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Transcript: Any Questions? 10 October 2008 |
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CHAIRMAN: JONATHAN DIMBLEBY
PANELLISTS:
Rt Hon HARRIET HARMAN MP: Deputy Leader of the Labour Party
Rt Hon OLIVER LETWIN MP: Chairman of the Conservative Party’s Policy Review
BARONESS (Shirley) WILLIAMS: Liberal Democrat peer
PROFESSOR PETER HENNESSY: Political Historian
From the Henry Beaufort School, East Woodhay Rd, Harestock, Winchester, Hants SO22 6JJ.
DIMBLEBY
Welcome to the sixtieth anniversary edition of Any Questions? which comes from the city of Winchester from where the first programme was broadcast in this week of 1948. But we are at a thoroughly 2008 venue, the Henry Beaufort School, a mixed comprehensive which flourishes under the slogan “a dynamic learning community of athousand individuals”. Its outlook is international and its activities, being involved in collaborative projects with schools in Vietnam, Palestine, France, Spain and the Czech Republic. In this month sixty years ago the BBC not only launched Any Questions? but for the first time broadcast from 10 Downing Street. In edition, the first volume of Winston Churchill’s war memoirs was published. It was called The Gathering Storm, not a bad title sixty years on, albeit for rather different global predicaments. On our panel, Shirley Williams who had been a member of the Labour party for two years when Any Questions? first hit the airways. She’s been in politics, mostly near the top of the greasy pole and latterly for many years, and for the Lib Dems ever since. You were presumably listening to the first programme Shirley?
BARONESS (Shirley) WILLIAMS
Of course I was glued to it. And we had Freddie Grisewood who is at that time I think you. The person who overlooked it all, and rather unlike your experience, I have to say Jonathan, I remember that he travelled down on what was then called the Great Western Railway, they actually literally laid out red carpet in front of him and the station master always wore a top hat, and the next best thing to the Queen was Freddy Grisewood, no doubt. (LAUGHTER) You don’t rate that I’m afraid.
DIMBLEBY
No wonder one’s nostalgic for the past. (LAUGHTER). Harriet Harman could not have heard the first programme because she wasn’t yet born. She has though, like Shirley, been in Politics generally for most of her life, a Labour MP for over 25 years she is now a Deputy Leader of her Party and the Leader of the House of Commons and has strong memories of this programme as well?
RT HON. HARRIET HARMAN MP
Well I’ve got memories of many disastrous appearances on Any Questions?, I was remembering one time when, you see we’re all sitting very closely together and I’d really been working hard at thinking through my thoughts and what I was going to say and I’d written them in capital letters on postcards. And I was sitting next to Paddy Ashdown and he was asked the question before me and his eyes fell on my postcard (LAUGHTER) and he read out my perfect answer and then the question came to me and I had absolutely nothing to say. But that wasn’t as bad as when I had a very busy and chaotic day at home on a Friday when I was doing Any Questions? and suddenly the car was outside my door and they were saying ‘get in the car, you’ve got to go now or you’ll miss the show’ and I was in my pyjamas , and, for some reason, and so I just heaved on a pair of boots and a cardigan and appeared in my pyjamas on the show, but I am fully dressed tonight I have to say. (LAUGHTER)
DIMBLEBY
No one’s ever doubted that radio’s better than television (LAUGHTER). Oliver Letwin was an academic, Tory Policy maker and a banker before he entered Parliament against the trend in 1997. He has since served his party as Shadow Chancellor and now both heads the Conservative Research Department and David Cameron’s Policy review. What kind of memories do you have of the programme?
RT HON. OLIVER LETWIN MP
It’s mainly selective amnesia but I do remember one occasion not about a year ago, maybe a year and a half, when I was on with David Miliband and people being asked about being leaders of Party’s and I said actually when I’ve been asked I said under no circumstances would I ever try to be the leader of the Conservative Party, not that the Conservative Party would want me anyway, and I saw David Miliband looking at me with his mouth open and he said suddenly ‘did you really say that?’ (Laughter)
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
No conclusions to be drawn.
(Laughter)
OLIVER LETWIN
No I don’t draw any conclusions at all.
DIMBLEBY
Peter Hennessy is the Attlee Professor of Contemporary History at Queen Mary University of London. Clement Attlee was of course Prime Minister sixty years ago, and Peter Hennessy as journalist, broadcaster and prolific author has perhaps more than any of his peers charted and illuminated the political landscape of the nation since the age austerity over which Attlee presided. Sixty years on, we’re facing another age of austerity?
PROFESSOR PETER HENNESSY
That’s right it won’t be back to rationing and we won’t have the big band era back, we won’t have Glen Miller to see us through and we won’t have football matches with no flood lighting, and bread won’t be rationed but (sings) there may be trouble ahead… (Laughter)
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
(singing) dadadadeda
(Laughter)
DIMBLEBY
Baroness Williams I think someone might have missed that could we hear that once more?
