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PRESENTER: Jonathan Dimbleby
PANELLISTS: Bob Marshall-Andrews
Michael Gove
James Delingpole
Jeanette Winterson
FROM: Guardian Hay Festival, Hay-on-Wye
DIMBLEBY
Welcome to Hay-on-Wye, a small market town in Wales famous as the second-hand book capital of the nation and probably the world as well and as the site of the Hay Literary Festival, which is sponsored by the Guardian. This year the festival celebrates its 20th anniversary and we are here, along with almost other programme on Radio 4, in our very own Radio 4 tent and here to champion the cause of open debate and the free expression of contrary opinion for which the festival is justly renowned.
On our panel: Bob Marshall-Andrews the free booting scourge of New Labour from the safety of a constituency where at the last Election he secured a majority of 213. He supported Gordon Brown for the leadership of the party, for which some of his erstwhile friends described him as a traitor. Are you hoping to get into the Cabinet or something?
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Sorry were you talking to me?
DIMBLEBY
You clearly are hoping to get into the Cabinet.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Two reasons, yes is one is I won't be asked and secondly I wouldn't dream of accepting it.
DIMBLEBY
Right, okay thank you.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Is that alright?
DIMBLEBY
That does very well. Michael Gove is also on the panel, former BBC reporter turned Times columnist and since 2005 Conservative MP, whose own free booting instincts may or may not be constrained by the fact that he's one of the chosen few around David Cameron on whose behalf he speaks on housing issues. Is your freedom of expression constrained?
GOVE
David Cameron doesn't believe in any constraint at all, so it'll be straight from the horse's mouth.
DIMBLEBY
Jeanette Winterson made her name with her first novel Oranges are not the only fruit and that was 22 years ago. Since then there have been another dozen or so, all sustaining her reputation as one of the most original and sparingly honest and challenging novelists of her generation. How many times have you done Hay over the last 20 years in one form or another?
WINTERSON
I can't count but then as I haven't quite written the dozen or so novels maybe neither of us are good at the maths.
DIMBLEBY
I'm thinking of the children's ones as well?
WINTERSON
No even if you do.
DIMBLEBY
Okay how many?
WINTERSON
But I always believe that you should have books that are waiting to be written.
DIMBLEBY
A very good idea. James Delingpole is a columnist who says he holds libertarian views of the right wing variety. The author of How to be Right - The Essential Guide to Making Lefty Liberals History, he's also the author of a novel of which someone describes as his friend - note his friend - wrote - and that was Alain de Botton: "It's better than spending time with the author - it's a lot less grouchy, it's always funny and tells you lots of intimate secrets." Is he still your friend?
DELINGPOLE
Where do you dig up this stuff.
DIMBLEBY
Is he still your friend?
DELINGPOLE
He was until I heard that.
DIMBLEBY
He can ring in to Any Answers and say I've misquoted him. James is the fourth member of our panel. [CLAPPING] Our first question please.
MAYER
Robert Mayer. Does the panel consider GP out of hours services to be safe?
DIMBLEBY
Bob Marshall-Andrews.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Not at the moment no and I mean demonstrably so because of the poor lady who died, having made eight telephone calls in order - in order to get a diagnosis which she demonstrably failed to do. The government has to rewrite the contract that it made with general practitioners, I don't think there's any doubt about that at all. There is a great deal of concern about it, so the answer is no. But if I can just - if I can just widen that question just a little to what is even worse in the health service and that is what's happened to junior doctors which has preoccupied parliament in the course of the last week. That is actually infinitely more dangerous because as you know a system has been put into place where junior doctors, that is any doctor under the rank of a senior registrar, now cannot use their CV in making applications to get into senior posts, which means people are being appointed with absolutely no reference to their aptitude, ability, brilliant experience or otherwise - bit like the government really.
DIMBLEBY
Do you believe - I mean there was an attempt to oust the Secretary of State for her alleged failures in this respect, do you think she should have walked?
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
No I don't. No I don't, I think that's probably the first time that I've answered a question in the negative, that question, but I don't think she - I don't think she should. I mean it's not of that magnitude but it was a very bad error.
DIMBLEBY
Jeanette Winterson.
WINTERSON
It worries me because if my cat gets sick in the night I can ring the vet and the vet will be with me within 30 minutes, why can't we do this with people? And I think one of the things we do have to discuss is what we want from our health service, how we're going to pay for it, what it means to us now as a modern nation. It's not a debate that we're having. Gordon Brown's out there saying we all need better access to GPs after hours but his government put this system in place, they've been in power for a long time. If there's a problem they should know about it already not be saying that suddenly there's a problem that's arisen. I would like to talk about how we fund our healthcare and what we want from it. We've got to a strange situation now where we will happily pay any amount for luxuries and we don't want to pay for necessities but the whole idea perhaps for private/public healthcare system does need to be addressed if we want to have top quality attention 24 hours a day.
