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ON THE RECORD
NORMAN FOWLER INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC-1 DATE: 06.11.94
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Sir Norman Fowler, so it's radicals
versus consolidators. Let's deal with a specific first, something that has
happened - Post Office, or rather has not happened, Post Office privatisation.
Is it over now?
SIR NORMAN FOWLER: No, I don't think it is over. It's
obviously a set back, and obviously people in the party, in the parliamentary
party, the vast majority I think, are disappointed, angry at the way the
decision has gone, but I don't think that's an end to the matter. I think that
this remains, and must remain, a policy of the party and of the government. I
can't predict when it can be put into effect, but what I do tell you, is that
it makes no sense to have the Post Office shackled by public sector controls,
there is absolutely no reason why the delivery of letters should in some way be
a function of the government and only government can do it is absurd. And so
we need to persist with that.
HUMPHRYS: In the next manifesto perhaps?
FOWLER: Well, if not before, but to be realistic
you're probably right about the next manifesto. But I personally would support
it at any stage. I do not think that it makes sense from the businesses point
of view. This is, I mean, this is the thing which no-one addressed, or too few
people addressed in this debate, it makes no sense from the Post Office's point
of view. Everyone talks, and one heard the Labour party talking about the
public, the Post Office, can have freedom withinside the public sector, it
can't have the freedom inside the public sector it would have in the private
sector, because if it was public money, there are going to have to be controls,
the ministers and civil servants are going to have to look at it, look over it,
going to have to interfere, because they're accountable for that public money.
HUMPHRYS: So extremely important from your point
of view, and the government's point of view that it should have happened, and
you were thrown off course by a bunch of back benchers, a small group of
backbenchers.
FOWLER: We were, and that is regrettably the
name of the game when you only have an overall majority of fourteen or fifteen,
and there I think are lessons for the party on this, and on other issues as
well. I heard what Norman Lamont said. Well, I very much hope that when it
comes to other issues Norman Lamont will also take the view that it is the
majority of the Conservative party that should have the final say in these
issues. I regret very much that in this issue the majority of the Conservative
party did not have the final say.
HUMPHRYS: So you'd agree with him, would you, when
he talked about, what was that phrase - "flotsam and bobtails", who should have
their heels held to the fire, should have had their heels held to the fire by
the Whips?
FOWLER: Well, I'm not going to go into the
descriptions, it strikes me as slightly confused description of the position,
but what I would say is that the minority who have temporarily defeated us at
this point, I don't think they represent the bulk of the Conservative party in
parliament itself.
HUMPHRYS: Well, why weren't they put to the test
then, why didn't ... there wasn't even a White Paper, you abandoned the fight
at a terribly early stage, and if you'd actually gone to a vote on it, the odds
are, isn't it, that they'd have backed down, so why didn't Mr Major fight for
this?
FOWLER: Well, I think you've got to come to a
political judgement. I mean we're sitting here, we've had to abandon this
particular policy before the Queen's speech. I think if I were sitting here in
nine months time, and we had been defeated on the issue itself, then you really
would be far more critical of the government at that stage. Why did the
government go ahead when all the signs were that they were going to be
defeated? The government have got to make a decision on the facts of the case
in front of them. The cabinet have got to decide whether they can get it
through. And can I say one thing? It always seems to me that there is this
marvellous black and white division ... which is ... and painting ... which is
painted between the Major years and the Thatcher years, as if in Margaret
Thatcher's time we didn't show caution as well. Let me give you one example.
The Dock Labour Scheme which I abolished in 1989, that was about fifteen years
after we said that we were thinking of abolishing it and after the party
opinion was in favour of it ... you've always in these things got to have
regard to the political reality in that, and that's what the cabinet did.
HUMPHRYS: Well let me give you two examples where
you faced up to the rebels and beat them in the end, with very little
concessions, and that was coal, shutting down the mines, and it was also rail.
Great problems in the face of it, confronting you, but you faced up to the
rebels and won.
FOWLER: I think that the party, the business
managers, the cabinet, have got to make a decision on the facts in front of
them. I don't know what the facts were that were presented by the Whips to
them. I know certainly that the Whips were doing their sums, they're extremely
good, Richard Rider's an extremely able Chief Whip. If the Chief Whip comes to
you, and the Whips come to you, and say 'look we don't think we can get this
through', then I think frankly a Cabinet or the Prime Minister would be very
unwise to go against that and try to double guess it. There was a long debate
on it, and we decided, or the Cabinet decided, that it couldn't get it through.
I don't think the anger should be directed at the Whips, I don't think the
anger should be directed at the Cabinet, I don't the anger should be directed
at the Prime Minister, I think the anger should be directed at that small
minority who didn't represent the party, who forced us to change policy.
HUMPHRYS: So here's an important matter of
principle that was lost, and yet you say it was handled well?
FOWLER: Well, I think it was handled in the only
way it could have been handled. You say lost - I don't think it has been lost
permanently. It has certainly been lost as far as this legislative, this
Queen's speech is concerned, but anyone who's been round the Cabinet table,
knows perfectly well that when you come to a Queen's speech, that some of your
measures sometimes get through for one year, and some don't get through.
There's no reason why we can't fight on this again. And I repeat the point -
that I think that anyone who thinks this is an end to the matter should think
again, because I think one of the interesting facts of this, and one of the
interesting results of what has taken place is that is had made the centre of
the Conservative party I think much more determined, and really rather angry at
what's taken place.
HUMPHRYS: Well, let's look at the Queen's speech
then. Michael Heseltine says there's going to be a lot of good tough radical
stuff in it, notwithstanding the loss of the Royal Mail. Do you think that's
right?
FOWLER: Yes, I mean I have no more knowledge
than you do of what are the contents of the ...
HUMPHRYS: No, but do you think it's right that it
ought to be, that the radical approach ought to be continued?
FOWLER: Oh, indeed I do, indeed I do. I don't
think that there's anything, I don't believe that governments can stand still.
I think this idea that government can simply sit back and consolidate on past
successes, I think that that is not remotely the case. I think that one of the
troubles, and again it goes back to the Post Office, that one of the troubles
has been, that we have in some ways become defensive on the privatisation
issue. We shouldn't be defensive on the privatisation issue. Privatisation
has been a great success, you can see it by the fact that governments from all
over the world come here to see how it's done.
HUMPHRYS: There will be more of it?
FOWLER: There should be more of it, but above
all we should not be defensive but trumpet what we have achieved by it, because
what we have achieved by it, it's not only justly returns for the taxpayer and
therefore for the public services that we're talking about, but we've also
achieved great successes in management itself. Go and ask the people who
actually work in the nationalised industries, go...(in the previous
nationalised industries), go and ask the people who were the managers and are
now the managers in the private sector. I don't know of any kind of great move
to go back into the public sector. People, managers of these industries are
not kind of walking up and down Whitehall saying 'please let us come back into
the public sector'.
HUMPHRYS: So privatise what, air traffic control
for instance?
FOWLER: Well, I think there's a very good case
for that, yes, I think there is a good case for that. I think you should look
at all these functions.
HUMPHRYS: London Underground?
FOWLER: I think you should look at all the
functions. I'm not going to cherry pick ...
HUMPHRYS: But I thought if I gave you a few it
would help you to ...
FOWLER: Well, London Underground it seems to me
that you could actually in fact ... those are all areas that you could. The
question that you have to ask is 'is there any over-riding reason why the
government, why the state, should be actually running these services?' If
there is, then okay, we can accept that. It's clear there are going to be
divisions on that. But when it comes to an industry, when it comes to a
company in the industrial environment, the natural place in my view for that is
in the private sector, and I tell you, when I was Minister of Transport, I
obviously did a number of privatisations of my own. We did some of the first.
