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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, the fight for Chris Huhne’s old seat of Eastleigh is shaping up to be one of the biggest by-election battles in memory. The Lib Dems are determined to keep hold of the seat but can the Conservatives afford to lose it? Well I’m joined now by the former Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, a very good morning to you Dr Fox. Is it true, I mean it is true isn’t it, the Conservative core are really spoiling for a fight here, they really want to sock it to the Lib Dems?

DR LIAM FOX: Well it’s an odd thing fighting a by-election in a coalition because we’re fighting from the same policy programme and fighting from the same record and so the differences will really be about emphasis and I think about trust. I think the Lib Dems have a problem with trust here, I think they’ve got to explain to the students who voted for them in large numbers at the election why they ditched their pleas on tuition fees, why they then decided that having wanted an in/out referendum before the general election, they now don’t want one at all and I think if you’re not willing to trust the voters, as we are, then the voters shouldn’t be willing to trust them and we’ve got the issue recently of the boundaries and I think perhaps that is the most important one because this was a pledge in the commitment that the two parties had together in the coalition to reduce the number of MPs, to reduce the cost to parliament as well as anything else and the Lib Dems chose to feather their own nests rather than …

DM: So is there bad blood flowing from that?

LF: I think it was a hugely dishonourable thing to do and I think it has caused a great deal of anger and resentment that they made a bargain and then they broke it.

DM: So you’re going in, as you say there, to Eastleigh with the studs up so to speak because if you make the issue about trust, you mentioned political issues there but of course the former MP for that constituency broke trust, broke trust with the people, with his party, he lied. By implication you are using that in this by-election.

LF: No, I don’t think … I think the case of Chris Huhne, that’s been said widely that it’s a terrible personal tragedy to see someone of that calibre brought down on that particular issue, I don't think that will be the issue. I think the issue will be Nick Clegg …

DM: But you’re going to say you can’t trust the Lib Dems.

LF: No, I think it will be about Nick Clegg and his party’s record, I don't think it will be anything to do with Chris Huhne the individual. I think it will be about the fact that they didn’t keep their promise on tuition fees to the people that the pledged to, they have totally done a U-turn on Europe and they have broken their pledge on boundaries.

DM: But it’s interesting that a Conservative is saying that isn’t it because if they’d held the line on tuition fees wouldn’t that have seen the coalition collapse within a couple of months because of course it was against Conservative policy and you were glad they did a U-turn on that?

LF: Of course they said they would never do it and then they did it. That’s a question for them to answer, that’s not a question for me to answer, that’s their policy, they made that decision so they have to explain that to their voters and we have to set out why the Conservatives would want to go on to get a majority government, what we would want to do in terms of reforms to the economy still, why we think public expenditure is still too high, why we shouldn’t be putting more tax burdens onto the next generation. All these things of course with the budget coming up I think will be of great importance.

DM: So how do the waters close over after the campaign, whoever wins it? How then do the Conservatives start sitting back round the Cabinet table with a bunch of people that they just said you can’t trust them, the Prime Minister is saying you can’t trust the Deputy Prime Minister?

LF: Well there’s a coalition agreement and the government has to continue because that’s what we said we would do in the national interest. It’s not a love-in that we have with the Liberal Democrats, if you like it’s a forced marriage …

DM: But you’re saying they are untrustworthy.

LF: Well we’re doing it because we believe we have to do it for the sake of the country and of course the alternative, a Labour government which brought us to economic ruin, couldn’t be allowed anywhere near the government of the country again.

DM: Do you have to do it for the sake of the Prime Minister’s future? I mean it would be an awful kick in the teeth wouldn’t it, especially if he does go down there to campaign, if you lose Eastleigh, it would weaken the Prime Minister.

LF: No, I don't think it will. Remember Margaret Thatcher lost a spectacular London by-election less than a year before she trounced Neil Kinnock in 1987 so by-elections are by-elections. This is also not a seat we hold, it’s a seat that the Liberals are defending so I think the onus is on them and I think they have got more to lose in this by-election than we do.

DM: But others are taking a different analysis, there are mutterings about the Prime Minister it seems at the moment, Adam Afriyie, people have been saying well he’s a stalking horse for you.

LF: I’ve been in parliament nearly 21 years and I can never remember a time in all 21 years where there wasn’t muttering going on about whoever was party leader at the time or the Prime Minister at the time. Party leaders have to get over that and they go ahead and do what they believe to be correct. The Prime Minister got a great victory for the UK at the EU summit this week which of course all those defeatists said would not be possible and he went in, negotiated hard, showed considerable diplomatic skill and got a great outcome for the United Kingdom. That is something that we should be talking about to the voters of Eastleigh.

