ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS

ADAM BOULTON: Welcome back to The Sage Gateshead where the four Labour leadership hopefuls are debating for the final time before voting closes next week.  Let’s go straight to the questions and it’s one that viewers at home have been voting on, on social affairs.  These are the questions that Sky News viewers submitted, appropriately on social media on social affairs and as you can see the winner is this from Twitter, “Do you support the decriminalisation of medical cannabis?”  38% backed that, who wants to start?
ANDY BURNHAM: Shadow Health Secretary, that’s a point!  There is a case for it in that people who suffer from conditions like multiple sclerosis, they swear by the benefits, the medicinal benefits are enormous but it would have to be highly regulated in my view to allow it for medicinal use only and obviously that presents all kinds of problems, so I understand why people feel so strongly about it.  I would proceed with caution but I wouldn’t be averse to looking at whether just for medicinal purposes only, whether or not greater flexibility could be allowed.  
YVETTE COOPER: Nobody has asked us that question at any of the hustings we have had, I’m not quite what it says.  We have a process for deciding about medicines and safe medicines and it includes a whole load of drugs that aren’t available legally outside the medicines process so I think you should just have exactly the same standards apply.  If you have any kind of drug or any kind of thing which has a clear medicinal benefit, then it should go through the normal processes just like any other kind of drug and do it that way.  
LIZ KENDALL: So far the evidence on this is not clear.  From many people who are suffering from MS and other conditions they feel it helps but many doctors are concerned about some of the problems, particularly for young people and the link with psychosis and if you are smoking the cannabis for medicinal purposes some of the indications are the same as if you are smoking tobacco.  I think the National Institute for Clinical Excellence is the right body to make any decisions on this but I think there should be proper trials though because many people do feel strongly that it makes a difference. I think the jury is out on it so far, let’s have the trials, do it through the normal proper process and see if we really can make it work.
JEREMY CORBYN: I don't think there should be criminalisation of something which is used for medicinal purposes, it is obviously very beneficial to people particularly those suffering from MS and I think we should be adult and grown up about it as a society and decriminalise it.  
ADAM BOULTON: Just for medicinal, not for recreational use?
JEREMY CORBYN: I think we should have a look at drugs policy as a whole but I wouldn’t advocate that at this stage.  I think there is a case for looking at drugs policy.  
ADAM BOULTON: Does anyone agree that you should look at drugs policy?
ANDY BURNHAM: Certainly legal highs need to be looked at, we need tough legislation pretty soon because I see in my constituency they are readily available for a small amount of money.  I have parents come to my surgery and say that their children have just changed overnight having taken them. I think we have allowed a loophole to exist for far too long here and it is being exploited by some unscrupulous people.  There needs to be tough legislation in this area and quickly.
YVETTE COOPER: To be honest we always end up just focusing on the legal side of things when the reality is the thing that makes the biggest difference is about treatment.  The treatment is being cut back, that’s letting people down, that’s where the efforts should be.  
LIZ KENDALL: That’s absolutely right, I agree with Andy on the legal high point.  The real problem that we have is the preventive services which stop people from taking drugs and alcohol up in the first place or help them get back on their feet are being cut and the problem is it is not just terrible for people but it costs us all far more in the long run.  I think the government really needs to look at what it’s doing to fund those kind of programmes. It has a huge impact on communities, certainly in my own constituency and that’s got to change.  
ADAM BOULTON: Okay, after that somewhat unexpected question let’s move on to another topic and this is in the area of the questions that were submitted by Sky News viewers on foreign affairs.  Again there was a choice of four and as you can see, the winner in this category is from Alex Wrong on Twitter, 39% of the vote wanted to ask “Should the UK put boots on the ground to tackle ISIS?” and by boots on the ground I think that means the deployment of ground forces to deal with ISIS or the so-called Islamic State, Liz Kendall?   
LIZ KENDALL: No, I don't think that they should.  We are hearing that the Prime Minister may come forward with some kind of proposal about military action in Syria, I don't know whether that will happen but my view is that any proposal should be taken seriously but we would have to clear about what UK troops or bombing would add over and above what the US is doing and it would have to be part of a much broader political strategy in the region, something I talked about earlier.  The underlying causes there, the schism between Sunni and Shia, how do we actually tackle the funding of ISIL and who they are selling the oil to, it’s got to be part of a wider strategy because anybody who believes that bombing Syria alone or boots on the ground is going to solve the problems we have in that area I think is sadly mistaken.
