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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 8.10.95
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. The Tories hold their
conference this week - and it couldn't have got off to a worse start. For the
first time ever a Conservative MP has defected directly to Labour. I'll be
asking Michael Heseltine if it's too late for the Tories to dig themselves out
of their hole. That's after the News read by JENNIE BOND.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Kim Catcheside reporting. The question
is, of course, can anything, however radical, save the Conservative's bacon,
especially now that Mr Howarth has wielded the carving knife? I've been
talking to Michael Heseltine about that - but first - what are they going to do
about Mr. Blair and his so-called "new" Labour Party and its appeal to the
Conservative centre ground?
MICHAEL HESELTINE MP: I don't recognise that situation. We're
going to have a Conference which is going to concentrate on real policies about
real people in the way that the audience out there will understand. We've just
had a Conference which is all about avoiding the real issues and glossing them
over with words to give an impression of action for which there's no
justification.
HUMPHRYS: Well none-the-less, it seems to be
working. They're more confident, they're more united, they appear to be more
moderate than they've ever before. Have they got you going?
HESELTINE: Well you may say that as an aggressive
way of introducing the interview but it doesn't bear any relationship to the
facts as I know them. The fact is there's a new mood of confidence in the
Conservative Party and we're just going to have an extremely good Conference
and we're going to be talking about issues that matter to people. We're going
to be talking about policies that matter to people and you will see
announcements during the course of this week on the things that people are
deeply concerned about. The sort of things that were being raised in your
interviews earlier in this programme - what are the issues that are worrying to
people. Self-evidently, law and order, fraud, unemployment, the tax situation,
well the tax has to wait until the Budget to see what the Chancellor can do but
on the issues, on fraud, law and order, unemployment, you will see
announcements this week which people are longing to hear.
HUMPHRYS: Come back to some of that in a minute.
But you wouldn't deny that Tony Blair had a marvellous week. Not a single vote
against the leadership from the floor of the Conference, unprecedented.
HESELTINE: Unprecedented from an unprecedented low
base, if you think about the normal Labour Party Conferences they range
somewhere around the level of political farce. This particular Conference has
been well stage managed without any shadow of a doubt. But within all that
that there are two factors.
First, a deep unease within the Labour
Party itself about what Tony Blair is saying and outside the Labour Party a
growing awareness that they'd ever make any statements of policy which are
going to change anything for anybody on a serious scale. Behind that, of
course, is the real Labour agenda and this last week has seen some extremely
worrying situations. There's first of all what we already knew, the stitch up
of the unions behind closed doors.
Secondly, we have this extraordinary
deal with British Telecom which if I had done it as a Minister of the Crown
would have brought the national media down on me like a ton of bricks. And
then you get this extraordinary now developing technique of the hidden
persuaders ringing up every journalist in sight, trying to bully the BBC into
how they handle their news programmes and this is all in opposition. Just
imagine what these people would be like in government.
HUMPHRYS: Well the message doesn't..the message
you're delivering doesn't seem to be the one that's getting across. They seem
to be seizing the centre ground. Mr Howarth, Alan Howarth, former Conservative
Party Minister..former Conservative Minister has now joined the Labour Party.
HESELTINE: Well it's interesting I have a minister
in my government, a very good minister who was a member of the Labour Party so
you get these individual decisions.
HUMPHRYS: This has never happened before.
HESELTINE: Let us...well I've just described, I
have a Labour Member of Parliament...ex-Labour Member of Parliament who is a
Minister of the Conservative Government. So you do have these situations..
HUMPHRYS: But we've never ever had a
Conservative MP going right across to the Labour Party.
HESELTINE: But the important thing is the issues
and I think I understand Alan Howarth's position and it is a position which
many people understand. There are big issues in the Welfare State from which
the Conservative Party, self-evidently, has a proud tradition in creating a
very large part of that Welfare State, but there are abuses and people know
that, there's too much fraud, there's too many people getting away with things
and we are pre-occupied to try and deal with some of these issues. But the
public want them dealt with, just as they want law and order dealt with. Now
there are people in all political parties who will subscribe to the broad ethos
of a Welfare State but won't face up to the realities of the abuses that goes
on within that situation.
HUMPHRYS: But you say you understand Mr Howarth's
position.
HESELTINE: I understand his position because he's a
member of the Conservative Party - or was a member of the Conservative Party -
and we are a broad church but the fact is that he's out of touch with what the
public want and the public want these very difficult issues about law and
order, about fraud, about unemployment abuse. They want these things dealt
with and you're going to see a Conference, a Conservative Conference next week,
that addresses real issues with real policies, quite unlike what you've seen
last week.
