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FAISAL ISLAM: Good afternoon, you’re watching a Sky News special live from Facebook’s central London offices.  We’re giving young voters the chance to put the party leaders on the spot live throughout the day on TV, online and across social media.  Coming up later this afternoon we’ll speak to the Conservative leader, the Prime Minister, David Cameron at three o’clock.  The Labour leader, Ed Miliband and the leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett, have already answered questions, I’m Faisal Islam, this is Stand Up Be Counted: Ask the Leaders.  Now is the turn of the leader of the Liberal Democrats, the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg.  Thank you Mr Clegg, take the hot seat.  First question is from Lisa.

LISA: … A&E doctors working in a major incident hospital?

NICK CLEGG: I think the biggest thing we can do which we’re not going to do overnight is to work out how we can keep people healthier in their own homes and their own communities so that we don’t have an increasing number of people going to A&E for problems that could have been anticipated earlier.  It sounds incredibly simple but it is actually very complex.  It’s complex, well for a bunch of reasons.  One of them, as your parents – did you say both of them work in A&E?

LISA: Yes, they do.  

NICK CLEGG: Do they work in the same A&E?  Have they seen a massive…?

LISA: Yes, in Colchester which is … there are like bed shortages and …

NICK CLEGG: Well they will probably tell you, as we might guess and correct me if I’m wrong, that one of the things that’s happened in A&E is that we have an increasingly large number of elderly people with conditions which they might fall at home, they might have a long term condition which means they are in and out of hospital.  They then go into hospital via A&E, they then go into a hospital bed and then it’s very difficult sometimes, even though sometimes your mum and dad as clinicians have judged that they are ready to leave hospital, to find a place to look after them in the community and that’s the social care system.  So in the jargon, what everyone has been talking about for ages but what we now need to get on and do is integrate social care and health and I think that is probably one of the biggest changes we can make.  I think there are some other things we can do, my personal view is that if we can put the treatment of mental care conditions on the same footing as has long been provided to physical health problems, I think that would have a transformative effect on the NHS because a lot of people, and again your mum and dad might confirm this, will go to a doctor or even go to A&E with physical problems which quite often have mental health origins but because mental health has been underfunded, under-appreciated actually, slightly brushed under the carpet for a long period of time, it’s been an issue around which there has been far too much of an embarrassment, a sort of foot shuffling taboo.  I think if we can put mental health and physical health on the same footing that would make a huge difference as well, so look, probably at the top of my list would be making sure that social care and healthcare work together better so that people don’t end up staying in hospital beds for longer than is necessary and making sure that mental health is given exactly the same, for instance waiting time standards and access standards which we have long had for physical health issues are only now going to start coming in over the next year or two for mental health problems.  I think those two things would make the biggest difference in my view.

FI: Has that answered your question Lisa?  Yes.  Anything else on the NHS, who wants to come in?  We’ve got lots of questions on the NHS.  Let’s go here with Basil.

BASIL: Hello there, I’m Basil and I just wanted to know, don’t you think one of the biggest reasons for the increase in waiting times is the 2012 Health and Care Social Act which your government passed in 2012 which has privatised some of our NHS, what is your comment on that?

NICK CLEGG: I don’t agree with that at all.  If you actually look at the facts rather than some of the myths and allegations around what’s happening, for instance with the private sector, the independent sector.  When this coalition government came into power in May 2010 the previous government had increased all of the NHS money, your money that is used in the independent or private sector to I think it was around 4% of the total.  It is now 6% so the idea that a 2% addition to something which was already much larger inherited from Labour is some great mass privatisation is complete and utter nonsense, there is no evidence to suggest that is the case at all.  Actually what lay behind, what was at the heart of that much maligned and much commented upon piece of legislation actually goes back to Enso’s question which is how do we take an NHS which was designed basically for a different country, a different time when it was all about hospitals, when it wasn’t about mental health, it wasn’t about keeping people healthy in the community, to a 21st century Britain where people are living much, much, much longer and the whole point of that Bill was nothing to do with privatisation, it was all to do about trying to put the authority about decisions, about where money goes to in the NHS in the hands of people who know best, namely clinicians.  Why?  Because it was our view and it remains my view that if you want to make sure that you keep people as healthy as possible without them having to resort to going to A&E and without them languishing in hospital beds, then the most important thing to do is to empower GPs, empower clinicians to put money where it can help people, keep them healthy.  We can’t have an NHS which is purely designed on dealing with people’s health when it has already gone wrong, surely we want a health system which keeps people healthy, doesn’t just provide the emergency remedies when things go wrong and that in a nutshell is what that legislation was trying – difficult though it is – trying to deliver.

