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ON THE RECORD
WILLIAM HAGUE INTERVIEW
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 3.3.96
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Well, Mr Hague, your Party has six seats
out of thirty-eight, forty-one councillors out of more than two-thousand
one-hundred, and you are a Yorkshireman. Does that sound to you like a
legitimate basis for governing a country?
WILLIAM HAGUE: Well, Wales is part of the United
Kingdom, and Wales is governed as part of the United Kingdom, and it gains
hugely from being governed as part of the United Kingdom. I've never heard
Labour politicians after General Elections in the past when they haven't won a
majority of seats in England but have won a majority in the country as a whole,
saying, "Well of course we mustn't govern England because the Conservatives won
that, it's the United Kingdom"
HUMPHRYS: It looks bad in Wales doesn't it, that's
the point. You're secretary - you Secretary's of State act like pro-consuls
sent by the emperor in London to look the affairs of Wales, and decisions are
taken, seemingly at whim. You can do what you want to do.
HAGUE: What matters is whether it works - and
it does work...
HUMPHRYS: Is that all?
HAGUE: ....and we have seen other things
matter, but that is the thing that matters above all else, and we've seen over
the last ten years new businesses moving into Wales, Wales gaining more jobs
proportionately than almost any other parts of the United Kingdom, and that is
now creating a greatly improved situation where we have unemployment down to
the same level as the rest of the United Kingdom for the first time since the
twenties. Well that really counts and is worth doing.
HUMPHRYS: Maybe it is - no doubt it is, but to say
what matters is whether it works is hardly a democratic argument. Dictators
work., dictatorships work absolutely splendidly in some cases, but we don't
want a dictatorship here.
HAGUE: I don't think we've seen many cases of
dictatorships working very well, but what we have here is (interruption) the
United Kingdom working very well, and I am accountable to the House of Commons,
including to the Welsh members of the House of Commons. The proposals for an
assembly would take away from the House of Commons the right to question
ministers about how money is spent, by removing from Welsh and English MPs the
right to question how money is spent in Wales.
HUMPHRYS: As things stand you make those
decisions. You act lonely (sic), it is down to you to decide what you
want to do. If you want to do something, if you want to spend money or this or
that or the other, you say "We'll spend it then, that's that".
HAGUE: I am then accountable to the House of
Commons including to the Welsh members of the House of Commons, and of course
the true picture is a little more complicated than the one you suggest. You
saw me in the film announcing on Thursday changes to the powers of local
government in Wales which will give them a much great say over how four hundred
million pounds of public money is spent, so it is not a dictatorship. It is
not a single man ruling the roost. The various parts of government have to
work together and they do in Wales.
HUMPHRYS: What I'm saying is that to the Welsh it
looks abitrary. I mean let us take that example that we saw in that film
there, the Countryside Council for Wales. Now one of the Secretaries of State,
David Hunt, rather liked it and they got plenty of money. The next one, John
Redwood, didn't like it. He took lots of money away. You liked it so you gave
it back to them. Well if that isn't arbitrary I don't know what is. The
pro-consul says, "You may now have it - here you are chaps, it's alright, I've
decided", but where's the democratic accountability in that?
HAGUE: It's a long way from a representative
example.
HUMPHRYS: Well, it's not a bad example.
HAGUE: You could equally have looked at fifty
areas where policy has had remarkable continuity.
HUMPHRYS: But you can't dispute that specific
example, that is precisely what happens.
HAGUE: What John Redwood was saying on the film
was that he was taking the overheads out of the Countryside Council for Wales.
HUMPHRYS: That's even worse. He's telling them
how to run their business.
HAGUE: What I have been able to do is give
money back in order to pursue wildlife and other environmental projects.
HUMPHRYS: Because you think it's important.
HAGUE: .. without increasing the overheads
again, so actually those approaches have not worked together in the conflicting
way that is suggested.
HUMPHRYS: But you did it because you think it's
important. You may or may not be right - we're not here to judge you on that,
we don't have the evidence to judge you on that, but you did it because you
thought it was important. John Redwood did what he did because he thought it
was important. The pro-consul takes the decision and hands down the decree and
it shall be done! That's what happens.
HAGUE: If only things were that simple. The
Secretary of State has to take ..
HUMPHRYS: Well it looks pretty simple, those three
changes in policy in three years.
HAGUE: The Secretary of State has to account to
Parliament for the decisions that he takes...
HUMPHRYS: After you've done it, after you've done
it.
HAGUE: ...and he has to answer to Parliament,
and Parliament can either give him a ticking off or question him in an
extremely hostile way, or tell him to do something different.
HUMPHRYS: But if the Welsh MPs....
HAGUE: ..and so democracy is at work.
HUMPHRYS: But if the Welsh MPs don't like it,
they're in a tiny, tiny, tiny minority at Westminster, so you're answerable to
the entire Westminster Parliament for running the affairs of Wales the way you
think fit.
