Murnaghan 3.03.13 Interview with Tim Loughton, Mark Field and George Eustace, Tory MPs
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well Conservatives seem to spend all their time talking about gay marriage and windmills, those are the words of UKIP leader Nigel Farage. So are the Conservatives making all the wrong noises? In a moment I’ll speak to Tory backbenchers Tim Loughton, Mark Field and George Eustace. Well I’m joined now from Burgess Hill in West Sussex by Tim Loughton, a very good morning to you Mr Loughton. So no lurch to the right we’re hearing from Mr Cameron but do you feel if not that what about a nudge on the tiller in that direction?
TIM LOUGHTON: No, this isn’t about lurching to the right or lurching to the left, if anything it’s about lurching to the public and I think what we need to realise is that there is a bit of a disconnect by politics generally, not just by the government parties, with the public at large. When I went to Eastleigh a lot of people were saying the trouble is with you lot is you take us for fools and we don’t and we shouldn’t and we shouldn’t be seen to be doing that. This government is absolutely on the side of people who want to do the right thing, work hard, look after their families, keep their noses clean. We’re doing a lot of things to emphasise that, that message is not getting across, we must redouble our efforts to make sure that people do appreciate that the government is actually on their side.
DM: So it is simply about perceptions, you say about the perception of taking the electorate for fools, is it about PR then, just getting the message across?
TL: No, no, it’s not about just PR and it’s not just about presentation, it is also about doing some of the thing that people voted Conservative for at the last election. That’s about reducing taxes rather than coming up with new taxes, it’s about recognising families are having a tough time and recognising marriage and families in the tax system which we said we would do and haven’t and it’s about getting tough on the European Convention as I’m very pleased to see the Home Secretary has reinforced again today. These are things that people voted Conservative for at the last election, it’s things that people vote Conservative for generally, want to see a Conservative led government get on with. Now we know we are held back by the Liberals in many of these respects but we’ve got to articulate a Conservative agenda which is in tune with what most decent Conservative minded, even if not Conservative voters, feel in this country and I think what people expect when they vote Conservative is a government which wants to get the state off the back of people, a government that wants to reduce taxes and reward people that do the right thing and a government which defends our citizens and backing Philip Hammond to stand up for our armed forces but defending liberties and free speech as well against political correctness and some of that nonsense we’ve still got that’s insidious in our society as well.
DM: Okay, I don’t want to get caught up in terminology here but all that does sound like a bit more of a move to the right. You’re saying it’s already Conservative values, getting the state off your back, political correctness, Europe’s a problem and cutting taxes, it all seems to be stuff that comes from that side of the political spectrum.
TL: Why is that a right wing agenda? That’s what most ordinary decent people say day in, day out, I don’t see why that is some right wing agenda, it’s about what the people are actually saying, it’s about the people’s agenda and that’s what we’ve got to get back to.
DM: What taxes do you want to cut?
TL: Oh the taxes, I think we’ve got to do several things on taxes. We’ve got to further cut taxes on small businesses in particular, I’d like to see a holiday on national insurance contributions for small businesses taking on new employees. At the same time I want to see us getting tough on big businesses, those international corporates who are still not paying their fair share of tax in this country. I want to see, as I’ve said on your programme before Dermot, a transferable married couple’s tax allowance which we promised in the last manifesto, we have still not delivered which sends out a firm message. It’s not a huge amount of money but it sounds out a very clear message that we back families who do the right things and bring up their children in the most stable sort of environment. There are a lot of things like that that people expect Conservatives to do which will actually link to the growth in the economy and the really important thing of making sure we’ve got growth producing new jobs which will bring in more tax revenues. All the studies have shown over many, many years that when you increase taxes, the tax take goes down and when you reduce taxes and have fair taxes, the tax take goes up and that’s what brings down the deficit.
DM: Okay, can I just ask you then lastly on this Mr Loughton, does Mr Cameron get in trouble with you if he doesn’t articulate what you’re already doing in terms of your prescription, does he get in trouble with you if that doesn’t come across, if that doesn’t gain traction with the public and push things further through, I suppose through Mr Osborne during the budget on those specifics you’ve mentioned about taxes?