DIMBLEBY
What do you mean by that, that it must be addressed [CLAPPING] that you - private/public what do you ...?
WINTERSON
Yes I mean the system that works very well in other countries, it works very well in France, where you can top up the system that we have here if you want to, so that you get tax relief for certain amounts of medical insurance, it's something that the Tories are thinking about doing. But it really is a question of how much money we want to put into the health service and what we want to get back from it. It cannot be free all of the time to everybody, we cannot do it anymore. Our health service is breaking down. The question of funding is really urgent and it's no good just turning this into soundbites and a political football, it's what we're going to do next. And I'd like to see this being a real point of debate for Labour, for the Tories, for the Liberal Democrats coming up to the next Election.
DIMBLEBY
GP out of hours services. Michael Gove?
GOVE
Well I'd like to think that GP out of hours services were broadly safe. We've heard today about one particular tragedy but everyday in the health service there are individual tragedies. Highly dedicated professionals doing their best can sometimes make mistakes, human error can enter that process. One thing's that's clear however is that the out of hours service is simply not as good as it should be. I remember in my childhood when Britain was a poor country the principle that the general practitioner would come to your home at the weekend or at night if a child or an elderly person was desperately ill was well established and we've moved away from that and we've moved further away from that in the last 10 years and I completely agree with Jeanette, it's hypocritical of Gordon Brown or any government minister to say that the situation isn't good enough at the moment when they've been presiding over the scheme. It's Gordon Brown whose been writing the cheques, it was Gordon Brown who signed off the GP contract which has meant that out of hours coverage is now weaker than it used to be. So he has to shoulder the responsibility rather than attempting to appear as a knight in shining armour who will rescue the NHS. It's as a result, a direct result, of the budgetary constraints and the reforms that he hasn't implemented that we have not just weaker out of hours service but we also have the potential closure of community hospitals and even accident and emergency units.
DIMBLEBY
James Delingpole.
DELINGPOLE
I don't want to be rude about the medical profession because earlier this year I had a very embarrassing bottom complaint which was sorted out very successfully and as you can see I'm sitting here very comfortably now...
DIMBLEBY
Not an Alain de Bottom complaint?
DELINGPOLE
Well I had that as well. Maybe that's what he needs. But I think one of the reasons that the health service is so expensive at the moment is because the doctors' trade union, the British Medical Association, very successfully negotiated massive pay rises for doctors, I mean they're now - your average GP is now earning in excess of a hundred grand a year, which is fine if they're prepared to put in the work. I think if they're going to be getting that much money they should be giving decent diagnoses after hours. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
I'll come back to you in a moment Bob Marshall-Andrews. Robert Mayer you put the question.
MAYER
I'm one of these overpaid GPs and I would like to come back. Clearly this is a tragic case and my sympathies are completely with the family but I don't think this should in any way be used to judge even the organisation Camidoc or the wider service. I have used and worked for this service for 10 years now and it is a safe and very highly regarded one and I think that really if Gordon Brown wants the NHS to provide Tesco's access out of hours considerably more investment would be need to be made into general practice to do that. I came into the health service 20 years ago and really the time has long gone when we can all get out of our beds every night and at weekends when we're working as hard as we do during the day.
DIMBLEBY
What about though James Delingpole's point that - that it is a quasi abdication of your responsibilities to say yes we will work weekends but only if you pay us an awful lot more and you're going to pay us more for not working weekends. There are those who think that this is not the Hippocratic oath as she was intended.
MAYER
Well the reality of the matter is that prior to contracting out of the out of hours services GPs were paying for them themselves, the government wasn't paying, GPs were paying for them and the government has discovered that to provide a proper service is considerably more expensive than they thought.
DIMBLEBY
One more thing. You said - this particular tragic case - are you suggesting that it is a one off tragedy or could I put it to you that actually quite often people find out of hours they ring desperately in urgent need to find someone to speak to and they often get through to a sort of call centre and hope that they can find a doctor who may or may not turn up sometimes later - isn't that quite a common experience that people have?
MAYER
I don't think I really could speak for services around the country because these are provided by many different coops and private deputising services and I'm sure standards must vary and this is the responsibility of the health department is to make sure that the standards are uniformly high and that these organisations are accountable for that.