HUMPHRYS: So you understand his position rather
than feeling betrayed by his departure?
HESELTINE: I personally have worked with him in the
Conservative Party, I know, admire and have a huge historic respect for the
Conservative Party, it embraces all opinions and I've always had one rule, I
never get abusive about colleagues or former colleagues, they make their own
decisions, each one of them. This is a huge party, a huge historic party and
it serves no purpose in denigrating people because they happen to make a
judgement, which, in my view, is quite wrong. But he's free to make it.
HUMPHRYS: But he's made it on the basis that the
Conservative is no longer the 'one nation party'; that is the Labour Party -
that is the 'one nation party'.
HESELTINE: That is, of course, to completely fall
into the trap that the Labour Party is trying to put forward. If you ask: what
is the 'one nation party?' - it is the party that can draw the whole nation
behind a set of policies. Crime: it is the Conservative Party that has
produced a situation where we have the largest fall in crime in forty years and
why? - because we took the decisions to be tougher on sentences, to build more
prisons and as the Sun newspaper, very articulately said, as we've got more of
these offenders in prison the crime rates have fallen. Now that took tough
policy. There are people in the Conservative Party who are anxious we may have
gone too far but in order to be a 'one nation' Tory today the public want us to
go further, that is the misjudgement that Alan Howarth has made.
Take the whole issue of fraud in the
Welfare State. I apologise to no-one for the enormous contribution that the
Conservatives have made to the building of the Welfare State but there is fraud
in there and we have to tackle it and people want it tackled.
HUMPHRYS: But that's not what he's talking about,
he's talking about cutting the Welfare State....
HESELTINE: But I'm sorry, I know what Alan's
concerns are because I've heard him talk about them in private in the House of
Commons. He's concerned, for example, about the Job Seekers' Allowance,
which....(interruption) well of course a lot of people are concerned about
that. What is that all about? That is about saying that if you are receiving
Unemployment Benefit the old principles upon which Beveridge founded the
concept in the first place is that you are available to work and increasingly
people are saying, not about everybody who is unemployed, not about the short
term people changing jobs, but there are too many people who are simply getting
away with unemployment benefit and perhaps moonlighting and they want something
done about it.
Someone like Alan Howarth and the Labour
Party, they talk about these problems but they will do nothing about them. Now
we believe something has got to be done about them.
HUMPHRYS: You say dismissively someone like Alan
Howarth. I mean here is an intelligent man who's been a loyal member of the
Conservative Party. He was respected enough to have been made a member of the
government, and yet here he is saying that you have lost it, you have lost this
one nation thing that you must have if you were to govern the country, and,
here's the important point from your point of view: Labour has it, Labour, let
me quote him: "rigorously clearsighted about the realities of governing".
That's what Mr Howarth believes.
HESELTINE: Well, let me just take some of these
rigorous, clearsighted views. This week, the Labour Party have announced
getting rid of the Assisted Places Scheme for kids - bright kids in inner
cities...
HUMPHRYS: Because he wants to spend the money on
reducing class sizes...
HESELTINE: ...Seventy thousand of them are going to
be pushed back into the unacceptable standards of Inner City comprehensives. I
cannot think of a more vicious doctrinal attack upon the opportunities
of bright young kids than that. How Alan can talk about that in terms of
abandoning the essential one nation role of the Tory Party I fail to
understand.
HUMPHRYS: Well, because his priority is to get
more money into Education, as he has said.
HESELTINE: No, it isn't getting more money into
Education. It is about extending Nursery Education, which we are already
doing.
HUMPHRYS: But, but he is not alone in this issue,
and on that matter he's got a hundred, he said this morning, he's got a hundred
or so teachers in his constituency being sacked. The fact is, he is not alone
is he? He talks about there being another thirty or forty members of
Parliament - Conservative Members of Parliament - who share his views, share
his unease.
HESELTINE: I wholly reject that.
HUMPHRYS: How do you know? He must be closer to
the backbenchers than you.
HESELTINE: No, not at all. I happen to know my
backbenchers extremely well. I spend a lot of time talking to them. They
spend a lot of time talking to me, and to a large number of other colleagues.
I, for example, was at a private dining club with Alan Howarth not very long
ago before the House rose, where a similar group of people with many of the
views that he would have held in the Conservative Party. There was in no way
the sort of opposition to Government position as was expressed by Alan Howarth
amongst that group. So, we keep very closely in touch.