TL: Well I think we ought to see some very clear messages in the budget. We want to see a real focus in the budget on growth and we don’t want to get side-lined by some of the stupid little things I’m afraid in the budget last year which became the big story even though they added up to just a few hundred million. The most important thing that the Chancellor has got to do is to articulate a budget that shows how the economy is going to grow, how we are going to attract more businesses to this country and more existing businesses to take risk and invest in new jobs and to show families we are on their side and recognise families in the tax system. Let’s once and for all just park this whole business about the leadership. At the next election in just over two years’ time, the party leaders will be David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg with Nigel Farage making some running as you like it on the sidelines. Now is the time to rally round the Prime Minister and the government and get on with the job which is what the people elected us at the last election to do and that’s to sort out the economy once and for all and get a fair deal for people in this country who do the decent and the right thing.
DM: All right, Mr Loughton, thank you very much indeed for your time. Tim Loughton there joining us from West Sussex. And in the studio listening to that, nodding along with a lot of it, it must be said, are Mark Field and George Eustace, also of course from the Conservative party. Mr Field, just to continue on that, I saw you nodding along with this idea of perception from voters in Eastleigh and of course across the country who don’t feel that your party is on their side. Is part of that to do with the perception particularly of Mr Cameron and Osborne of being part of a metropolitan elite who are, in Nigel Farage’s phrase, more concerned about gay marriage and windmills?
MARK FIELD: I represent the most metropolitan of seats of the lot, the Cities of London and Westminster and I’m favour of gay marriage, in favour of House of Lords reform, quite a lot of that sort of agenda. I think the issue about Eastleigh above all is that we mustn’t lose our nerve, we’ve got to react calmly, listen to what the voters had to say, don’t rush out to say 101 different policy prescriptions. Part of the difficulty on business is that we have had no growth over the past three years and some of the messages about big business are not exactly opening the doors to them, the sense of having arbitrary tax and the like, but about this idea of veering to the right, we’ve tried it. In the last six weeks we had a speech from David Cameron about Europe which was supposed to have killed UKIPs fox and it did nothing of the sort. Indeed in the last two or three days before the by-election there were big headlines about we’re going to stop Romanians and Bulgarians who are going to be entitled to come here en masse at the beginning of next year.
DM: Well are already here, it’s in the papers today about the NHS.
MF: A lot are already here. People are not fools, they know that we can’t really do very much about this. We’re members of the European Union, I personally want to stay in the European Union and I don’t have any problem with that but even all the headlines today, Theresa May and Chris Grayling perhaps are on manoeuvres of their own to some description but the idea of getting out of the European Court of Human Rights – we are in government at the moment, either do something now in the next two years and call the Liberal Democrats bluff on this, either do that or stay quiet because it’s that sort of cynicism that the public think well actually it’s just politicians saying words and not doing anything.
DM: Well your analysis there, I don't know whether George Eustace agrees, that smacks of panic at the top then if they are making these kind of noises to get the headlines in the Sunday papers and are never going to do anything about it.
MF: It’s not panic but I think it’s incoherence at the top. We’re saying one thing and thinking we can somehow convince the voters yet actually the voters are not fools.
GEORGE EUSTACE: On this one, look the party has been consistent since David Cameron became leader in 2005 that we are against the Human Rights Act, we would scrap it and replace it with a British Bill of Rights. People are realistic that it’s not something we can do now in a coalition government but it’s absolutely right that we should say that’s what we believe in as Conservatives and if there was a Conservative government that’s exactly what we will do.
MF: But George, this all sounds like words. Let’s call the Liberal Democrat’s bluff on this, let’s have a Bill in the next few months and if it is as popular as we think it is, quite a lot of Labour MPs will vote our way and even if the Liberals are against it, it will put them on the wrong side of it all. Either do that or say nothing but at the moment, as I say, it breeds into this cynicism that all politicians are alike and they are all full of promises and delivering very little. I’m afraid that is why UKIP got 28% of the vote in Eastleigh on Thursday.
