Murnaghan 6.01.13 Interview with Simon Hughes, Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats
ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS
DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Welcome back, now the Lib Dems have begun the year low in the polls but they say they will fight tooth and nail at the next general election and I’m joined now by their Deputy Leader, Simon Hughes, very good to see you Mr Hughes.
SIMON HUGHES: Happy New Year.
DM: Happy New Year to you or is it? This is coming from your President, Tim Farron, talking about the toughest election for years that you will face in 2015 and this is all because, isn’t it, because you’ve become the whipping boy for the coalition, all the unpopular policies are hung round your neck.
SH: Well of course it is going to be the most difficult election when it comes because we haven’t been a government in your lifetime or mine and governments get a harder time than oppositions. It’s easy relatively to be in opposition, I was listening to Ed Balls avoiding some of your questions, that’s a much easier position than when you’re in government, when you have to come up with answers. We start the new year realistically, we went in to government for the right reason, we went in because the country was in a terrible mess, we needed a stable government, the only stable government was a coalition between us and the Conservatives and what was our ambition? To sort out the economy, to deliver a fairer Britain, to make sure that everybody had a better opportunity to make their own way in this country. Now a lot of those things we have succeeded on, you know the most obvious one, I’m going to make the point again – we had as the number one item in our manifesto to take the level of income tax, the threshold for income tax up to £10,000 and this April it will be £9,440. It’ll mean that two and a half million people who were paying tax aren’t paying tax, it means that 24 million people will have six hundred extra pounds a year not going to the Treasury. That’s the practical sort of way ahead and we’ll have the highest pension rise ever.
DM: There’s no doubt about it, it is a considerable achievement but do you get the credit for it because first and foremost on the deficit side of it, excuse the parallels there but you get the cuts, you get tuition fees hung around your next, people don’t really give you credit for that key policy.
SH: That gave us a really difficult first year, it wasn’t something we were all agreed about. We went into an election wanting to get rid of tuition fees but we had no other partners in parliament who voted for that so we weren’t able to deliver that and in a coalition you do a deal but in a coalition you negotiate the best deal you can and our job has been to make sure, for example we talked about benefit changes, for example that there isn’t a cut in benefits, everybody will have a 1% increase. Yes, it’s not last year’s 5.5% increase which we fought for and got but it means that people on benefits will have higher increases, you put the point very fairly, than people on average wages who have had to take the cut. We’ve made sure that under 25s weren’t taken out of the benefit system, we made sure that people with large families weren’t having their benefits reduced so …
DM: You made your point about that but on benefits you are now supporting this 1%, which is a real terms cut as we all know, so you’ve rolled over again as Lib Dems because there you were a year ago vociferously supporting the linking to inflation and we heard so much about it at the time, Nick Clegg and others including yourself were making a line in the sand and now you’ve abandoned that.
SH: Well first thing, we have restored the link for pensioners with earnings which Labour never did. Mrs Thatcher abolished it, Labour never restored it, we restored it and pensions have gone up. It’s not huge but it will be a £110 a year, the state pension, by April. They’ve gone up every year but that is the highest increase ever. In relation to the link, last year we fought to make sure the link was retained and there was a 5% increase in benefits. What was the proposition on the table this year? It was to find about £10 billion because we need still to find savings in the economy. In the end what was the deal we did? We did a deal that again raised the tax threshold, helping people on low and ordinary incomes and we didn’t freeze benefits, we didn’t cut benefits on anybody, we ring fenced people with disabilities but what we did do is say we accept that there will have to be a lower than inflation increase this year. Now of course it’s difficult, I’m not pretending, none of us is pretending it’s what we would have liked to do but until the economy gets out of its difficulty we must go on making those decisions and the signs, the Prime Minister said earlier, the signs are beginning to move in the right direction towards unemployment coming down.
DM: I want to push you on that phrase we used in the introduction, fighting the toughest election for years in 2015. We know the Lib Dems on the ground can fight very, very tough. Of course in so many of your seats, you have 57 MPs, you’re up against Conservatives and you have to fight tough against your coalition partners and we already know, we’ve already seen it, you’re starting to distance yourself, two, two and a half years out, and you are getting the message across that the Tories cannot be trusted and you’re keeping them honest. Is that the strategy overall?
SH: Well, a couple of very simple points. We’ve just started the second half of this parliament, you like me follow sport and I judge things at the end of the game by the score, not the score at half time. Secondly …
DM: Yes, but if you’re shouted at by your manager at half time you come out and change your tactics. Are you going to say we can’t trust the Tories?
SH: … and you go on making sure that as you get to the next section people understand that the Liberal Democrats are different from the other two parties, we believe that we can run the economy better than Labour did and we believe that we will be a fairer party in government than the Tories would have been without us. We’re very clear that had we not been there, there wouldn’t have been the increases in the taxes on the well off, the cut in taxes for the lower paid, making sure everybody gets a fairer start at school in terms of extra money. We fought for those things and we’ll go on doing that and you’re right, we will differentiate ourselves in the run up to the next election.
DM: And when the Prime Minister says he would like to remain Prime Minister until at least 2020, if it comes to that would the Lib Dems support him that or do you want to see Nick Clegg in place in 2015?
SH: Look, we want to win the election, that’s what we fight elections for. The great British people will decide who wins the next election, what I know is at the last election they decided that no party deserved to win and we took that challenge, we didn’t run away, we faced up to it, we went into government and I hope we’ll be in government at the next election and afterwards because I believe we will deliver the fairer Britain that we’re still a long way off achieving.
DM: Mr Hughes, thank you very much indeed for your time. The Deputy Leader of the Liberal Democrats, Simon Hughes, there.
