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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Earlier this year Ken Clarke told this programme that UKIP was a collection of clowns. At UKIP’s party conference this week, MEP Godfrey Bloom did very little to distance himself from that claim, he called a room full of women sluts, shouted at reporters and now faces disciplinary action by the party. Well the former Conservative party chairman, Lord Tebbit, says despite that his party must take UKIP seriously and let’s say a very good morning then to Lord Tebbit who joins me now from Bury St. Edmunds. Lord Tebbit, can I start with that, a man I know you worked with for many years, Ken Clarke says UKIP, element of them, are a collection of clowns. Doesn’t Godfrey Bloom’s actions, doesn’t that just prove it?

LORD TEBBIT: I don't think Godfrey Bloom amounts to very much, certainly not as significant as Damian McBride and I take it we are not going to write off the Labour party on the basis that Damian McBride with all his revelations about what he was up to, we are not going to write off the Labour party because of that. I think we have to take UKIP seriously because so many ex-Tory voters are attracted to it. If I took over a shop in the high street which used to have a lot of customers and found that the customers were going past my shop and going down the road to a competitor, I wouldn’t do what Ken Clarke has advised which is to stand in the street abusing one’s ex-customers in the hope that that will bring them back into your shop. I’d go and see what the other guy was selling and if I found out it was pretty much what I used to sell in my shop, I think I’d fire the purchasing manager of the shop and get some goods back in that attracted the people in and that’s what the Tory party has got to do. We’ve got to take seriously why people are attracted to UKIP.

DM: Well let’s continue with that analogy. Why has the manager of the shop that’s losing customers, why have they lost their appeal?

LORD TEBBIT: Well it’s very simple. We no longer offer a robust policy on the European Union, not nearly sufficiently robust. The Prime Minister was very reluctantly pushed into agreeing to a referendum in 2017 but he has made it plain that he will campaign for us to stay in whatever happens. I think also UKIPs policies on immigration are attracting a lot of voters and not only Tory voters either, right the way across the board. So there are several things there that we should be looking at and say why are our former voters attracted to UKIP and it’s because of the policies they are putting forward.

DM: On that issue of abuse we discussed, calling them clowns and of course it was the shop manager, the Prime Minister – before he was Prime Minster – who of course referred to UKIP as a collection of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists. Do you think that was wrong?

LORD TEBBIT: Yes, it was. You can say what you like about the leaders of UKIP and put that on one side, it is about the people who used to vote Conservative who are now attracted to vote UKIP and we need to get those back. It’s not even enough to persuade them not to vote UKIP, we’ve actually got to persuade them to come back and vote Conservative again and we don’t do that by abusing them. You have to understand what it is that has attracted them to UKIP, it is their policy on many things. You can argue one way or the other for gay marriage for example but it has certainly lost the Tory party a lot of its traditional voters. Now maybe it has attracted a few more but I really don’t know anybody in the Labour party who is going to switch votes to the Conservative party over gay marriage. I know a lot of Conservatives who won’t vote over it and the immigration issue is a very strong one indeed. We are not making progress on the control of immigration and above all, we are constantly in trouble, unable to do what we would like to do because of the various goings on in the European Union.

DM: The issue of immigration is of course tied up with the European Union because a large bulk of the immigrants that come here, come quite legally from the European Union and we are talking about Romanians and Bulgarians next. The only answer to that is to leave the European Union. Is there a halfway house that the Conservatives could offer?

LORD TEBBIT: Let’s not jump to that conclusion about immigration. The bigger problem that is caused in our cities is caused by immigrants from the third world who have got no intention of integrating here. They are people who left their country, came here and are trying to recreate their country in our country. We don’t have much of a problem with people like the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks or indeed French or Germans who come here, they’re not the problem and I often have to remind people that in 1940 we were extremely glad to have a bunch of Polish immigrants come here, without them we would have lost the Battle of Britain and lost the war. Then when you look at the south-east of the European Union, there is a very grave problem because the borders are leaky and people come in through those countries here and our welfare system is much more attractive than theirs. So you’ve got to have some controls but don’t think that the problem is all caused by Polish plumbers. It isn’t.

DM: So is the issue that was being discussed last week a lot and previously of some women wearing full veils, is that important because of what you say about integration and separate communities?

LORD TEBBIT: We are building not so much a multi-racial society or a multi-cultural society, we are building separate societies which really don’t have much to do with each other and so far as I’m concerned within the limits of common decency anybody should be able to wear whatever they like in the street or at home but it comes to a different thing if the person who is hiding their face is for example your doctor or a nurse, you need to see their face in order to know what they are saying and what they are thinking. Equally, how do we know in a courtroom that the person who is giving evidence is the person that they say they are if we can’t see their face. What’s more, if they are lying, perhaps their face might give that away particularly under cross examination so we have to say no to covering yourself up completely in that way. There is the additional problem that we have got a number of cases where men have disguised themselves by wearing traditional women’s dress in pursuit of a crime so again there are dangers to it but overall we must let people wear what they wish in general but in particular situations where it is essential that we should see each other’s faces, then the veil should be forbidden.

DM: Finally Lord Tebbit, just to be explicit about this issue of a referendum, we touched on it earlier in terms of what Mr Cameron is offering a referendum on the EU after renegotiating a variety of powers, what do you think he should offer then? Could he possibly offer an in/out referendum, perhaps before the general election?

LORD TEBBIT: I don't think that would be particularly sensible. I think he is right to say he should go to Brussels, meet his colleagues, explain to them what the British people want and seek to negotiate those matters and he should come back then with what he has been able to negotiate, say this is what I have achieved, is it satisfactory or not? Because if it is not satisfactory we shall leave and if it is satisfactory, we shall stay. I’m not a fanatic about these matters, I think there is a strong case for close collaboration with our friends on the continent, I always have done and I think that’s right but what we must not allow is for ourselves to be submerged in a political system which is quite alien to ours and a system of law which is alien to ours and frankly I don't think it is nearly such a good system of law. We should not put up with that.

DM: The Prime Minister is not likely to get much given what you describe about the European Union and its tendency to go the other way which is to increase its powers, what way would you vote in a referendum?

LORD TEBBIT: Oh, I think if there were to be a referendum tomorrow on the basis that we could either like it or lump it, that we either go on with the process towards an ever closer union, which of course means losing control completely of our economy, inevitably being forced into the euro which has been a disaster, inevitably forced into Westminster becoming no more than a regional council, then I would say no and I would vote to be out. But I don't think that’s necessarily the end of the argument. We have to give Mr Cameron his chance to go and see what changes he can persuade the others to make and if he can’t persuade them to make adequate changes then with no bitterness or recrimination, we should say we will go our way. After all, that’s what Churchill said about it in the very beginning.

DM: Okay Lord Tebbit, we must end it there. Thank you very much indeed for sparing the time to talk to us here on Sky News.