GE: You are going to get an element of that when you have a coalition because in a coalition agreement is necessarily about compromise and there are things that the Liberal Democrats wanted to do that they couldn’t do. I think actually the public are grown up enough to realise that we have come together as a coalition to deal with a particular problem that the country faces, a financial crisis, that doesn’t stop the parties having their own independent identities and something like the Human Rights Act is one of those. I think the other thing we’ve got to do as a party, it’s not so much about lurching to the right but actually just talking much more about our record.
DM: But is it about standing up to the Liberal Democrats? You mentioned the coalition and we know there are many in your party who feel that you are being held back and almost misrepresented as a government because of what the Lib Dems either are making you do or not allowing you to do.
GE: Yes, I think all governments suffer from the problem that bad news floats to the top and good news is in danger of sinking and what I find when I talk to people is they say you’re not doing anything on immigration, we’ve actually cut immigration by a third. They say you are not doing anything to cut government waste, we’ve actually slashed £9 billion off Whitehall costs.
MF: On immigration we’ve ramped up the rhetoric about Romanians and Bulgarians, we’re members of the EU, we can do nothing about that and at the self-same time David Cameron, in my view absolutely rightly, goes to India and says we want to get more students but it’s the sense of incoherence of that message. Many of our supporters in this country and many Conservative MPs do look upon the whole coalition for incompetence.
DM: Just on that issue about Romanians and Bulgarians, we’re going to be talking to the Romanian foreign minister in a bit and Nigel Farage as well, you’re saying that the Conservative party ought to stand up and say look, we’re members of the EU there’s nothing we can do about it, the many hundreds of thousands of them who want to come to this country can come under the treaties we’ve signed.
MF: That is the reality, the situation we’re in and I think again trying to ramp up something that we can’t actually deliver on, it is only going to lead to even more disillusionment with the whole political process. As I say, I think one of the reasons UKIP did well is really an anger and disdain about the entire political class, not just the coalition but it applies equally to the Labour party as well but I think there is also just a sense that many UKIP members look upon, or UKIP supporters look upon what the party is saying on things like defence and I was very pleased to hear what Philip Hammond had to say in the last 24 hours, but on defence, on grammar schools, on immigration and thought, well actually this is what we thought the Conservative party stood for.
DM: If I can just bring George Eustace in on that specific point because UKIP have made great headway, Nigel Farage was well ahead of the game, in the middle of last year he was talking about the Romanians and Bulgarians that will be flooding into Britain perhaps in 2014. Do you feel like Mark Field you should just say that’s the way it is?
GE: Well I think there are things that we can do to make sure that these people don’t come here and just claim our benefits and that’s what a government should do and is looking at doing. There are things that we’ve achieved on immigration, we’ve cut immigration by a third and that’s the point we should be making because the types of people who are voting UKIP do not realise what his government has actually …
DM: But Mark Field is saying that a lot of the people you are not letting in here, we could actually do with in this country, well qualified students and things like that.
MF: I’ve got businesses obviously in my patch, in the City of London, I’ve got endless numbers of American lawyers, bankers, people from New Zealand and Australia, who could be facing difficulties, who are bringing real money in and it is not that they being stopped from coming but it’s just the sheer delay of the whole thing.
GE: But again, coming back to the record of what we’ve actually done, it’s not to stop legitimate students coming here but they have tightened up on all the sham colleges and there was a real problem there, they have made it more difficult for people to use marriage as a route into this country, that’s been tightened up …
MF: A little more difficult.
GE: … it’s things like that that have actually cut immigration by a third and my point with Mark is I’m not talking about …
MF: That is net migration, not immigration.
GE: I’m not talking about ramping things up, I’m just talking about pointing to the record of what we’ve achieved but I agree, I don’t want to lurch anywhere, I just think we need to get the budget right and focus on growth and focus on the cost of living.
MF: Ultimately it is all about the economy and it will be for the next two years.
DM: Okay, on that you both agree. George Eustace, Mark Field, thank you both very much indeed.