ANDY BURNHAM: Agreeing with most of what Liz has just said, no.  This is not where we’re at, the question is should we increase air raids into Syria, that’s the question.  
ADAM BOULTON: The question was should we go further.
ANDY BURNHAM: If that other eventuality ever comes down the path, well it’s not for now and I don’t envisage it being an issue in the immediate future. The issue we’ve got is should we extend air strikes into Syria and we’re told that this could be a decision within days for the new leader of the Labour party and I want to be clear about what I would expect. I  would say to the Prime Minister, don’t disrespect Parliament, the public and the country by trying to bounce the new leader of the Labour party into a decision on something of this significance.  Going to Syria with air strikes raises all kinds of different questions, the legal question for one.  Also if you do bomb, what do you leave on the ground?  Do you leave a vacuum, a void for ISIL to fill, for Al-Qaeda to fill?  This has to be thought through, there has to be time for careful consideration of any proposal to extend military action.  If in years to come there is a further decision about whether Britain should become more involved, well that is for another day, this is the issue for now and even this decision needs very careful consideration, there needs to be a process and a timetable set out and the government should not try to bounce the opposition because that would be disrespectful to the country.  
JEREMY CORBYN: If we started bombing now we would be killing civilians, we wouldn’t be necessarily …
ADAM BOULTON: Well we are bombing at the moment, we’re bombing in Iraq.
JEREMY CORBYN: And apparently we’re taking part in some bombing in Syria even though the government pretended we’re not, only revealed by Freedom of Information requests.  But I do think the issue would be we bomb, we kill people, we wouldn’t destroy or defeat ISIS, we’d probably actually make the situation considerably worse.  If that doesn’t work and the question is do you put boots on the ground, I don't think so.  I think what we have to do, and I agree with others on this, is mount a serious political initiative across the entire region including Turkey, Iran and all the other countries and ask ourselves some quite hard questions.  Where does ISIS gets its arms from, where does it get its money from, where does it sell its oil to, who is buying that oil, why are the borders around so leaky and also how many of the arms that we’ve sold to various countries in the region have ended up in the hands of ISIS?  
ADAM BOULTON: I appreciate that those are all matters of concern, of course we’ve got the Chilcott Inquiry asking similar sorts of questions about Iraq at the moment but to come back to this problem, what do you do about the situation at the moment with IS behaving as it is?  
JEREMY CORBYN: You support the refugees that are fleeing, you try to bring about a political process and interestingly, I actually agree with the Foreign Secretary on this point, he went to Teheran to reopen the Embassy there and I have real concerns about human rights in Iran but nevertheless there has to be a relationship with Iran and he made the point that since this agreement may be successful with the USA, there is a real possibility you could bring about a proper political dialogue across the entire region that involves everybody except ISIL.  That provides some possibility and some hope.  Bombing I think would make the situation worse, more deaths would follow, more horrors would follow and more people might end up being attracted to ISIL and seeing them as a victim as a result of it.  It’s a very dangerous situation, there are no easy palatable answers but we’ve got to start somewhere of recognising how ISIL grew and try and cut off their supplies and cut off their funds.  
ADAM BOULTON: Liz Kendall?
LIZ KENDALL: I’ve already answered.  
YVETTE COOPER: Liz has answered already, I haven’t, Adam.  
ADAM BOULTON: I’m sorry, you can go next.
YVETTE COOPER: Because we all look the same!  
ADAM BOULTON: No, no, don’t put words into my mouth please.  
YVETTE COOPER: I think we shouldn’t have UK troops on the ground, I don't think that would be the right approach, I don't think it would help, there isn’t any evidence that that would help circumstances at all.  The response on the ground – and there does need to be a response on the ground because we can’t kid ourselves, ISIL is a barbaric and totalitarian movement and we should be working as part of supporting the region to combat it and not just think a few nice negotiations are going to work, that is not the kind of organisation that we are dealing with.  However it’s got to be led by the region itself, it’s got to be led by Iraq where ISIL is operating within Iraq, by the Kurdish forces, by the neighbouring forces in the region and our role should be to support them in doing so.  In terms of in Iraq, we have been invited by a democratically elected Iraqi government to support them with targeted air strikes because they are struggling to hold back a barbaric regime and when they have asked for our help to defend their democracy, I think we should support them in doing so. Syria is different, Syria is completely different because there you’ve got Assad, you’ve got ISIL and it is a much more complicated situation and it is not clear how the same strategy works at all but for us to turn our backs on an elected democracy that asks for our help in a targeted way I think would be wrong.  