(laughter)
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
(singing) There may be trouble ahead…
(laughter)
DIMBLEBY
We’d better be getting on with this programme, anyway this is our panel.
(APPLAUSE)
DIMBLEBY
Our first question please.
BARRY LIPSCOMB
Should charities with deposits at risk in failed foreign, British based and regulated banks receive compensation from the UK Government?
DIMBLEBY
The total sum was reported at about £25 million that charities have in such funds and in Hampshire, nearby here, Naomi House has 250 sick children and their families there each year and they’ve put nearly 6 million into such deposits. Shirley Williams.
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
I think it’s a very difficult one, it’s going to ride along with the problem that many local authorities have of similarly having placed their deposits in foreign banks with very high rates of interest and Iceland, the Iceland banks have probably the highest rates of interest of anybody and of course at the time they were advised by the Treasury to go for very high interest rates and that’s where they found them and so I think all of us have to answer for quite a lot of the advice that was given which was based upon what could only be described as irrational optimism. There was no reason to think the property market would go up and up and up and therefore you could build your assets in association with them. Having said that I think it is extremely difficult and the thought that comes to my mind is that maybe the Government would consider the possibility of sustaining or even slightly increasing the amount of recognition that they give at the present time to charitable donations. But I frankly have to say it’s not an easy one, it’s not one where you can just say ‘they should compensate the whole lot’ because charities are very different, and of course charities range all the way from, for example, places like the National Trust, which has a strong base of fairly well off contributors all the way through to things like Barnardo’s and Oxfam which are much more much more difficult.
DIMBLEBY
Oliver Letwin.
OLIVER LETWIN
I agree with Shirley it’s very difficult because the tax payer is already on the line for an awful lot, they’ve got a huge mountain of debt anyway, and then in the present crisis obviously that’s been added to enormously. It isn’t just Naomi’s House of course it’s many others besides and it’s not just charities it’s also councils and others. And my natural reaction is to say there isn’t anything the Government can do about that but it has come to light that it’s actually I think it’s one of Shirley’s Liberal Democrat peers but one of the peers asked one of the people in the House of Lords asked a Parliamentary question I think in about July..
DIMBLEBY
Lord Oakeshott
OLIVER LETWIN
Lord Oakeshott exactly
DIMBLEBY
Yes
OLIVER LETWIN
And tried to find out whether the Government thought that these Icelandic institutions were actually safe and got a not quite categorical but pretty categorical answer that..
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Pretty resounding reply…yeah yeah
OLIVER LETWIN
Yes pretty resounding reply that they were and I think there was also some question about what exactly was on the website of the err erm futures authoritiy. The authority that is meant to govern these things until quite recently. I think this needs some quite careful looking at it does very much depend on exactly what advice people were given and whether that came from the Government or not as it does in the equitable life case for example where the Ombudsman eventually said the Government gave so much advice that it was on the hook and we need to know if this was a situation like that.
DIMBLEBY
So your information would that if it was clear that if the Treasury’s advice was invalidly inadequate you would then be inclined to favour compensation, we’re talking about £25 million out of the Government’s already endorsed underwritten £400 million or so
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Billion
OLIVER LETWIN
You need billions rather than millions yes
DIMBLEBY
Yes. It’s it’s £25 million for the charities as opposed to the
OLIVER LETWIN
(interrupting) As opposed to the exactly. Exactly. Well what I’m saying is that at least there would then be a case that would need to be looked at very carefully if the Government gave advice that was categorical.
DIMBLEBY
Harriet Harman
HARRIET HARMAN
Well I think that where charities as many of them are who’ve been hit by this problem of the Icelandic banks going down, that where they’re providing vital services like the hospice service that you’re talking about near here, the Government will want to do everything we can to actually help them and cabinet ministers are meeting with the charitable sector early next week to work out who’s in trouble, to what extent, what we can do to help tide some of them over but we’re also helping them by freezing the assets of the Icelandic banks straight away so that we can hope to get some of that money back and Treasury officials have hot footed it over to Iceland to try and get as much of the assets back. With when the BCCI bank went bottom up most of the assets came back but it took some time for it to get back and we want to make sure that charities are able to tide themselves over in the meantime so yes we won’t leave them on their own
DIMBLEBY
That’s important from the charities point of view when you say you won’t leave them on their own are you saying that you will look at each charity on a case by case basis or that overall those charities who have thus invested will be compensated?
HARRIET HARMAN
Well I don’t think there’ll be a one size fits all but nor are we going to be like a dodgy insurance company which looks at the small print and says well it’s your fault it’s nothing to do with us, we strongly support the work that goes on in the charitable sector that’s why we put so much Government resources into it, public money into it and that’s why we actually help with tax relief for Gift Aid we were strongly supportive of the work in the charity sector, the last thing we want…
DIMBLEBY
(interrupting)Yes but but but we are where we are now…
HARRIET HARMAN
Yes
DIMBLEBY
Are you saying effect because it’s not entirely clear are you saying don’t worry in the end you charities who have properly invested as advised you will be compensated
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Or is it more case by case?
HARRIET HARMAN
It’s case by case it’s going to be case by case and the first meeting is going to be next week with the Cabinet Minister going through with the charitable sector trying to work out who’s got into problems, where it’s causing most immediate problems and we will do everything we can to help it’s not their fault and we want to make sure that the people who rely on those important services don’t lose out.
DIMBLEBY
Peter Hennessy.
PETER HENNESSY
It’s more than just a question of whether the Government should have warned them or us generally about Iceland because the credit rating companies if I remember rightly were giving them the top ratings until about 10 days ago now. I think charities have got a stronger case than the local authorities I think the local authorities and the police authorities have got a lot to worry about but it’s a question of what proportion of the charities assets in each case that’s looked at we’re dealing with because the big authorities and the local authorities can probably in many cases if not all somehow manage to cope because of the overall size of their budgets but if it’s a small charity that’s gone on to the world market for the best return for its good work I think really the case is very very powerful indeed. But there has to be some limit for the liability of the Government, it doesn’t seem like it this week with the extraordinary events but lines do have to be drawn somewhere but I think if the quality of mercy cannot be shown to the charities who else can it be shown to?
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Can I ask you a question Peter is that alright? I mean I can see your argument that you know it shouldn’t also include local authorities in most cases but suppose you get, I’m going to bring my friend Oliver into this, suppose you get a local authority like Dorset which has, and even more Kent, which has a huge proportion of its debt placed with in fact the Icelandic banks what do you do then do you in a sense say well we’ll give a proportion of support or do you let someone like Kent or Dorset sink which the proportion is so bad that it may happen
PETER HENNESSY
You can’t let them sink because there are certain statutory duties that local authorities carry out which would be in jeopardy
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Like policing
PETER HENNESSY
Indeed. And housing homeless and so on. If you went beyond a certain point. But I don’t think you can just scoop it all up Shirley and say whatever the fall out from Icelandic part of this world problem is we’ll cope with it because there are going to be many many more percussive effects from various parts of the globe even if we get stability next week which I don’t think we are going to get.
DIMBLEBY
You put the question Barry Lipscomb What’s your thought?
BARRY LIPSCOMB
I sadly felt that both Oliver Letwin and Shirley Williams were slightly equivocal in their answers, I understand why but I had to say I was getting a little bit disappointed.
DIMBLEBY
(interrupting) Were you’re encouraged…
BARRY LIPSCOMB
I was indeed as we move to this end I was infinitely more encouraged, by what Harriet Harman and Peter Hennessy said as I am sure would have been anyone involved in the hospice movement in charities generally, this is a real problem for them and if I could just finish Jonathan by saying that I think it was all summed up last night by the Chairman of Trustee at Naomi’s House who said this sum and it’s £5.7 million is a drop in the ocean for the Government and he wasn’t being in any way capricious but it’s all the world for the children in our care, and I think that is what Harriet and Peter were talking about. So thank you very much.
DIMBLEBY
I suspect, I don’t know for certain I suspect that’s the clearest statement of Government intent we’ve had from Harriet Harman so far from any Government spokesperson.
BARRY LIPSCOMB
I certainly thought so yes thank you very much
(laughter)
OLIVER LETWIN
We’ll discover in due course whether it’s backed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. But…(laughter)
DIMBLEBY
Well the Chancellor of the Exchequer can ring in to Any Answers? (laughter) the number is 03700 100 444 that’s after the Saturday broadcast of the programme the email address any.answers@bbc.co.uk. We’ll go to our next please.
JANE LANGRIDGE
Gordon Brown’s pledge to punish irresponsible bankers seems to have no substance. What suitable punishment would panel members hand out?
DIMBLEBY
And can you hand out punishments if you seek to. Oliver Letwin
OLIVER LETWIN
I don’t think you can hand out punishments but I do think you can make sure that they don’t benefit from the rescue package that has gone forward. The real thing that matters in all of this is not banks or bankers but the corner shop who is trying to pay its salary bill at the end of the month and needs an overdraft. The family that can’t tide itself over without being able to borrow a bit. The small firm that just won’t be able to make investment to keep it going and keep its employees that is what really counts and that is why it makes sense to put enormous amounts of money into the banks in the hope it will stabilize and that they will begin to lend again to those corner shops and those families and those small businesses and we have to make sure that the money does actually get into doing that and not into bonus payments for the bankers who have been running the banks that have benefited from the package because they were going in a terrible way
DIMBLEBY
Ear mark it.
OLIVER LETWIN
It has to be kept absolutely inside the banks yes exactly. That means there will have to be very very firm conditions that there will not be bonuses this year for the people who were responsible for calling down that money from the taxpayer and I don’t think we have yet had a completely clear identification from the government as to whether that is the case. If I can just add I think there is another thing that is terribly important in that package which is the taxpayer is at risk for an enormous amount of money here. I think inevitably, I think rightly but we need to make sure that if things get better as I hope in due course they will. Peter was being rather pessimistic about the length of time and none of us knows how long it will be we are obviously facing some very choppy waters but there will come a time….
