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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now in the past hour the Liberal Democrats have voted not to support the Health Bill in the House of Lords but they haven’t voted to officially oppose it either. Essentially they can’t bring themselves to support it or oppose it, whatever impact it has it’s bad news for the coalition. Well in a moment I’ll be speaking to the Lib Dem Deputy Leader Simon Hughes and to Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, Andy Burnham. Also watching the discussions are our Twitter commentators and they are Paul Waugh, editor of Politics Home, David Wooding, Associate Political Editor at the Sun and John Higginson, political editor of the Metro. They provide their reactions via Twitter and you can read those on the side panels and you can also follow on our website skynews.com/politics and we want you to join in as well using the hashtag #murnaghan. Well let’s say a very good morning then to the Deputy Leader of the Lib Dems, Simon Hughes. Mr Hughes, this is a bit of an embarrassment for the leadership isn’t it? They get a leadership friendly motion before the party and then one of its key clauses is booted out.

SIMON HUGHES: I think the conference reflected the mood of the party and the country to be honest. The NHS Bill is a controversial Bill, it’s not the Bill we would have produced if we had been in government on our own, it’s a Bill that the conference agreed this morning we have amended considerably and in the right direction on lots of issues, it’s a Bill where the conference made clear it wants other changes and the conference, the party, is saying we’re reserving our judgement on the Bill as a whole until we see the final shape of it. We want to be reassured that it absolutely shuts off privatisation, doesn’t allow competition to dominate and puts patient interest first. I think it can do that …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: What do you mean, see the final shape of it?

SIMON HUGHES: We want to see the final product before we agree to it.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: What do you mean the final shape, you want even more amendments to it? It’s at the third reading stage in the Lords, it’s nearly over.

SIMON HUGHES: No, there are … No, no, no, no, no, no, no, it’s at report stage in the Lords, there are further amendments to be debated this week, there are amendments that the party and people like Shirley Williams and others want to be carried in the Lords, unusually there is a chance for amendments on the third reading as well. There has been a huge amount of work done to make sure that all the major concerns, the big concerns, are dealt with. There are two big concerns, is there any way in which the National Health Service can be privatised? The answer is this Bill makes it less possible than under Labour, Labour forced us to privatise parts of the NHS, we’re saying that will not be permitted. Secondly, is there any way in which competition will be allowed to drive the way in which the NHS works? This past week the Lords put in amendments which make sure this is not governed by the Competition Commission, it’s not governed by European competition regulations and therefore it is protected from external legal or other challenges saying there must be a competitive NHS. The patient must come first, that’s what my constituency in Southwark wants, that’s what the people who use my local hospital, Guy’s Hospital, want and I’m sure that’s what the people here in Gateshead and Newcastle want too.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But in terms of what those activists have done in Gateshead, you support them in saying at this point the Lords do not support the much amended Bill, there needs to be further progress on that and that’s something you welcome and doesn’t symbolise a classic Lib Dem muddle?

SIMON HUGHES: No, this is not a classic … there have been various choices. There has been a call, and you’ll hear it from Andy Burnham, for the Bill to be scrapped. I don’t buy that because I don’t support what Andy Burnham and his colleagues put into legislation six years ago which is forcing the NHS in various areas to go private. I’m sorry, I don’t want to go down that road, I voted against it then and I don’t want it now, I want to legislate against it. Andy Burnham tries to pretend sometimes that the Bill will be an end to the NHS in the sense of a public service where anybody can be treated, they don’t have to worry about paying for it, all the people working for the NHS will work in a publicly accountable service – that’s not going to end. That’s going to be continued and indeed we’ve put that in the Bill, the obligation of the Secretary of State, whoever that is, to be accountable to parliament and that amendment went with the support of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats but also cross bench and Labour Peers in the House of Lords, that was agreed. So I think it is better. Having given a Bill that does some useful and necessary things like make sure there’s much more local council involvement, make sure public health is a much bigger priority, secures education, secures research – there are some good things in the Bill so I don’t want to lose those. I don’t want to stop the block to the privatisation which Labour introduced, I want that to be there and I want to make sure that we are absolutely shutting off any risks that we privatise or make too competitive the health service. But conference said we need further reassurance.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, but as you’re saying Mr Hughes then, I mean we follow the logic of that position, the conference said that and you seem to be agreeing with it. As an MP when it comes back before the House of Commons, if those further reassurances, further changes are not made, you could – could – vote against it?