FI: We have got a slightly related question from Facebook, why do important life- saving services always suffer but there’s money for Trident?

NICK CLEGG: So I’ll come to Trident in a minute because I personally think that the like for like replacement for Trident advocated by Labour and the Conservatives is a nonsense, of course it is, it’s just obvious.  This was a nuclear weapons system that was designed to flatten Moscow at the touch of a button in a Cold War.  Well we clearly don’t live in that same world and of course we should be cutting down the nuclear ladder.  As it happens, I wish there was a great pot of gold in doing that but I’ve been told by the experts that decommissioning a nuclear weapon system costs a huge amount of money anyway so in other words whilst I might agree I think with what lies behind the question, that we shouldn’t just stick with Trident as it is but I’m afraid that changing tack on Trident doesn’t necessarily suddenly produce miraculously a whole bunch of money for the NHS.  Look, on the money point of the NHS, when it comes to your two questions, of course we need to safeguard the budget of the NHS and we’ve actually done that in his coalition government, unlike many other public services.  I mean the police have had to make 20% savings, we have actually increased by over £12 billion the amount of money going to the NHS.  The new independent head – so breathe easy, not a politician, you can believe what he says – a guy called Simon Stevens, has calculated that by the end of the next parliament the funding gap in the NHS will be £8 billion.  My party, we have explained how you find that money, by tightening up some of the tax exemptions which are provided only to the very wealthy and also relinking the amount of money going into the NHS with the growth of the economy once the deficit is dealt with. So you do need to protect the budget for the NHS, you need to secure the money that has been identified by Simon Stevens.  My point however would be to the Facebook questioner is that in and of itself is not enough, you need to do the reforms, in an ageing population you need to do the reforms on mental health and those reforms as well, because if you don’t do that you are just going to put money into a system that isn’t yet properly working for all of us.

FI: Okay, next question from Sam.

SAM: Hi, I’m at school currently in sixth form and almost everybody that I know agrees that we don’t have enough teaching on life skills such as drug education, sex education, even politics.  There is such pressure on teachers in schools to deliver exam syllabuses that they have just not got time, how would you tackle that if you came in to power?

NICK CLEGG: Well I’d tell you one thing where I’d start where bluntly I just haven’t been able to make progress with the Conservative party in coalition is if you take citizenship classes, right.  Hands up those of you who thought that your citizenship classes when you were at school or are at school were any good?  And those who thought their citizenship classes weren’t any good?  And those of you who just didn’t have it at all?  Yes, well that shows the mixed bag.  I think good citizenship classes as those who put their hands up who said they did have good classes, are a really good thing.   They empower people, they teach youngsters about the world they live in, they teach about politics, democracy and so on.  The requirement at the moment to teach some kind of citizenship class is there for normal maintained schools but not for Academies and free schools, so why’s that?  Why should there be a requirement for it to be taught to thousands and thousands of schools across the country but not to certain other schools which just happen to have a different name plate at the school gates? The same with personal sex relationship education, incredibly important, incredibly important to empower youngsters to feel that they can take responsible decisions.

SAM: Would you enforce that then?

NICK CLEGG: Yes, I would, I would, that is what I am alluding to.  I have long thought that, you know something you might, well not be familiar with but you might have come across, the whole phenomenon of online bullying and sometimes sexual intimidation you can see online. That’s a new threat for a lot of young people that didn’t exist when I grew up, it’s quite recent. That’s the kind of thing actually where having universal courses on sex education and relationship education classes in schools I think could really help a lot of vulnerable youngsters.  For some reason, and ask David Cameron when he comes here, the Conservatives have just got some ideological view that that shouldn’t be taught or you shouldn’t insist that it be taught in free schools and academies. That’s a nonsense, if it’s taught in one school surely it should be taught in all schools and that’s what I think should happen because I think it helps youngsters prepare for a lot of the perils and pitfalls that now exist.  

