ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: She’s one of the rising stars of the Conservative party and Nicky Morgan shows such promise that she’s now got two jobs in government to be precise.  She’s Financial Secretary to the Treasury and also Minister for Women and you’ll remember she was given that role when Maria Miller resigned from the Cabinet and she joins me this morning in her first Murnaghan interview to prove the government has not run out of steam.  Let’s welcome Nicky Morgan to the programme, she joins me from Loughborough and answer the charge first of all, Nicky Morgan, that this is a zombie government now, it’s coming from Labour, you’ve run out of steam and coalition is in deadlock.

NICKY MORGAN:   Good morning and I couldn’t disagree with that more.  We will unveil on Wednesday a series of bills for this session of parliament, the final session, which will show the government is very much full of ideas, tackling issues that people tell us that they care about, things like childcare which is so important and obviously some of the other issues, things I am going to talk about this morning about redundancy payoffs and I also think it is just wrong to measure a government’s achievements and what parliament is doing simply by the number of bills that are passed.  Parliament and government are about much more than that, it’s about tackling the issues that people want us to deal with which is what we have been doing for the past four years.

DM: But you would accept, would you not, that it must have been difficult now as we close in on a general election and particularly with your coalition partners trying to so-call differentiate themselves, to find issues that both sides of the coalition can agree on to put in the Queen’s Speech.

NICKY MORGAN: Well actually no, as I say I mentioned childcare, there will be things like the Modern Slavery Bill.  I can’t speculate about the details of what is going to be in the Queen’s Speech but there are plenty of issues for the government to be dealing with and of course at the heart of all this is what we came together as two parties to do which was to tackle the economic legacy left to us by the last government, the huge deficit and the big recession left to us and that is what we will continue to do because the job on that is not yet finished.

DM: Even in the last session of parliament, you must be aware of the statistics, you had the fewest number of bills since 1950.

NICKY MORGAN: But I think the question is the quality of the bills, what they were actually doing which was dealing with the issues.  The last government I think in their thirteen years in office passed something like 3000 new criminal offences but did people feel safer?  No.  It’s about actually what you do with the laws that you’re passing.  We’ve had a very busy session of parliament dealing with issues that people, as I say, tell us that matter to them and we’re not going to be measured just on the basis on how many bills we pass, it’s what we do.  Do we deal with those issues and are we tackling issues that people say they still want us to do with things like childcare, modern slavery and obviously finishing off the finance bill, the budget for this year and many important measures that people will welcome in that and then implementing them, making sure what we are saying in parliament in the bill actually carries through to action on the ground. 

DM: Let’s talk some specifics there.  You touched on the issue of redundancy payments to people who leave the public sector and are then rehired when they move into the private sector, the Small Business Bill. Isn’t this partially the government’s own doing, a problem of your own making?  Look at the NHS, you were warned during those reorganisations that as people were made redundant some of their skills would still be required by the NHS so they have been rehired with redundancy payments.

NICKY MORGAN: I think this is an issue of fairness and value for money for taxpayers.  This is taxpayers money that we’re talking about, people work very hard to pay those taxes and the point is exactly as you’ve said, we’ve seen in the NHS, we’ve also seen in local government, sometimes there are people who are made redundant and the idea about redundancy payments and ex-gratia payments and severance payments is to bridge that gap while people are looking for a new role or potentially until they reach retirement age and I think people feel very hard done by when they see the same person appearing, popping up in a new job within months, having had a huge payoff and then are back.  This will apply only for twelve months after somebody loses their job.

DM: But a child could work this one out, if you realise that their skills are still required in the job then don’t make them redundant in the first place, that’s joined up government.

NICKY MORGAN: Well this is often, I mean people move from one NHS Trust to another or one government to another.  We were elected as I say and we came together as two parties in order to tackle the deficit and part of that has been about making sure that we have got a public sector which is fit for purpose, which is doing the job, which has the right number of people and people at the front line, so for example in the NHS what we have seen is more doctors and nurses recruited and people in management positions have gone but actually there are times when obviously there will be a vacancy, in another NHS Trust somebody might retire and it might be that you need somebody else to come in but the point is that if they have had a large pay off which is tax payers money then what we are saying is that individual should repay that money if it is within twelve months and if they earn over £100,000.  There will be a twelve week consultation and we very much want to hear from people, their ideas on this but I think that people do find it hard to take when they see somebody popping up in another job, a kind of revolving door where people leave from one job in the same sector, move on to another one and take that money with them. 

DM: Okay, let’s move on to pensions.  We know quite a lot about what’s going to happen because of the budget and you will be aware of the concerns within the Bank of England of people being able to access huge sums of money potentially from their pension pots and be able to take it all out if they want, the so-called Lamborghini budget.  The Bank of England will be concerned, will they not, given the state of the economy at the moment, that this is even more money that could fuel or fan the flames.

NICKY MORGAN: Well this is something that the Bank of England has expressed concern about and I know that the Labour party seem to think that you can’t trust people with their retirement pots and you can’t allow people to access their money early.  We think that people know best how to spend their money, people have saved hard for their retirement, the budget as we saw earlier on this year, the Chancellor has given more freedoms and flexibilities for people to access their pension pots, to make provision for themselves.  There will be provision for advice and guidance and this builds on other reforms that this government has brought in, things like the single-tier pension, auto enrolment where we have seen actually a great success in people being enrolled in pensions and staying obviously enrolled and also the triple lock which has given people a decent state pension too.  These all build together to say we trust people with their money and we think that they know best how to make provision for themselves and their families. 

DM: Let me ask you about your role as Women’s Minister, you must be concerned mustn’t you and what are you doing about it, about the lack of female representation in Cabinet?

NICK MORGAN: Well we have some excellent female Cabinet Ministers and we have some excellent female ministers as well, people like Liz Truss, Esther McVey and Anna Soubry who are absolutely fantastic and we want to see more female ministers obviously, I’d like to see more female Members of Parliament across the House of Commons.  I note this morning you have an all-female line up and what I’m looking forward to the day when that is not news, it’s just the way it is, it’s liking having an all-female line up of ministers in a particular department but the fact is that we’ve got some great ministers and who the Prime Minister puts in the Cabinet is very much a matter for him. 

DM: Okay, last thought on this FIFA row about the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar and the money that may or may not have changed hands, well in actual fact it did, for Qatar to get the World Cup.  Is there anything we can do about it in the UK?

NICKY MORGAN: Well I welcome the investigation that’s happened and I think it’s important that these things are dealt with.  This is very much I think is a matter for FIFA and the investigation at the moment but it is right that the spotlight is shown on it and I think it is just a question that people work very hard to put these bids together, we know that people travelled across the world, the Prime Minister included as well as Prince William, to make the case for England hosting the World Cup at one point and I think it’s quite galling to think that actually it’s money that’s talking and not the quality of the bid itself. So this is a matter for FIFA but I very much welcome the investigation that’s happened that has uncovered so far what appears to have happened in terms of  money changing hands.

DM: But after all this it seems like Sepp Blatter should go, shouldn’t he?  Shouldn’t the UK say he should stand down?

NICKY MORGAN: Well let’s get to the bottom of this first and there will be this internal investigation but yes, I think at the end of the day when something like this happened, as I say it is very galling for those countries who played by the rules, who put in the bids, who don’t indulge in this sort of behaviour and clearly those at the top would need to think very clearly about their position.

DM: Okay, Nicky Morgan, thank you very much indeed for appearing on the programme, great to talk to you.