ADAM BOULTON: I want to turn to the point that Andy Burnham raised which is the possibility of a vote in the House of Commons, you are all MPs, coming up on whether to extend the bombing to include British planes operating above Syria as well.  Would you vote for that in any circumstance?
YVETTE COOPER: I think Syria is very different from Iraq.  It’s unclear whether any action you take there, whether it helps Assad, whether it helps ISIL, it’s much more complex and I’ve not yet seen anything from the Prime Minister, from the British government about what it is they think they would achieve by any kind of intervention in Syria. When the government puts forward things you have got to be a responsible opposition and you’ve got to look very carefully at anything that they come forward with but I think there are some very big questions for the Prime Minister to answer …
ADAM BOULTON: But you wouldn’t rule it out?
YVETTE COOPER: I don't think it’s right to rule out things when the government hasn’t put things forward, however there are some big questions for them to answer.
ADAM BOULTON: Would you rule it out?
LIZ KENDALL: No, but as I said you’d have to have a clear objective, know how any UK involvement as I said added to what the US was already doing and it had to be part of a broader political stand.  
ANDY BURNHAM: No, like Liz but I would proceed with the utmost caution and the bigger context here for this party and the next leader is the publication of the Chilcott Report that you mentioned because that will be a sobering moment for this party and we will need to be seen to take on board its findings, put them at the heart of Labour policy going forward. The idea that this party can just go along with a push.  Ed Miliband to be fair was right to stand up and oppose military action in Syria in 2013, he was right to do that and I think we need to have in our mind all the time that we need to proceed with great caution and learn the lessons of the last decade.  
ADAM BOULTON: Mr Corbyn, would you as Labour leader rule out the possibility of voting in support of extending bombing into Syria?
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes, because I want to see a different political solution in the area, I want to see a different approach to the questions in the region, particularly the economic issues and I’d also say to those who say you can do – and I know none of my colleagues have said this – but those that do say you can do limited bombing, as soon as you get involved in military action something called mission creep takes over and we’ll find ourselves deeply embedded in that and then there will be a huge demand to send in ground troops as well. I  think there has to be a regional political solution and that’s the issue that I would press at the present time.
ADAM BOULTON: And how would you apply it to that vote if you did become party leader? Would it be a three line whip saying we’re going to vote against it?
JEREMY CORBYN: We’d have to debate it, we’d have to discuss it, I hope the majority of Labour MPs would go along with that position, I hope all Labour MPs would go along with that position.  When we opposed the bombing of Syria in 2013 there were some who didn’t agree with the position Ed Miliband did, the majority of us did and supported it.  On other votes there have been differences, there are always going to be differences on crucial issues, MPs have a responsibility to take decisions because it is a very important job.  
LIZ KENDALL: Is there any circumstance in which you would deploy Britain’s military forces?
JEREMY CORBYN: Any?  I’m sure there are some but I can’t think of them at the moment.    
ADAM BOULTON: Not the Falklands?  
JEREMY CORBYN: On the question of Kosovo, yes we ended up with a dreadful situation in Kosovo, we also did an excessive amount of bombing in Serbia which did cause a lot of problems. I think the UN should have been more strongly supported in the very beginning and it was the failure of the UN and its forces that actually led to the much greater danger there.  I think there wasn’t enough support given to the UN in the first place.  
YVETTE COOPER: But did you think we did the wrong thing in Kosovo?  I think there was a huge … in the end we ended up with genocide in the region and we had huge abuse of human rights, there was a real humanitarian crisis so I think we were right to intervene in Kosovo, in the Balkans and I think we saved a lot of lives as a result.  It is difficult, it is very difficult to have any kind of military intervention but I don't think you can rule it out when you have humanitarian crises in place.  
JEREMY CORBYN: I don’t rule it out, what I do say is that the UN mission should have been more strongly, more effectively supported in the very beginning.  It was significantly undermined and eventually that paved the way for NATO going in which then decided on what was actually a quite heavy bombing campaign against various places in Serbia, some of which were not necessarily military targets.  I think we should have stuck with the UN and the UN proposals and given far more support to the UN because surely we are living in a world that is based on the rule of international law and the UN is quintessentially part of international law.  
