ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Joining me now to discuss the future path for welfare is a former minister for that very subject, Frank Field. A very good morning to you Mr Field. I know more than a decade and a bit ago you put forward some very detailed proposals for the reform of the Welfare State and the benefits system, is there an element in all of this of you saying I told you so, these are chickens coming home to roost?

FRANK FIELD: Well it doesn’t advance the debate to do that.

DM: But we have been there before.

FF: We have been there before and we’ve ducked it before so the real question mark is, as Labour now moves up towards the general election, are we going to have an alternative to this because the government reforms, which rely even more on means testing, is even more corrupting, it just develops a system which Chris has actually been describing and you’re seeing twofold, one is this subsidy has moved from £4 million when it was introduced to £26,000 million now, so it now makes a huge difference to people in work if they’ve got children but it makes very little difference if you’re single, without children, going back into work but of course employers have now caught on to this. It is a mega, mega subsidy to their wage bill so we have got two groups who are actually dependent on a growing part of the welfare state and as Chris said, the really big change will be if at the next election we say with welfare, the bill is going to have to grow. We’re ageing, I’m quite a good example of that …

DM: So we’re honest about that, the bill will have to grow?

FF: The bill will grow but are people going to be prepared to pay for it? Now I don't think they are going to pay for it under existing rules but if we say to them we are going to go back to an insurance system whereby your gateway, your entitlement is linked to what you’ve contributed and that the monies you’ve put in we can’t get our sticky fingers on as politicians but it is actually independent of us, I think we could actually have a new welfare tax contract with the electorate.

DM: And you think that’s a policy that Labour could take in to a general election and thrive by?

FF: Not only do I hope that but it is certainly one which is in tune with the public who know that welfare bills in many instances have to go up, are very unhappy with the existing set up and who gets what from that. Many people who have actually worked quite hard find it very difficult to actually claim when they actually need that help, this would be an alternative. The real crunch would be how do we convince the electorate, one that we’re the people to do it – I hope we can do that but also it’s fine describing where you want to get to, you’ve also got to have the nous to describe how you’ll get there.

DM: And you’ve also got to demonstrate your reaction to the policies that are being implemented right now which is why we’re having this discussion, do you think Labour needs to be more honest about the 1% cap, the aspiration to cap overall benefits at £500. We know about the bedroom tax but they need to be very, very clear where it stands.

FF: I think we need to make the distinction that London is not like the rest of the country, it’s an island to itself and you can’t run welfare reform from London, we have to deal with that separately but the £500 cap in my constituency is a mega sum. When it first came out voters reaction in Birkenhead was have you allowed this to go on for this long? Most people in see in my constituency surgeries or walking around, people talking to us, I mean 11, 12, 13,000 pounds a year is their cap which they actually get from working. The idea that we’ve allowed a welfare state to pay out these sums without trying to put some element of responsibility back strikes them as well so I hope we are going to be really tough on that, cap, really tough on making sure you have got to actually do certain things to get welfare and above all you’ve actually had to pay in to get it.

DM: Okay, Mr Field, thank you very much indeed for your thoughts. Frank Field there.