SIMON HUGHES: Every amendment in the Lords has been an amendment to improve the Bill. What comes back to the Commons is not the Bill as a whole, that’s not the system in the UK parliament, what comes back to the Commons are the amendments the Lords have made and my belief is that we have led the debate in the Lords just as we’re leading the debate in the country on tax and taking more people out of tax and leading the debate on fairness and making sure rich people pay their fair share, so we’ll be leading the debate to get an NHS Bill that protects and secures the future of an NHS which is going to be busier because there are more older people and more people in general. So all the stuff that comes back to the Commons are amendments. I will vote for those amendments because they will all be improvements to the Bill as it was when it left the Commons. There isn’t a final yes/no vote in the Commons, I wish there was but there isn’t. We will vote for the amendments and I expect to vote for the amendments that the Lords send us. What conference said today is we still think there is further improvement to make in the Lords, there are some amendments on the order paper already, I hope the government accept them and they go through and there is further discussion to have to see if there any further amendments in the light of conference’s mood and decision that we can obtain, that we think we need to obtain. Shirley Williams and my colleagues, Judith Jolly and her colleagues can and believe they ought to deliver in the Lords. It is a work in progress and we believe it is hugely better than the Bill when it started.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay … still a work in progress? Do you not believe though, and back to the first question that I put to you, that this an embarrassment, that this sends signals out to the country that the Lib Dems, the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand’s doing? This was a motion that we know conference didn’t want to debate in the first place, they wanted a yes/no vote on it. The leadership made sure we got this so-called Williams Motion through and even then the conference don’t vote for it in its entirety.

SIMON HUGHES: No, come on, we are a democratic party. The Tory party is completely undemocratic as a political party, the Labour party has a block vote for the unions and is partially and only partially democratic. We are a fully democratic party. Last year at our conference, this time last year in Sheffield, the party said we don’t think this Bill is adequate, you government need to go back and do the following things in order to make it acceptable and the Bill was paused, at our request and huge numbers of amendments were passed, at our request and instigation. The Bill wouldn’t have continued if they hadn’t have been passed. The conference, a year later, has democratically decided that it didn’t want to have a debate on throwing out the Bill, that was decided yesterday, it did want to have a debate on whether it was content with the Bill as it now was and it said we are content with the progress that’s been made, we applaud what’s happened but we still believe there is still other work to do. I think our members reflect the mood of the county which is nervous about change to the health service, quite understandably, is careful to protect this wonderfully valuable institution and want absolutely copper bottomed guarantees and assurances and that’s the message they’ve sent to our colleagues in the Lord.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay, I just want to ask you about that issue of fairness you touched upon it in one of your answers. Which is fairer, a mansion tax or a tycoon tax or both?

SIMON HUGHES: What’s fairer is a country where people on incomes of under ten grand don’t pay tax, that’s our first objective, wherever they live in the United Kingdom, that’s will be a fairer system. Secondly, that we raise the money for the public services in a way that causes very wealthy people to pay more. We have started down that road, as you know we have put up Capital Gains Tax to 28%, there’s a bank levy and so on.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Yes, but mansion or tycoon?

SIMON HUGHES: We want and it’s a commitment to … well mansion tax is a commitment of the party, I agree with it. We want to make sure we stop people avoiding stamp duty by putting their property transactions into offshore companies. We want to make sure there is a legal rule that requires tax avoidance to be unacceptable to the revenue and a tycoon tax can be looked at too but I’m clear across the board, deal with tax avoidance, deal with tax evasion, deal with the people who are tax exiles in foreign tax havens and make sure those that can avoid it pay and we don’t have the scandal that Labour left us with of people in the City and the banks having rip off salaries and rip off incomes and rip off bonuses while the rest of the country are …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Yes but just what you said about the tycoon tax …

SIMON HUGHES: … and that’s what we’re fighting for.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Just what you said about the tycoon tax, it can be looked at too. It sounds a bit weak, your leader is very keen on it.

SIMON HUGHES: The leader has suggested that it is a good idea. I understand the argument, it is to make sure we capture everybody, to make sure nobody pays under 20% of tax, it’s a perfectly reasonable proposal to put on the table. It’s a coalition, we’re doing budget negotiations but our first and overriding important issue is to make sure we move as quickly as we can to make sure that millions of people, not hundreds of thousands, not tens of thousands, not a very few people who are very rich, but millions of people, twenty plus million people have already had a lift in their tax thresholds, already have gained more money back to spend which helps the economy grow again, we want these people not to pay a penny in tax until and unless they pay ten grand and we want that to happen as soon as we can, ideally next year and certainly by 2014. That’s what we’re all about. Pensioners are having higher pensions this year than ever before, people paying less tax or no tax if they’re poor and people who can afford it paying for the things that Britain needs. That’s fairness, never delivered by the Tories on their own, never delivered by Labour on their own. That’s why we’re in government and that’s why people like me are here making sure we deliver.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: You certainly are. Okay, Simon Hughes, thank you very much indeed, Deputy Leader of the Lib Dems there at spring conference in Gateshead.

SIMON HUGHES: Thank you.