ADAM BOULTON: There is a quote from you in the Sun newspaper today from a video you did where you really questioned the need for an armed forces on the scale that we have within this country even after recent cuts, would you stand by those remarks?
JEREMY CORBYN: I don't know what those remarks are because I don’t buy the Sun newspaper.  
ADAM BOULTON: Well you might recall recording a video that according to the Sun you did on behalf of the Communist party in which you questioned the need for aircraft carriers, you questioned the need for Britain to have a place on the international stage in terms of armed forces. Did you make remarks of that kind?
JEREMY CORBYN: I think we have to have and are having a strategic defence review.  I do think we have to think about the level of armed expenditure we have in this country, £35 billion per year.  We are in the top five of military spending across the whole world and I think we have to seriously look at those issues and look at the issues of nuclear weapons as well and also what our foreign policy objectives actually are.  So I am suggesting we have both a strategic defence review and a foreign policy review at the same time. Can we afford to have global reach of a country of 65 million people on the north-west coast of Europe? Should we not be more interested in supporting international law, working with the UN rather than deciding that we as quite a small country can actually afford this global military role.  
ADAM BOULTON: I have to say that is pretty much what the Sun quoted you as saying but bearing that in mind, on an important issue, pulling together defence and security, do you think Britain should seek to maintain its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council?
JEREMY CORBYN: Well the seat on the Security Council is not based on military expenditure or on the holding of nuclear weapons … wait a minute, that’s coincidental because originally they didn’t all have nuclear weapons, it’s coincidental to that.  I do think there needs to be reform of the UN to expand the Security Council to ensure there is a permanent …
ADAM BOULTON: But should Britain seek to maintain a permanent seat on the Security Council?
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes, of course but if that is …
LIZ KENDALL: Membership of NATO?
JEREMY CORBYN: … if that is what the UN reforms bring about and I think they will retain the existing five members, probably expand to other permanent members and …
ADAM BOULTON: Do you support that?
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes, I do.  
ADAM BOULTON: But you just said you questioned Britain’s role on the world stage.
JEREMY CORBYN: No, I question the level of military expenditure and why we have this global role for ourselves and I question whether or not we shouldn’t just think about these things.  Other countries think quite seriously about this and I think it’s time for us to have that discussion and have those thoughts.  
[Inaudible comment from audience]
YVETTE COOPER: I think we have to be part of both not just the UN but also part of NATO and part of the EU.  I think there is a fundamental part of the Labour party from our very beginning which is to be an internationalist party and my worry is that actually if you talk about pulling out of NATO, if you talk about prevaricating over the EU, if you talk about shrinking ourselves inwards, we will lose that internationalism which has been an important part of whether it’s standing up for human rights, whether it’s part of development across the world, that internationalism has to stay at the heart of our party.
ANDY BURNHAM: I agree with what Yvette has just said and given the way the world is and given the issues we have just been talking about, the unpredictability that we see, the insecurity, the instability, is now really the time for Britain to drop its defences.  I honestly don’t think it is, I don’t think we can be sure enough about what the future holds to say we can take a step into the unknown.  So yes, Security Council, we keep our seat, NATO, we retain our membership. These are differences between myself and Jeremy but I am quite clear, the security of this country comes first.  
LIZ KENDALL: The security of the country does come first and it is one of the reasons why at the start of this leadership campaign I said that the Prime Minister should keep his promise to our NATO allies of spending 2% of GDP on defence.  We face such risks and instability in the world but the truth is we can’t be a country that somehow thinks we can pull up the drawbridge and hope the rest of the world goes away.  What happens in other countries affects us here. I had two of my constituents killed on the beach in Tunisia, murdered and we have seen from the migration crisis that what happens elsewhere affects us here and the idea that we as a country can achieve our national security in its broadest sense by withdrawing from the world rather than engaging with it I think is profoundly wrong.  
ADAM BOULTON: Okay, let’s go back to domestic affairs now and our next question comes from Mark.
MAN: Good evening candidates, I would like to ask all of you how important do you think faith schools are for the future of the education system in this country?