DIMBLEBY
Thank you very much for the putting the question and then answering it. I just want to go to our audience and I'll come back you, Bob Marshall-Andrews, in a second. The question is are GP hours out of services safe, who thinks they are, would you put your hands up? Who thinks they are not safe? Well some people haven't put up their hands but of those who put up their hands the great majority thinks that they are unsafe, only four in this quite large audience thought they were safe. Bob, sorry you wanted to come in.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Yes, I mean there is a reaction to that and I mean and I would agree with it and I think an awful lot of general practitioners would agree as well. The system at the moment is very far from perfect in terms of out of hours care. I agree. But to extrapolate from that into the much wider issues of the health service is simply unacceptable. The health service is not in a state of collapse. I can tell you that when I first became a member of parliament in 1997 my surgeries were dominated - dominated by two issues. The first issue was benefit, normally disability, in some way or another and the second issue was the National Health Service and the treatment that people were receiving in the National Health Service and those were the dominant - the two dominant issues in the Medway towns. And I can tell you straightaway that they have effectively disappeared, it is rare for me now - rare for me to have serious complaints about the health service. And the improvement in the health service in my constituency has been massive and this is not somebody who will simply trot out a party line, I am telling you that is the experience of my constituents in the last 10 years. And I think that we need to get hold of it.
DIMBLEBY
Michael Gove.
GOVE
I don't doubt that that's Bob's experience but I don't believe that it's universal. In the area that I represent in Surrey we have three accident and emergency units in the whole of West Surrey and it will be two in a few months time - the government are closing existing services. And that's true across the country. And it's not just in the south, it's not just in leafy Tory areas, in Hartlepool they're closing a hospital that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown pledged to keep open. These are existing and valued facilities that are being closed as a direct result of the government failing to implement the sorts of reforms that they said they would.
WINTERSON
Well I think all that's true but we've all got very personal experiences haven't we, which are negative. Five weeks ago my stepmother died in a hospital and she died of MRSA in an infected bedsore that the hospital had given to her. So I'm not feeling that great about it.
DIMBLEBY
If you're listening and you can hear what sound like patients in pain or Bob Marshall-Andrews attacking Michael Gove actually it's just - there's a breeze blowing, a strong breeze, and the tent that we're in is responding accordingly. We'll go please to our next question.
MELING
Chung Meling. In The Rebel, Albert King who wrote that the silence rights until justice is established is to silence it forever and in this context what do the panel make of John Reid's intent or threat to declare a state of emergency and opt out of the European Convention of Human Rights?
DIMBLEBY
This is in relation of course to those who are suspected of terrorist - terrorism or aspiration to terrorism.
MELING
Specifically yes in relation to anti-terrorism activities.
DIMBLEBY
Michael Gove.
GOVE
I think John Reid's lost it. We know that he's leaving office in just a few weeks time, I think he may have lost touch with the rest of the human race in saying that we need a state of emergency in this country. And the first thing to say is that I do not underestimate the nature of the terrorist threat that we face in Britain and across the world. I've written a book about it, I've tried to ask the government serious questions about some of the ways in which they fail adequately to deal with that threat. But let's be clear - when we are fighting terrorism or any extremist threat it's also vitally important that we remember what we're fighting to uphold. Our democratic system and at the heart of our democratic system is the rule of law, due process and respect for liberty. So when it comes [CLAPPING] when it comes to pursuing terrorists or terrorist suspects and I want to give the police every power that is appropriate to pursue them we should always bear in mind that if we suspect someone is involved in terrorist activity the correct thing to do is to gather evidence and when we have enough evidence bring that individual to court and convict them appropriately... that is what our criminal justice system is for.
DIMBLEBY
Michael Gove, if that evidence is of a kind that were it to be revealed in court it would expose the intelligence services to threat of undermining their task does that not have a bearing?
GOVE
It does have a bearing and it's absolutely right that the security services should say that it's their responsibility to safeguard their sources and their methods. But a balance has to be struck and elected representatives have to ensure that the claims of the security services and others do not infringe the liberties which are at the heart of what we're defending. And I think it is entirely possible to ensure that the criminal law and the prosecution system can put people behind bars. Look at the Crevice trial recently, we had individuals who were being followed by the police, who were under surveillance, at the appropriate moment when it was possible that they might have committed a crime the police swooped, prosecutions were secured, these evil men were behind bars, our criminal justice system worked. Let's make sure it gets the resources and the backing it needs.
DIMBLEBY
Jeanette Winterson.