DM: Okay, well you ignored the stalking horse question, let me put it to you a different way though, front line politics, do you ever see a return to that, to cabinet rank, or is that chapter of your career now over for good?

LF: That’s not a question for me, that’s a question for the Prime Minister and I’m sure he’ll have his view on that.

DM: But it is a question for you because if you were asked and you didn’t want to do it, you’d say no.

LF: Well if anyone was asked by the Prime Minister, are you willing to serve your country, I think they ought to say yes. It’s not a question of what you want, I think there’s an element of public service and duty in that, but that as I say is a question for the Prime Minister.

DM: On the EU budget negotiations you mentioned there, has that shored up the Prime Minister’s position? That went down well as we heard from you and those that support you.

LF: As you know, I’ve been saying for some time that we needed to have a renegotiation and a referendum. The Prime Minister has delivered that. We also needed to get a cut to the EU budget, the Prime Minister has delivered that. I fail to see on Europe what more he can be reasonably expected to do at the present time and I think that one of the interesting dynamics would be what would be the point in a general election of voting for a party like UKIP for example, when the Conservatives will promise and deliver a referendum if we were elected and voting for a party like UKIP can only increase the chance of Labour being re-elected and they will deny the voters a choice.

DM: Let me ask you about, we were talking about the Prime Minister last week and another it was said good or well delivered apology he made about the Francis Report and all it uncovered about the goings on in Mid Staffordshire. As a medical man yourself, are you slightly amazed that the medical professionals involved in this over so many years allowed that situation to develop and persist and indeed cover it up?

LF: I think the whole thing was disgusting. Words almost fail me to describe the revulsion that I felt at reading some of the stuff there and I think that the medical profession cannot be the servant of two masters. It cannot be the servant of the patients, and that’s who they should be the servants of, and of the bureaucracy and management of the NHS. Doctors have questions to ask, nurses have questions to ask ethically about what their activity was that stopped them looking after the patients in the proper way. I think we have got questions to ask about nursing itself as to whether we need to have a less academically oriented nursing programme and have more of the sort of caring only elements of nursing and I think there perhaps needs to be a rebalancing there and that’s a debate we ought to have.

DM: There is also a debate, and you have got personal experience of it, about responsibility here? You resigned from the cabinet, far less worse it seems about letting hundreds of people die in hospital, yet it seems that nobody has taken responsibility at the top and as you mentioned the bureaucrats, well the chief bureaucrat so to speak in the NHS is still there and was part of the Regional Health Authority at the time this developed.

LF: I think that some of the accusations that have been made about what happened to patients are worth police investigation. There may well be criminal neglect involved here and I think there are ethical questions for the medical professions involved and I think the professional bodies should become involved in asking some of those questions. It is quite unacceptable that a patient should put themselves into the care of the NHS and the NHS professionals and then have some of the outcomes that we’ve seen. But my own view is that the NHS is much too driven by targets still, it is much too driven by times and process and not driven enough by outcome and it’s the outcome for the patient that the NHS is supposed to be about.

DM: Okay, the last thing I just wanted to ask you there about the economic course, it’ll be discussed on the streets of Eastleigh, way beyond that and it’s not too long before we’ve got the Budget on March 20th. Are you amongst those that say to the Chancellor you’ve really got to be bold here, we haven’t got long till the next General Election, if any economic measures are going to have any effect you really have to do them now. We have to be radical and we have to be radical in a Conservative way and that means cutting taxes and perhaps cutting spending even more.

LF: Well I think we need to get a further grip on spending and one of the biggest rises in our budget is the interest we’re paying on our debt and that’s risen from just over forty billion, it will rise to almost sixty billion by the next general election. That means that we are paying more in debt interest on our debt than we are spending on defence and overseas aid and the Foreign Office all combined and the gap between where we are this year and 2015/16 is about …

DM: What’s your answer for that, Dr Fox?

LF: I think we need to have a further look at the whole of the welfare budget which is still very, very large. We still need to look at administration across the public sector, we need to look at the size of Whitehall and how much that’s costing us, all of these elements that are not front line delivery need to be thoroughly questioned.

DM: We are nearly out of time, what about tax? What about some tax cuts, corporation tax?

LF: Cutting taxes on business I think is key to getting more people into work. I’d personally like to see capital gains tax taken down to get more activity into the economy. We need to be creative, if we’re creative we get growth, if we get growth we get re-election.

DM: Okay, Dr Fox, thank you very much indeed.