ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, time to take a look through the  Sunday papers, I’m joined by the Deputy Chairman of UKIP, Suzanne Evans, by the Lib Dem peer and former Deputy Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Brian Paddick and by Damian McBride who was an advisor to Gordon Brown when he was Chancellor and Prime Minister, Damian’s book Omnirambles is out now, so we got that in didn’t we!  Good morning to you all and let’s start with the story we have been discussing all morning already, it’s on the front pages of many of the papers, Osborne to thrown NHS £2 billion lifeline says the Sunday Times.  Damian, if I can start with you as an expert spinner, here we are still three days out from the Autumn Statement and we have already got it here in front of us.  So what’s going on?  It’s pre-announced so we discuss it all week.

DAMIAN McBRIDE: There are two notable things about this.  One, it’s been briefed to all the papers so it is not an exclusive that has been given to one paper, it is a very deliberate briefing which comes with actual text from the budget speech, the Chancellor will say on Wednesday.  The other thing is this looks almost like the biggest measure in the budget.  

DM: Autumn Statement but they become budgets anyway.  

DAMIAN McBRIDE: Sorry, Autumn Statement, but you’d expect this almost to be with a £2 billion price tag on it almost to be the flagship announcement so two things are going on here.  One, there is another big rabbit waiting to be announced, perhaps a more immediate cash injection into the NHS.  

DM: Obviously you don’t have inside knowledge but this is what you would suspect?

DAMIAN McBRIDE: That is what I would suspect or they think that the bad news on the day about the increased borrowing numbers are going to dominate so much that they want one day of good headlines from the Autumn Statement and they are trying to get it today.  So it is one of those two things.  

DM: Good to get it from the man who knows.  Brian, what do you think?

BRIAN PADDICK: I think there is an alternative explanation.  It is a coalition government and they have been working together to rebuild the economy, they have got some money now to spend and they both want to be the ones who announce these measures, particularly in the run up to the election, so they get the kudos for it.  I’m a twin brother and sometimes we used to get joint Christmas presents and we used to argue about who was going to open it.  Here you have got the Lib Dems and the Tories in government saying we want to announce this bit of it and we want to announce that bit of it, so they are going to do it over a series of days rather than just leaving it to the day.  

DM: Suzanne Evans, obviously all the parties are trying to outbid each other with more money for the NHS, it’s been said now that the government have shot Labour’s fox here with their mansion tax money, this is more money than the mansion tax would put in.  Now you represent a party which says it speaks the truth, now isn’t the truth that you can’t ultimately just keep on throwing money at the NHS?  Somehow, somewhere this has to stop.

SUZANNE EVANS: I completely agree.  You’ve hit the nail on the head, Dermot, they are just trying to outbid each other.  Last week it was Labour saying we are going to put £2.5 billion in and now the coalition, the Tories are saying £2 billion but throwing money at the NHS just isn’t going to work. The Labour party did that when they were in government and was it any better at the end of the day?  Well we had a few sparkling new hospitals which probably put a few more votes in their coffers as well no doubt but the NHS was always lumbered with these huge public finance initiative debts too.  When the Labour party took power in 1997 we were spending £300 million on management in the NHS, by the time they left government in 2010 that had gone to over a billion.  There are huge pots of money in the NHS that actually we could cut without having to chuck any more money in and just reorganisation …

DM: Would you make any cuts to the budget?

SUZANNE EVANS: I wouldn’t necessarily cut the budget but I think it could certainly be reallocated and put more into frontline stuff.  Why are we spending money on spin doctors?  

DM: What would be wrong in the UKIP analysis if those that could afford taking out private health insurance and relieving a lot of pressure on the NHS.  The NHS stays the way it is, lots  of people already have private health insurance, shouldn’t more of them be encouraged to do so?

SUZANNE EVANS: I think that is entirely up to the individual, if you want to take out private health insurance I wouldn’t stop anybody and I’m sure none of the other parties would as well but we are absolutely committed to having an NHS that is free at the point at the delivery and I think all the parties are agree on that.

DM: So what kind of cuts would UKIP see in the administrative budget?

SUZANNE EVANS: Well it’s not so much about cuts, it’s about …

DM: But you’d need to though, the administrative budget is going up from £300 million to a hundred (sic),  what kind of cuts would you like to see?  

SUZANNE EVANS: [It’s not a hundred, the budget has gone up by] over a billion, over a billion.  I’d argue do we really need all those managers in the NHS?  

BRIAN PADDICK: And what about reorganisation?

SUZANNE EVANS: I was just going to come on to that Brian, the Conservative party spent £4 billion on NHS reorganisation that they said wasn’t going to happen, a disgraceful waste of money and what is Ed Miliband saying now?  He is going to do the same.  

DM: But the NHS would not be immune from cuts under UKIP, we’ve got that very clear, so let’s move ….

SUZANNE EVANS; I don’t think that’s quite what I said actually, I said the money would be reallocated and put more into frontline services.  

DM: Okay, thanks for clearing that up.  Damian McBride, let’s move this on now, you’ve got the front page of the Independent, the Prime Minister’s hecklers, is this from the Autumn Statement as well, to get money for flood defences?

DAMIAN McBRIDE: It is and it proves Brian’s point about twin brothers sharing out the presents because this is the Lib Dem announcement that has come out the Autumn Statement which Danny Alexander has grabbed and it is Danny Alexander in his position as Chief Secretary announcing a series of infrastructure projects.  We’ve heard about some of these which are about road building but there is a really interesting one in this Independent story which is about flood defences.  If you think the government is worried about an NHS crisis this winter, the thing they are really worried about is whether that’s going to be followed up by another floods crisis.

DM: And they are going to get their wellies on and be shouted at by ordinary people who have got their carpets covered in mud.

DAMIAN McBRIDE: They are already under criticism that they should have seen the crisis coming in the NHS, they definitely should have seen any flood crisis coming because it is only a year since we were dealing with the last one.

BRIAN PADDICK: Ed Miliband should be okay on Hampstead Heath because that’s quite high up so he won’t be …

DM: No, there’s a big argument about flood defences on Hampstead Heath from the ponds, to stop the water going down the hill.

BRIAN PADDICK: The serious point here is even where public finances are tight, to invest in infrastructure is a good use of money and at the moment the cost of borrowing for the government is so low it really is important that we take this opportunity to build more roads, build HS2, build flood defences in order to boost the economy.  

DM: As Damian is saying, this is one of the sweeties, one of the presents being handed out by the Lib Dems, it is going to have Lib Dem fingerprints on it.

BRIAN PADDICK: I think it is a much more constructive way to think of this.  You have got Liberal Democrats, you have got Danny Alexander rightly in the heart of the Treasury, we’ve got Vince Cable in the Business department, these are equally the architects of the economic recovery as any other minister in government and the Liberal Democrats together should take credit for these things.  

DM: And the overall point, Damian McBride, is that they obviously want to focus on the issue of economic growth, economic recovery rather than immigration.  

DAMIAN McBRIDE: Yes, there is this constant battle and they don’t want the focus to be on the NHS.  It is very interesting looking at all the papers in total today, you have got this duelling battle between the NHS, immigration, the economy but what is going to be the dominant issue at the election?  Some of the papers – the Mail on Sunday has five pages today devoted to immigration, an immigration special and it really is going to be crucial about what stays in the public’s mind as the top issue.

BRIAN PADDICK: The Liberal Democrats are not shying away from the National Health Service, we are championing mental health services within the NHS and of this new £2 billion we want half of that spent on mental health services so you don’t get this other story that was on the front page about a young woman, 16 year old being detained for two days in police cells because there were no hospital beds available.  We really do have to invest in mental health services and that is a Lib Dem commitment at the next election.  

DM: Sorry Suzanne, I want to bring you in here but I wanted to move it on, you can now add your comments to this, the issue that perhaps the Conservatives no longer want to talk about too much anyway, on the front page of the Telegraph, ‘Tory anger after Germany blocks PM’s migrant cap’, apparently Angela Merkel said no, you can’t actually alter the fundamental right of European peoples to move between different countries within the European Union.

SUZANNE EVANS: Yes, we wondered where his promise to cap migrants had gone and now we know, it’s Angela Merkel.  Germany it seems is writing the Conservative Party’s manifesto for 2015!  The big immigration speech was supposed to be all bells, all whistles, knock UKIP into touch, blah-blah-blah.  Well that simply didn’t happen did it?  What he came up with were a whole set of proposals which are actually completely unfeasible, that are going to require treaty change, that he has no chance whatsoever of getting through, certainly not before the election and probably not in the next parliamentary term either the amount of time that treaty change takes.  This man just can’t do it.  He said back in 2010 he was going to cut net migration, he didn’t do it.  He is now promising it again, give me another chance. Well we gave him another chance but he just can’t actually …

DM: The headline is Tory Anger, does this give you hope you may get a few more defections this side of the election, get a few more UKIP MPs?

SUZANNE EVANS: Well it’s interesting because Bill Cash is also saying elsewhere in the papers that there are 200 Eurosceptic MPs in the Tory party.  Now I’m sorry, I just don’t believe it, I think they must have had dramatic Eurosceptic conversions overnight and there is only one word to explain why and that’s UKIP.

DM: Okay, Brian, are you coming in there?

BRIAN PADDICK: I was just going to say that some of the things the Prime Minister announced are quite reasonable and if you go to the other European heads of government and say in terms of child benefit for example, we’ll pay the level of child benefit that applies in the country where the child is rather than the country where the worker is, you are likely to get agreement and we have got to work together with our European partners to change things rather than standing in a corner on our own shouting at them.

SUZANNE EVANS: But it’s the time it’s going to take isn’t it?  By the time we sort this out and get treaty change we’ve got two more cities the size of Sheffield in the country.

DM: So we might as well just get out of the EU anyway?

SUZANNE EVANS: Absolutely.  

DM: All right, you are very clear there Suzanne.  Brian you have got this about the political class, plebgate, upper class are just up themselves – I am allowed to say that aren’t I?

BRIAN PADDICK: Well there are two stories, one in the Sunday Mirror and another in another paper, ‘Two top Tories in a tangle’, talking about David Mellor and Andrew Mitchell.  Andrew Mitchell of course involved in plebgate who lost his libel case and David Mellor arguing in the back of a taxi and halfway through the taxi driver has enough and starts recording him.  It reinforces that the Tories really don’t care and the Tories really are out of touch but let’s not forget about the Shadow Attorney General, Emily Thornberry, in trouble for a very similar thing, tweeting that picture of a white van and St George’s flags.  It all adds up to the fact that politicians do appear to be out of touch and they need to get in touch pretty quickly.

DM: How would you play it from the Labour perspective, Damian, given Emily Thornberry is in there but there is a chance for a bit of Tory toff bashing as well?

DAMIAN McBRIDE: Yes, I wouldn’t do it to David Mellor though.  He is someone who has almost transcended politics if you like in his media career and David Mellor adds to the gaiety of the nation and frankly a lot of people who have seen this won’t feel massively angry about the rant because they’ll just think, that’s David Mellor, that’s the kind of thing he does.

BRIAN PADDICK: He told the taxi driver to get a better education, someone who has a public school education.

DAMIAN McBRIDE: I’ve been listening to David Mellor on the radio since he used to do the 606 show with football supporters ringing in and lambasting him and this sort of thing and he just took it all and took it in good spirits. Clearly in this case he lost his temper and didn’t take it in good spirit and neither did the cabbie.

DM: This is something that Labour can play into the election because it’s been around a long time from the Labour front benches that they are all Bullingdon Club toffs and out of touch with what ordinary people think.

DAMIAN McBRIDE: But I think Brian is right, Labour have got to be careful with that because you can plead too much that you are the people that understand the ordinary working man if you like but then you get something like the Emily Thornberry issue and that blows it out of the water.  What Labour needs to do is start putting upfront those authentic voices that sound very different to the David Mellors.

DM: That’s Alan Johnson.

DAMIAN McBRIDE: It’s the Alan Johnson’s, it’s the Andy Burnham’s but I’m not talking about the leadership, who are their spokespeople, who’s out there for Labour?  Are they people that can authentically claim, I do get it.

SUZANNE EVANS: Just putting them upfront doesn’t change the constitutional make up does it of what the people are like and the truth is that the majority of people on the Labour benches are just the same as the people on the Tory benches, are public school educated and haven’t had a real job outside politics.  

DM: Like Nigel Farage, public school educated.  

SUZANNE EVANS: Come on, nobody is saying Nigel Farage is out of touch is he?  Nobody is saying he is out of touch.

BRIAN PADDICK: But you are talking about what their background is and Nigel Farage’s background is exactly the same as the other leaders of the other two parties.  

SUZANNE EVANS: I would never criticise anyone for going to public school.  I didn’t but my mother taught in a public school, it’s again what we were talking about health, people have to make a choice. You can’t blame children for the decisions of their parents.

DM: Okay, let’s get a couple more stories in, Suzanne you have got an EU fishing story, imagine you picking that.

SUZANNE EVANS: This is a story in the Mail talking about how one Dutch trawler gets a quarter of England’s entire fish quota worth half a million quid and it is juxtaposing it with two other English fishermen who are only allowed two crates worth £50 each.  The Common Fisheries Policy has been an absolute disaster, it has decimated our fishing industry and decimated our fish stocks too and what’s the EU answer?  Let’s try and stop recreational anglers catching more than one sea bass a day for instance, absolute nonsense.

BRIAN PADDICK: The thing I like about the Mail on Sunday, if you read the last couple of paragraphs it probably tells you more about the story than the whole of the previous bit because in the last two paragraphs it says it is predominantly a British crew on this Dutch trawler, the fish that they catch are not fish that we eat in the UK, they are low grade fish and 95% of them get exported anyway and when you actually read into the detail you find this story is actually a bit of a red herring.  

DM: Ah!

SUZANNE EVANS: But let me tell you why these fishermen are …

DM: No, we haven’t got time, you’ll have to come back.

SUZANNE EVANS: Oh what a shame, we can’t talk about EU fishing policies also plundering waters in the developing world.

DM: Well you got that in anyway.  Thank you all very much indeed, Suzanne, Brian and Damian, very good to see you all.