WINTERSON
I think it's a terrible idea. I'm very frightened by the way that this Labour government has successively over the years both found ways of opting out - as they put it - it's such banal language isn't it to opt our of something, it makes it sound quite straightforward, quite simple and actually what we're really talking about is breaking down a very hard won human rights act where the individual is at the centre and where that individual matters, whatever we suspect them of doing. I don't want to see such a framework dismantled or destabilised in any way because I fear that when governments begin to take over, when they begin to say but this is an exception, everything else is fine but this is an exception, then we're all really in trouble. I mean we all know now that in Britain already this is the land of the CCTV camera, 40 million in Britain watching our every move. We're going to have microchips in our dustbins in a minute. I mean what do we need to keep ourselves free as citizens and that includes people who are suspected of terrorist acts, it includes people we might just not like the look of, you know, if you're a member of the BNP party you don't like the look of a lot of people. But we can't go around saying well we'll just opt out a little bit here and just dilute something a little bit there and weaken it a little bit over there but everything will be fine, you can trust us. We can't trust politicians, we must stick to the rule of law. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
James Delingpole.
DELINGPOLE
The first thing to be said here is it's not going to happen. John Reid can talk the talk all he likes but he's not going to walk the walk, he knows that. The second thing is why ...
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
He's going to walk the plank.
DELINGPOLE
Yeah, yes. Why are we talking about this at all, why do control orders exist? The reason is that they're a classic fudge. Because of the Human Rights Act we're not allowed to deport suspected terrorists to any country which doesn't obey the Human Rights Act and we can't put them in prison either. So we have these ridiculous things called control orders whereby their passport is taken away from them and they have to report to a local police station or I think a telephone company, maybe once a week. Well these are hardened terrorists, they're not going to let that put them off trying to escape the country if they want to, which these three seem to have done. I think that we ought to re-examine our whole attitude to human rights. I think our human right not to be blown to smithereens on the bus on the way to work trumps these people's human rights not to be deported to a country where they don't offer you a free large sized pepsi and a bucket of KFC when you arrive.
DIMBLEBY
So you would like - you would like, if I'm correct, you would like the Home Secretary to do what you don't think he will do which is namely to say effectively to hell with the human rights legislation let's do what we want to these guys?
DELINGPOLE
Well you know obviously if you've got evidence against them but I think we can have, for example, diplock courts, like they had in Northern Ireland, where you don't have a jury so that the judge - the judge can - judge the sensitive evidence in that way. [Audience noise]
DIMBLEBY
Bob Marshall-Andrews.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Yes I mean I'm sorry I don't agree with that and I actually regard it really as quite illiterate. [CLAPPING] As I do what John Reid said. The idea that our principles and our liberties rely on the Human Rights Act or the European Convention on Human Rights shows a very myopic view of British history. Our civil liberties extend back 800 years. What was enshrined in the Human Rights Act in effect simply set those rights out in a statute which was not there before. The - we do not rely on these things and it's much older - much older than the Human Rights Act, much older than Europe and much older than the Communist Party which is presumably where John Reid learned his respect for civil liberties. So I think that's the first thing that needs to be said. The second, and I very much agree with Michael here, this is not a threat to our way of life, terrorism may be a threat to our lives and there are places where you can be which are quite uncomfortable in view of that threat but it doesn't threaten our way of life. What does threaten our way of life is what we do to ourselves as a result of it and if we begin to abnegate our own rights, particularly the rights to jury trial, which I'm sorry to say has been a persistent fight between this government and a large number of backbenchers, including me, during the course of the whole of that time, then we are doing precisely and exactly what the terrorists want us to do. [CLAPPING] If I can just quietly make the last point on this because I think it is important. It is a question of enlistment. The one thing that we must not do is enlist and radicalise young people who otherwise would not be radicalised. And one of the ways that we will do that as sure as God is if we take away the liberties of people within their communities. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
If, as the Home ... sorry yes Jeanette.
WINTERSON
My background is in the north and the place where I grew Accrington near Blackburn and Burnley is now probably 60% Muslim, it's changed completely in my lifetime. And what I see there now is a huge stand off and I see the BNP making enormous inroads in the place that I grew up, an absolute apartheid and segregation in those towns. And you know white people like me up there now will be the first people to say chuck out the Human Rights Act, let's just get rid of them, let's deport them, everything is wrong. We cannot risk that happening, we'll have civil war in our country if we're not careful, we cannot risk it.
DIMBLEBY
Do you want to come back on that James Delingpole.
DELINGPOLE
Yeah clearly I made an unpopular point but I don't believe that the answer is simply bombarding these people with love. The fact is that they are jihadists are committed to destroying our society and I don't think...
WINTERSON
So is George Bush.
DELINGPOLE
Well I don't [CLAPPING] oh we can't go to that level, there's no moral parity between jihadists who want to blow people up on buses and George Bush, that's just nonsense.
WINTERSON
I mean we don't accept they actually believe in something, George Bush just believes in oil and middle America.
DIMBLEBY
James Delingpole you want to complete your point.
