTINE MP: Well in that an important part of my job
is to support the Prime Minister generally that must be true, but I think it's
very important to understand two things. First, that because of the
constitutional position of this job, one's authority is dependent entirely on
the support of the Prime Minister. Secondly, because of the constitutional
position of my colleagues as cabinet minister in charge of departments the only
way that I can exercise influence is through them and with their support. So
it is a job which, within the constitution of our country, does require that
particular understanding of the person who holds it, in this particular case
me, as to exactly where power lies within our way of working.
HUMPHRYS: Are you expecting that support?
HESELTINE: Yes I am and certainly I've been
immensely flattered really by the way in which the Prime Minister has offered
me this task but one of the things that influenced me is that ever since I've
known John Major I've had an excellent relationship with him. People don't
remember now but the first manifestation of that was when we built a fence
around Molesworth (phon.) in....
HUMPHRYS: Literally?
HESELTINE: In a night, in order to keep CND out of
the second nuclear base and John Major was in his constitutency so I worked
very closely with him then.
HUMPHRYS: You say we built a..you didn't get out
there with a hammer and nails and things?
HESELTINE: The Ministry of Defence were responsible
obviously.
HUMPHRYS: You and Mr Major there with your pick
axe and things.
HESELTINE: You may remember the flak jacket which..
HUMPHRYS: I remember the flak jacket.
HESELTINE: Which someone put on my shoulders when I
went to thank the people who had made it such an amazing achievement.
HUMPHRYS: So your colleagues who've been telling
the newspapers this morning that you are going to run rampant, I think is the
phrase that's being used in some of the papers - run rampant around
government, have got it wrong?
HESELTINE: No I think probably the press have got
it wrong, as usual, because I doubt if any colleagues have been saying that.
Particularly as they know how I work. If you take the model really, the
easiest model to understand, if there are models for these sort of things. I've
been responsible now for - I think nearly three years - for the competitiveness
agenda of government and that affects all departments, public and private
sector, and virtually every colleague. There's been no hint of dissent,
there's been no tensions between colleagues. I've been responsible for the
deregulation initiative, right across government, no troubles, no dissent
because I've always taken the view - two views, I think: first, that it's very
important in doing these trans-governmental jobs to work with colleagues and
secondly I have a self-denying ordinance that I never leak to the press.
HUMPHRYS: Let's look at some of the policies that
you may....or some of the issues that you may or may not be involved in.
Europe obviously hugely important, inter-governmental conference coming up,
Maastricht II as they say coming up in about a year from now. Do you think
Britain ought to be entering that conference, approaching that conference in a
spirit of give and take?
HESELTINE: As long as they give and we take yes.
HUMPHRYS: Literally?
HESELTINE: Well what's the point of being there?
You see people, why..what's the point of being in Europe, why are the member
states of Europe there? They're not there for each other, they're there for
themselves. It is British self-interest that has taken us into Europe and it
is only British self-interest that should keep us there. I wrote a book some
years ago called, "The Challenge of Europe - can Britain win?" I mean if you
think of the big players of Europe, for example take Chancellor Kohl. Do you
think Chancellor Kohl is there trying to sell out German interest, do you think
he'd get elected by the German people if he was? Do you think that President
Chirac has persuaded the French people that this is the time to lay down the
sovereignty of France. What you are in Europe for is to see how in partnership
with proud, independent nation states with long sophisticated histories,
whether in partnership we can do more together than any of us can do apart.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed and working towards a common
ideal and in that spirit you sometimes have to give a bit in order to create
the common whole.
HESELTINE: Well if you take the Single European Act
which Mrs Thatcher was responsible for, putting to the British parliament, of
course there was an understanding that if you want common rules across a common
market you had to exchange the national rules for those common rules. Now
that was giving a bit, but what did we gain? We gained the fact that we had a
very very large home market, we gained the fact that Britain was able to become
THE most attractive inward investment base of the countries that were seeking a
base in that market. We gained the opportunity to increase our trade to that
market very significantly. So all of these things were part of a concept
for Britain of enlarging our powerbase and if you look at what John Major has
done, he has said to the Europeans: "Look, your concepts of a corporatist
state dominated economy is not going to work. We want to privatise, we want to
de-regulate, we want to promote efficiency and competitiveness" and they're
moving that way.
Just take another example of this. Why
do you think that the Germans are so keen to see us adopt the Social Chapter in
this country which we've refused to do? It's not some great vision of a
greater Europe, it is because they've got a high on costs in their industry
which they can't get rid of because their unions would never allow it. So the
next best thing is to impose those on-costs onto us which we won't have.