FI: So Sam, let’s just let you come back on that point.

SAM: So you were saying about life skills being taught within schools, what about services outside of schools like NCS, the National Citizen Service, where they build on life skills and give young people a feeling of purpose and independence, do you think that’s a priority at all?

NICK CLEGG: I think they’re great and not only those projects but there are thousands upon thousands of outstanding community projects that take youngsters who are maybe from the toughest backgrounds or who have fallen foul of their teachers or are being disruptive or whatever.  This morning actually in south-west London I visited a rugby sports scheme which caters for kids who basically had some real problems at school and it’s wonderful to see because basically through sports they are giving those youngsters who otherwise might fall by the wayside a real sense of confidence.  I’ve visited a number of boxing clubs that get some of the most disruptive kids and turn them into quite self-disciplined youngsters.  I think the worst thing to do is have politicians or central government say this is, thou shalt do this or that project but we do need to give support to all of those community projects that help make sure that youngsters who otherwise might fall by the wayside instead stay at school, do well and have a better future.

FI: Thank you Deputy Prime Minister.  Luke, changing the subject.

LUKE: Yes, completely.  Hi, my  name is Luke and I was actually 18, 19 when the last election was around and you were the first people I voted for.  The big issue I have is that I now feel responsible for my sister now having to pay three times the amount of tuition fees.  My first question boils down to why should we feel we can trust you?  Obviously we understand that it was part of the coalition and that combinations had to be made but we have seen now that actually, as we all knew originally, it is not going to work out, the higher tuition fees, it’s not going to get repaid.   What’s your stance?  Are you sorry for the fact that you weren’t able to reduce it to zero, the tuition fees?  [Applause]

NICK CLEGG: Sure.  On the last part of your question, I’ve apologised musically  no less!  Look actually it is a very important point, your sister, you say your sister is at school, it’s really important to know, just to get politics and all that – and I will come to that in a minute, of course I will, I’ve always taken this on the chin and I’ll do it again but for your sister and for people wanting to go to university, please don’t as you said, somehow suggest that she is paying three times, she is not.  Which is the reason of course that despite all the predictions at the time more youngsters are now going to university than  ever before, more youngsters from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to university than ever before, more youngsters from black minority and ethnic backgrounds are going to university than ever before.  Why? Because unlike the fee system that you had under the previous Labour government, your sister doesn’t have to pay anything up front, she doesn’t have to pay anything back only until she can afford to do so.  Why I say that is so important is if she can’t pay it off she doesn’t have to, if she is on low pay she doesn’t have to pay a penny, if she is not working she doesn’t have to pay a penny.  The reason I say this is, and I don’t want to shirk the political controversy, I’ll come back to that but for your sister and the thousands of youngsters who are going to university, it is really important that she knows and they know that there is absolutely no impediment to going to university whatsoever and in many respects, let me give you an example, if your sister – what course is she doing at university?

LUKE: She is currently doing Childhood Studies.  

NICK CLEGG: Let’s say she goes into early years work and ends up getting paid, I don't know, roughly the average income these which is what, £24, 25,000 in this country.  Under the old fee system she would have had to pay 67 quid a month under the Labour fee system for that, she will now have to pay a third of that, £22 a month. She might have to pay longer but she will have to pay much less every week and every month.  I only give you those facts because of the fury and the anger and so on, sometimes I think the facts have been a little bit lost.  Now, on to your question.  What I hope politically, and I have never shirked the fact that I am not Prime Minister, we have 9% of MPs, Liberal Democrat MPs in government, in parliament.  I didn’t win the election so therefore we can’t implement, alas, the full Liberal Democrat manifesto in full.   I will of course be saying to you and to everybody else, I hope that as well as judging me and my party on the one thing we haven’t been able to do, you’ll also give us credit for the hundreds of things that we have done – lower taxes, more apprenticeships, fairer pensions, better education for youngsters by giving them free healthy meals at lunch time, the pupil premium – a transformative experience in schools for kids from the most disadvantaged background – but of course I am not going to shirk the fact, I’ve never hidden from the fact that if you are a party in a coalition government, coalition means you can’t get your way on everything and we clearly, given that both Labour and the Conservatives wanted to see fees go up, there was no way we could implement our own policy.  

