ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now time to take a look through the Sunday papers and I’m joined by Labour frontbencher, Liz Kendall, she’s MP for Leicester West and Shadow Minister for Care and Older People, Lord Carlile a Lib Dem peer and was formerly the independent reviewer of counter terrorism laws and Peter Wilding who is a former spin doctor for the Conservatives in the European Parliament and is now the Director of British Influence, a cross-party pro-Europe group.  Good morning to you all, let’s get straight about our task, Liz, kick us off with this UKIP story or one of the UKIP stories and this Matthew Richardson and his NHS comments.

LIZ KENDALL: I think this is the most important story about UKIP in the papers today, it’s Matthew Richardson’s comments saying that the NHS is the biggest waste of money in the UK and comparing it to Hitler’s Nazi bunker and it comes on top of comments that Nigel Farage has made about wanting the NHS changed to be funded through private health insurance and actually the deputy leader of UKIP also saying welcoming a whiff of privatisation.  What I think about this is that there are real challenges facing the NHS but people don’t want to see it go, change and become a private insurance system like we see in the States and the reason for that is for ordinary working people, that’s not the best way to provide healthcare.

DM: Liz, just on that, haven’t you said that all people really are interested in outcomes and there is a role for the private sector within the NHS?

LIZ KENDALL: I think what matters is what works and you wouldn’t expect any party to claim anything else, you don’t want policies that don’t work and the real problem with a private insurance system as you see in the States is it doesn’t provide effective coverage for everyone, it leaves a poor service for the poor and in ends up costing everyone far more.  

DM: But there is a role for the private sector if it can provide certain specialist areas of care and that came in under the last Labour government didn’t it?

LIZ KENDALL: Yes, if there is a role for the private sector in adding capacity or challenge to the system within proper accountability, that’s fine but I think what we’re seeing here is … one of the things that’s interesting is UKIP and Farage especially say I tell it how it is, I’m straight and direct with people, well what’s happened is here is they keep getting caught out with their comments, they keep trying to run away from it but when the leader, deputy leader and party secretary all say something, you know it’s true.

DM: Lord Carlile, does it affect them?  As Liz Kendall was saying there, there have been a string of these revelations and strange and outrageous comments from UKIP members and candidates and their polling doesn’t seem to change.

LORD CARLILE: Well we have seen today their polling levels start to drop for the first time in recent months so I think it is going to change.  The fact is that UKIPs senior figures are almost totally ignorant about the way the country is run and they show that ignorance at every turn along with historical ignorance.  Mr Richardson’s reference to the Reichstag bunker is a reference to something that didn’t actually exist, there was a bunker but it wasn’t in the Reichstag.  On the health service, the Labour party, the last Labour government quite rightly introduced an element of the private sector into the National Health Service, if for example you were to look at cataract operations in Wales they are all done by the or they were all done by the private sector and it worked very well.  We shouldn’t have an objection to the private sector’s involvement on principle but we must ensure that the National Health Service continues and if we are going to improve the health service perhaps we should actually be looking at Europe, for example in France where many aspects of public health provision are done more efficiently through the private sector as part of the national service.  

DM: Peter Wilding, bring in your front page story you’ve chosen from the Telegraph, this other UKIP story, I was just discussing it with the Conservative Party Chairman there, this defection by an MEP, just tell us about it.

PETER WILDING: Well what’s happened is yet again a crazy story about how UKIP really just can’t keep their show on the road.  As far as amateurs are concerned it is an Ealing comedy but the problem is it’s not a joke.  I mean these are the biggest party in the European Parliament, they get half a million a year if they don’t turn up or don’t vote.  It’s a national embarrassment.  

DM: But UKIP would say, well hang on a minute, two MPs have gone the other way and had themselves re-elected.  

PETER WILDING: Well I’m really looking forward to what’s going to happen next because Douglas Carswell does not sound like Nigel Farage and if Nigel doesn’t win his seat, which is highly likely in a general election, there is going to be all hell to pay in UKIP.  I think that party is collapsing through the weight of its own contradictions and let’s face it, I mean the problem everybody watching your programme has got to recognise is that out of the European Union voting for UKIP eventually means there’s no UK because Scotland will leave, there’s no independence because like Norway we’ll have to accept all the laws and it certainly is not going to be any party for the kids getting jobs because Nigel has already said he is quite happy for the country to get poorer and two million jobs to go.  So we’ve really got to recognise that it’s not just about the scandal, it’s about what UKIP stands for as far as the future of the country is concerned.

LIZ KENDALL: Well said, well said, hear-hear.  

DM: Well we’ll move on from UKIP, Lord Carlile, you’ve been looking at this tribute to Leon Britton who died last week from Bruce Anderson in the Telegraph, a fine man, an important ally of Thatcher who left under a cloud.  

LORD CARLILE: Yes, I think this is an important article because it puts Leon Britton into perspective.  He was a reforming Home Secretary, he introduced the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1983 which protected people against some police excesses up to that time, made police interviews fair.  He presided over a Home Office in which there were 35,000 people in prison, we complained about it at the time but we’re well over double that now. Geoffrey Dickens praised him explicitly both in the House of Commons and in correspondence and Leon Britton has been the subject of a smear campaign in the media which is wholly unjustified and based on no evidence.  There is a further very important point: we know now because it has been revealed publicly that he was interviewed by the police about an alleged offence, not very long before he died.  No action was taken on it, he was never arrested let alone charged.  Leon Britton provides evidence for the need to ensure that the fact that people are questioned by the police is not revealed publicly save with the leave of a judge unless they are charged and that is a very important point that we should take from what happened to Leon Britton and the very sad last few months of the life of an important political figure.  

DM: Interesting stuff.  Liz Kendall, on the Times front page where you’ve picked this story, the number of people in influential positions in society and the relatively small proportion who have actually come from comprehensive schools.  

LIZ KENDALL: I suppose I chose this story because I came into politics to make sure everybody has got a fair chance to fulfil their potential and live the life that they choose and I think there are still far too many barriers for ordinary kids to get on in life and what this story is about is how few state school children really are in the top positions in law, in journalism and a whole other range of industries.  

DM: I stressed comprehensive schools because the grammar school ones seem to do quite well.  

LIZ KENDALL: Yes, but the vast majority of children in this country go to comprehensive schools and I think we need to really focus on this issue of how we help people achieve their potential.  For me that means starting really, really early on in life, we know that kids start school from poorer backgrounds up to fifteen months behind everybody else.  We’ve got to see our schools doing better, we need to see our universities open up far more and really boost aspiration.  It is something that I’ve been doing in my own constituency, trying to get the local universities to come in and help schools …

DM: What about ending the charitable status for the public, the private schools?  

LIZ KENDALL: Actually what I think we need to focus on is brilliant quality teaching and brilliant heads leading schools. For me that’s the big thing and secondly, the degree to which parents are really active and involved in their kids’ lives and boosting their aspiration.  We know that before the age of five it is obviously parents who have the biggest influence and I don't know about your background or you school, Dermot, but actually journalists …

DM: State school.  

LIZ KENDALL: State school, journalism does slightly better than certainly politics or the law, sport is obviously far more open but one of the things I’m trying to do as a local MP as I said is getting our local universities and businesses to go into the schools, show the kids …

DM: But did your colleague Chris Bryant have a point though when he made that comment about culture and the arts and singled out the likes of James Blunt and said people who go to private schools get the big breaks.  

LIZ KENDALL: If you know any writers, musicians or actors, it is really tough trying to get a foot in the door if you don’t have the money from parents who can help you do all this stuff when you might not be paid to start off with and if you don’t have the contacts, so I think Chris made a really important point, a really important point.  

DM: But what about the idea that talent will out, particularly when it comes to music and things like that?  

LORD CARLILE: I wanted to say that removal of charitable status is just a vindictive red herring.  I think that the private education sector should be required to do much more in relation to the public education sector but let’s use the excellence that has been built up in the private sector in the state sector, let’s demand that the private sector has greater participation in the state sector including comprehensive schools which some private education trusts have taken on with enthusiasm, some of them are doing it.  