DELINGPOLE
This is just sort of playground argument that George Bush equals terrorists, it's not the same thing at all. I think - I would love, I think like most of us, to bury my head under the pillow and hope it will all go away, it's not going to go away and I'm afraid having things like control orders simply doesn't solve the problem. These guys are on the loose and that is a problem.
DIMBLEBY
Sorry Michael Gove.
GOVE
I just wanted to say that James does make, I think, a very important point which is that the ideology which drives some of these people is a genuine threat to the liberal values that we hold dear. Bob is absolutely right - we shouldn't compromise our liberal values in defence of our society but we also need to be clear sighted about the nature of the threat that we face. It's not the case that people who are radicalised are radicalised simply as a result of clumsy or heavy handed state action, people are radicalised because of the activities of preachers and proselytisers who follow a path which to my mind is repugnant to anyone who believes in a genuinely liberal society and we need to educate ourselves about that.
DIMBLEBY
And if the Home Secretary were to say in response, in relation to the balance between freedom and security, you're trying to have your cake and eat it, what's your answer to that?
GOVE
Well I think what he's been guilty of is entirely ineffective authoritarianism, that he's given authoritarianism a bad name because of the clumsy way in which it's been carried out. I believe that the correct thing for us to do is actually to follow a distinctly British path - to be robust in defence of our civilisation and our values and that means having confidence in the rule of law and the due process at the heart of it.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Can we just correct - can we just correct one thing about the people that have absconded? I mean I know of absolutely nobody who knows anything about this that has ever described them as hardened terrorists which has just been put forward, they simply are not hardened terrorists which is why they were on the lowest level of control order which is practically an ASBO. And indeed when we were asked to vote for control orders in the House of Commons which I vehemently opposed we were told by the minister that some of them would be no more than ASBOs in order to keep an eye on very, very low grade people who were suspected of terrorism. But talking about prosecuting them - offences now under the Prevention of Terrorism Act go to a very, very low level indeed. The possession of any material which may in any way assist terrorism is an offence. Now I tell you scouting for boys comes under that, it doesn't tell you how to build a bomb but it tells you how to build a bivouac and how to survive and I kid you not, it does. Now if you want to prosecute people there is no problem at all in prosecuting them and they should be and the rule of law should prevail and this whole - this whole mess has come about because of control orders, not because they're not being enforced.
DIMBLEBY
Thank you. If you have thoughts about that or any of the other issues that we're discussing the Any Answers programme may be for you after the Saturday edition of Any Questions. The number to ring is 08700 100 444, that's 08700 100 444 and our e-mail address any.answers@bbc.co.uk. Our next question please.
HEMBLING
Vanessa Hembling. Will spies in bins really make Britain clean up its act?
DIMBLEBY
James Delingpole.
DELINGPOLE
I'm so glad - we were all waiting for this question I think. If there's anything that concerns the country more at the moment, I can't think of it. It's as if we'd woken up one day to discover that we're not living in Britain anymore, we're living in East Germany before the wall came down. Why is this happening to us? Well I think one of the problems is that the sense of powerless we all feel, as was demonstrated in the council elections last week or a couple of weeks ago, no matter which way we voted it didn't make any difference, we have no control apparently to say we want dustbin collections every week, we don't seem to have that anymore. Why is it happening? Because of the European Union. The European Union has imposed on us - but the problem is you may laugh but this is an actual - this is an actual fact, I mean everyone finds the European Union boring and I think this is part of the problem, this is why it gets one over us all the time. These directives come directly from the European Union on - we are fined according to the amount of rubbish that we put in landfill. Actually the reason that we're having trouble dealing with landfill in this country is historically we have a much greater use of landfill than other countries which have, like Holland, which have less space to dig holes in the ground and bury it. Here it's perfectly okay actually, it doesn't cause an environmental problem and if you look around the country [AUDIENCE NOISE] - if you look around the country you will find many, many lovely wooded hills which underneath there is loads of rubbish.
DIMBLEBY
The case is put by those who think that it's quite an important issue, the landfill, is that amongst other things methane gas is produced which is a major component in the global warming problem.
DELINGPOLE
I think what we need to ask ourselves is for the marginal benefits of enforcing recycling, which is not after all happening, most of it gets shipped to places like China anyway, the stuff that's supposedly being recycled. For the marginal benefits that might accrue to this country what we're actually having is dustbin men turning into spies, being assaulted and abused by members of the public, having spy cameras - spy devices in our dustbins. I think it's too high a price to pay.
DIMBLEBY
Jeanette Winterson.