DIMBLEBY
We have one or two, well one at least Government minister saying it is certainly going to be a recession the question is how long? Some say the IMF is talking there will be a global recession what is your own view, what are we actually heading for.
OLIVER LETWIN
I know enough to know that I don’t know how long it is going to be but I do know that it is probably going to be very very difficult for a lot of people who are the innocent victims of all of this. People who might lose their houses, people who may lose their jobs. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and eventually we will get through this we are very much less well prepared than many other sectors because we have got huge public sector debt but we will get through it. And when we get through it maybe all that money that the government has put in for the taxpayer into the banks will be worth a lot and we need to make sure the taxpayer then gets the up side. Actually gets a return on that and again we need to make sure that is part of this deal.
DIMBLEBY
Can the bankers as it were put their snouts back in the trough after that?
OLIVER LETWIN
I think there will be a pretty strong national reaction against the level of remuneration that we have seen in some of the banks and I suspect that the bankers will recognize that and I think it is really pretty important that we learn from all of this that actually capitalism and free markets in which I passionately believe is the only way to generate wealth and sustain the public services and give us the quality of life we need and want actually depends in the end on ethics, it depends on not leaving your morals behind when you go to work it depends on solid institutions in society and I think we are beginning to relearn those very important lessons.
DIMBLEBY
Minister how does Gordon Brown propose to give substance to his urge that bankers should be punished?
HARRIET HARMAN
Well I think first off is our concern is the charities, the individuals who are worried about their deposits, the businesses who are worried about getting the loan to restock the shelves of the corner shop.
DIMBLEBY
But this is a question about punishing the bankers, it is not a question about the strategy that you are adopting which is quite familiar to people.
HARRIET HARMAN
I am just saying that the question of retribution against the bankers and understandably everybody is fuming about them because of what Digby Jones I think described as arrogance, ignorance and irresponsibility which has caused so many problems but our first priority is to get the situation stable so that we have an effective banking system that can get the housing market going and that can lend to small businesses and people can feel reassured about deposits.
DIMBLEBY
I am sorry it was the Prime Minister who raised this saying that they would be punished and people are asking, the questioner is asking Jane Langridge how are the bankers going to be punished?
HARRIET HARMAN
Well I think they are going to be punished by not being able to have vast bonuses in the future which appear to go up and up irrespective of the fortunes of their individual company and I think that that age of massive greedy bonuses which encourage recklessness and short termism as well as giving people more money than I can imagine anybody would ever really need I think that is going to have to change.
DIMBLEBY
Is that going to be, is that going to be as Oliver Letwin suggests by sort of moral principles asserting themselves or are you talking about regulation to control the scale of remuneration?
HARRIET HARMAN
Well I don’t think that actually just urging ethics on bankers as Oliver Letwin has urged is going to be enough and when public money takes shares, preferential shares as part of putting more capital into them in order to help with stabilization the question of sensible remuneration policies is going to be very much on the table and financial services authority has said that if they see evidence of big bonuses and vast pay outs going on they will require banks to have more capital to offset that risk and I think that we have made the bonus system more transparent we have put in certain regulations on it actually against the wishes of the conservatives but we have done that but I think we are going to have to do more about that. But actually for the moment our priority is not kind of revenge on the bankers it is recovery for the economy in this country.
DIMBLEBY
And you share the view I think of Tony McNulty who said yes we are going to go into a recession the question is how long and how deep.
HARRIET HARMAN
Well the last quarter for which figures were available shows that the economy was neither growing or shrinking and the definition of recession is two consecutive quarters of the economy shrinking and we are doing everything we can to make sure that money comes back into the system so that the housing market moves again with all its importance for employment, that money goes back into businesses big and small and we are fighting for recovery rather than planning for the worst. We are actually really focused on getting things moving again
OLIVER LETWIN
Jonathan can I just respond to one thing that Harriet said because actually I agree with her that it is not enough, it is crucial we are going to have to recreate a culture which is right inside our banks and in society as a whole but we also need regulation and that is whey we actually need to give the Bank of England back the power to call time on excessive and irresponsible lending. That is one of the problems we face that the Bank of England lost that power.
HARRIET HARMAN
But you have changed your tune Oliver because basically I mean leave aside the bonus you get yourself as a banker but actually last year your Party was saying.
DIMBLEBY
Oliver wanted to comment
HARRIET HARMAN
He said last year his Party said, mortgage regulation, we see no need to continue to regulate the provision of mortgage finance.