HUMPHRYS: You seem to be taking a fairly tough
line on this. Does this mean that you would prefer to see the
inter-governmental conference break up or break down, rather than give in
certain areas.
HESELTINE: Well I would rather see it make
progress.
HUMPHRYS: Indeed, but given that that may be
difficult if Britain takes a pretty obdurate stand and says we won't give
anything here, here or here. You would prefer to see the whole thing come
apart rather than us make some concessions.
HESELTINE: Well one's experience with Europe is
that these things don't come apart. In the end one finds a way forward, that's
usually what has happened. Not always but usually what's happened. I mean we
did at one stage in Messina in the fifties, we walked out and then the
French and the Germans fixed the Common Agricultural policy to suit them and
when we evenutally joined we've been paying for it every since. So walking out
can be an expensive option, it's not the sensible way to try to influence the
future direction of Europe, it's not the sensible way to allow your major trade
competitors ie. France and Germany to set rules for a market in your absence.
It's not the sensible way. But that doesn't mean to say that you surrender
British interests. Now that's the real difference between the position of John
Major and the Conservatives and Tony Blair. Tony Blair would surrender to the
French and to the Germans essential British interests, he'd give in on the
Social Chapter, he'd give in for a minimum wage, powers back to the unions, you
can hear it all.
HUMPHRYS: So to go back to Messina, we would walk
out rather than see things develop in a way that we don't like.
HESELTINE: I think that to put that question and to
try to get me to suggest that that's what we would do is...
HUMPHRYS: Well I was following up your answer.
HESELTINE: Yes, but you know you are taking it a
stage further than any sensible...
HUMPHRYS: But that's the logic of it isn't it?
HESELTINE: You're taking it a step further than any
sensible politician would want to go because the essence is to try to win and
if you go to a conference saying: "If I don't win I walk out".
HUMPHRYS: Of course...
HESELTINE: You've lost all influence before you get
to the conference, and nobody wants to walk out. What we want to do is to make
Europe competitive. We think our way is the better way of any alternative.
The British economy today is leading Europe out of recession so we want them to
understand how we are doing that and to come in the direction which we're
pointing.
HUMPHRYS: But you're saying, quite clearly,
winning is more important than consensual, than agreeement.
HESELTINE: Winning is more important than an
agreement if an agreement is against our interests. That is how John Major
actually managed to get the opt out to the Social Chapter and of course to
Monetary Union.
HUMPHRYS: Well, I was going to turn to Monetary
Union, to the notion of a single currency. It's obvious that at the end of
the century, notwithstanding what was agreed at Maastricht most countries are
not going to be in a Single European Currency, at least that's the way it looks
at the moment. If in 1999 that turns out to be the case, would you be happy to
see Britain as the leader of those outside countries?
HESELTINE: Well I think you answer your own
question when you use the word 1999. I don't think there's any purpose in
trying to analyse today and take decisions today on something that may or may
not happen in 1999. My preoccupation is a much simpler one, I'm preoccupied
with what is bound to happen in 1996 or 1997 which is a General Election which
could bring a Labour Government to this country, which would actually surrender
essential British interests to the European powers.
HUMPHRYS: But can you countenance the idea that
Britain is the sort of leader de facto or whatever of this group of people who
are outside?
HESELTINE: Much more important is for Britain to be
the leader of a group of people inside.
HUMPHRYS: Ah.
HESELTINE: But that doesn't mean that you in any
way compromise the interests of Britain to be in that position.
HUMPHRYS: And you say that 1999 is too far away,
but you made up your mind a long time ago that a Single European Currency was
essential didn't you, you wrote: "no truly united market can exist without a
single currency.
HESELTINE: I certainly did say that if you are
dealing academically with the concept of a pure market you will have a whole
range of things, you will have a single currency, but I didn't say that that
means you will get there and indeed if I could remind you, you can't in any way
be expected to know this, I made a speech in Hamburg before Mrs Thatcher
resigned, proposing the opt out for Britain, and it was widely distributed, the
speech, long since forgotten I have to tell you, but I did make it.
HUMPHRYS: You're quite clear now though, that it's
more important, if I understand you correctly, it's more important that we be
inside leading from the inside...
HESELTINE: In a direction of our choice...
HUMPHRYS: In a direction of our choice, which may
or may not be a single European currency?