HAGUE: Wales is proportionately
over-represented in the Parliament of the United Kingdom...
HUMPHRYS: It's not the point...
HAGUE: ....because it is, and this is the
point, because Wales is a small part of the United Kingdom as a whole, it has
more MPs than it would have on a proportionate basis. It has a Secretary of
State who sits in the Cabinet, it has a lot of clout at the centre of
government. Now is that going to survive setting up an assembly where English
MPs would no longer be able to vote on the Welsh matters, Welsh MPs would still
be able to vote on English matters. People are then going to say after a few
years, why do we have a Secretary of State, why is Wales over-represented in
the United Kingdom. And Wales would lose the influence that it now has at the
centre of the United Kingdom.
HUMPHRYS We had a great discussion about that
with the Shadow Secretary a few weeks ago on this programme. What we're
talking about at the moment is the way it works under this present system, and
you acknowledge, you have acknowledged by your actions that there is a
perceived problem of legitimacy else why would you try to make the Welsh Grand
Committee look as though it has rather more power than in fact it has, which is
none.
HAGUE: No, I'm not trying to make it look as if
it has more, I'm trying to improve the way in which it holds ministers to
account. People want to see the Government held to account, I'm increasing
the number of occasions on which I have to answer questions to Welsh MPs,
increasing their ability to raise matters in the House of Commons by
introducing new types of debates into the Grand Committee. I'm not pretending
to give it more power, I'm neither pretending nor intending to give to the
Grand Committee or to local government the scale of power which the Labour
Party propose to give to a Welsh assembly, because I think that would be
fundamentally damaging to the United Kingdom and damaging to the interests of
Wales.
HUMPHRYS: Well, as you say you're not giving it
more powers, it's nothing more nor less than a talking shop, but you're moving
it around Wales, and you're making it look as if it does rather more than it
does, and it becomes instead of just a talking shop, it becomes a king of
walking talking shop doesn't it, an ambulatory talking shop.
HAGUE: It's not a talking shop, and as
Parliament most of the time is a talking shop itself, it has the right to
question ministers, and that is a great discipline upon the executive branch of
government.
HUMPHRYS: No, it isn't, because if it questions
you and doesn't like your answers, nothing it can do about it, that's it. You
say, "Well, there you go - if you don't like it ..."
HAGUE: I'm totally accountable to the majority
view of the House of Commons, and it all comes ....
HUMPHRYS: And the majority in the House of Commons
is not of course Welsh, it's English so there you go.
HAGUE: Our whole discussion comes down to
whether the United Kingdom should be governed with the United Kingdom, and
all the questions that you are raising are facets of that debate, and there is
of course an irreconcilable difference between people like me who think Wales
should be governed as part of the United Kingdom, and people who think Wales
should be independent or that it should have its own Parliament or assembly,
which, as I say, I believe would be fundamentally damaging to it.
HUMPHRYS: But Walter Sweeney, one of your own MPs
thinks that what you've done already is the thin end of the devolutionary
wedge.
HAGUE: I don't think it is the thin end of the
wedge because as I've explained I'm doing something quite different from
setting up a Welsh Assembly. Well I think I would be able to convince the
majority of people in Wales...people in Wales are very ambivalent and sceptical
about the merits of setting up an assembly. Last time there was a referendum
on this question they voted four to one against the last Labour Government's
plan to have a Welsh Assembly. They knew where their interests lay and they
voted for the current constitutional arrangements.
HUMPHRYS: And the last opinion poll that was taken
showed that they were overwhelmingly in support of some kind of assembly, it is
possible for a nation to change its mind because it has seen the way things
have gone over the last sixteen years and now it appears, we shan't know of
course until if there is a referendum or until the next election but at the
moment it appears that that is what they want.
HAGUE: It is possible for people to change
their mind but the opinion poll that I saw last Friday didn't show overwhelming
support for an assembly by any means, it showed fifty per cent of people in
Wales thought they were in favour of an assembly or something like it. I
suspect if there were to be another referendum it would again be rejected and I
notice that the Labour Party aren't proposing to have a referendum, they don't
have the confidence in the people in Wales to say let us ask you whether you
want an assembly, even though they are proposing to have referendums in English
regions that want to have assemblies, so I...(interruption)..if we are going to
reverse the last referendum we should have another one but they haven't got the
confidence or the guts to say that.
HUMPHRYS: Your problem is that you're conceding
the principle in some respects, certainly as far as the Grand Committee is
concerned but you are not satisfying the demand so you are going to fall
between two stools here aren't you.
HAGUE: No, I'm not conceding any principle. I
think I have explained quite carefully that I believe Wales should be governed
as part of the United Kingdom, I want to see the Welsh Grand Committee work
better as a committee than the House of Commons, I want to see local government
take on things which are appropriate to it, which it can do well. But I am not
pretending for one moment that I am giving to those institutions the rights and
powers of a separate parliament or assembly, I believe the United Kingdom
should be governed as a whole.
