ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well the Liberal Democrat leader, the Deputy Prime Minister of course as well, Nick Clegg has cautioned against reading too much into one quarter’s positive growth figures. He says the country is still ‘out of kilter’. The Deputy Prime Minister has warned that Britain’s recovery will be fitful and that the country could not rely on London to bail it out, striking a bit of a different tone to the upbeat Prime Minister. Well the Deputy Leader of the Lib Dems, Simon Hughes, is in Westminster. A very good morning to you, Mr Hughes, that phrase ‘out of kilter’, could we see that between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister’s interpretation of what these growth figures mean?

SIMON HUGHES: No, look, everybody understands – and it’s not just the politicians – we’ve had a really difficult time for the last two and a half years, we’re coming next month into a halfway date for this parliament. The government was formed because of the national economic crisis in the national interest to try to get the economy going again at a time when everybody remembers that we were looking across Europe at economic pandemonium. Now we didn’t know how long it would take, we said we didn’t know how long it would take, we understood that it was linked to the eurozone and what happened in Europe and the rest of the world and there has been every effort made to get a really secure growth, it’s like getting the foundations secure before you rebuild the house. Now the good news is, and it is good news, is that we have at last seen growth bigger than projected in the last quarter but we know that we hadn’t had it in the previous quarter so we can’t suddenly say everything is sorted because it needs to continue from the quarter we’re in and then go on continuing. We know that we have a record number of jobs ever in this country which is phenomenal but at the same time constituencies like mine just over the river, we know still we have very high unemployment although it is lower than the average in Europe. We know that we’re having good news because there are more new companies being created than at any time and compared to many other countries in the world, we’re doing better in the crisis so we have secured ourselves internationally, we aren’t regarded as a credit risk which we might have been if we hadn’t started to deal with the deficit. We’ve taken some very tough measures but gradually and hopefully if we can continue to create new jobs, build new jobs, export more goods, then we are going in the right direction.

DM: All right but I just want to get an idea of how much, whether we’re going to zigzag, that’s another phrase used by the Governor of the Bank of England, there does seem to be a difference in interpretation between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. The good news will keep on coming or things will remain difficult and out of kilter from the Deputy Prime Minister, where are you on that?

SH: We could have a conversation for the next few minutes about nuances of difference between the two parties in government. Both government parties, and the Liberal Democrats are in the government fundamentally to sort out the economy of the United Kingdom, that’s why we’re there, that’s why we did the deal with the Tories who traditionally have been our opponents and we did it in the national interest and we are committed to it for five years and it was a five year plan. Now we didn’t know when we would begin to see growth again, we didn’t know when we’d begin to see jobs going up and unemployment going down but unemployment is now beginning to come down both generally and youth unemployment but there is a huge way to go. There’s a huge way to go to get the economy restructured. We inherited an economy which had basically lost manufacturing and had replaced it by banking and finance as activities, where a lot of our exports just never happened and we’re beginning to sell more to China, a huge increase to India, a huge increase to Russia, a huge increase and we’re beginning to see the economy grow in the manufacturing sector as well.

DM: Yes but losing jobs in a major manufacturer like Ford’s, that doesn’t help the rebalancing but let me just …

SH: Dermot, that’s exactly why the definition of it being choppy is correct because at the same time as we’ve secured more exports in the motor sector than ever before, yes, we have other areas where people don’t continue to manufacture so of course we’re not there yet, of course it’s the beginning but I sense, very gently, that we are turning the corner and we wouldn’t have been able to do so unless you had a secure base for the economy on which to do that.

DM: Okay, fair enough. Simon Hughes, thank you very much indeed, we must leave it there.