HESELTINE: Correct.
HUMPHRYS: And as far a referendum is concerned,
are you still as obdurate you were?
HESELTINE: I have always believed in the
sovereignty of parliament, and I've always found it difficult to believe that
you enhance the sovereignty of parliament by a referendum. I know that Harold
Wilson did it, but he did it because he couldn't unite his party. It was
nothing to do with the desire for consulting the people, it was simply a
political device, characteristic if I may say so, of the way that Harold Wilson
ran his government.
HUMPHRYS: So, in your new role as Deputy Prime
Minister, you would urge your counsel, Mr Major, if he were so inclined, and he
may well be so inclined, he's told us he may, not to think about a referendum
on a single European currency.
HESELTINE: Well, he's made his position quite
clear, and I've reinforced it.
HUMPHRYS: He's left it open.
HESELTINE: He's left it open, that's right and
therefore there will be a discussion and a decision, but there won't be one -
when did you say, 1999? If events make it possible? Can I just make a very
important point. There are huge issues, immediate issues, which confront this
country this side of a General Election. Public opinion, to the best of my
knowledge, puts Europe tenth, eleventh in its concerns?
HUMPHRYS: Yeah but you wouldn't.
HESELTINE: I would certainly put it in terms of the
political urgency of the matter. The IGC is next year, it may go on, the year
after that, who knows. So why are we so preoccupied by this particular issue,
which is not the one that the great British public are preoccupied by?
HUMPHRYS: Because the Prime Minister himself, and
many others have said, it's the single most important issue issue facing
Britain in the foreseeable future. There's nothing more important.
HESELTINE: In the future, but not this side of a
General Election. The issue that is facing Britain is how we enhance the
competitiveness of this nation in order to increase the wealth of this nation,
in order to meet the aspirations of the people of this country and whether we
do that with Tony Blair in No 10, or with John Major. Those are the issues.
HUMPHRYS: But just to be clear about your position
on this. If when it came to it, Mr Major was minded to think about or to put
to the Cabinet, at least the notion that there should be a referendum on a
single European currency, your advice, your strong advice, would be 'no, don't
do that'.
HESELTINE: If he puts it to the Cabinet in the
circumstances where we are discussing a single currency at the time, the
Cabinet will make up its mind. I will be a member of the Cabinet, and you've
asked me what my views are, and I have nothing to add or subtract to that.
HUMPHRYS: Let's look at some of the other issues
then, some of the sort of issues which you've said, will decide, probably,
which way the election goes in a couple of years' time, and taxation clearly is
one of them. There's a lot of talk about the need for tax cuts, clearly. Are
expectations, do you think, too high at the moment?
HESELTINE: There's a balance to be struck between
what the country can afford, and the understandable aspirations of a very large
number of people, to keep more of their own money. This government will be
centrally influenced by the proper management of the economy. I happen to
think that Ken Clarke is presiding over a very exciting economic recovery.
That doesn't mean to say it's yet got to the benefit of the people, I
understand the problems, but in terms of the economic recovery, Ken Clarke is
achieving a very remarkable development, and we have to stick with that. He
won't waiver, the Prime Minister wouldn't encourage him or want him to waiver
and so it will be what the nation can afford, and that will be against a
background of the proper development and maintenance of economic priorities.
HUMPHRYS: So should we therefore, in terms of that
balance, be redoubling, should you be redoubling your efforts to find ways of
cutting public spending, before tax cuts.
HESELTINE: Yes, certainly. Certainly.
HUMPHRYS: That is....that can be done.
HESELTINE: To reduce public borrowing.
HUMPHRYS: To reduce public borowing, not to afford
tax cuts?
HESELTINE: You are then in a position to make
judgements about what you do with the lever you've created, and that is for my
colleagues to discuss.
HUMPHRYS: So what's your priority then? To reduce
public borrowing, or to hand something back to the taxpayers?
HESELTINE: The option is opened up, if you have
made the reductions in public expenditure, I personally would be in favour of
finding ways of reducing public expenditure, I don't know any member of the
Cabinet who wouldn't, but you have got to balance that against the very
legitimate requirements if you take the very exciting opportunities that
Gillian Shephard has got, now I've laid emphasis on proper economic management,
every member of the government believes that, but if I had to move outside
proper economic management, I think my second priority would be education and
training, in terms of the overall competitiveness of the economy and I think
thast the announcement that the Prime Minister has made that he is going
to..has now put Gillian Shepherd in charge of through life education is a world
state of the art political concept.
HUMPHRYS: Cutting public borrowing isn't going to
win you an election in the way that tax cuts might.
HESELTINE: It is a step in the direction of being
able to make decisions about tax cuts.
HUMPHRYS: But there's a clear difference in
emphasis here isn't there.
HESELTINE: It would be wrong to suggest there is
any difference of approach on this matter, what the immediate priority is of
the Chancellor are to get down the levels of public expenditure as a
consequence of which he'll get down the level of public borrowing.
HUMPHRYS: Are the targets tight enough at the
moment?
HESELTINE: I believe that they are as tight as the
policy of the government demands, oh there's a fly.
HUMPHRYS: It has been buzzing around and getting
in the way...so you will be in there to go back to your role in all of this,
you will be in there battling for cuts in public spending.
HESELTINE: Certainly.
HUMPHRYS: Are they going to listen to you?
HESELTINE: As I shall be supporting the Prime
Minister and the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary that will be a pretty
formidable team, particularly as I don't know any colleague who is against what
we are trying to do.
HUMPHRYS: What about expectations that has been
raised, that have been raised on the part of home owners, who want some sort of
help, certainly many of the Conservative backbench MPs are desperately worried
about this, do you think there is anymore..anything that can be done, is there
anything more, anything that can be done to help them?
HESELTINE: Well this is a matter for the Chancellor
and his budget and you raise of course the critical point that anyone who is
dealing with government policy across the round (sic) has to recognise is that
it's colleagues who have Departmental responsibilities that make the
announcements and take the decisions, I'm there to help them and support them,
in no way am I going to try and pre-empt their options or in any way to set up
a sort of tension between the two of us.
HUMPHRYS: But housing crosses all sorts of
boundaries...
HESELTINE: Yes it does but the specific issues that
you are raising are essentially for the Chancellor.
HUMPHRYS: So where might you get involved then?
HESELTINE: Well I will get involved behind closed
doors in support of my colleagues, as I have, for example on the
competitiveness agenda.
HUMPHRYS: But you've always done that, I mean that
was in your old job...
HESELTINE: Oh yes yes but it..the principle is the
one that we are talking about, you will not find me divided from my colleagues
and you will certainly not hear of any discussions that have gone on between me
and my colleagues other than from them.
HUMPHRYS: Well then it begins to look a little
difficult doesn't it, to see quite where your influence is going to come...
(talking together)......
HESELTINE: No it's not difficult at all. You can
exercise in my view more influence if your colleagues trust you than if they
don't. The worst thing that could happen is that if colleagues felt that I was
there trying to steal the limelight, trying to undermine their position, trying
to make them do policy changes they don't want to do, all that would do would
be to close the doors of Whitehall and I've spent three years with the
competitiveness agenda, which covers all these fields, as you will well
appreciate on the competitiveness committee the Chancellor sits and other
colleagues sit there as well. There has been no problems at all of the sort
that you are raising with me simply because whatever decisions were taken, were
taken in private and the colleagues that were responsible for carrying them
through, sometimes they were...they listened to ideas that might have come from
other colleagues, sometimes even from myself, but there was never any attempt
to give an impression that someone had pushed a colleague or undermined a
colleague, that's not what we were doing, that's not the way the system can
work or should work.
HUMPHRYS: But it's quite hard to see your role, I
mean I take your point about working quietly behind the scenes but working
quietly behind the scenes doing what, if you are not seeking to influence
policy, you've got no direct departmental responsibility...
HESELTINE: John, you've missed the point.
Influencing policy behind closed doors and in private is very much a part of
the responsibilities that I have. What I am not in the business of doing is
letting down my colleagues and what I am really saying to you, to the question
can it be done, I've been doing it for three years.
HUMPHRYS: But you've been doing it with an obvious
job, I mean, everybody knew what Michael Heseltine did, it was quite clear the
President of Board of Trade, Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, in
charge of an important department, in charge of the competitiveness agenda.
HESELTINE: Yeah well I am still in charge of the
competitiveness agenda.
HUMPHRYS: Were you offered the Chancellor's job?
HESELTINE: No.
HUMPHRYS: The papers are reporting it this
morning as fact or some of the papers are reporting it as fact that you were
offered.....
HESELTINE: Do you know I am glad you asked that
question because it is one of the difficult things to know how to deal with
this issue. There is a three letter word to describe that story, Churchill
talked about it .... in a rather longer way of saying the same thing.
Can I just..I gave an on the record
account of what happened to all the Sunday newspapers on Friday. This wasn't
raised then, so somewhere a rumour has been started, one Sunday newspaper, the
Sunday Telegraph, talked to me yesterday and I told them that it was
categorically untrue, no other newspaper talked to me, I'm not saying they
didn't ask Whitehall or whatever it may be I don't know, no-one talked to me,
and yet today we see this all over the shop in the Sunday newspapers. There is
no truth in it at all.
HUMPHRYS: Somebody's stirring up trouble?
HESELTINE: Who knows. But what I find so
unacceptable because it's characteristic of what now is happening in Fleet
Street all the time, is that there's a sort of print it first, check it if
you've got time later, and the damage that that does in incalculable.
HUMPHRYS: They only print it because somebody
tells them.
HESELTINE: Well, there are only two people, or three
people I suppose who could know the truth of that story. Well, two in the case
of me, the Prime Minister and myself, because no-one else was present at these
conversations, and I can tell you there was never at any time any suggestion,
any hint, any thought, any wish to bring about that, and even - I could even go
further. First of all the relationship between the Prime Minister and the
Chancellor is extremely good, but my relationship with the Chancellor is
extremely good. We have worked immensely closely together, we agree about most
things we discuss, and I personally, if I may say this, if I had ever been in a
position to influence the matter which I wasn't because it didn't come up as a
conversation, I would have been appalled at the idea that Ken Clarke didn't go
on as Chancellor, but so I'm sure would the Prime Minister.
HUMPHRYS: The reason that you're sitting here this
morning as Deputy Prime Minister, and not perhaps Prime Minister in waiting is,
many say, that you recognise that you could not lead the Tory Party in the end,
because the party is so divided that you'd be leading a broken back party and
Mr Major's the only man who could have done that. Was that the calculation you
made?
HESELTINE: Well, you see this is another - we did
go into this at great length on Friday. These are the sort of issues that were
coming up, but the truth is much simpler, and you know it because you've tried
on the Today programme many times to elicit a different answer from me. I
told you I would never stand against John Major. I told you that probably two
years ago when the issue had first come up.
HUMPHRYS: I tell you what you said two years ago
was that you allowed the impression to be created wittingly or unwittingly that
if the circumstances were right you would still like to be Prime Minister.
There's nothing wrong in admitting that.
HESELTINE: No, no, no, I of course I have never
suggested that there was anything undesirable about being leader of the
Conservative Party, it's a hugely prestigious thing and important thing to do.
HUMPHRYS: And is that still your view?
HESELTINE: Of course it's my view, I have - nothing
would change my view that being Prime Minister of this country, being leader of
the Conservative Party is the highest honour that someone in my particular
party and in profession can achieve.
HUMPHRYS: And given the circumstances and I
emphasise..if I can just press this point to you directly...
HESELTINE: ...you've got to....I mean we've been
round this course so many times, I want to stick with the context in which you
raised it. I made it clear that I would never stand against John Major. There
was no qualification about that at all, and so when all this stuff started
coming up and all sorts of people asked about it, journalists asked about it,
colleagues in the House asked about it, friends asked about it, people wrote me
letters about it, they all got the same reply: I will not stand against the
Prime Minister. And so when we got closer to the event all that happened is
that I did what I said, nothing changed.
HUMPHRYS: Given the circumstances, and I emphasise
given the circumstances, would you still like to be Prime Minister? Well, it
was quite clear that at one stage you wanted to be, two years ago in this room
we discussed it in those terms. Are you now saying to me that this man,
Michael Heseltine, who's brought down one Prime Minister, perhaps created
another Prime Minister, has decided at this stage in his life: that's it now,
it's over.
HESELTINE: John Major won the election which I
contested some years ago. He was re-elected by an overwhelming majority of the
Conservative colleagues in the House of Commons the other day, that's the end
of the matter.
HUMPHRYS: Right so it's all over for Michael
Heseltine, potential Prime Minister, that's it?
HESELTINE: No, it certainly isn't all over for
Michael Heseltine, I'm Deputy Prime Minister...
HUMPHRYS: Potential Prime Minister.
HESELTINE: Deputy Prime Minister I am. That is a
great honour and one I intend to discharge to the best of my ability in support
of my colleagues and above all else in support of the Prime Minister.
HUMPHRYS: Michael Heseltine, thank you very much.
HESELTINE: Thank you very much.
...oooOOOooo...
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