BBC - Radio 4 - Transcripts

CHAIRMAN: JONATHAN DIMBLEBY

PANELLISTS:

GEOFF HOON MP: Secretary of State for Transport

VINCENT CABLE MP: Liberal Democrat's Deputy Leader

DAVID WILLETTS MP: Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills

CAROLINE LUCAS MEP: Leader, Green Party

From: Nottingham Med-Chi Society, Lecture Room 4, Nottingham Medical School, Queen’s Medical Centre Campus, Derby Road, Nottingham NG7 2UH

DIMBLEBY:
We are in Nottingham at the Nottingham Medical School which is on the Queen’s Medical Centre Campus in the City. We are the guests here of the Nottingham Med-Chi Society which was founded 180 years ago to cultivate, promote medicine, surgery and the auxiliary sciences and the Society says its objectives are as relevant and as vital today as they were then and that they are well served in the City which is one of six science cities in the country. On our panel Geoff Hoon has declared his hand. He loves cars, in fact he loves them so much he drove 3,500 thousand miles through 10 countries on his last summer holiday which proves he was not then seeking to ingratiate himself with the motoring lobby because at that time he was Chief Whip and had not yet been appointed to his new post as Transport Secretary, although I believe he didn’t let us in on his enthusiasm until he had been appointed Transport Secretary. Vincent Cable is probably the most familiar name in the Liberal Democrat hierarchy except of course he would want to be swift to point out for his Leader Nick Clegg. Mr. Cable is not an optimist. I fear he says as his Party’s Treasury spokesman that the recession will be longer, deeper and nastier than the government believes but not all is lost. He is the only known politician who could certainly do better on the dance floor than even John Sergeant. Caroline Lucas hopes that the right lessons will be learnt from the economic crisis and that it will usher in a new age with a green new deal. As an MEP and a Leader the first leader of the Green Party to be a solo leader she was awarded last year the Observers title of the UK’s most difficult politician. That’s a bit harsh to live with isn’t it?

CAROLINE LUCAS
Well there wasn’t much competition to be honest.

(LAUGH)

DIMBLEBY
David Willets has been around at the top of the Conservative Party for almost 20 years. He is now Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills. There is a tired old gag about him that he is so clever that he should be known as two brains Willetts. It is such an old line that I refuse absolutely to mention it. He is the 4^th member of our Panel.

(APPLAUSE)

Our first question please

FARUK PATEL
Hello there. We have just seen over the past two days on the news about the terrorist attacks in India this follows the Terrorist attacks of 9/11, 7/7 the Madrid bombings, the Bali bombings and many others. Can extremism ever be defeated?

DIMBLEBY:
Vince Cable

VINCENT CABLE
Well extremism is never going to disappear. There will always be bitter, angry people willing to murder others in appalling circumstances as we have seen over the last few days. That can’t be stopped. It can be minimalised by good intelligence and co-operation. I think what is particularly alarming about this episode is the sophistication of it. I mean India has had a great deal of terrorism which probably hasn’t attracted the attention it should have done. They had 180 people killed on a train, terrorism a couple of years ago, this time because foreigners have been involved it has had higher profile. What is particularly worrying about this is that fist of all it could well trigger ethnic conflict in India which has a long tradition of hostility between the more militant Hindus and Muslims. India has 150 million Muslims, some of which are already radicalized and that could stir up a very vicious hornets nest and the other problem about it and I am sure this is why it was done the way it was, was to create the possibility of conflict between India and Pakistan both of which are nuclear powers. It is very clear that the Pakistan government was not involved. Their President is really trying very hard to create peace but there are militant elements in Pakistan hierarchy in military intelligence that may well have been involved in all of this and this could provide a pretext for confrontation between the two countries and this is obviously what the terrorists wanted and there is now a great deal of onus on the Indians with our support to try to avoid this escalating into conflict on that level.

DIMBLEBY:
Thank you. Caroline Lucas?

CAROLINE LUCAS
Let me first say in response to the situation in Mumbai it is clearly a terrible act of terror that our thoughts are very much with the families there, it is a criminal act and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. In terms of whether there is a way of defeating extremism my answer very clearly would be not by military means. I think all the evidence we have seen from Iraq, from Afghanistan, right across the board is that you don’t bring peace to the barrel of a gun. I think that when you see, many people seeing that the war on terror hasn’t made us safer, it has been interpreted by many as a war on Muslims and I think that is enormously damaging. I think what we should be doing is looking at some of the root causes of some of the terrorist activities we see. Not to condone it but I do think we need to try to understand it and I think that the situation in Palestine for example wit the ongoing Israelis occupation, with the absolute strangulation of Gaza through this siege on Gaza, this economic blockade is really feeding so much anger right across the world and it means there is more of a fertile breeding ground then for extremists to flourish so I think if we are to defeat extremism then we have to go to the root causes of it. We have to look in particular at how marginalized communities are being treated; we have to look in particular at countries like Palestine.

DIMBLEBY:
Secretary of State?

GEOFF HOON
Certainly I share Caroline’s sympathy for those that have died and lost loved ones and I think we must all think about the situation that people have faced over the past 48 hours. I disagree with her to this extent though that I think defeating terrorist extremism begins with effective security and effective policing. I think we should pay tribute actually to the Indian security forces who seem to me to have done a remarkable job in clearing these buildings of terrorists, terrorists who appear determined to lose their lives so clearing a hotel of the kind that we have seen on the television floor by floor, room by room is a remarkable operation. They seem to have done that very successfully.

DIMBLEBY:
Yet unable to prevent the act as Vince Cable was talking about

GEOFF HOON
What I think follows from that in a great democracy like India, there is politics. I accept Caroline’s point that we have to resolve these issues politically in democracies and we have to find ways in which we can achieve effective settlement between people and one of the things that we must avoid at all costs in this situation is allowing the difficult relationship between India and Pakistan to be inflamed by whatever has taken place. this looks like an Al Qaeda operation, it certainly looks like the characteristic of multiple attacks, people prepared to commit suicide, high profile targets involving foreign citizens very similar to what happened sadly in Bali so it looks to have those characteristics but there will always be in this kind of incident tensions between people across that difficult border.

DIMBLEBY:
When you say looks like do you believe it is Al Qaeda or simply individuals who for whatever motives are using the same skills and techniques.

GEOFF HOON
Certainly one of the assumptions that security forces make is that Al Qaeda has become something of a terrorist franchise and that people will copy the methods and techniques that the core leadership might advocate. Whether this has some kind of authority from somewhere inside Pakistan I do not know. Sadly there are a number of terrorist organisations dedicated to causing trouble between India and Pakistan. It could easily be one of those as well.

DIMBLEBY:
David Willets?

DAVID WILLETTS
Well first of all of course it is a tragedy for the individuals involved and we are all thinking about them at a time like this. I think it could also be a tragedy for India. I mean the other thing is that if you want a hope. If you want a country that is large, multi cultural, diverse, has been deeply poor, is advancing is making a success of its economy, is keeping a democracy going India is one of the countries that we really look to as a beacon of hope in the third world and amongst developing countries and I hope as other people have said that India is not diverted from the democratic route by the extraordinary internal tensions that events like this bring up. As to what we can do about it I don’t think extremism can ever be defeated. You can win individual victories and certainly robust intelligence proper security measures, aggressive action of the sort that we have now seen from the Indian armed forces that is part of it. Political activity is part of it. There is a third thing that hasn’t been mentioned yet and there is this extraordinary experiment that they are doing in Saudi Arabia where some of the Muslim extremists perhaps linked by Al Qaeda who had almost been brainwashed in their youth have been persuaded that this is not the true path of Islam that there are other ways of interpreting Islam and are becoming, almost rejoining the community as individuals rescued from a strange bizarre form of extremism so that can be done as well. You can win this battle one by one hearts and minds as well.

DIMBLEBY:
Let me go back to our questioner Faruk Patel. You asked, posed this question. Do you have a thought about it yourself?

FARUK PATEL
Yes for me to defeat extremism you have to win the hearts and minds of the people as David Willetts said and you are not going to do that if you are going to do as George Bush has done in the past 8 years and create a them and us culture. You have to be inclusive and try to understand why extremists do that, once you understand the motives you can address their concerns and the motives and balance out.

DIMBLEBY:
In response to that Geoff Hoon

GEOFF HOON
The only reason I disagree with Caroline about this is that when terrorist organisations launch an attack on New York and Washington from Afghanistan the international community simply cannot stand back and allow those terrorist organisations to train, and develop and to fly. We have to take military action to deal with those organisations. If we had not done so they would simply have had a whole country form which to operate and which to attack western values and western democracy and it cannot be right

CAROLINE LUCAS
Well first of all I am not necessarily saying don’t do anything but let’s at least not do harm. Your strategy has simply not managed to capture Osama bin Laden what it has done is to diffuse terrorism right across Afghanistan and into Pakistan which is nuclear armed which means the whole situation is ever more dangerous. I am not saying do nothing but I am saying do no harm and at least start to understand why these things are happening. Look at the root causes and don’t immediately resort to arms because frankly when you see what is happening in Afghanistan right now the idea that that has somehow been successful more than 4,000 people died in the last 11 months you know the kind of violence there is worse now than it was before. The idea that that is success I think is fantasy land.

DIMBLEBY:
OK.

(APPLAUSE)

DIMBLEBY:
Faruk Patel thank you for putting that question. Any thoughts you may have on that after the Saturday broadcast of this programme there is of course Any Answers. The number to ring is 03700 100 444 and the email address any.answers@bbc.co.uk. We will go to our next

JULIE RUTTER
Should an MP be arrested for doing his job?

DIMBLEBY:
This is the Conservative front bench spokesman Damian Green. Caroline Lucas?

CAROLINE LUCAS
Absolutely not. I think this story is absolutely horrifying quite frankly. (APPLAUSE)
A key role of MP’s and particularly MPs in opposition is to try and hold the government to account. Now we don’t have that many ways of doing it and so one of the ways that MPs do have is precisely by putting into the public domain what needs to be put there so I think absolutely this was an incredibly worrying step. I think it is worrying as well because it is happening on the eve of the appointment of the new Police Commissioner and we don’t seem to have learnt the lessons about not having the police embroiled in politics. I think the role of the police should be to protect the general public from harm not to protect the government from embarrassment which is what I think seems to have gone on here. It seems, can I just say what is so serious about it is it is not just an isolated example. I think it seems to be aimed at intimidating others. We know the government is very angry about a number of leaks that have happened just recently. What all of this seems to have the hallmarks of is the kind of signals going out to anybody else who might be planning to blow the whistle. To say don’t do it we are going to come down on you like a ton of bricks, it is an incredibly intimidating thing to do. It is an incredibly negative thing to do and I think we should all stand up and try to protect our much battered democracy in our country. (APPLAUSE)

DIMBLEBY:
David Willetts

DAVID WILLETTS
Well I am very much in agreement with what Caroline said and I think one of the, I think the sense of shock in the House of commons today was very strong indeed. We had counter terrorism officers coming into the House of Commons, coming into the office as well as the constituency office and the home of an elected MP not for any crimes he had committed but because of political activities because he had been releasing information that he was getting. It was nothing to do with national security. He hadn’t revealed the names of something that was extraordinarily sensitive for security reasons. What he had been doing is he had been getting information about ministerial cover ups. There was a, it was discovered that there were 5000 people who were illegal immigrants who had been take on by the security vetting agency. Damian got the evidence that ministers had known this for months and had not told the House of Commons so he revealed that information. He discovered that there were people who had not complied with immigration who were being employed in the House of Commons. He revealed that information. That is information that is part of the day to day political debate in a democracy which we are absolutely entitled to know. What was shocking about it was that Ministers were not willing to let it be known

DIMBLEBY:
Can I just ask you this had he acquired that information as is the widespread presumption from a civil servant who is enjoined under the Official Secrets Act not to provide information of that kind. Is that a normal, however, part of the political process?

DAVID WILLETTS
I don’t know exactly how the information was obtained by Damian. I think that my assumption from what has been going on is that this is and this is what Gordon Brown as Shadow Chancellor was doing 10 or 15 years ago and if you read the biographies of Gordon Brown they are saying he made his reputation in the Labour Party and was urged to stand for the Labour Shadow Cabinet because he was so effective in using leaked material to embarrass the then conservative government. So it seems to me that something that Prime Minister, now our Prime Minister used to do in opposition is now being a reason for being arrested by the police. And I think what we need to know is this. The, as this investigation began with the Home Office the Home Office wanted to know why it was being revealed that the Home Secretary was not releasing information that she should have been releasing. As it clearly began in the Home Office they commissioned this enquiry they must have set it up, at what point were Home Office Ministers told that it was going to reach the stage that an elected MP was going to be arrested as part of the enquiry. We now know that the Mayor of London Boris Johnson was told shortly before this happened. We understand that perhaps some of the House of Commons authorities were told because after all the police were coming in to take over an MP’s office. What we need to know is did the Home Secretary know? And if the Home Secretary did not know it would seem quite extraordinarily incompetent that this massive change in our constitutional practice that politicians can be arrested for this kind of activity as a result of a Home Office enquiry has not even been checked with the Home Secretary and I think that is something that we are entitled to have an answer to and a matter of urgency.

DIMBLEBY:
Are you saying that you don’t accept at face value because it is part of what your last answer seemed to imply what the Prime Minister has said? Namely that Ministers did not know before this raid took place.

DAVID WILLETTS
Well I would like to know exactly who knew what because this began, this must have been Ministers saying why have I been regularly embarrassed by being revealed with information that was sent to my desk and not been released by me and that information is subsequently being released by the Opposition Home Affairs Spokesman. That was the original issue that was being investigated so I am, I think we all need to know, either the Home Secretary did not know in which case it was extraordinary given that other people were being told. Or she did know in which case we are getting into very serious territory indeed.

DIMBLEBY:
Geoff Hoon?

GEOFF HOON
Well let’s start from first principles about this. In this room there a number of doctors. There is something in our society called Doctor/patient confidentiality. You are a journalist Jonathan you will not reveal your sources, there is the privilege of the confessional. All those relationships depend on trust. Now what were are dealing with here is a civil servant who has broken the trust that flows from doing the job. I have been a Minister since 1997. I have had lots of private officers and I trust them. I trust them to allow me to do my job properly because that job necessarily has to involve a degree of confidentiality. As a Minister I have got to review a whole series of different issues, I have got to reach conclusions. If any one of the those aspects of that decision making in the way that this has been compromised that damages the integrity of government and the integrity of being able to take proper and sensible decisions. Let me just finish. The undermining of the vital trust between civil servants who remember sign up to the Official Secrets Act. Nobody makes them. What is interesting about Caroline’s

DIMBLEBY:
Now I am going to come in here and just – the core of the question is about a Shadow Minister being arrested. Why given that it is well known to anyone in my trade that leaks and as was touched on just now by David Willetts leaks are stock in trade of the British political system, that a Shadow, sometimes form the Government sometimes from Civil Servants sometimes form other sources . How should it be that an MP, a senior MP should be arrested in this process?

GEOFF HOON
Well I do not know why the police arrested Damian Green. What I do know is that there was a perfectly proper police investigation into a leak from the Home Office. A Dept responsible for the security of its country now it isn’t right that the Civil Servant or indeed if you’ll forgive me Jonathan a journalist can decide in Caroline’s words what needs to be put there. This is about the essential confidence between Ministers and their Civil Servants and it isn’t right that an individual civil servant should be able to decide for himself or herself what should be put into the public domain

DIMBLEBY:
Were you, were you at all dismayed or in any way bewildered by the fact that terrorist officers were used 9 of them we are told, dwellings at the office and at Westminster when as your own party said when this happened not so long ago in relation to the cash for honours enquiry that it was bizarre that someone who was quite willing to come forward and offer herself for interview should have a dawn swoop at 0630. Were you bewildered in this case when there was no suggestion as far as I know from anyone that Mr. Green wouldn’t have been available for questioning?

GEOFF HOON
That is entirely a matter for the police and what is vital in our society. (LAUGH) Well it is vital in our society is that police are independent that they (LAUGH) take responsibility. Well I am astonished that anybody would be so unfair to police officers in this county and across this country who do a difficult and demanding job and I assure they are not subject to political direction and the problem with all of the panelists so far and the problem with the reaction of if you forgive me for saying so position politicians to this is that they are impugning the integrity of decent hardworking police officers because they are saying that they are incapable (SHOUTS OF NO) You are Caroline. You are saying that the police are incapable of carrying out operational duties without political direction that does not happen in this country and it should never happen.

DIMBLEBY:
I am going to bring in Vince Cable and then after that David Willetts

VINCENT CABLE
Well I am another opposition politician. I am not in Damian Green’s Party I doubt that I would have agreed with what he was going to do with the information but it was an outrage. Absolutely outrageous and there is no point (APPLAUSE) and what was so outrageous and particularly after the question we have just had on India is the use of counter terrorism police. I mean those are specialist officers who are hired for the purpose of tracking down potential murderers and bombers in Britain. That is their job. They are not there to pursue what by any standards a much lower grade offences in relation to what essentially is a civil matter. And I think this highlights a wider concern that what the Government has done over the years is that it has used terrorists powers and counter terrorist operations for matters that have absolutely nothing to do with terrorism at all. I mean quite apart from the use of these officers (APPLAUSE)

DIMBLEBY:
The Minister has said that they operated independently that they chose, these officers to go on this set of raids and you are suggesting that the government was using them or are you not suggesting that?

VINCENT CABLE
Well they were presumably acting under somebody’s instructions.

GEOFF HOON?
The Chief constable.

VINCENT CABLE
Yes the Metropolitan Commissioner and whether it was him or somebody higher I don’t know but whether it was him or a politician who ultimately ordered was using terrorism powers and terrorism officers in a completely inappropriate way and the point I was going to make is that we have had a whole succession of these. If you remember the counter terrorism legislation came in, one of the first times it was used against someone heckling at a Party Conference. We have had people reading the names of war dead at memorials, people demonstrating against the arms trade and counter terrorism provisions have been used and the use in this case it just discredits the whole war against terrorism . This is what is so utterly damaging about it.

DIMBLEBY:
David Willetts you wanted to come back

DAVID WILLETTS
I wanted to come back to Geoff. First of all to say that none of this is to do with the integrity of professionalism of the police. The whole point about the nature of this investigation though is this goes right back up to Ministers because it was Ministers who presumably complained about the fact that he was getting this leaked information

DIMBLEBY:
What we are told is by Sir David Normington who is the civil servant, the senior civil servant that he had take the decision to ask the police help in identifying a source of a serious “leaks of sensitive information over an extended period which risked undermining the effective of my department”. The alleged things are what you touched on I presume the 500 illegal immigrants working in the security industry authority.

GEOFF HOON?
But David answer this question if there is a leak from a senior official in the Home Office how do you know whether that material is simply politically embarrassing and I can see that a lot of the audience consider that what is the case or that it is damaging to the security of the United Kingdom. We are talking about the Home Office, the Dept responsible for protecting our security.

DAVID WILLETTS
Can I first of all and it is a common sense test the kind of information Damian Green was receiving was information about for example the number of rebels that the Labour Party thought might be opposing the 42 day detention rule. That is the kind of information. This is political activity. Now I fully understand that we have an Official Secrets Act and successive Governments investigate breaches of official secrets. I fully understand that that is part of the way, that is an established part of our political system. This is different. I would like to know from Geoff the last time he believes Police Officers arrested an elected Member of Parliament in respect of that member of Parliaments’ political activities, raided not just his home but his office at the House of Commons, have taken away his computers and I was speaking to Damian whose office is down the corridor from me this afternoon. For a time his parliamentary emails were all frozen for police investigations. You have to be able to do your job as a democratic constituency member of parliament and this is as far as I can understand unprecedented and I would like to hear Geoff explain when he believes we are fighting around the world to protect our democratic values why he could possibly defend this type of activity at home

(APPLAUSE)

DIMBLEBY:
Let me, rather than to invite you to rehearse what you have said can I just put it very simply to summarize. Do you have yourself no qualms about the action that was taken by the police, you say quite independently let’s assume that for the purposes of this question in taking the steps that they took and the manner in which they took those steps to secure an interview with Damian Green.

GEOFF HOON
As far as I am concerned the police are operationally independent. They must be free to take the decisions that they judge to be necessary

DIMBLEBY:
Do you never take a view that does a Minister or individual never take a view about how the police behave given that they are independent and the way in which they select to behave?

GEOFF HOON
What I think is important about that is that Ministers, Ministers give strong support to those whose responsibility it is to protect our civil liberties. That is what the police are there for.

DIMBLEBY:
And there we will have to leave it because we have got a lot more to do but if you have thoughts about Any Answers may be for you. Again I will give you that number it is 03700 100 444. We will go to our next please.

JANE HIND
Good evening. Does the panel think that the fiscal measures introduced by the Government to help the ailing economy will turn out to be jam today but dripping tomorrow?

DIMBLEBY:
I presume from your question that you prefer jam to dripping?
David Willetts?

DAVID WILLETTS
Well it is indeed an ailing economy and we do need measures to revive it and try to avoid the worse of the recession. The trouble with these measures is that you have put your finger on it there is a very temporary tax cut and then there are very large tax increases and the tax increases will come in just as we hop the economy might be recovering so the danger is that they will extinguish a recovery by hitting people at the very worse possible moment and these costs will be with us for years to come. Our children will be paying taxes to service the debts that Gordon Brown and Alastair Darling are taking on at the moment. They will be paying these costs in 20 years time. (APPLAUSE) What we do need, we do need to do things to help our economy and the most powerful single thing the governments can do and this is something that Vince has also spoken about and it is something the Governor of the Bank of England has called for and the Director General of the CBI is try and help to get the credit flowing. It is trying to ensure that the money supply, the money that lubricates our economy that that is flowing and that seems to me a far more important way in which a government can help the economy than with tax cuts that are going to be so far chancey that no one will trust them as a basis for spending any more and what we are talking about is for example helping banks to keep on lending by guaranteeing some of all the new loans that they make so that the banks are less risk averse are more willing to keep on financing the small businesses that are desperate for credit and there are genuinely viable companies that are threatened with bankruptcy simply because banks are withdrawing the funding that they are reliant on and are used to and that is what the government should be putting their energies to and that is what we are focused on and we have put forward practical proposals for guaranteeing the loans the banks make to try to keep credit flowing to British business and that is the best single way we can help stimulate and keep our economy moving.

DIMBLEBY:
Caroline Lucas?

CAROLINE LUCAS
Well I think that if Alastair Darling really things that 2.5% off VAT is really going to make a difference he really needs to get out more and you know has he not seen down the High Street there are enough shops out there now with 30% off 40% off 50% off so the idea that a paltry 2.5% off is really going to make much difference I think is a little deluded but I have a deeper problem with this and that is that we are essentially being told to shop our way out of this crisis and the idea that the answer to massive debt and over consumption is more debt and more consumption seems to me a little foolish and what worries me about it is that not just because it won’t work but more seriously it will actually exacerbate the other crisis that people seem to have completely forgotten about which is the climate crisis. You know this week the climate bill received Royal Assent although you would not know it because it hasn’t really been covered in the media anywhere. the climate crisis is even more serious than the financial crisis, serious though that is and what this whole package of measures that the Chancellor announced has done is basically to have missed a massive opportunity to have really invested in a green new deal, in a green future and basically putting money into energy efficiency, into renewable energies, into producing thousands, hundreds of thousands of green jobs a real carbon army of people who will go round insulating homes, saving people money as well as saving a mission . This is a real opportunity to deal with both the climate crisis and the economic crisis at the same time and I think it is really desperate that the Chancellor completely blew it. (APPLAUSE)

DIMBLEBY:
Secretary of State for Transport

GEOFF HOON
What is important is that we get confidence back into our economy. We have made a lot of money available incidentally David for increasing liquidity to allow the banks to lend to both potential home buyers and to businesses but unfortunately what David sounded like is too often what the conservatives sounded like in the past. His colleague Andrew Lansley talked about let the recession run its course and we have seen that before. We have seen that in Nottinghamshire. We have see hundreds of thousands of people lose their jobs and no effort by conservative government to allow them to get back into work. We cannot go back into those times which is why the government has set out rather than the inactivity that David has described it has set out to pump money back into the economy and that is not simply just in terms of tax cuts. I announced a package of £1billion of spending on roads and railways last week. We have seen similar packages (and railways) and we have made sure that we are giving people the opportunity of work because we recognise that these are tough times for people and that people will be worried about their future employment. We need to ensure that there are opportunities for people to stay in work as part of an overall package to raise activity in the economy so it is not just about tax cuts it is a range of measures across the government., across depts. to ensure that our economy gets through these hard times

DIMBLEBY:
Just on the one part of your responsibility that relates to roads the Chancellor said that there was going to be £400 million available I think I am right for roads building or development. There aren’t whether that is a good thing or not we will leave that aside there aren’t actually going to be any more roads are there as a result of the investment. You have brought forward one £100 million project and that is about it.

GEOFF HOON
An important scheme in Nottinghamshire, we are also looking at as Caroline said not road widening in quite the sense she implied but using the hard shoulder from time to time to relieve congestion

CAROLINE LUCAS
To increase capacity on the roads

GEOFF HOON
Well it increase capacity on those part of the motorway network where is congestion and that is part of the way in which we manage the process of dealing with the number s of people who want to travel. We have a remarkably successful railway network we are increasing capacity on the network (LAUGH) we are spending, we are spending something like £10 billion on improving capacity in our rail network, buying huge number of extra trains, 1300 extra carriages to improve the capacity of public transport. Spending similar amounts to improve public transport elsewhere in the country

DIMBLEBY:
Those were all in the pipeline anyway. That isn’t spending as a result of …..

GEOFF HOON
The Chancellor made and I made on Monday and Tuesday in relation to Transport to bring forward schemes, the scheme the dual carriageway in Nottinghamshire was a scheme that has been waiting for some 25 years. It had another 5 years to go, we brought it forward it will happen 5 years earlier than it otherwise would have done.

DIMBLEBY:
Vince Cable

VINCENT CABLE
I think the starting point has to be that we really are in a very very dire situation economically and we have to all of us acknowledge the seriousness of the problem and the government has to take a lead in keeping the economy going. But just to give in perspective what the government has done the American administration the new Obama Administration has just announced a stimulus package which in relation to the size of the American economy is 3 to 4 times bigger than what the British government are doing. They realise how bad this is and what the British government has done I mean the VAT cut OK it may help a little at the margin but it is a very minor step. If you just think about what it means concretely if you are talking about a flat screen television probably imported from China costing jut over £200 well you get £5 off , you go to a restaurant, you pay £25 for a meal you get 50p off I mean that is not going to provide a massive stimulus to the British economy. We do need tax cuts but a much better way of doing it is to focus tax cuts on the people who are at the lower bottom end of the income scale and to do it on a permanent basis but actually those people are going to to face increased taxation in a couple of years in the form of national insurance. I do agree with the comments that have been made about the need to invest. It is important at the end of this this money it doesn’t just disappear, we have an asset, something at the end of it there has been an investment. One of the things I would really like the government to be doing more of is taking advantage of the fact that we currently have enormous numbers of people who are unemployed construction work industry because the housing industry has ground to a halt. thousands of people have been laid off, construction companies are going bust all over the place and if government could mobilize those people to get proper social housing going, provide an injection of demand for the construction industry, provide houses that people need. Although they use this language they don’t actually do anything, very little is actually happening and the final point I would make is this and David Willetts is right to mention the banking system. Just to put this in perspective the total amount of British government debt is only a third as much as the total size of the balance sheet of the bank that was effectively nationalized this morning the Royal Bank of Scotland and the banks are very very important in driving this forward. We have put all that money in, vast amounts of tax payers money it isn’t actually coming out the other end and the key responsibility of government is to get a grip on that and make absolutely sure that money flows through to companies to keep them going and keep workers in work. (APPLAUSE)

DIMBLEBY:
Can you comment on those commentators who say what is being done is to exacerbate a problem. The problem was caused by mountains of debt, not least private debt hugely more indebtedness than people were earning and that what is being encouraged by one means or another is for people to get even further into debt which will mean it will be a very long time indeed before the recession can come to an end.

VINCENT CABLE
Well we had a vast amount of personal household debt. People were indeed encouraged very often by a lot of irresponsible lending by the banking system to accumulate vast mortgages against houses that were grossly overpriced and we had a household debt crisis. What the government is trying to do to get out of it is taking some of this responsibility on to the government’s books, effectively by increasing public debt. It is worrying because eventually of course the government has got to service this debt and it has got to float bonds in the market to raise the capital but I think we shouldn’t allow that problem to produce the answer that I think the Tories are saying we shouldn’t do anything. I think we must do something and I think that British government debt although it is worrying it is actually about in the middle of the rest of the developed world. We are not in as comfortable position as the Scandinavians or the Australians but we are actually in a much better position than continental Europe and the United States so we should use that capacity to keep the economy going.

DIMBLEBY:
David Willetts in relation to that when Andrew Lansley the Health Secretary put up on his blog that actually recession could be good for you in the sense that people stayed at home more they drank less alcohol they went less to restaurants he was then obliged to apologise and to withdraw that but you think deep down he believes it but it is politically unacceptable to say it.

DAVID WILLETTS
Well first of all Andrew did apologise and I think and I know Andrew and he is a decent man and we all understand that at times like this people want Governments to do everything that you can possibly do to keep the economy going. There is not good news in the kind of economic disaster that is unfolding and we all of us understand that. What I would like to come back to though is to say to Geoff and to Vince who both said oh but the conservative are just preaching inactivity that is absolutely not what I have been saying this evening or what David Cameron or George Osborne are proposing. The biggest single engine driving an economy at a time like this is the banking system and access to credit and finance and I thought at the end of his remarks Vince was sharing that analysis and it is the flow of money through the economy that is essential and the reason why we had the great depression in the 1930’s was that it was the flow of money that stopped even though governments were running budget deficits and what we are focusing on is practical measures and we are proposing that it is not just a matter of the government guaranteeing the lending between banks that happens in the inter bank market that has already been done and the right thing too incidentally we support it but we are also saying that we should guarantee the loans that banks make to businesses so that businesses can keep on accessing funds.. That will keep the British economy going.

DIMBLEBY:
Two quick final words if you would. First of all Caroline Lucas

CAROLINE LUCAS
Well the first is about jobs you know. I am deeply disappointed about the number of jobs that the government seems to be planning and it is talking about bringing forward a few billion pounds worth of existing capital projects but not actually any new capital projects. We need to make hundreds of thousands of new jobs not just the pitiable number he is talking about. But the other thing I wanted to mention is well is that we need to look at more innovative ways of funding this. I think we should look at the idea of local authority bonds for example where people can put their pensions into local authority bonds. Those pensions would then be used to basically for example insulate all homes in a particular local authority. That would be a much better use of your money than having it somewhere in Iceland where you didn’t even know that it was and then you kind of lose it. So actually investing locally for something that is productive and useful would be an opportunity again that this government is missing

DIMBLEBY:
Geoff Hoon

GEOFF HOON
Well I don’t often quote the last conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer with approval but since he is a local Nottinghamshire MP he was asked what he would do to provide a fiscal stimulus to the economy and he said he would go for VAT and that is precisely what we have done.

DIMBLEBY:
At that point we will go on to our next question.

PAUL LOUGHNA
Does the panel believe that a future government should end final salary pensions for public sector workers?

DIMBLEBY:
This has been, this has been floated by David Cameron. David Willetts

DAVID WILLETTS
Well certainly we cannot have a pensions apartheid in this country where if you are in the public sector you have one sort of pension. The final salary pension whose value is related to the income you earn in your last years in the post as against in the private sector people having often pensions worth far less depending on the size of the individual pot you have built up. And we can’t have a country where there are two nations and public sector workers have one regime and private have another regime. What you do about that involves above all improving our pensions. I want to see more people saving for better pensions and I personally think that there is a lot that we can do to improve the quality and revive private sector pensions so that people in the private sector re once more building up something from their employment that enable them to enjoy a comfortable retirement whereas at the moment there are large numbers of people growing in anxiety about the income they are going to have on their retirement. As to what should happen in the public sector I mean this is something that has got to be looked at as to how it should be done and what approach you take, it is extremely difficult as you go through scheme by scheme. I have studied pensions quite a bit over the years and the thing when you look at it is that the public sector workers have to accept terms of employment which include a value attached to the pension that they have, you have to look at whether you can reform or improve pensions where you can make sure that people properly pay the contributions that reflect the value of the pension that they are getting so this is something that we are going to go have to look at; Any responsible government is going to have to look at but we are far from the stage of having detailed proposals at the moment. It is the kind of thing that you really do need to look at in great detail

DIMBLEBY:
Does the apartheid as it is put have to be ended Geoff Hoon?

GEOFF HOON
I don’t believe that I would use that expression to start with I think if David thinks about it for a moment I think that is rather an extreme word to use to describe the way in which people provide their retirement and ne of the key issues is that generally speaking historically people who have worked in the public sector have worked for less weekly or monthly pay than people in the private sector.

DIMBLEBY:
Given that that is no longer, given that that is no longer generally the case and that they have the security whereas people in the private sector are paying for those secure pensions while there are own pension values have been slashed is there a case for reform?

GOEFF HOON
Well I certainly think there is a case for reform but again and David quite fairly after making that remark did indicate that it is necessary to look at different schemes. Now one of the key differences is the extent to which schemes are funded. If there is a fund, if people have paid into a fund and that money is invested there is no reason actually why that shouldn’t provide them with a final salaried scheme. There is nothing wrong in principle with that either in the private sector or the public sector. What we need to look at is the way in which the overall reward for people is balanced. I don’t want people in the private sector to retire without having adequate means. We have put forward a series of reforms for pension arrangements to allow for that. Equally I accept that it looks wrong when people are paying taxes in the private sector for people who perhaps are earning as much as they are in public service but I do think that generally speaking and I see this al the time in the civil service very able people who could make more money in the private sector choose to enter public service and part of the reason for doing so is the pension that is part of their reward for their employment and we should disturb that at our risk

DIMBLEBY:
Vince Cable

VINCENT CABLE
This is one of those issues which Sir Humphrey would have told the Minister you are very brave by raising this and actually I think it is fair to say that although David Cameron did mention it he was provoked into doing so by the fact that we had raised it also because it is an issue that has to be properly discussed. The liabilities are in danger of running out of control. The government estimated a few years ago the cost this year would be £600 million it is turning out to be £3 billion. It will be £4 billion next year. It is very very expensive. Now obviously people who are in the public services who have got contractual obligations they must be respected but for the next generation we are going to have to look at contributions, retirement ages and have proper fairness between groups.

DIMBLEBY:
Ok Caroline Lucas I am sorry we must be brief

CAROLINE LUCAS
I think the whole system has to be overhauled I think the two tier system is unfair.; It is discriminatory particularly against women what we want to see is the citizen’s pension payable to everybody at the higher rate particularly looking at the situation of women who currently are really left out of the current main system. You are really making me go fast here.

DIMBLEBY:
You have been tremendously helpful. It is only because I wanted to squeeze in one more question

SUE MACDONALD
The Bishop of Reading said this week that we should stop sending Christmas cards to the people we see every day. Who do you see every day that you would like to drop from your Christmas list?

(laugh)

DIMBLEBY:
Who wants to go first on this I think. I think that he is the minister Geoff Hoon

GEOFF HOON
Well all of you will have seen that wonderful Yes Minister episode where the Minister has to sit and decide how he is going to sign this great pile of Christmas cards that is put in front of him and I having recently moved to the Dept of Transport I have a wonderful diary secretary who piled a huge number of Christmas cards in front of me the other day and they were all for journalists. What she didn’t tell me was that she was going to send them out and all of the journalists in the lobby got the earliest Christmas card that they have had in their lives. So since I see quite a lot of them maybe some of them

DIMBLEBY:
Caroline Lucas

CAROLINE LUCAS
Well I like e-cards I think they are really great and you don’t have to worry about the paper so that is what I am going to keep doing and because it is so easy and I am sure the Bishop of Reading wouldn’t mind because it is electronic not paper then I can go on sending them left right and centre.

DIMBLEBY:
Vince Cable

VINCENT CABLE
Well I see 600 odd MP’s every day and I think they can be spared a card. But it is a very good way of saying thank you to people actually even if you see them quite often.

DIMBLEBY:
And David Willetts

DAVID WILLETTS
If it is anybody who sends a Christmas card that is unsigned it is those automatic Christmas cards that are mass produced anybody who sends those should not receive human ones from us.

DIMBLEBY:
Thank you very much and I am afraid (APPLAUSE) there we have to end this programme from the Nottingham Medical School. Join us next week don’t forget Any Answers from here Goodbye.

Any Questions?