ANDY BURNHAM: I think they are important.  I went to one, a Catholic school, my children go to a Catholic comprehensive, they are part of our tradition, they are part of the way education had developed in this country.  I always felt the values that I got from that education, the Catholic social teaching, are part of my politics to be honest so that is me and that’s my background, I wouldn’t deny my background but I’ll tell you what I do believe in when it comes to education, comprehensive education.  I believe in it with every fibre of my being, all kids together, all backgrounds together, seeing life from all sides, a breadth of opportunity in the curriculum. That is what I stand for, I believe that is the best way to educate our children and I hate this approach where we break down the system into  free schools and academies that aren’t accountable to their local community but accountable to London. How is that the best way to run an education system, where we say you can have unqualified teachers in the classroom and no application of the national curriculum?  I think this man, Mr Gove, has done more damage to the education system in England than any other person before him.  
YVETTE COOPER: I had a shocking moment when Michael Gove became Justice Secretary and said that he was going to, actually he opposed taking away books from prisons and I thought oh my God, I suddenly agree with Michael Gove on something for the first time ever because I completely disagree with him and with his approach to education.  Listen, faith schools, there are some really good faith schools across Britain and we want lots of good schools across the country.  My concern about the government’s approach is what they have actually done is centralise everything and whether it’s through their free schools which end up being in areas which don’t need additional places, whether it is through the way in which they have approached the academy programme, it’s all centralised.  If you are a local parent and you are worried about what is going on in the local school, who do you call?  Nicky Morgan?  I think she’s going to be busy.  It’s going to be hard to get proper answers about your local school so I think support good schools but also make sure we have proper local accountability again so that local communities can have a say about their schools.
LIZ KENDALL: There are many superb faith schools including in my own constituency, I represent a very diverse community in Leicester and I’m very proud to do so.  We work very hard actually to build strong relationships between our different faiths and emphasise what we have in common rather than what divides us.  Without doubt we need more stronger accountability in the school system and Yvette is right to say so much is centralised at the moment, I don't know now a Secretary of State can keep a real focus on the quality and standards in schools if everything is done centrally but honestly, I think we have got to get away from this obsession with structures in schools.  My mum was a primary school teacher and I know from what I’ve seen in my own constituency and my background that what makes a great school is an inspiring head, brilliant teachers who have enough flexibility in the curriculum to really grasp what is it that inspires kids and to use that to hook them in and give them the confidence that they need to succeed. We need a big reform in my view of the curriculum particularly between age 14 and 19.  We’ve got to get finally some equality between vocational and academic education, we’ve got to prepare kids for the world that is out there and have a fully rounded education and we’ve got to start very, very early.  We always talk rightly about primaries and secondaries but by the time disadvantaged children start school they are up to 20 months behind where they should be in their development, that’s where we’ve got to put the focus.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Faith schools are absolutely part of the landscape and they are doing a very good job in many cases.  The caveat that I would put on is that I want all faith schools to ensure that they do ensure that all their pupils understand the multiplicity of faiths in our society, that Catholic schools teach Islam, that Islamic schools teach Christianity and so on, so that all of our children grow up understanding the multi-faith and multicultural society in which they live.  Indeed many of them do this, one of the best descriptions that I’ve heard of the fundamentals of Islam was actually in a girls Catholic school in my constituency when I was observing lessons there and I was very impressed with the way they put it forward.  I don’t want all of our communities to grow up in silos because we all know where that leads to in the end.  I want young people to grow up together and I also agree with my colleagues on this that we need to re-empower local education authorities to bring together the family of local schools rather than this frankly ludicrous idea that with all the brilliance of Michael Gove, even he couldn’t possibly know what’s going on in every secondary school in every part of Britain.  I don't think even his brain capacity is capable of doing that.  
ADAM BOULTON: The clock is against us so we are going to have a slight change of tack now, an opportunity for the candidates to directly question their opponents.  We asked them to submit their questions to us in advance and we’ve assembled a round robin. First we have a question from Jeremy Corbyn to Liz Kendall.
JEREMY CORBYN: Well Liz, I can’t read it over there and it would be discourteous to turn round and read it behind me.  After this election is over, we’ve obviously got huge issues to face in the party and I believe we have to have very fundamental party debates.  I hope everybody can work together to achieve that, do you think that we need to develop our economic strategy so that we actually have my suggestion of a National Investment Bank that could help to bring about the necessary investment in infrastructure and housing and all the things we need in this country to promote economic development.
ADAM BOULTON: And the question is?
JEREMY CORBYN: The question is, it’s gone from the screen, could we work together after the election.  
ADAM BOULTON: Are you [inaudible] to work with you?
JEREMY CORBYN: Of course, I work with everybody, I am a very inclusive sort of chap.  