LUKE: I just wanted to say actually that even though you said she is going to be paying less, she is still going to be paying three times the amount, she still has three times the amount of debt and that still will be looming over her.  You are encouraging with this mind-set the idea that it is actually okay to work for less and below the targets in order to actually not have to pay it.  Now lots of us here are going to feel why should we earn over 20 grand, we’re going to have to pay more debt, we’re going to have to pay more stuff.  [Applause]

NICK CLEGG: Look, I’ll be completely open ….

LUKE: So why is it okay that I should have to feel it is better for me financially not to earn more?  It is better for me financially to take a lower paying job, do less hours, focus more on myself than to actually go and be a contributing member.  I am a computer science graduate, I could go and do that as a degree option but do you know what, I am going to have to pay more money doing that.  Why shouldn’t I just go and take another job …

NICK CLEGG: For the simple reason, which is the reason of course why fees were introduced in 2003 was that the evidence is overwhelming and still remains the fact, that if you have a university degree your earning power, what you can earn during your working life is considerably, considerably higher.  So in effect the decision was taken well before my party came into government by the previous Labour administration is that the costs of a higher education are shared by the taxpayers generally, many of course who have never been lucky enough to go to university but partly by the increased earnings that graduates earn because they’ve been to university so that’s the system we inherited.  As you know, my party couldn’t implement … and by the way, look, as you quite righty alluded to, of course I’ve apologised for the fact that particular policy of my party we couldn’t implement.   I sometimes wish, I only point this out, I sometimes wish I could hear an apology from David Cameron for not implementing his policy that he promised he would in immigration or Ed Miliband for crashing the economy in the first place but there you go, that’s the way these things are.  What I do think I am entitled to say is that if you look at the details of the system we put in place, it was the next best thing.  It is in effect like a graduate tax, you only pay when you can and you only pay what you can afford to.  

FI: Some quick responses, that is quite a burning issue.  Clarissa, just give us a couple of sentences.

CLARISSA: That being said, over the three years we are basically paying, we basically have to pay three times more than we ….

NICK CLEGG: Not when you are at university, no.

CLARISSA: But the thing is, why should I be paying that amount of money when I am not even going to secure a graduate job after?  [Applause]

NICK CLEGG: Can I just explain, if you don’t get a graduate job, in other words if you don’t get a job which pays well, then you don’t pay anything at all.

CLARISSA: But why should be stuck with that, I would love to earn more, I don’t want to earn that.  

NICK CLEGG: But here’s the thing, okay, forget the coalition, forget me, forget the Liberal Democrats, if you had carried on with the system that we had before, right, the fee system that was introduced by Labour in 2003, it is really important you understand this, when you left university you would have to start paying back the moment you started earning £15,000 which is not a very high income, right?  Under the new system you don’t have to pay when you are earning 15 or 16 or 17 or 18 or 19 or 20, you only start paying when you start earning £21,000 or more.  So in the same way that of course you are being blunt with me, I have to be blunt with you, you have got to compare this system with the system that came before it and actually – and that I think is the reason why so many more youngsters are despite all the furore going to university, the new system makes it more not less affordable.  Of course it might cause me political embarrassment, I can’t do my party’s policy but all I am trying to say to you and I’m assuming – sorry, I’m making assumptions about how old you are – that you are hoping to go to university, I really, really want you to know that you pay nothing up front and you don’t pay back nearly as punitively as you did under the system we inherited.

FI: Let’s get some other topics in, we’ll try and come back to this. Charlene.

CHARLENE: Hi Nick, I’m Charlene.  Now that’s just a great example of how you went into politics or you went into that promise with great intentions but obviously party lines, party politics stopped you from doing so.  Now do you ever feel there is a pressure because of party politics and trying to stay with what your party wants but you have got the coalition as well, do you ever feel like you are compromising yourself?