WINTERSON
I think everything that we're talking about tonight keys into much larger questions about what these so-called values are that we want to uphold, how exactly we want to live, what sort of people we think we are. We said we want a good health service but do we want to pay for it? We want to reduce our environmental footprint but we don't want to have bin collections every fortnight, we want them every week, so that we can go on making as much rubbish as we've always made, and piling it up outside the front gate. If anybody suddenly says make less rubbish we say but that's interfering with my civil liberties, I must make as much rubbish as I like because I live in the rich West. So some where there are a lot of contradictions which need to be straightened out and we do need - we need less packaging, we need less rubbish, we need to be a lot more conscious about what we're doing to the planet, to the environment. But in order to do that it can't just be about us putting stuff out in the bins at night it has to be about supermarkets and packaging which is a huge issue [CLAPPING]. I've been a member of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth for the last 25 years and we used to do those symbolic protests where you unpack everything at the checkout and just chuck it all back at them and you have at least two bin bags worth full before you've even eaten anything. That is a big problem and I think we should all start addressing that and be going in there and saying we don't want all this crap and then we could have fortnightly collections but it's up to us to change things and no you can't keep putting your rubbish out every week you know, we're all in here going to have to change our ways. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
Michael Gove.
GOVE
Well I very much take Jeanette's point, I think the direction of travel that we need to move in is pretty clear. But I do have worries about what the government are proposing and I think that when James described our dustbin men as turning into spies some people might have thought there was an element of rightly exaggeration or poetic licence there. But let's just think for a moment about what the government are actually proposing. They're proposing chips in every bin, the possibility that in order to ensure that your bin - that your bin is not micro chipped - not oven chips, that would be better if they guarantee oven chips for everybody. But anyway - micro chips in every bin and then a lock on your bin to make sure that your neighbours don't accidentally put their rubbish into your bin and more than that they're proposing potentially cameras at community or communal dumps in order to make sure that you don't make the journey there in order to offload some of the rubbish that should be going into your bin at your home by putting it in to the town or village dump. So they're going to have cameras which will recognise your car licence plate.
DIMBLEBY
So does recycling - does ...
GOVE
This whole paraphernalia of surveillance simply in order to ensure that we recycle appropriately, rather than having the coercive hand of the state given such additional muscle, it seems to me that it would be far more appropriate to try to make it easier for us to recycle. One of the great things about the British people is that there's a bolshy freedom loving spirit at the heart of them. If you make it easy for the British people to do the right thing they will but if you treat them like recalcitrant children who have to be nannied, watched, supervised and fined in order to behave then they'll react against it with a giant raspberry. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
Does that mean that a Conservative government would make recycling entirely voluntary?
GOVE
I think a Conservative government would do everything possible to ensure that it was easier for people to recycle rather than bullying them ...
DIMBLEBY
That's not quite the answer to the question - that's not quite the answer to the question is it, would it be entirely voluntarily because ...?
GOVE
Well I don't know what you mean by being voluntary, do you mean force a certain level of recycling and then have penalties if people fail? I don't think it's appropriate to penalise individuals in that way, I think it's right to ensure that local authorities are given the freedom to provide as, for example, Guildford has in Surrey, the recycling facilities that people enjoy using and make it easier for them to do the right thing.
DIMBLEBY
But it would be entirely up to people whether they chose to recycle for the good of the planet or to obey EU regulations, not a matter for government to do other or indeed local government to do other than advise and say we will make it easier for you? Is that policy?
GOVE
Make it easier and make it easier for people to do the right thing yeah.
DIMBLEBY
So it would be voluntary in that sense, it would be entirely - because if you didn't want to make use of the fact that it's easier you wouldn't have to?
GOVE
Well at the moment you don't and one of the dangers that we have is that the coercive system that the government seem to be encouraging will actually lead not just to defiance but to a worst situation where we have people who fly tip and who use their capacity to evade the system of regulation to make our environment worse.
DIMBLEBY
Voluntarism is the Conservative principle on this, if I've got that correct. Bob Marshall-Andrews.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
I'm just writing that down. The - I mean as a barrister I'm enormously in favour of slightly overstating your case for effect. But to - but to liken the bin monitor system to the Stasi I mean really it has to be extraordinary. Government is entitled to be coercive if the problem is bad enough and the answer is, I'm afraid, Michael is we do behave badly, we behave appalling badly about how we dispose of our waste and have done for many years and coercion of this kind, if it is coercion - there are no sanctions, nobody's going to be sent to prison for this, they are simply going to monitor whatever you are throwing into your bin in order that you can be charged accordingly. Now what on earth is wrong with that. The real problem - the real problem as perceived by government is this neurosis and I'm sorry it's grown up about what is called bin wars, that it will set neighbour against neighbour, as you have just pointed out, with neighbours actually decanting some rubbish into other neighbours bins and then stealing the good rubbish to put into - in order to put into their - in order to put into their own bins. And this has apparently been the subject of quite a serious paper. And no doubt a new form of ASBO will be - the rubbish ASBO will arrive. I don't think so, I don't hold that morbid view of my fellow citizens. I believe that actually what is going to happen it will lead to a new - will help a new community awareness that neighbours will help elderly people like me sort out what is organic and what isn't organic in order to put it into their bins. And to take up Jeanette's point, it will also lead to community action where people band together, march on their local supermarkets in order to stop them selling you an ounce of plastic for every pound of produce that they produce.
DIMBLEBY
Jeanette Winterson you were in the process of saying something about incentives.
WINTERSON
I am - no I'm just wondering really whether bin men will become like traffic wardens and if they'll be encouraged with financial incentives to root through our bins.
GOVE
There was a programme on TV last night about it doing that very thing, they were going around houses giving people three warnings and you're out, if you don't obey the strict recycling laws then you don't get your bin collected.
WINTERSON
But it will work because I was in Munich last year where you have to recycle everything, you can't get any bags in the shops at all and the city is so clean, it's so green and it's so pleasant and everybody manages it. So if they can do it in Bavaria, where they did it once before, we could do it here.
DIMBLEBY
In case anyone heard what James Delingpole said any German listening might wish to ring in, as well as anyone else to Any Answers on that issue: 08700 100 444, the e-mail address again: any.answers@bbc.co.uk. We'll go to our next question please.
LOCKWOOD
Lorrissa Lockwood. Does the panel agree that nuclear power is a white elephant, a red herring and a dead duck?
DIMBLEBY
Bob Marshall-Andrews.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Yes I am very, very much against nuclear, very much indeed. I think it's based on an entirely false premise. If one takes into account the amount of energy which is required in order to create nuclear power stations and in particular the fissile material and the production of fissile material which is necessary for them, its environmental benefit is not nil it is minus and minus to a very substantial extent. It does have, of course, a cosmetic effect that it is carbon - that is carbon neutral but given the damage - and that's just the production damage - the damage that then applies to what you do in a uranium economy or a plutonium economy has still not been resolved. And we simply cannot give this problem to our grandchildren as well as all the other problems in the environment that we are going to give to them as well. And in order to deal with how we can get round this, I'm talking about our own households which will no doubt will be thought to be a sort of Himmler effect. If we put into effect sensible management of our households, combined heat and power, wind, solar - if we put these things into effect - biomass - we put them into effect properly by 2050 we will have cut our energy demand by 40%. Now that is the way to do it. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
James Delingpole.
DELINGPOLE
I'm not going to get the Hay audience to agree with me on many things tonight I don't think but I think there's one thing I can persuade you all to agree with me on and that is we are currently in one of the most beautiful places in the whole world. And I look at those beautiful hills surrounding us, I look at Hay Bluff and my favourite - Lord Hereford's Nob - and I look at those hills and I think to myself those hills look pretty nice as they are what they don't need right now and never will is ruddy great wind farms built on top of them. I think - we talk about saving the environment but wind farms are one of the greatest environmental menaces of our time and I think in 20 or 30 years we're going to look back at them and wonder, rather as we do now with the tower blocks of the sixties, how anyone could have been so stupid as to want these things to come about. Now if we want to have carbon neutral energy then nuclear power is a very sensible way forward. It works, it means we aren't going to be in hock to the Russians when our gas runs out, it also means we're not going to be in hock to the French who have got a nuclear programme and they're going to be supplying us with our energy in a few years time unless we get our act together and start building power stations.
DIMBLEBY
Jeanette Winterson.
WINTERSON
This is a very tricky question and James Lovelock, a scientist whom I have a huge amount of respect as you know, is a proponent of nuclear energy and really thinks it's the only way forward. And it is someone we have to take seriously. I am trying to wade through the mass of evidence information on this to make up my own mind because it's tricky. However unlike James I do find wind farms rather beautiful. And I would rather see as much power as we can get coming from renewables rather than go down the nuclear route. But again it's back to what - how much are we prepared to give up, will you use less power, less electricity? I've just put in a geothermal system underground for my electricity which is fantastic but it costs £12,000 and Gordon Brown took seventeen and a half per cent VAT off me in order to put it in. That doesn't help the householder to help the planet. But there's a lot that we can do ourselves but we are going to have to rein in, pull back a little bit. We can't just say this is a problem for politicians, it's bigger than us, it's not bigger than us, it's about us in our homes tonight, so switch the light off. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
Is nuclear power or should nuclear power be a dead duck Michael Gove?
GOVE
I don't believe it's a dead duck, I certainly accept that it's not the instantly most attractive option. If you look at the history of nuclear power it's required a significant degree of state subsidy in order to be viable and it's not been an unproblematic process. However, as Jeanette indicated, we do have to take some tough decisions. At the moment something like 20% of the energy that we use is generated by nuclear power and those nuclear power stations are going to come to the end of their productive life in due course and we need to ask ourselves, particularly as we're moving away from our reliance on fossil fuels, where is future energy going to come from. Even if we significantly increase the proportion of energy that's generated by renewables or combined heat and power or any of the other methods that Bob mentioned, there is going to be a gap there. And as James correctly pointed out we do also have a problem with energy security because of the way in which so many of those fossil fuels, that we'll still continue to use even as their proportion diminishes, are in areas of geo-political uncertainty. To rule nuclear out of the mix at this stage would I think be dangerous.
DIMBLEBY
On the point that Michael Gove has just made, Bob Marshall-Andrews.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
There doesn't have to be a gap is the simple answer. I mean we can meet the gap by using less energy and there is no doubt about that at all. But what it does require is a political will to put into effect - to put into effect the measures, and some of them will be coercive, coercive measures to stop us doing so. It is a difficult problem, as Jeanette says, I'm reminded of those wonderful lines of Betjeman talking about the village pub when he saw two people sitting in the corner talking of Marx and nuclear fission with all a rustic's intuition.
DIMBLEBY
Can I ask our audience briefly: who's as it were with James Lovelock on this, that we have to have nuclear power at least in a transitional phase, would you put your hands up? Who rejects the option of nuclear power? Well it's a very evenly divided audience here, which is interesting because we've done this debate a lot and in the past it's been very generally in Any Answers public opposition pretty unequivocally to nuclear power. Anyway that's what this audience thinks here. We can get one more question in.
LEVERTON
Maureen Leverton. Do you think literary festivals are elitist?
DIMBLEBY
James Delingpole.
DELINGPOLE
I think we need to reclaim this word elitism. I think for too long now it's been used as a boo word by New Labour. But what exactly is wrong with wanting elitism to thrive? Would you want your surgeon operating on your brain not to have been selected and have got very good marks in his science degree or her science degree and done lots of training and would you want some random person picked in the street in the name of fairness and equality to do the operation? Would you want the SAS to comprise of boy scouts plucked at random or would you want carefully trained killers? Elitism is a good thing.
DIMBLEBY
What's this got to do with literary festivals? Interesting as it is.
DELINGPOLE
I was ... elitist, elitist. They're always hard the questions at the end, I never know what to say, I made a pretty good fist of it.
DIMBLEBY
Most eloquent, you said it wonderfully. Do you like literary festivals?
DELINGPOLE
I love literary festivals and I particularly love the audience tonight who've been so sweet to me and applauded every word I said. I love you.
DIMBLEBY
Michael Gove.
GOVE
By definition literary festivals cannot be elitist because I've been invited to speak at one of them in the past.
DIMBLEBY
Do you think literary festivals are good?
GOVE
Yes I do actually, I mean one of the things that I think that people feel the want of generally in the country is civilised intelligent conversation, that's what you can find in literary festivals, it's also what you can find generally on Radio 4 as well. And I think there is an appetite - an appetite - in the country for conversation about subjects artistic, cultural and political to be carried on in a more elevated level than people sometimes find. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
Bob Marshall-Andrews.
MARSHALL-ANDREWS
Well I think that they're wonderful, I think this is wonderful. The most important thing is not elitism at festivals, it's that people should read and the real issue is are people - and particularly young people - reading and there is a myth, a myth abroad that young people do not read. They read now more than they have ever read and it is true - it is true - more books are sold, more children's books and I don't mean nursery books, I mean books are being sold now - are being sold now than have ever been, have ever been, reading is not elitist. And it is talked down as being elitist by some - and disgracefully so - by some of our mass media. And it shouldn't be. And so that's the - I think the real question and once it is not elitist then festivals of course have a huge role to play.
DIMBLEBY
Jeanette Winterson, the last word to you - words to you.
WINTERSON
I know that books can change your life because that's why I'm here tonight, otherwise I'd be behind the counter in Woolworths in Accrington. Reading is an act of freewill, we should take a book and stand in front of each of the 14 million CCTV cameras in Britain and say this is what we're doing, no censorship here, you can't get inside our minds, we're free citizens and we're reading. [CLAPPING]
DIMBLEBY
On which clarion call we come to the end of this week's programme. Next week we're going to be in Bristol with Peter Tatchell; Jenny Wilmott for the Liberal Democrats; Andrew Lansley for the Conservatives and there'll be a fourth panellist whose name I can't reveal yet because I don't know what it is. We've enjoyed being here at the Hay Festival, thank you for having us. Don't forget Any Answers but from Hay-on-Wye goodbye. [CLAPPING] |
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