OLIVER LETWIN
Now wait a minute Harriet I will come back to the other point you made in a moment. That was a comment by John Redwood in his paper which immediately afterwards we said, and rightly we do not agree with, and the reasons
HARRIET HARMAN
Ok here is one by David Cameron then …. Well intentioned regulation can make us lesssecure in the age of globalisation Well they have changed their tune
OLIVER LETWIN
Please, please I may be naïve but I thought tonight of all nights the political class might rise to the level of events rather than resorting to tribalism (APPLAUSE)
DIMBLEBY
I am going to let you answer in a minute but Harriet Harman said something in relation to your bonuses the implication being that they were large bonuses…
OLIVER LETWIN
Yes I regret to say I didn’t ever earn an enormous bonus as a banker but it is also the case that I happen to be associated with a bank which is about the most conservatively managed institution on earth and that is because it has a certain ethic and I think that is what is very important here.
DIMBLEBY
Peter Hennessy your answer on this.
PETER HENNESSY
I don’t find scapegoating attractive in society and I rather hope we resist it because it is a perfectly noble profession in many ways, banking, and worthwhile and the vast majority of bankers are very decent people. It is a tiny handful of people but a tiny handful of people I think that everybody is getting exercised about are pretty shameless people, they are the sort of people who have gold in every conceivable orifice and they are beyond shame so I mean the Captain Mannering’s of this world, every society has depended on them and Uncle Arthur, you know Dad’s Army I know I am paradigming an entire profession here but I don’t find scapegoating attractive. What we need to think about actually really is why nobody saw this coming. Everybody knew there was going to be quite a big adjustment but nobody foresaw the combination of what you might call ice and fire. Ice being the freezing of the purest stream of capitalism which is the inter bank lending; the liquidity between them and the fire is the volcanic effect all round that which is causing that melt. And also like all volcanoes it is going to have after shocks which cannot be predicted and when you get in to the techniques of it. I am not a mathematician but I do understand that the very sophisticated mathematical modeling that Oliver knows about that goes into the banks, the so called VAR the value at risk they slice it up in the way so much of the markets are sliced up now and look at particular item risks but they have done it on the assumption that the last few years of the guide mathematically they don’t go back to 1929 indeed they couldn’t so they don’t build into the risk the systems failure, the possibility of the systems failure so the most sophisticated mathematicians and mathematical modelers that the city can hire because they pay so well have let us down and what we really need to concentrate on is the never again impulse. This simply must not happen again. Scapegoating might be alright for a few weeks, it is cathartic for the disturbed particularly in the political class but the rest of us don’t need to have to fall for it do we?
(APPLAUSE)
OLIVER LETWIN
I must say I agree with that.
DIMBLEBY
Shirley Williams what punishment would you hand out?
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Well let me begin by saying one thing. I think that the government as in the United States, the government there have simply failed to recognize the scale of anger out there. And the reasons for the scale of anger and let me give an example of a civil servant I was talking to earlier this week who had been told firmly that they can’t have an increase even equal to inflation, who then hear on the radio that the Heads of Barclays and Lloyds and other banks are carrying back several millions of pounds for failed management in the same year that the civil servants and health service workers and teachers, public service workers are once again being told for the sake of the country you have got to curb your ambitions and your greed. We look at the example of extraordinary greed. I agree with Peter it is only a minority but it is a very very controlling minority and I think so far with respect to Harriet we haven’t, the reaction has not been sufficient. What would I do? I would have a public figure a kind of ombudsman figure on every remuneration committee of every major company because what is already plain is that shareholder control is almost completely inadequate, it has never actually judged whether people have been good for their companies or bad for their companies, it is largely dominated by what directors say. I also think and it is a sore point if you like but what we have seen in Britain less true in the last 10 years I will hand this to Harriet but certainly true over the last 20 years is a steady rise in inequality. That is true in most western countries but it is notably true, number one in the United States, number two in the United Kingdom and we are looking at a country which is becoming more and more divided less and less capable of having the sense of the common wealth in the best sense of the word of society and I think that what we have to do if we possibly can is root out the concept that greed has to be the driving force in society. It is one hell of a concept, it is destructive of children’s relationships with their parents, it is destructive of elder peoples relationships with young people and I think it has gone too far and I think we have to say that those bankers and others who have taken part in this must be regulated much more firmly than they have been up to now. Final point and the point in which I disagree with Oliver rather strongly I think this is actually an acid test of capitalism, I think we have seen capitalism work very well in some countries, I think we have seen it work disastrously in a country like Russia where it turned out to be jungle capitalism which destroyed the rule of law. I think we have to think much more deeply about the whole future of the system than has been happening so far in the relatively narrow political responses we have had.
OLIVER LETWIN
But Shirley wouldn’t we agree actually what we really need is a sort of human capitalism, capitalism with a human face that actually has an ethics built into it and does respect society and is there for the greater good….
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
It needs to be built into the structure of society
OLIVER LETWN
It doesn’t need to be built in I agree
DIMBLEBY
We will leave that there and go swiftly to our next please.
DEEPAK GUPTA
Given the current financial turmoil where would the panel keep their savings and why?
Under the mattress maybe?
