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SOPHY RIDGE: Now even before she set foot inside Number 10 Theresa May said that she wanted to improve the equality between workers and bosses.  She’ll set out her plans in more detail next week but from what we know it so far sounds rather reminiscent of Labour policies launched by Ed Miliband.  I’m joined now by Damian Green, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, hello to you.  Before we start talking about Theresa May’s crackdown on executive pay, I’m keen to get your thoughts on the news that the FA is to be launching a review into these allegations of abuse in football, something you welcome?

DAMIAN GREEN: I do, I think, I hope the football authorities have learnt what other institutions have learnt and far too many have been affected by this sort of terrible scourge of child abuse, is that transparency and investigation and finding facts is really important, that anyone that tries to brush this aside, that’s just wrong.  There are too many instances that we’ve seen at the BBC with Jimmy Savile, in the churches and so on, so let’s get to the facts.

SR: Thank you.  Let’s talk now about the policy announcement from Theresa May, this crackdown on inequality between the pay of workers and their bosses.  At a time when the UK is about to leave the European Union should we not be trying to make the UK as business friendly as possible?

DAMIAN GREEN: And we are, and successfully so.  We’ve seen in the past couple of weeks a huge raft of international companies who can put their business and business HQs anywhere, saying that they want to expand in Britain.  Google, Apple, Facebook, Jaguar Landrover who are owned by the Indian group Tata, so absolutely Britain is and needs to remain business friendly but what the proposals that will come out in the Green Paper are about is making sure that people have faith in the capitalist system, that they can see it is working for everyone and not just a privileged few and that’s why the idea of publishing the gap between the highest paid person in a company and the average earnings in that company is so important so it feels that everyone working for a company can feel they are participating in the success of that company.

SR: Are these reforms slightly toothless though?  You are asking people to publish the pay, you are also saying that workers can be in the room when pay is discussed but do they have any block if they are really unhappy by the idea that some of the executives, some of the fat cats, are getting too much?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well one of the other proposals which we’ll be consulting on in the Green Paper is to allow shareholders to have a mandatory vote …

SR: But will workers be involved in that or is it just company shareholders?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well in the end it is the shareholders that own the company so it’s their company, it’s not the senior managers’ company, that’s the legal position and often the problem in the past has been that the shareholders haven’t had the power or, in some cases, the inclination actually to protest or to say look, we don’t find this acceptable so this will give the power to the shareholders but I think it will be important to have a voice in the room as you say, on the remuneration committee, the committee that decides the pay of the top people in a company to have the workers represented there if only to make the point that now we have transparency, now we have the facts that what the difference in pay is between the top and the middle of a company, that will have some force.

SR: It sounds an awful lot like some of the things that Ed Miliband was suggesting at the last general election, policies that the Conservatives derided as being anti-business and just looking at some of the 2015 Labour election manifesto where it says that there should be employee representatives on remuneration committees and that the pay ratio should also be published between the highest paid and the average in the company.  Are you just nicking Ed Miliband’s policies here?

DAMIAN GREEN: There are slight differences but if the Labour party wants to support this then fine.  What …

SR: But why didn’t you support Ed Miliband when he made them?

DAMIAN GREEN: As I say, our proposals are slightly different but I think we’ve seen around the world, I think there is a really serious issue here, that a lot of the protest votes if you like that we’ve seen in various countries around the world are about people losing faith in the thought that what most people in this country, maybe not Jeremy Corbyn but what most people believe that a liberal capitalist system not only creates more wealth but helps spread more wealth, that’s the argument that was won back in the 1980s and it is clear that we need to win that argument again and to do that we need to make as sure as possible that everyone benefits from the system and that they can see that it’s fair.  So this is squarely in line with what Theresa May said on the steps of Downing Street when she first became Prime Minister.

SR: So is that your lesson from Donald Trump’s victory in America then, that you need to prove again to people that capitalism works?

DAMIAN GREEN: Not just that but clearly a lot of what lay behind the Brexit vote in this country were people feeling dissatisfied with the system more generally and we’ve seen it in other European countries as well so I think making clear that capitalism works for everyone and not just the people at the top is a very, very important project for this government.

SR: Let’s talk about the autumn statement.  In the space of a few minutes Philip Hammond the Chancellor raising the national debt more than Gordon Brown did in his whole chancellorship.  Are the Conservative party now the party who can’t be trusted with the economy?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well no, because we are bearing down on the deficit.  We are not going to do it as quickly as we originally thought we could because of various difficulties …

SR: But George Osborne’s austerity programme has been ripped up effectively.

DAMIAN GREEN: Well it’s not been ripped up, we are still on a steady downward trajectory, we’re not going to hit the end of deficit by 2020 but we will do so in the course of the next parliament and any Chancellor faced with a very uncertain situation around the world will want to make a sensible balance between continuing to bear down so that we live within our means but also finding the money for the essential things that will keep Britain open for business, that will keep Britain attractive internationally, hence the three billion fund for productivity improvement which will include a lot of road schemes but also a lot of other kinds of infrastructure like more modern broadband and so on, the things that made us an attractive country to do business which allows us to create the jobs.  We have an historically very good level of employment.

SR: One of the areas which soaks up a huge amount of public money is pensions, can you guarantee that the triple lock is here to stay for the next parliament?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well I can guarantee that it’s here to stay for this parliament because that’s the only sensible guarantee any politician can make.  We had it in our manifesto, that and other benefits for pensioners and we will stick to that, we will stick to our manifesto commitments.  It’s too early sitting here in 2016 to write the 2020 Conservative manifesto, that will all have to be decided in future years but it is absolutely here for this parliament.

SR: Do you think it is a bit of a temping amount of money for Chancellors to have a look at and think, hang on, there is something that we can squeeze?

DAMIAN GREEN: Oddly enough I think the idea that if you look at a deficit now and say end the triple lock, that wouldn’t make any difference because it’s money looking further out that you’re spending, other people are considering but I think a lot of the debate on the triple lock is slightly simplistic because one of the things that’s happened in this country that we haven’t noticed and should do because it’s very good – and this is a non-partisan point, it’s taken place over the last 30 years – is the reduction in pensioner poverty.  In the 1980s 40% of our pensioners were living in poverty, we’ve got that figure down now to 14% and I think that is a huge beneficial social advance in this country.

SR: Potentially partly because the deficit has been reduced on the back of younger people as opposed to older people.

DAMIAN GREEN: I absolutely take the point about intergenerational fairness but let’s pause and have a look at what we’ve done for people to allow them to have a more dignified old age and not do anything that puts that at risk.

SR: And a quick thought on Brexit, it is the issue that is looming large over this parliament.  I know that the government doesn’t want to give us what they call a running commentary but I wonder where you’d position yourself on things such as the single market debate.  You have Philip Hammond potentially arguing in favour of access to the single market and others like Liam Fox saying that we need to be prioritising trade deals, where would you put yourself on that spectrum?

DAMIAN GREEN: I think the problem with the debate is that it is often binary, you are either pro single market or let’s get out altogether, you’re pro the customs union or let’s get out altogether.  As the government, as we are working through the individual problems, they are not as black and white as that, they are not as binary as that, there are elements that are beneficial to us both in the single market and in the customs union and we’re looking at whether you can actually – well obviously we want to keep as many of the advantages as possible whilst at the same time allowing us to have control over our own borders.  That’s the debate that we’re having internally but the idea that it’s black and white, that you are in and out of these different bits of these institutions, it’s I’m afraid more complex than that.

SR: Is that realistic, that you can have a pick and mix approach, particularly at a time with elections looming next year in Europe people are going to want to show that you can’t simply have your cake and eat it?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well of course we’re at the pre-negotiation stage now where people will issue tough statements and as you say, particularly with elections coming up next year but I think there  is a sensible negotiation to be had which will be as beneficial as possible to Britain and as beneficial as possible to the other members of the European Union.  Clearly in any negotiation both sides need to get something but if you talk to European businesses in particular, they want as little disruption as possible and so I would hope that the political leaders in other countries will be listening to their own businesses.  There are many businesses that have supply chains across many different European countries including this one.

SR: I’m interested as well on the back really of Theresa May’s quite revealing interview that she’s given to the Sunday Times, clearly trying to show the public a bit more of who she is as a person.  I think I’m right in saying you are her oldest friend around the Cabinet table, can you give us a bit of a sense of what gets Theresa May out of bed in the morning, what was she like at university?

DAMIAN GREEN: People constantly ask me what’s Theresa really like to which my answer is always the same, what you see is what you get and it was true of her when she was a student as well.  She is hardworking, conscientious, serious minded but also good fun to be with.  There is no sort of hidden Theresa May that the public doesn’t know about.  There are clearly details and Theresa can talk about them but …

SR: She has also talked about her husband, Philip May, in this interview too even saying that he helps her choose her outfits. At university did you ever think that Philip May was the one more likely to go on to be a Prime Minister or was it always clear that it would be Theresa?

DAMIAN GREEN: They were both, they have been friends of mine for a long time and they are both very talented.  I am sure if Philip had wanted to have a career in politics he would have been extremely successful but I assume they took the sensible decision that one politician in the family was probably enough and that they’d go into different spheres and Philip was, is extremely successful in business.

SR: Damian Green, thank you.