DM: We have got to move on to other stories and you’ve got, Lord Carlile, these comments from Baroness Warsi, I put them to Grant Shapps, on the front page of the Observer. They are quite stinging aren’t they, when she talks about colleague’s failures to understand the fears and concerns of the three million Muslims in the country.

LORD CARLILE: Well they certainly are.   I wish that when she was a Minister Baroness Warsi had been quite as vocal about these issues.  I have been involved in the Prevent strand of counter-terrorism policy, that’s the anti-radicalisation strand, for a number of years and I am a member of the Prevent oversight board and I didn’t notice Baroness Warsi being particularly helpful or vocal whilst she was a Minister.  She is partly right but I think that we have to understand that we argue about Prevent in a context in which we all know and recognise and should say 99.999 recurring percent of Muslims in this country are wholly opposed to ISIS and terrorism, we have to embrace particularly the young leadership of British Islam and there are many people who are not given the opportunity to lead British Islam because they are deemed by others to be too young, we have to give them the opportunity to make the running for the British Muslim communities – Baroness Warsi implies there is one British Muslim community, I don’t agree with her at all, my experience is that there are many but she makes a point that is worth debating, albeit I think in a very [inaudible] way.

PETER WILDING:     I think the point here is when you look back at the creation of this coalition, you would have thought that David Cameron and Nick Clegg would have been able jointly to create a new narrative for the country, a Liberal Conservative narrative and that, back in the day when David Cameron became leader, was what he sought to achieve, he was talking about compassionate Conservatism and compassionate Conservatism means bringing in communities whenever and wherever.

DM: So do you think that’s been thrown out now with the dire need to get elected and to fend off UKIP?

PETER WILDING: Tragically I think that the party has had too much of a kneejerk reaction to the threat from the right, when victory comes from the centre.  So you really have to accept that over forty years of electoral politics you can only win from the centre and so consequently inclusiveness, compassionate Conservatism, has got to be the way forward.   

DM: Liz, a very sad story, the papers reflecting on the fate we feel of one of these Japanese hostages at the hands of ISIS, this is in the Times you’ve got there.

LIZ KENDALL: Yes, I just think this shows once again that we are in a generational battle against an evil ideology and it is something that we will have to relentlessly focus on over the coming years.  That’s not just in terms of what the US and other countries are doing in terms of strikes against ISIL, I think we need to look at how we cut off the funding to ISIL too and I don't think we’ve done anywhere near enough on that, and how we make sure that the countries in the region have a very strong strategy for actually destroying them.  One of the issues that’s very difficult, and I don’t have all the answers to this, but actually all these front page headlines and videos that are shown, they want this.  This fuels and gives them … how are we going to handle this going forward?  I am passionate about free speech but I do think when I see these appalling videos which are recruitment tools for them, we are going to have to debate how we actually handle this in the coming months and years.  

DM: I think that’s a very good point, for the media as well, how do you deal with them and what prominence do you give it.  Listen, let’s try and give it a lift as we get to the end of our paper review, what a remarkable day it was in the FA Cup yesterday.  

LORD CARLILE: Well you are talking to a lifelong Burnley supporter, I was brought up in Burnley, so you will gather from that that I like the ups and downs of football.  I don’t subscribe to the view that there should be a few top teams that always win and also I subscribe to the view that we want to see more British players, British born players, playing in top teams which is something that clubs like Burnley do – Burnley were knocked out in the last round sadly but I am delighted to see Bradford beating Chelsea, what a wonderful outcome.

DM: Did you watch that game, Liz, did you see the way they played?  

LIZ KENDALL: I didn’t but I absolutely, let’s be honest, the sport and the footie are going to make people far more interested and happy than politics but what I love about it is it’s the underdog, it’s the insurgent, there’s a chance that they can win and get to the top.

DM: Do you have an interest to declare, Peter?  

PETER WILDING: I’m a lifelong Liverpool supporter so I’ve been on a rollercoaster for many years.  

DM: That’s a replay isn’t it?  

PETER WILDING: It is a replay, that’s right.

DM: Well I just hope we don’t see another underdog go through today as an Arsenal fan!  It’s a cross I have to bear.  Thank you all very much indeed, thank you for taking us through some of the  main stories in the papers today.