LIZ KENDALL: Hopefully I’ll be elected leader of the Labour party but I would work with whoever is elected in this contest because I believe our party is, you know, the best champion of equality and opportunity.  
ADAM BOULTON: Does that mean joining a shadow cabinet?
LIZ KENDALL: I have said very straightforwardly I wouldn’t, not with Jeremy or anybody else, offer anybody in this contest jobs because we’re not taking the vote for granted, still a third of the people haven’t voted, we are out for every last vote that we can get but I don’t agree with the policies that Jeremy has put forward, I don’t believe that the solution to jobs and growth in this region is saying we should renationalise vast swathes of the economy or print money or reopen the coal mines.  Honestly, people are sick of people saying things they don’t believe and none of you would believe me if I suddenly backed all of those policies but I will always work for the Labour party to put our principles into practice, but the fundamentals of this don’t change.  Unless we regain people’s trust on the economy or with their taxes we won’t have a hope in hell of winning in 2020.
JEREMY CORBYN: So that’s a maybe is it?  
LIZ KENDALL: Would you work with me, Jeremy?
JEREMY CORBYN: Of course.  
ADAM BOULTON: Your turn now Ms Kendall, your question for Andy Burnham.
LIZ KENDALL: Andy, you said there could be a woman leader of the Labour party when the time is right, when exactly will that be?
ANDY BURNHAM: I also said that the time could be now at the same time and it could, of course it could, two brilliant candidates in this race but it’s got to be the right person, gender can’t be the only consideration can it?  It is a massive responsibility isn’t it that we’re all seeking to take on, to lead this party of ours forward when we’ve lost so much support in Scotland, the catastrophic loss of support. We’ve lost voters to UKIP, we’ve lost votes to the Tories, the Labour party stands at this moment at a very dangerous crossroads and it has got to be the person that can reach out, that can touch all of those communities, that can rebuild trust in Labour, make Labour a party people can believe in again and the voters in this election have got to choose who is the person best placed to do that and a lot of factors need to come into consideration before that person is chosen.   
LIZ KENDALL: I might be a bit biased but I think the time is right for our party to elect a woman leader but also a woman leader who, as I said, is tough enough to say the difficult things as well as the inspiring ones and who is focused on winning in 2020, beating the Tories, kicking them out and I think I’m the best person for the job.
ADAM BOULTON: Everyone gets to answer a question and everyone gets to ask one so Andy Burnham, your question to Yvette Cooper.
ANDY BURNHAM: Yvette, I think we’d all agree that Jeremy has brought a lot of energy to this race, to say the least.  It’s been a long race hasn’t it?  So long I can just about remember being the frontrunner at one point in this race, however Jeremy has brought a lot of energy to this race and I’ve said as leader that I would involve Jeremy and his team in writing but you’ve said you wouldn’t so with that, how could you unite the Labour party if you were going to push Jeremy and his supporters away?
YVETTE COOPER: I don't think this is about pushing people away at all.  I think you’re right, this has got to be about uniting the party and all of the ideas from across the party.  I have been really careful not to start drawing up shadow cabinets before a third of the party have even voted and I don't think anybody should be taking for granted this leadership election, there’s an awful lot to play for, there’s a lot of people still voting and that’s what we should be arguing about.  Jeremy and I disagree on all sorts of different things and I know Jeremy has not wanted to be a team player in the past shall we say, having voted against the party about 500 times I think in parliament but in terms of values we have a lot in common in terms of tackling, in terms of dealing with things like human rights, in terms of tackling homelessness, in terms of the belief in the core equality of the Labour party so I think we can have an honest debate in which we can be quite robust about the issues that we disagree on and not pretending to agree with people in order to try and get their votes, be honest about the issues that we disagree on but also be honest and proud about the values that we share.  
ADAM BOULTON: Okay, Yvette Cooper it is your turn and your question is to Jeremy Corbyn.  
YVETTE COOPER: So it is.  So Jeremy, there are issues that we agree on that we should oppose George Osborne’s 40% cuts but the issue I’d raise concern with you about is your proposal for the Bank of England to print money to pay for schools or transport. In those circumstances do you believe that the government would have to pay that money back to the Bank of England or do you think that this is free money?