HUMPHRYS: Better not talk about that sort of
thing or they'll accuse you of getting involved in conspiracies. But let-
HESELTINE: No, the only conspiracy is Mr Blair and
British Telecom's or Mr Blair and the Trade Unions, or Alistair Campbell trying
to rough up the journalists.
HUMPHRYS: Peter Temple Morris, another
backbencher of the centre left, he believes, and he said so this morning that
what Mr Howarth has done is not a sort of one-off bizarre event. He says it is
a symptom, and let me quote to you: "a symptom of the strain in the centre left
of the party". Not at all suprised by it.
HESELTINE: I think that you have strains in all
political parties. You've just probably been at Brighton and everybody knows
that the Labour Party is strained to breaking point by-.
HUMPHRYS: I didn't see any MPs departing the
Labour for the Tory fold.
HESELTINE: So, your quotation is about Peter
Temple-Morris talking about the strains within a party, and we've had during
the summer Labour MP after Labour MP castigating the leadership of the Labour
Party. We had Roy Hattersley at Brighton making a vicious attack.
HUMPHRYS: He disagreed, he disagreed with their
Education policy, but the vote was put to the floor of the Conference and
carried overwhelmingly.
HESELTINE: But let's understand and be mature about
democracy. You have..they are..all parties are coalitions, and it's ridiculous
to pick on one particular person and say they represent some great movement
within the Party. The fact is, the trick of politics is to find a coalition
powerful enough to attract popular support to form a government, and you always
find differing views within it, in all Parties.
HUMPHRYS: Let's not talk about individuals then,
let's talk about this latest poll that there's been, of Conservative Party
supporters, I emphasise Conservative Party supporters. Two-fifth of those
people who were interviewed said they could see no hope of a Tory victory next
time. A third of them said the Labour Party had the best ideas. A third of
them said Blair would make the best Prime Minister, those are Labour Party
supporters.
HESELTINE: Conservative Party supporters.
HUMPHRYS: Conservative Party supporters!
HESELTINE: I don't want to do your job for you, I
couldn't do it as well as you, but we must help you in every way we can.
HUMPHRYS: You're kind.
HESELTINE: And give me the poll figures that are
equivalent to that in the period before the nineteen-ninety election, or say in
nineteen-eighty-six. Any of the downturn, just show me, and you'll find
exactly the same sort of trend of opinion.
HUMPHRYS: Well, you may say that. I don't recall
that happening in support of Neil Kinnock, do you? When it was Mrs Thatcher
against Neil Kinnock. When it was John Major against Neil Kinnock?
HESELTINE: I can tell you that at that time you
would have found opinion polls reflecting the views of Conservative supporters
which chose certain subjects which you'd have thought the Conservatives were
strong on, where we appeared weak. And then you come to the Election campaign,
you come to the run up, you come to the battle itself, to the focussing of
minds, to the improvements in the economy that took place before those
elections, and people's minds focus. What you're dealing with understandably -
no criticism - is the classic mid-term difficulties of Government, exacerbated
this time across the world by one of the most severe and long term recessions
that we've seen, and every government - every government - of our sort in the
world has had the same sort of trouble as we've had.
HUMPHRYS: Well I'll tell what I don't recollect
last time. I don't recollect people like Lord Rothermere saying he could see
his newspapers supporting the Labour Party at the next Election, I don't
recollect that do you?
HESELTINE: No, I wonder if he's told his editors?
HUMPHRYS: Yes he has. Well he's, he's certainly
told David English and David English takes the same view.
HESELTINE: I happen to read the papers of Lord
Rothermere, and it's quite difficult to see how the views you've expressed are
compatible with what his editors are saying day after day after day.
HUMPHRYS: I hope. ....... saying as well.
HESELTINE: Well, would you just hang back and see
if David English is out there on the night campaigning for the Labour Party.
It would be something of a surprise to me, and I suspect to David English.
HUMPHRYS: But they're nibbling, they're nibbling
HESELTINE: They're teasing.
HUMPHRYS: Do you think that's all it is?
HESELTINE: They're teasing.
HUMPHRYS: Something else I didn't see the last
time around was important business people coming out on behalf of the Tony
Blair, or indeed you mentioned British Telecom earlier doing deals, doing these
sort of sweetheart deals with the leader of the Labour Party. You may rubbish
the deal, but, but what it does is it sends a signal doesn't it? It sends a
signal that says people like Sir Iain Vallance, the chairman of British Telecom
are saying: "I can do business with this man" to use that famous phrase.