But what I do remember also is that when we had to operate with the public
sector operators themselves, with British Rail, I don't think it's great fun
for the managers of these public sector operations, to be peered over by civil
servants and by ministers.
HUMPHRYS: Right, but privatisation isn't enough to
prove radical credentials is it. You've got to go that much further, you've
got to have a vision, haven't you, and the real Tory vision is that individuals
must increasingly take responsibility for their own lives.
FOWLER: That is one vision. I mean my vision...
HUMPHRYS: An important vision?
FOWLER: That is an imporant vision. My vision
of the Tory party is a vision of, I think it was what RAB Butler said years
ago, of private enterprise, but without selfishness. And basically what that
means is the kind of privatisation and private sector policies that we've been
talking about, but then we have to go to the other side, and say those policies
should be set out without selfishness, meaning that there must be policies
which protect the ... those people in need in our societies. It's, I think,
one of the most interesting debates that we should now be having, is a debate
on the welfare state, and how far the welfare state should go.
HUMPHRYS: Could I come to that in just a moment,
but look at a few specifics first of where you might pursue this radical
agenda. Let's have a look at for instance, education. You heard somebody in
our film there saying we should encourage parents if they can afford it, and
all the rest of it, to opt for private education, we should encourage that.
Would you encourage that?
FOWLER: Well I wouldn't encourage it any more
than it's done at the moment.
HUMPHRYS: You wouldn't give them tax concessions?
FOWLER: No. I wouldn't give them tax
concessions. I think that the options are there for education, I think that
education we have carried out a whole series of changes. I think that
conceivably when the Prime Minister was talking in his Party Conference speech
about not change for change's sake or apparent change for change's sake, I
mean, education was one of those areas where we appear to have had an awful lot
of changes - perhaps piecemeal, I'm not making a criticism of that but I mean
that appears to be what has happened. I think probably that is an area where a
certain amount of catching up needs to be done, a certain amount of stability.
HUMPHRYS: And what about health - another radical
suggestion on health would be to encourage people to take out private health
insurance.
FOWLER: Again, I think that the position with
health - and I had dealt with health for six years - is that you should have a
very good National Health Service, that no one should be in fear of not getting
medical care because of lack of income, but if people wish to and want to take
out private sector health insurance then that should be absolutely their right.
HUMPHRYS: Their right, but would you encourage
them? Would you give them tax concessions? More than there are at the moment.
FOWLER: Well there are tax concessions but I
certainly wouldn't go beyond that but what I also wouldn't do is, as I think
Labour seeks to do, is to say that there is something wrong, there is something
immoral about that. I think the whole idea must be that there is going to be
so much demand for medical care that it is the private sector, it is the public
sector, it is the voluntary sector, together, which can do it. We need
partnership as far as that is concerned. But the private sector is a very
important part of that.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Let's move now then to what you
volunteered originally in this list and that's social security. In a sense,
perhaps the litmus test of Tory radicalism - the Welfare State. You would of
course accept that there must be a safety net for the most disadvantaged but
otherwise, the kind of changes you have in mind?
FOWLER: Well I think the fascinating thing there
is if you look at Gordon Bowyers (phon) commission - the Labour Party's
commission on social security, are the unmistakable signs that Labour is moving
our way on this. When I set out our social security review in the ... three
quarters the way through the 1980s, 1985/86, what I said then was that we
should target our help upon those people who need it. Now you now look at
Gordon Bowyers proposals, what do you see? You find on child benefit he wishes
to tax it for the higher tax earners - in other words target on those people
who need it, not on those who don't. And on pensions the most significant
policy change which has taken place, if we weren't absolutely besotted by all
these other issues we might have actually spent a little time debating it in
the past month or so - the fact that he's moved away from the earning's pledge,
the old pledge of the Labour Party: 'We'll upweight the basic pension by
earnings," - their flagship policy. That's been abandoned.