JEREMY CORBYN: We put £385 billion worth of money called quantitative easing into the banks to bail them out in 2008.  We bought bank shares and put them in a holding company some of which Osborne is now selling off and he shouldn’t because they are not his to sell, they’re ours to keep and my suggestion is that some of that quantitative easing ought to be made available, together with other sources such as government bonds, to fund a National Investment Bank so that we have a growing economy which can improve the infrastructure in all parts of the UK, particularly the rail infrastructure, also be able to fund the very necessary housing building, particularly council house building that this country is desperately crying out for and as efficient and effective and inexpensive way of funding public investment rather than the private finance initiatives which have been pursued by both this government and the last government which are costing so much so dear in both the NHS and education.  It’s not inflationary, Japan used quantitative easing after ten years of a flatlining economy in order to boost growth, I would have thought it was a sensible and reasonable precautionary thing to do.
YVETTE COOPER: You haven’t answered the question.
JEREMY CORBYN: Yes I have.  
YVETTE COOPER: You haven’t because actually what you are offering people is false hope.  For a start …
JEREMY CORBYN: No I’m not.  
YVETTE COOPER: Let me finish, for a start quantitative easing has stopped because the economy is now growing.  The reason that Japan was able to keep going and doing it for many years is because they went into slump, serious slump for long term.  It is absolutely right to support the economy when it is crisis and when it is in a serious recession but once the economy is growing, if you simply keep printing money at that time that pushes up inflation.  The second thing is, when the Bank of England prints that money even through quantitative easing, it still has to be paid back so actually you have still not answered, is the money for the schools and the hospitals or the transport going to have to be paid back because my fear is what you are doing is offering people false promise.  It sounds brilliant, everybody claps because everybody wants to see the schools, the hospitals, the infrastructure to be done but if we are really going to be able to deliver the schools, the hospitals, the transport, the infrastructure, we’ve got to be credible enough to properly pay for it.  We cannot do that if we just promise to print money we haven’t got, it’s dishonest, it’s false promise, we’ve got offer people real hope.  
JEREMY CORBYN: Are we going to go back to private finance initiative with the 600% cost of investment in schools and hospitals because that surely is a model that has failed.  What I’m …
YVETTE COOPER: Your plan is like private finance on steroids, it is worse than that.  If you put quantitative easing in you are not being straight with people and that’s why huge number of economists have said it doesn’t stack up.  It’s not fair on people and it will fall apart and what will we be, the Labour party, if we go to people with false promises like Nick Clegg before the 2010 election, all the false promises that then fell apart.  It’s not fair and we will let people down if we do.  
JEREMY CORBYN: I’m not sure if you have had chance to look at the proposals, and they are proposals that have been put forward and they have been supported by a very large number of economists including Nobel Prize winning economists who say this is a sensible and reasonable idea, that we do a combination of during a period of recession you use quantitative easing … wait a minute … and during a period of growth you use government bonds as a way of funding development within our society.  The problems we’ve got, and I repeat this, is that we are funding public services by the sale of assets, by private finance initiative and we are losing control of those assets and it is costing a lot of people very dear in cuts that have been made in health and education in order to pay for the voracious appetite of these private finance companies …
YVETTE COOPER: But why don’t you ditch the printing money?  If you ditch the printing money … If you ditch the printing money we could set out a credible alternative that means we don’t have to do George Osborne’s 40%.  The problem is if all you promise is something that won’t stack up, you will let the Tories get away with this.  You will let the Tories get away with their 40% cuts of public services, I think that will be devastating.  It’s an ideology of austerity that will rip apart our public services and it will hugely undermine our economy but if we are really going to stand up to them, we’ve got to be strong enough and credible enough to do it and not just pretend that money will come out of thin air by printing it. Let’s have a strong real alternative and we can work together on doing that but you’re not doing so because you’re offering people false hope instead.
JEREMY CORBYN: I am very pleased that you accept that the politics of austerity is one of the problems we face.  We went into the last election promising cuts, we went into the 2010 election promising cuts, are we going to go into the 2020 election, because Osborne will not have balanced the books by that stage, saying well an incoming Labour government, the first thing they’ll do is make more cuts in order to make ourselves credible?  I say invest to grow, you don’t cut your way out of austerity, you grow your way out of austerity.  
ADAM BOULTON: Well I’m afraid that on that note our time is up and I would like first of all to thank our audience here for their very vigorous participation in the debate, I’d like to thank our hosts here at Sage in Gateshead and above all of course I’d like to thank our four panellists tonight Jeremy Corbyn, Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham.