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DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now this week the Chancellor has unveiled more of his plans for a Northern Powerhouse complete with its own minister.  The Conservatives hope it will go some way to address the north/south divide and perhaps as a by-product it might win them more support in the Labour heartlands.  Well a man who has been championing regional devolution for many decades is Lord Heseltine, the former Deputy Prime Minister and he joins me now from Oxfordshire, a very good morning to you Lord Heseltine.  I was interested to read this morning that John Cruddas, who was deeply involved with the Labour manifesto, picked up on the Northern Powerhouse and said this was one of his ideas and I know you’re going to tell me you pre-dated him on that, but this is one of his ideas the Conservatives are going to benefit from.  

LORD HESELTINE:   Well that’s a new twist to history but let’s not get involved with where it all started, what matters is the Chancellor has put his full authority and that of the government behind offering a new deal for England on how we govern.  It’s an historic opportunity, the Northern Powerhouse pioneered by remarkable work that’s been done in Manchester on an all-party basis is the example of where the opportunity is for the rest of England.  I was there on Thursday listening to the Chancellor make what to me was an historic speech, reversing a process of 150 years of centralism and giving back to the great cities and the individual parts of England a chance to really drive their own agenda.  

DM: And do you think one of the by-products could be more Conservative seats in Northern cities?

LORD HESELTINE:   Well obviously I’m a member of the Conservative party, I fight Conservative battles and I want to see Conservatives play a bigger role and you wouldn’t expect me to say anything different from that but we now have what we have.  We have a parliament for five years, we have many cities with Labour leadership and I know that the Chancellor and Greg Clark, the Minister for Cities, have established very good personal relationships despite the political differences and it will now be a question of working together in order to make the maximum possible success of the local economies.  I don't think that party politics is going to play any divisive role in that because basically, look, we’re all part of one nation, we all want success for the constituent parts of that nation and the best way to get that is to rekindle the entrepreneurial spirit of the great local economies.

DM: That’s the broad aim and you are right of course, many Labour councils have welcomed the initiative but just on the technicalities, on the process of delivering this devolution, it’s linked with mayors being elected in many areas but there are already those saying, from those areas, saying we had this before and we rejected it, we already have the structures in place to deliver and hearing some rumblings perhaps from the 1922 Committee along those lines as well.  

LORD HESELTINE:   Look, it is controversial but they don’t have to do it. The Chancellor made it absolutely clear that there is an option, he is not going to impose anything on anybody but equally he is not going to transfer the power, and therefore the big opportunity, unless he’s confident in the structure and accountability of the local administration and everywhere that I know in the world that has powerful cities and powerful local authorities, there’s one person locally elected and identifiable who is ultimately electorally accountable and the Chancellor said that is not negotiable.  If anybody wants the new regime, the new freedoms, the new opportunities, then there has to be an infrastructure in which we can have confidence and a person that we can identify and I think that’s a very sensible deal.  

DM: Lord Heseltine, just to touch on the other major issue facing the party over the next few years, the EU referendum, do you get any sense that it could be held sooner than 2017?  

LORD HESELTINE:   Well the first priority I would guess for the Prime Minister and the Chancellor dealing with this issue is to get a conclusion that they believe in and so from Britain’s point of view that must be the right priority.  If it can be done quicker, well that would enable the referendum to be done earlier but the important thing is the nature of the agreement, not the precise timing although there is an element of attractiveness in putting this issue behind us so that we all know exactly where we are for the rest of the five years.

DM: Last question from Prince Harry, well not directly from Prince Harry but one of his proposals talking in the papers today, now I know you did your National Service when it was still in place and Prince Harry is saying perhaps it should be reintroduced in some form, do you think he could be on to something?

LORD HESELTINE:  This is a very well-worn path.  The first thing to realise is that the military themselves are very opposed to it for very understandable reasons.  They have a different world to the world of the old National Service, the technology of modern weapons and weapon systems are infinitely more complex and so fighting battles today requires a degree of expertise and specialism which is not compatible with just saying that everybody can be part of this process.  Now you can argue that you have some form of service separated from the military which enables young people to go through a more disciplined formative part of their life.  Very controversial but equally it is something a lot of people believe in.  I would myself be surprised if the government were to go that far because we’re a very different country today to the one in which National Service existed at the end of the 1950s.

DM: Lord Heseltine, thank you very much indeed.  
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