HUMPHRYS: Right, so what would you do then? You
wouldn't target child benefit to the extent that only the poor would get it,
would you?
FOWLER: I would not, certainly wouldn't run away
from doing that. I would certainly not run away from doing that. I think that
that now has become an entirely sensible policy objective. But what I would do
is I would do what I have always advocated and that is that really what we
should be doing in terms of pensions is to improve the position of those on
basic pensions - people who have got no other pension but the basic pension and
there should be a pension credit for them. They should be brought up to a
standard because they have not had the benefit of occupational pensions, and
then what I would want to do is to move more and more from the second pension
into the occupational private pensions so that there would be - for everyonee -
you should have a second pension which would be in the private sector.
HUMPHRYS: But the truly radical thing to do in
this respect is to allow the state pension for those who have their own
pensions to wither on the vine.
FOWLER: Well, I don't know what you mean by
'wither on the vine' the basic state pension, it was one of the points which
was made in the film, I mean I would love it to have been an insurance based
scheme, but it isn't an insurance based scheme it's a pay-as-you-go scheme. In
other words, you and I are paying for the obligations which come out of the
pension system at the moment on the promise that we will be paid for when our
time comes. It would be lovely to go to an insurance scheme but that isn't the
case.
HUMPHRYS: So let's look at some truly radical bits
and pieces here then. Not bits and pieces, fundamentals - abolishing SERPS.
FOWLER: Yes, well I've always been in favour of
that. That has always been my view. I mean I have always set that out. In my
view it was a great pity we weren't able to do that in the 1980s. There were
problems, I obviously understand that there were problems but I think that the
basic, the idea should be that the Government should look after - and look
after more generously, let me say - those people who have to rely on a basic
pension and that the second pension should be in the private sector and not in
the public sector and I think SERPS goes in between the two. One of the most
fascinating things we did in the SERPS review, we actually asked people who had
the state earnings related pension scheme, about it. Half the public who had
it didn't actually know that they were members of SERPS so I don't think one
can really say that there was a kind of fondness, a kind of love of this
particular scheme itself. What it also showed our review was that there was a
love of having people having their own pension, their own occupational pension,
their own personal pension, their own private pension. So that's the way I
think we should be going.
HUMPHRYS: What about private unemployment
insurance?
FOWLER: Well I think that the state, I think
that the Government does obviously have a responsibility as far as unemployment
is concerned. We have made some changes as far as the unemployment allowance
is concerned. I mean, if people are able to insure against unemployment and,
you know, many of the mortgages and things of that sort require that to take
place, but I think that the idea that there should be, if you like, a six month
- or it is twelve months at the moment, six months as it is likely to be -
state backing as far as unemployment is concerned, I think that that is
perfectly sensible.
HUMPHRYS: What I'm really getting at is the point
that Edward Lea (phon) made in that film is that nobody...he wants to look at
social security on a kind of actuarial basis. Nobody gets more out of it than
they put into it.
FOWLER: Yes he does. But the thing that Edward,
I think, is missing is that if we were starting from here that would be fine
but we can't look on it in an actuarial basis in quite that way because it
isn't an insurance scheme. This is the whole trouble. If we had followed
Beveridge's (phon) view after the war we would have introduced an insurance
scheme. It was a great tragedy that we didn't but we couldn't wait. So what
we've got is a pay as you go scheme. Now having a pay as you go scheme and an
insurance scheme on top of each other at the same time does mean double
premiums for everybody and that is the problem.
HUMPHRYS: Many people say that a lot of what you
said here makes a good deal of sense and you're in tune with many people in
your party but it isn't a radical agenda, is it? It isn't truly radical. It's
a kind of fag end of Thatcherism. Lots more privatisation, a few bits and
pieces here and a good deal of consolidation. That's not radical.
FOWLER: Well I think it is radical in fact. I
think that if you actually change the whole social security system, I think if
you continue with privatisation, I think if you continue with the whole range
of the other policies, that is a radical agenda. But if you are telling me
that over the last fifteen years we have slain some of the dragons, yes that's
true. We have slain, for example, the dragon of union power after a great deal
of trouble.
HUMPHRYS: Yes but that's been done.
FOWLER: It has been done but there's no point
therefore in going back to it and saying, you know, revisiting that
particular...
HUMPHRYS: No but what I've been doing is offering
you various things where you could adopt a truly radical agenda and for the
most part you've been saying: "Well, no, no, because that is too radical," and
the fact is even if you wanted to do it you couldn't do it because you are not
in step with the country then and this is the problem that you face.
FOWLER: Well I think that you are wrong then. I
think that there is always going to be a debate upon the individual measures
that there are and I think that really what you would...I think that it would
be a mistake to believe that some of the views which perhaps put it to the
extreme represent the absolute radical pretentions and ambitions of the party
itself. I would claim that the kind of policies that I set out are radical and
they certainly would not be policies, I suspect, which would actually have all
the wholehearted consent of all the people who appeared on your programme.
HUMPHRYS: So yours is a kind of consolidating
radicalism - if you will forgive the expression.
FOWLER: No. Mine is a sensible radicalism. And
I think that's what the Tory Party is about. Again, I come back to this point,
John.
HUMPHRYS: But the Tory Party isn't about that is
it?
FOWLER: It is exactly about that. It's exactly
about that. I come back to this point. You paint the Tory Party - not you,
but people generally - paint the Tory Party over the last thirteen/fourteen
years under Margaret Thatcher, as if we took on every dragon as it came up and
we actually went into it. We did not do that. We took it politically. You've
got to have political commonsense in these matters and in these issues and
Margaret Thatcher was extremely cautious. Again, I go back to the Dock Labour
Scheme (phon). Nigel Lawson and I didn't actually believe up until the last
moment we were going to get permission to actually go forward with that policy.
HUMPHRYS: But political commonsense means you've
got to look at the support you got for your programme and what that tells you.
Look at the strength of the '92 group in Parliament. They're the people - many
of them - in tune with the 'no turning back' policies. Now you can't embrace
those policies on the one hand because the Government doesn't want you to
because the country doesn't want you to and yet they want this radical approach
and that's why the Government's kind of run up against the buffers.
FOWLER: No I don't think it is. I think the
reason the Government has run up against the buffers, as you put it, in the
last few days, is simply the result and the inevitable result of actually
having a small majority. The fact is that when...
HUMPHRYS: But you've got stuff through with small
majorities in the past. You''ve pushed it through - very small majorities.
FOWLER: Yes but when I was Party Chairman we had
some very near runs, I mean, you remember the European debate we had to have a
vote of confidence on that ... and we won it by about three or four in the end.
That is living extremely dangerously.
HUMPHRYS: So you can't live dangerously any
longer, can you? That's the whole point. You've got to settle back now and...
FOWLER: You've got to make an assessment every
time but what you cannot do is you cannot constantly look backwards. You
cannot constantly look at the 1980s and say well it was all different then.
HUMPHRYS: No, no, I'm not doing that I'm looking
forward.
FOWLER: No, but people are and because in the
1980s and 1983, 1987 we had very big majorities. When I was Social Services
Secretary we had policies that we knew we would get through but we also knew
that that sort of majority, that sort of minority, that we were talking about
in the Post Office, would vote against it. It didn't matter then.
HUMPHRYS: But you can't live dangerously - to use
your own language - any longer. Therefore you've got to consolidate haven't
you?
FOWLER: You've got to ... no, no, no; you've got
to decide which issues - every time - you have got to decide which issues you
can win. I think it is a great tragedy that we weren't able to win this but I
don't think you should write the obituary of Post Office privatisation. We can
come back to Post Office privatisation, we can win that and we will do so
because all argument and the Post Office is on our side.
HUMPHRYS: Sir Norman Fowler, thank you very much.
FOWLER: Thank you.
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