DIMBLEBY
This is a brief and personal question to each of you it is not a global question
Where do you keep yours Harriet?
HARRIET HARMAN
I keep my overdraft in the bank.
DIMBLEBY
Peter?
PETER HENNESSY
I am innumerate so my dear wife who is a mathematician or a statistician does all of this for me but I think it is in the one that didn’t become a bank, it is a mutual it is Nationwide I think but I had better ask her when I get home.
DIMBLEBY
Shirley Williams
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Straight answer. The Post Office savings bank which because it has not been very good at publicity is continually under rated. It actually pays some of the best interest on savings and is because it is modest totally disregarded by almost everybody every kind of competitor wrong.
DIMBLEBY
You are paid by the Post office for these public announcements
(LAUGH)
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
No bonus for me Jonathan
DIMBLEBY
Oliver Letwin
OLIVER LETWIN
Well what these answers prove is actually that those of us who are politicians at two ends of this table working politicians at the moment are obviously well off than the two who aren’t because I also keep my overdraft in the bank so I think we are probably in the wrong profession
DIMBLEBY
Are you saying, because there will be those who ask saying he has been a banker etc etc are you saying you only have an overdraft you have no savings
OLIVER LETWIN
I am terribly sorry to say yes it is true. I wish it weren’t so and incidentally I wish people in Britain in general we were all saving more. I know I ought to but my wife and I are too extravagant and we should cut back.
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
I should come back quickly from coming from the unpaid and noble house ….
DIMBLEBY
Very well. Our next please.
KEREN COLES
Over the last 60 years women have become more equal in the work place do you think it will take them another 60 years to become equal?
DIMBLEBY
Oh Shirley Williams.
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
I pay and let me pay a compliment to Harriet Harman who has been very much involved in things to do with equality of men and women. The problem I think we are up against is basically a kind of institutional and corporate one. You can pass a lot of laws and you should about equal pay but when you look for example at the proportion of women on the boards of corporations it is an appallingly low figure. It is even worse if you look at the big corporations than the small businesses which may be family businesses. Two problems. One is you have got this deeply inbuilt resistance in particularly some of the big businesses I think towards women being allowed to give their expertise even in areas like pharmaceuticals, fashion and so on when they have a particularly great capacity to contribute. the other thing I think and I say this with feeling is that we haven’t really successfully dealt with the issue which is central in my view which is that women are still expected to carry the greater burden of family, of elderly relatives, of children and until that changes we can whistle for equality it won’t happen. (APPLAUSE)
DIMBLEBY
Professor Hennessy
PETER HENNESSY
Can I give a reason to be cheerful from where I sit in the teaching trade? When you look at the delayed effects of the 1944 education act just before, 4 years before this programme started it took a long time before secondary education for all swept through and particularly in terms of the catch up for women in education and the Robins Report of 1962 which gave us the first batch of new universities was partly designed to get the women who had come through as a result of ’44 Education Act up to university qualification into university and now with 43% of the age group going to college coming through my seminar room every year and pretty well half and half men and women now I think that is going to be an engine of equality. It is not going to tackle what Shirley was putting her finger quite rightly but in terms of sounds old Marxist, I am not an old Marxist but the forward march of women there is this inbuilt progressive force which is schooling and higher education so with a bit of luck this question in 60 years time on AnyQuestions? On the 120th anniversary will be slightly less pessimistic perhaps.
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
How much longer do we have to wait?
HENNESSY
I know, I know what you mean Shirley but I am trying to find reasons to be cheerful
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Of course
DIMBLEBY
Are you in this Harriet Harman, optimist? Pessimist?
HARRIET HARMAN
Yes because I think we have made a lot of progress but I think there is still a great deal of inequality for women and if I think of when Shirley was in the House of Commons and when I first came into the House of Commons I was one of only 3% women MP’s and it was 97% men and all the issues that we wanted to discuss that we felt mattered to women like nursery care, like after school clubs like domestic violence, maternity leave you couldn’t really discuss those at all and people like Shirley really blazed the trail and we followed in her footsteps and we have now got 20% or so women MP’s but we are still a small minority and I think that she is absolutely right that although women have now got equal educational qualifications as men as Peter says women fall back because of the unequal division of labour another Marxist term here, the unequal division of labour in the home
DIMBLEBY
But you are an old Marxist
HARRIET HARMAN
Well, excuse me young Marxist thank you, (LAUGH) of the unequal division of labour in the home, there is a growing elderly population and they need family care as well as good local health and social issues they need more family care. There is women who are working as well as bringing up children and I think that until the next settlement that is going to bring a great leap forward for women to be equal citizens outside the home is when men are equal in the home with women and we have seen new man on the billboards and on the advertising campaigns but he is yet to appear in the kitchen.
DIMBLEBY
Do you envisage, do you genuinely imagine in 10 or 20 years time that there will be an equal proportion of men and women working either full time or part time?
HARRIET HARMAN
Well I think it will take a long time but I think the other thing is that I don’t think that because and it is mostly women working part time that they should be undervalued for the hours of work that they do. I mean how on earth can it be justified that an hour of a woman’s work part time is worth 40% less than a man working full time and I don’t believe that women who are working part time are less intelligent, less committed, less qualified, less useful in their work it is just institutional discrimination against people doing important work in the household so that has got to change and that is why we are bringing a tough new law in
DIMBLEBY
I was about to say that is a matter of legislation is it not? If you say people are being discriminated against for doing the same work whether it is part time or full time legislation can hit that on the head in one go can’t it?
HARRIET HARMAN
And that is why we are having a new equality bill and one of the aims of the equality bill is to show work place by work place to make transparent the pay gaps so that each work place has to say that on average men going home at the end of the work earn x pounds per hour and on average women earn this amount so that actually you can see work place by work place where the unfairness is and then you can help to tackle it.
DIMBLEBY
But with your passion about this why don’t you say not that you can help to tackle this this will be illegal in the same way everyone has to pay a minimum wage why should not women automatically be paid according to your principles exactly the same as a man for doing the same work whether it is part time or full time?
HARRIET HARMAN
Well because the problem is there is already a law which says that we brought in in the 70’s that says paying men and women differently is unfair paying man and women differently for the work of equal value is unfair but it is a question of the value that is put on women’s work and I think that until we actually expose that and show workplace by workplace where the unfair is then we can’t make progress on it.
DIMBLEBY
I mustn’t pursue it for too long but are you saying that women in practice are doing exactly the same job but it is being valued less or that the job description is different because they are women
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
Both
HARRIET HARMAN
Well both and they tend to be in occupations, any occupation that is dominated by women tends to be low paid and that is legacy of discrimination.
DIMBLEBY
Oliver Letwin
OLIVER LETWIN
Well this is actually somewhere where I do agree with Harriet and I think we do need more transparency. One of the reasons why we suggested that actually for eg if there is a discrimination case brought and it is won then there should be a complete audit of the pay arrangements for that firm so the people can see totally what is going on. I think Harriet has a real point there and I think what she says about and indeed what Shirley is saying about people coming into parliament, women coming into Parliament is terribly important. We were behind the curve on that. We have been catching up now and the next Parliament will contain I hope a large number not incidentally just of women but really first class women MP’s in the conservative party and that is overdue and we need to do more . We haven’t done enough yet. I do think actually that I am more on Pater’s side on the question of optimism and the questioner was asking how long. Of course the educational opportunities have changed and that is terrific but also actually I don’t want to be pious about it but I do half or perhaps more than half the cooking and my wife and I when we had two young twins and anybody here who has had twins or anybody listening who has had twins will know what I am talking about got up alternate hours during the night and that is as it should be and I think is beginning to be. I think that is beginning to be the way things are. It is not there yet fully but it needs to get there and of course if you have a couple both of whom are working and working hard they begin to work out ways of doing things together and Harriet’s household like mine contains two hardworking people both trying to do difficult jobs and that is beginning to be the way of the future so I think actually we are on a wave that will get us to the right place I hope very much sooner than 60 years it certainly needs to.
HARRIET HARMAN
I think I am going to make a little call to Mrs Letwin after the programme just to check up whether that is the real version
OLIVER LETWIN
You should do that Harriet and you will find she agrees with what I have just said and I know I must.
DIMBLEBY
And in order to get balance into Any Answers along with the Chancellor, Mrs. Letwin can phone in as well (LAUGH) the number is 03700 100 444 the email address any.answers@bbc.co.uk. That is after the Saturday broadcast of the programme. We will go to our next please.
ADRIAN SINDALL
What in the team’s view is the greatest success and the greatest failure of the last 60 years?
DIMBLEBY
Silence. Shirley Williams?
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
You are a brute. The greatest success I think has been the opening up of the world through internet, through telephone systems, through networks, to the rest of the world. I mean there is this huge potential which we haven’t used very well. But for the fist time it is true that if you are young man or woman who understands the information technology system you can discover if you want to what is going on not just in United States or Australia but for that matter in somewhere like Ecuador you can it is available to you. It is up to you to do it. The greatest drawback I think and I could say many things about this and I have already mentioned inequality but I will mention one other and that is that there is no appreciation of the importance of empty time. The modern world consists almost entirely of filling up every single space often with very trivial things indeed, trivial television, trivial concerns, trivial worries, trivial nervousness so that the time for thinking, for conversation, for building relationships between friends has become I think terribly short term and if there is one thing I think the modern world suffers from terribly especially in the richer industrialized states it is the sense of time for reflection, time for appreciation, time for what one marvellous novelist called the God of Little Things
(APPLAUSE)
DIMBLEBY
Harriet Harman
HARRIET HARMAN
I would say the greatest success over the last 60 years is something that shares it s birthday with Any Question?s which is the NHS and I would say the greatest failure has been the tragic shameful toll of women still dying in childbirth, maternal mortality in the developing world.