HESELTINE: Yes, it does send a signal about what
the Labour Party is about, about deals behind closed doors, which if I did it,
it would be illegal. It would have brought the wrath of Fleet Street down upon
me. No consultation, no interest to all those small companies that are trying
to get into market, no...
HUMPHRYS: There are lots of big foreign companies
trying to get into the market and British Telecom couldn't compete against
them, weren't allowed to.
HESELTINE: But I helped British Telecom get into
the American market, and I don't remember anybody saying: "Oh well we shouldn't
go to America with British Telecom, as it's a British company should stay here.
I mean we've got to be grown up. We're living in a world market place and
we're now trying to attract and succeeding to attract massive foreign
investment into this country, and every time someone says it's a British
company, as though somehow we have a policy only about British companies here-
HUMPHRYS: But, I thought, our concern was to help
these companies?
HESELTINE: What they're really saying is:to
Siemens, to Samsung, to Goldstar, to Jaguar - which is an American-owned
company: "Well look, there's something different about you, you're a bit beyond
the pale". If that is the attitude, then I tell you that will prejudice the
fact that we're getting forty per cent of all the inward investment coming into
the European Union. In this country.
HUMPHRYS: What I was talking about, the reason
I raised it was the signal that it sends, that here is business looking at the
Labour Party, looking at Mr Blair, and saying: Actually next time, perhaps
they're right for Britain".
HESELTINE: Well I think what business actually has
spotted and the editorials in the papers reflect this is that Mr Blair's
naive. He's fallen for a line which British Telecom has been trying to peddle
around the place and everybody knows this.
HUMPHRYS: That's going back to the specifics
now, I'm talking about the general.
HESELTINE: Oh, no, no, but the specific is
everything because this is a deal for British Telecom, about British Telecom,
against their competitors who were never consulted.
HUMPHRYS: BT's not the only company that finds Mr
Blair 'the modern', 'the new modern Labour Party' attractive.
HESELTINE: Are there more secret deals I don't know
about?
HUMPHRYS: Neither do I, of course but we can't
assume that...but, but...
HESELTINE: If this is the way we're going to run
this country, that politicians are going to do deals..
HUMPHRYS: Ah but you're not suggesting to me that
every business leader who has ever had anything nice to say about Mr Blair, or
new Labour has done some sort of secret deal with him, are you?
HESELTINE: You're approaching British Telecom, who
have done a secret deal. That is why one suspects they're appearing to say
nice things because they've conned him and they've conned him at the expense of
the British consumer, who could find British Telecoms with some sort of
quasi-monopolistic position and then charges for connections and services
increased against the regulatory regime we have. And if it had happened by a
Minister of the Crown, as I repeat, you would have crucified us.
HUMPHRYS: But, the roots of your problem - the
roots of the Conservative Party's problem at the moment, goes deeper than
whatever effect the Labour Party may be having on you. There is, after sixteen
years, of Conservative rule, a sense in the middle class that they feel much
less secure than they have ever felt. Now, that may or may not be your fault.
There are international events affecting this as well of course and everybody
understands that. But that is the reality of it, isn't it?
HESELTINE: Across the world, that is true because
the competitive thrust of the market place is bringing about change, at an ever
increasing speed. Interestingly, in talking about the IT revolution, which
Blair was talking about and which we are creating here, what you are really
talking about is the process of change. More insecurity, more instability.
But he didn't tell you about that. What he said: oh, no, what we're going to
do is IT because that's attention-grabbing. I have to introduce the changes
and face the insecurity. He doesn't tell you about that.
HUMPHRYS: But, that's the problem, isn't it? You
see, there isn't very much you can do about it. We're seeing house values
collapsing, we're seeing that people no longer have a job for life. We're
seeing that they can't look forward to retirement because they might have to
sell their home to pay for it. All these sorts of things if you add them
altogether, feeds the sense of insecurity and the effect on you is that people
say: look, we've had a Conservative Government for sixteen years, perhaps it'll
be different next time around. That's what...
HESELTINE: Well, they said all that after thirteen
years and it, of course, didn't turn out to have any substance at all because
people judge on the issues. So, when we get to the Election campaign, let's
take your premise and I don't actually disagree with it because it's a
worldwide phenomenon about the insecurity based on change. Why do you think
people are going to vote for a Labour Party which is going to impose the social
contract on the companies of this country and make them less competitive? In
other words, more insecurity. Why do you think they're going to vote for a
Labour Party which is going to give privileges back to the trade unions, in
order to shackle the bosses of the country, to make them less able to run
their companies, to make them less competitive and therefore destroy more jobs?
HUMPHRYS: Well I suppose the answer to that is, as
Mrs Dover said in our film, because they don't think it's going to be any worse
under a Labour government.
HESELTINE: No, the answer is that they're not going
to...because by then, the arguments will have focused.
HUMPHRYS: Well, let me give you another reason
why they might and that's tax. You've got to make people feel that they are
better off now than they were. And, again, quoting Mrs Dover, they don't feel
they're better off.
HESELTINE: Well, you put this in the right
context. By the time of the Election that will be an important issue. Now,
everybody knows...
HUMPHRYS: Can you do anything about it between now
and then that's...?
HESELTINE: This is a matter for the Budget judgment
and I'm not going to anticipate that. But, nobody seriously believes that a
Labour Government will be searching for the economies in Public Expenditure,
that this Government is and nobody on earth can believe that the Labour Party
would use any money that they could find to reduce taxes.
HUMPHRYS: Yes, but that's not the issue.
HESELTINE: Oh, it is the issue! The issue is
whether....
HUMPHRYS: The issue is whether you can make people
feel better off between now and the Election. That's the issue.
HESELTINE: This is the judgment people will have to
make at the Election. Do they really believe that a Labour Party, which is
wholly sold out to Public Sector trade unions is going to cut Expenditure.
They're going to increase Expenditure.
HUMPHRYS: Yeah, but they may feel.....why
look at a crystal ball when we can read the book? You know, we've seen what's
happened to us, under the Tories. We've seen our taxes go up.
HESELTINE: So, we look back from an Election time,
not forward from where we are now because the judgments will be made then.
Now, I'm not going to, in any way-
HUMPHRYS: Are you telling me... Of course, you're
not telling me.....
HESELTINE: I cannot prejudge the Budget. You know
that but we know, in the same way, that you asked me the questions that there
are vital questions at stake in the Budget and in the Budget in the year
after. We have to address those issues but Ken Clarke is absolutely clear, we
will do nothing to prejudice the present economic success, which is delivering
one of the most exciting economies that this country has seen in my lifetime
with rising investment, rising exports, rising productivity, excellent
industrial relations and an enormous flow of inward investment into this
country - real prosperity for tomorrow.
HUMPHRYS: All of that may well be true but you
have got this time - as far as the middle classes, in particular, are
concerned; your natural supporters - this time it's no good promising because
they've heard promises before and as far as Income Tax...taxation is concerned,
have been let down. This time, you've got to deliver, haven't you?
HESELTINE: But that's why this Conference is so
important and why the Budget is important and why the next few months are
obviously important. I repeat what I said, at the beginning of the programme:
whilst we will not obviously deal with the Budget this week, on the issues,
which are also of major concern, to the British people, these whole issues of
law and order and fraud and unemployment and people getting away with things,
you will see real announcements by Ministers in power relevant to what people
are concerned about. That will be the difference between the Conservative
Conference and the Labour Conference.
HUMPHRYS: Ah but you see, you can't put - oh I
take your point you can't of course tell us what Ken Clarke is going to do in
the Budget next month but you're going to have to deliver. You're going to
have to deliver on all sorts of things, on a series of announcements about law
and order or whatever it may be, is it going to do what people need?
HESELTINE: Well, you say that.
HUMPHRYS: They are telling us. It's not me
saying. It's 'them' telling us.
HESELTINE: I disagree. No, no they are saying: we
want announcements, results, actions.
HUMPHRYS: They're not saying: we want
announcements, they're saying: we want more money in our pockets. It's pretty
straightforward.
HESELTINE: Well, if you're talking about tax,
but I'm now talking about things we can deal with at the Conservative Party
Conference.
HUMPHRYS: You can't do anything by making an
announcement.
HESELTINE: You can announce decisions which you
then implement and I think you will find if we were sitting here next week
that the people will recognise that the Government is grappling with some of
those issues which matter profoundly to people.
HUMPHRYS: But aren't they more likely to say:
hang on, I thought they'd been grappling with them for the last sixteen years.
HESELTINE: And you will see that we take law and
order. The biggest fall in crime for forty years. More policemen on the beat.