HUMPHRYS: But giving those extra powers to the
local authorities in Wales, is in itself a concession that they didn't have
enough before, isn't it, else why do it?
HAGUE: It's not a concession, it is something
that they have asked for which....
HUMPHRYS: Well they've been asking for it for a
very long time, you ....in the last sixteen years...
HAGUE: And I think they can run those
programmes at local level prefectly well, there is no need for me to make the
decisions about quite small regeneration projects which local authorities can
decide.
HUMPHRYS: You have to make the decisions on the
big ones not the little ones, so they can look after their own affairs...
HAGUE: Well I have to make decisions about ones
of course that go right across the boundaries of local authorities or which
they couldn't finance on their own, that's when we come back to the Government
of the United Kingdom as a whole. But I am not saying to them that I am
setting up local government as an alternative to an assembly, I'm saying to
local government can do a lot more, but we need to make sure that the existing
structures of government work more successfully but we don't need to set up a
whole new tier of government which would be a room full of hot air, that would
cost people a lot of money for no practical gain.
HUMPHRYS: You've made it clear, many many times
in the course of this interview that you don't like the idea, the Tory Party
doesn't like the idea of a Welsh Assembly and what you've done with the local
authorities is in truth a pretty cynical manoeuvre to turn them away from
wanting a Welsh Assembly isn't it, that's what that's all about.
HAGUE: That's what they asked for and I have
given it to them and it has been welcomed on all sides of the House of Commons.
So it doesn't look to me much like a cynical manoeuvre because everybody thinks
it is a good idea and I think we will see it will work practically and well.
The Labour Party will have to explain if local government is able to take on
successfully more powers over time, why they still need to have an additional
tier of politicians, another whole set of politicians costing the taxpayer a
great deal of money.
HUMPHRYS: Precisely and that's what it's about
isn't it, it's about embarrassing the Labour Party, that's what's behind it.
HAGUE: It's Labour councils who asked for it...
HUMPHRYS: They've been asking for it for a very
long time but you've not given it to them and now the Labour Party...they've
been asking for it for years and now that this..the prospect of a Labour
Government comes close and with it a Welsh Assembly, you say well on mature
reflection, after sixteen years, maybe we'll give it to you. If that isn't
naked politics, one wonders what is.
HAGUE: I think the cynicism is coming from the
other side of the table..(interruption)...these are things which all parties..
HUMPHRYS: How are people going to look at it when
they see...
HAGUE: It would be regarded extremely
positively, why shouldn't I listen to local councils and say: you want to do
this, I believe you can do this, I will give you the power to do it. All
political parties agreed on that, it is a quite separate demand from tearing up
the constitution of the United Kingdom. It's a quite different matter and I am
determined to get across to people the dangers of setting up a parliament in
Scotland, assembly in Wales, regional committees in England, a dog's breakfast
of a constitutional arrangement instead of the arrangements that work now in
which Scotland and Wales are very successful parts of the United Kingdom.
HUMPHRYS: That very rare breed, indeed almost
extinct breed, certainly on the endangered species list, a Conservative
Councillor in Wales said you shouldn't do it, so you don't listen to him, but
you do listen now, eventually, after all these years, to the Welsh authority,
to the Labour authorities, that's a bit odd isn't it?
HAGUE: It's not happening after all these
years, John Redwood, my predecessor, also transferred new functions to local
government, from Welsh Development Agency and other agencies, so there has been
a continuity in policy, it will succeed. But it is a quite different argument
from breaking up the United Kingdom, or breaking up the constitution of the
United Kingdom.
HUMPHRYS: Well let me suggest to you that it is a
pretty cynical political manoeuvre this but it doesn't actually matter to you
because of course you'll be gone, Secretaries of State for Wales don't stay
very long do they, it's a stepping stone to greater things.
HAGUE: Don't count on it, I would like to be
Secretary of State for Wales for a very long time, whether I say by heck or
not, according to the cartoonist, although I've managed to avoid doing that so
far but I would like to be there for a very long time....
HUMPHRYS: That's what happens isn't it with this
particular seat in the Cabinet, it's the most junior seat in the Cabinet and
it's a kind of musical chairs, it's useful to the Prime Minister to start
somebody off, or maybe to punish them with if they've not been terribly good at
they times they were doing - stick them in Wales and we can forget about them
and if they do well, perhaps we'll get them to do a proper job at the end of
it. That's what it's about isn't it....doesn't have a very good patch.
HAGUE: I don't think that is how it is going to
be in the future, if it's ever been like that in the past. A lot of my
predecessors have done a terrific job for Wales. If you look back to Peter
Walker, David Hunt, John Redwood and now me, you see the growth of the Welsh
economy, you see a transformation from how Wales was fifteen or sixteen years
ago, new industries moving in, that's going to continue.
HUMPHRYS: William Hague, thank you very much.
HAGUE: Thank you.
HUMPHRYS: And that is it for this week. See you
next Sunday, good afternoon.
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