DIMBLEBY
Oliver Letwin
OLIVER LETWIN
I mean there are hot contests here in that I think the NHS does have a claim to be one of the great world successes but I think the greatest success of all over the last 60 years has been the destruction of tyranny that encaptured 300 million people behind the iron curtain, subjected them to dreadful conditions of life. I think the worst failing the biggest failure has been both within Britain and across the world having a rich world and a rich country which has left another part of the world in poverty and has left some of the people in our country trapped in multiple deprivation in a way that is I think all political parties would recognise a shame and a scandal
DIMBLEBY
To what do you attribute that failure?
OLIVER LETWIN
I think it is immensely complex and if we are talking about Britain it isn’t just a matter although it is partly a matter of money it is a matter of the patterns of life which have established themselves, poor schooling, poor housing, family background, indebtedness, drug and alcohol addiction, there is a set of things together which together have reinforced on another and then if you look across the world and ask why is Africa become poorer at a time when everyone has got richer a lot of it has to do with failures of aid certainly although rightly this present government moved to a commitment of much greater aid that we agree with but actually it is not just aid it is also about trying to enable those countries to make their way in the world and that involves a whole series of things, institution building, peacekeeping, a real effort to get people in those countries to be able to trade effectively amongst themselves and with the rest of the world and all those things are on the agenda now thank goodness but we have got a long, long way to go.
DIMBLEBY
Peter Hennessy
PETER HENNESSY
On the global scale I think it is the ending of the cold war I am with Oliver if in 1948 tonight it would have been 3 months into the Berlin airlift, if you said come with me to 2008 the Cold War would have ended without a nuclear exchange or without a general global war and also in real terms of wealth we would be 5 times wealthier per head than we are now. We would have said what on earth would they have to worry bout. But that is my great regret it is back to what Shirley was saying. Nye Bevan said I think it was the very day the NHS came into existence the 5th July 1948 the whole idea of this and the welfare state generally is to bring to everybody a level of serenity that word serenity you don’t hear it in politics now, the level serenity that is enjoyed by very few and one of the problems is I think that certainly through the 50’s when I was properly conscious for the first time we were much more optimistic. We were much poorer but we thought we had got into a benign cycle that generation on generation the opportunities for health education, welfare and jut getting on with ourselves better would increase but we are a very scratchy ill at ease society we were before this credit crunch. and that is one of the paradoxes the wealth has increased exponentially but the serenity had decreased and that I think is a huge own goal it really is but how you get it back again, how you put it right very difficult indeed.
DIMBLEBY
Adrian Sandle what is your answer to your question?
ADRIAN SINDALL
Success I think I firmly go with Shirley Williams on the internet which I think has transformed the globe. In failure in terms of what society could have achieved and didn’t as opposed to more idealist concepts like the abolition of world poverty I think the failure of the international community to solve the Arab Israel dispute in Palestine which has spread across to so many areas o four life and has been a constant corrosive influence.
DIMBLEBY
Thank you so much for that if you have thoughts again Any Answers may be for you on that question. We would be delighted to have them. We can just squeeze in very swiftly one more.
ROBERT COURTS
Given the problems in the City of London is it time for Winchester once again to become England’s capital?
(LAUGH AND APPLAUSE)
DIMBLEBY
Now is your change to ingratiate yourself with the people of Winchester. Harriet Harman.
HARRIET HARMAN
Well I know it is not supposed to be nasty to bankers night but I would suggest if Winchester became the capital they would have to have all the bankers and would you really want them?
DIMBLEBY
Oliver Letwin
OLIVER LETWIN
No.
DIMBLEBY
Happy with where it is or Winchester shouldn’t be spoilt in this way.
OLIVER LETWIN
It is where it is and Winchester is an especially beautiful city but it is not a conservative party policy to turn Winchester into the capital of Britain.
DIMBLEBY
Shirley?
SHIRLEY WILLIAMS
He is just scared of the Scots going off to become independent Alfred stands in the middle of Westminster holding his sword up against the presumably at that time the Vikings all I can say is they have now got an alternative to Vikings and I hope he will hold his sword up yet again.
DIMBLEBY
Peter Hennessy
PETER HENNESSY
Would you really want the British political class land the British press corps to camp on your doorstep?
DIMBLEBY
You all applauded a the start hands up those who would like to see Winchester restored to its original status of capital of this country hands up? Those who would not like it?
Well it certainly puts it forward as an idea, it is not going to win a seat in Winchester that is for certain. That takes us to the end of this weeks programme. Next week we are going to be in Accrington in Lancashire with the Justice Secretary, Jack Straw, with Jude Kelly the Artistic Director of the South Bank Centre and Professor Brian Cox who is a Physicist and who was heavily involved in the Hadron Collider project and someone else as well I don’t know who that is yet . Join us there. But here, from here in the Henry Beaufort school in Winchester at the end of the 60th anniversary edition of Any Questions? Goodbye.
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