So we are grappling with them. Maybe, we'll be able to say things next week
which are relevant to going further. That's for Michael Howard.
HUMPHRYS: But you've just pointed to one issue
that of course concerns a lot of people.
HESELTINE: But it's at the top of the agenda.
HUMPHRYS: Well with the greatest of respect, I
wouldn't suggest to you that at the moment, that that is the top of the
agenda. The top of the agenda...
HESELTINE: Now, you may be talking to a different
audience than the one I talk to. Wherever I go, people are talking about
these issues: the law and order, fraud, unemployment.
HUMPHRYS: But, you know what wins elections, at
the end of it all, is whether people feel that they're going to be better off
under this Government than they were under another government. That's the
issue that decides elections.
HESELTINE: I don't disagree with that view but they
judge that at the time and we have got a long time to go to the next Election.
HUMPHRYS: How are you going to deliver on that?
HESELTINE: I believe you will find - and all the
forecasts now indicate this - that people's real living standards are now going
to rise. That's what the forecast...
HUMPHRYS: I don't know that the...I was thinking
about the IMF, I mean the IMF says that you're actually going to...the forecast
is that growth is going to come down from what three point two to two point six
per cent.....
HESELTINE: Two point nine actually..
HUMPHRYS: Two point seven per cent I think it is..
HESELTINE: Well it's..I thought it was two point
nine but the fact is that it is by British historic standards a high growth
rate..
HUMPHRYS: It may be.
HESELTINE: And it's coming on top of existing
growth rates.
HUMPHRYS: It may be but it's their view that now
is not the time to cut taxes and indeed...
HESELTINE: It depends on what we do about public
expenditure.
HUMPHRYS: Well, so what are you going to do about
public expenditure?
HESELTINE: That's the Budget judgement....John, you
know as well as...I cannot anticipate the Budget, it's not possible to do it, I
wouldn't try to do it, but those are issues for November and everybody
understands that. We are today looking at public expenditure in the light of
the decisions we take there, Ken Clarke will decide what he can do about the
tax levels for the year ahead and that is something that can only be done on
the particular Budget day but the fact is we are in a position and all the
independent and international commentators recognise it, where the British
economy is healthier today than probably for twenty or thirty years...
HUMPHRYS: But you recognise that this time, more
than any other time before, because the last time you got in a promise, this
time you recognise, you accept that you've got to deliver and if that means, if
I understand you correctly, if that means more real cuts, real cuts in public
expenditure so that you can meet those tax cuts, that's what's going to have to
happen and that will happen is what you're telling me.
HESELTINE: We will make a judgement about all these
issues because whilst everybody is very keen on cuts in public expenditure you
have to judge the merits. We are not going to ride rough-shod into any
direction, we will weigh up the merits of each argument, each particular
spending area and come to what we think are proper and balanced views.
HUMPHRYS: You haven't got much time have you?
HESELTINE: Yes, we've got the proper amount of
time, we've already started, the process is well underway and, of course, as a
member of the Committee, I know much more about it than I am prepared to tell
you and it would be quite improper if I in anyway moved from that position. We
are going to address this issue with the full rigour that is required - the
outome - that must wait for the Budget. But I don't disagree with you that
if we failed to deal with this issue, if we failed to regard these matters with
the reflection of what the public want and what we as a Government want, that
would not be the best way to commend ourselves to the people in the General
Election, we know all that but we have a long time still ahead in which to
demonstrate to people that what we are determined to achieve is on the agenda.
HUMPHRYS: And in that long time, as you describe
it, I wouldn't have thought it was all that long but anyway, sixteen, eighteen
months away....
HESELTINE: Well into 1997..
HUMPHRYS: Whatever it may be in that time you are
going to deliver real cuts, the sort of cuts we haven't seen until now.
HESELTINE: No, you are putting words into my
mouth...
HUMPHRYS: And deliver..and deliver...
HESELTINE: What I am saying is....
HUMPHRYS: And deliver on your promises.
HESELTINE: What I am saying is that that is an
agenda item for the Budget....
HUMPHRYS: But you are going to deliver on your
promises, that's what you are saying?
HESELTINE: I didn't say anything about what we were
going to do other than we will address these matters in the Budget, I'm not
prepared to be moved on that...
HUMPHRYS: But you'll deliver on your promises?
HESELTINE: However, we are as pre-occupied as the
public are to get this matter right and we are the only Party that will get
this matter right.
HUMPHRYS: Michael Heseltine, thank you very much
indeed.
...oooOooo...
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