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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: So as we’ve been saying, it’s the budget backlash that seems not be going away, pasty taxes, granny taxes and now it’s philanthropy tax that’s causing unease. Charities are saying that George Osborne’s curbs on tax relief on donations are going to hit some of them very hard. The country’s top universities are worried too because they get a lot of charitable donations. Well I’m joined now by the Chancellor of the University of St. Andrew’s who also happens to be the former leader of the Lib Dems, Sir Ming Campbell. Nice to be able to call you Chancellor, Sir Ming, a lot of people I’m sure didn’t know that. How might this change affect universities like St. Andrew’s?

SIR MING CAMPBELL: Well it will affect St. Andrew’s in particular because we are in the midst of 600th anniversary celebrations and we are trying to raise an endowment fund of £100 million and of course to raise a sum of that kind in the present economic conditions requires us to look for generous people to make generous donations and the anxiety of which not only in St. Andrew’s University but other universities, is quite clearly that the proposals which the Chancellor has made could easily hit the kind of targets that we need to seek out ourselves in order to persuade people, like former graduates of the university, to make generous donations.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: I was reading somewhere that universities like your own tend to get those kind of big lump sums above the £50,000 limit that’s been mentioned.

SIR MING CAMPBELL: That’s quite true, this week we had a donation of a million pounds which has allowed the establishment of two particularly important programmes and that’s exactly the kind of thing of course that government has been encouraging us to do because as you know there is no opportunity for more public funds for higher education and universities have been encouraged to go out and find other sources. There is of course another wrinkle if you like in relation to St. Andrew’s and other Scottish universities, they are not entitled to charge tuition fees to either Scottish students or European students and that obviously therefore has an impact upon income but what is significant I think is the fact that there doesn’t appear to have been any consultation about this. David Willetts has been reported as expressing unease as has Vince Cable and I think if you listen carefully to what William Hague said a moment or two ago, he was pretty well sounding the bugle call of retreat. The government is obviously accepting that it has to go back and think about this again.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But if they don’t isn’t this the law of unintended consequences for some of the Lib Dems because it is the flipside, isn’t it, of the so-called tycoon tax which we’re told Nick Clegg was very much in favour of and this is clamping down on very rich people avoiding paying their fair share of tax?

SIR MING CAMPBELL: Well very rich people, everyone, should pay their fair share of tax and I hope the tax regime, and indeed it has been Liberal Democrat policy hasn’t it, to take the poorest people out of paying tax altogether, everyone should pay what they are assessed to pay but if there is anxiety, as William Hague was suggesting, about people paying to institutions or organisations that don’t really justify the description charity, well the way in which you deal with that is by removing their charitable status, not making it more difficult for those institutions like St. Andrew’s University which require the support of high net worth individuals.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Another way of looking at this, couldn’t the campaign take this on board, in that in effect it is not really hitting those high net worth individuals very hard, it’s the charities who are losing tax relief and it’s a tax on charities, it is not extra tax charged to these people, they were giving the money away anyway?

SIR MING CAMPBELL: Well that’s rather a neat way to put it. I mean what will be in the mind of a person considering a donation will be what is the net cost to me. Now there are a lot of assumptions that people are making in their calculations but one calculation suggests that at the moment if you donate a million pounds to a charity then it costs you, once you take account of the tax relief, £750,000. In the future if you donate a million pounds, it will cost you a million pounds. Now what figure do people look at? They look at the net cost to themselves and it is that figure which will affect charities like universities like St Andrew’s and that’s why I’ve written to the Chancellor today to say look, you’ve got to look at this again and I derive some comfort, even if only marginally, from the fact that William Hague appears to be accepting that.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Okay and can I just ask you lastly, Sir Ming, another issue where we want to be clear what some of the Lib Dems think about it, is the issue of the security services and the police being able to get access, increased access to things like Skype and online activities, the so-called Snoopers Charter?

SIR MING CAMPBELL: Well I’m a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee of both Houses so some of these issues come before us but if I just state my own personal position it’s this, that the consequences of the increase of if you like authoritarianism have always got to be regarded with great seriousness and a number of people, myself included, feel some anxiety at the idea that powers of the kind which have been described might well be made available without the endorsement of a warrant of the court. I think it’s quite a separate and distinct matter to say yes, there may be cases in which there has to be particular scrutiny but in order to do that we will always seek the authority of a court and make out a case for doing so rather than allowing automatic access to what people have up till now regarded as private information.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Sir Ming, thank you very much indeed. Sir Ming Campbell, I’ll say it again, the Chancellor of the University of St. Andrew’s there with his thoughts.