NICK CLEGG: Sure.  Charlene, it is a really important point this.  I would love to be Prime Minister, of course I would, I would love to not have these questions from Luke, of course I would, who wouldn’t, I’m a human being.  Of course I’d like to go I can do exactly what I want, I can do my whole manifesto in full.  It’s a democracy, I didn’t win the election.  Of all the MPs in the House of Commons, 9% are the Liberal Democrats.  I have never hidden from anybody that if you have a government composed of different parties, by definition neither party can do everything it wants.  Now some people might like that, I have had a lot of people shouting at me for five years saying why don’t you do exactly what you want?  Well because I don’t have the mandate to do it, I don’t have the right, I do not have the democratic right to do exactly what I want because I didn’t win the election and at the end of the day, it’s not whether I’m a Liberal Democrat or Labour or Tory or whatever, you have to be a democrat and in a party where you – not me – you the people decide that no single party had the right to run the government on their own, compromise follows like night follows day.  What you then need to do, and this I think is an important point, is be open with people if you are going to have to compromise about what your priorities are.  So for instance what you’ll hear from me in the coming weeks is what are the kind of priorities for the Liberal Democrats in the run up to the general election so that you, Charlene, know that if the Liberal Democrats are going to be in government again what are the things that we are really going to fight for and not necessarily ever compromise on.  As it happens, if you take out the 2010 Liberal manifesto, I’m not sure if you have an edition in your library, a well- thumbed copy but if you did you would say that the four things that we put on the front page of our manifesto we have delivered.  You don’t pay any tax on the first £10,000 you earn – we’re over delivering on that; the £2.5 billion pupil premium that I referred to earlier, we’re delivering that; sorting out the economy – we’re delivering that; pushing for political reform. Those are the four things which we have actually stuck to religiously.  Now I understand of course because of a policy that wasn’t on our front page but nonetheless we couldn’t deliver and all the notoriety around it, the allegation is that you have failed to deliver on anything you promised. That’s simply not true, look at the front page of our manifesto, look at what we’ve done in government and I’m actually really proud of what we’ve delivered.  

FI: Just a quick response to this from Tom over here.

TOM: Hi, I am just wondering then, I have got two very quick questions.  

FI: One question please.

TOM: Okay, one very quick question, if it came to it in 2015 would you join David Cameron in the coalition again?

NICK CLEGG: It is exactly like last time, it’s not my choice or his choice or Ed Miliband’s choice, it really is your choice.  So last time it was obvious that even though no party had won the election and got a slam dunk majority, the Conservatives got the most votes and the most seats, so I said according to the democratic principles I was just talking to Charlene about, that in a democracy the party – and frankly it is regardless whether you like them or loathe them – if that party has got more votes and more seats it has got the democratic right after an election to seek to form a government if it wants to, which is what the Conservatives did. We then had negotiations with them, as it happened there was no other combination that was possible.  I spoke to Gordon Brown on a couple of occasions because he wanted to see if a Lib Dem/Labour coalition could be formed and it was numerically impossible because Labour and Lib Dem MPs don’t make up a majority in the current parliament.  Look, I’m like anyone in politics, I have got my dreams and my ideals, I am also a pragmatic person, I have to respond to the instructions given by the British people and the instructions last time were that the only way that we could have a stable government in this country at a time when we were crying out for stable government because the country was teetering on the edge of an economic precipice, was that particular combination of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.  But if you guys give us different instructions next time, I will try and do my democratic duty and follow your instructions.  

FI: Okay Kwasi, there you go.

KWASI: Hi, I am somebody who lives independently as an undergraduate, what guarantees do you have to ensure rent is affordable for those on low or moderate incomes?

NICK CLEGG: Rents, well I think there are a number of things that we need to do.  First we need to make sure that longer rent contracts and agreements are much, much more widely used.  I think these short term rent agreements which really, really can leave people in the lurch are very, very unfair indeed and if you want I can take your details separately and give you some more information about the work we’re doing to make sure that longer term rentals become the norm rather than the exception.  Here in London as in large parts of the country, do you know what, I’ve read endless, endless policy documents but at the end of the day our biggest problem is that we just don’t build enough homes, we just don’t build enough new properties, particularly affordable properties and we in my judgement need to build as a country maybe, what, 250, 300,000 new properties every year to simply start matching the demand for people looking for properties not least to rent.  There are a whole lot of different ways you can do that, I personally think we can do more to give local authorities a freer hand to build stuff, I think we can use the muscle of the state, of central government to put finance into housing more significantly as well but I would single out for you making sure that the rental terms are fairer for people who are in rented accommodation, a) and b) that we build more homes on a much larger scale over a sustained period of time.

FI: Do you think he can solve your renting problem?

KWASI: Well yes, also Diane Abbott the MP for Hackney says that she feels rent controls as they have in New York would be good or rental caps.

NICK CLEGG: Yes, they are very seductive the idea of rental controls aren’t they?  It’s just a pragmatic question of do they really work, do they really lead to the spread of affordable rents and there is think to be honest the debate is much, much more mixed.  They can actually have quite a knock-on effect on squeezing a lot of people out of rented accommodation altogether because they make it less attractive for landlords to come in and rent out.  Unless you think you can do the whole rental thing without having landlords actually buy houses and make them available for rent, unless you think that, then I think you have got to be a little bit careful about the knock-on effects of rent controls of having more people invest money in properties in the first place which is what you need to make sure that you have got a roof over your head.

FI: Let’s get another subject in, Murad on apprenticeships.

MURAD: Last September I was lucky enough to defer a university place to take up a job, however many of my friends have gone into apprenticeships that pay as little as £2.73 an hour, less than the bus fare to and from work, with no guarantee of a job at the end.  What would you do to change the situation and improve apprenticeships?

NICK CLEGG: So the minimum wage for apprenticeships, you’re right, is set differently as you quite rightly alluded to, to the £6.50 adult minimum wage, for a reason and the reason of course is that apprenticeships by definition are not supposed to be the same as a full time fully qualified job.  So you have this difference and actually as it happens, Vince Cable my colleague in government, has increased the apprenticeship minimum wage quite considerably, by the largest percentage increase in recent years.  Thankfully, if you look at the average and not your friends who you alluded to, the average minimum wage to apprentices is generally across the country much, much higher than that.  It tends to be well short of the six quid but I think average, I can find out for you but I think it’s over four quid an hour.  This is a really difficult balance, how do make sure you get people in on apprenticeships because it is such an important conveyor belt for then getting people in to work, how do you make sure employers feel it is worth it for them, that it’s not too expensive but make sure that it’s not exploitative and I think getting the balance by, which is the way we’re trying to do it, increasing the statutory rate of the apprenticeship minimum wage whilst at the same time encouraging employers which on the whole, on the whole they do, to pay more than that I think is the right approach.  I think if you simply whack up the apprenticeship minimum wage to the, in inverted commas, ‘normal minimum wage’, you’ll discourage lots of people from taking apprenticeships and one of the most important thing in recent years is the huge expansion of apprenticeships we’ve seen under this government and whilst yes, we’ve saved some money controversially in places like higher education, we’ve poured money into apprenticeships.  Just recently we had for the first time ever the two millionth new apprentice take up an apprenticeship in this country because of the massive expansion in apprenticeships and they are just a great way, as you know, of combining learning with working and I think it’s great that they are becoming more popular.

FI: I’m going to try and squeeze one more question in from Facebook, ‘I’d like to know what Nick Clegg would do differently if he were Deputy Prime Minister again’.   I feel a Frank Sinatra song coming on here.

NICK CLEGG: Yes, exactly, where do I start, where do I start?  Look, of course there are individual decisions, individual policies, individual moments and all the rest of it where you think I could have done that better, expressed that better, explained that better but in terms of where was the country back in May 2010 and where it is now?  I mean I’m incredibly proud, and I am not going to hide from you of course my party has suffered in the polls and all the rest of it, that we stepped up to the plate because I feel that if the Liberal Democrats had not done it – we were more or less like Greece was back in May 2010, our deficit was almost exactly the same as Greece and I just think now we have got youth unemployment much lower than it was when we came into office, more apprenticeships for youngsters than ever before, we have taken more than three million people on low pay out of paying any income tax whatsoever, have got youngsters from poor backgrounds receiving a healthy hot meal at lunch times for the first time ever because of what we’ve done.  Those are things I’m proud of so I think it is probably pride more than regret.  

FI: Thank you Deputy Prime Minister, je ne regrette rien perhaps.  That’s it for this session, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, thank you very much and later we’ll be joined by the leader of the Conservatives and the current Prime Minister, David Cameron.  If you still have questions for Mr Clegg he will be answering those in a live Facebook Q&A as soon as he comes off the set.  Thank you very much.

NICK CLEGG: Thank you.