David Cameron MP

ANDREW MARR: Now, then, someone else who's made quite a song a dance about their commitment to environment issues is the Tory leader, David Cameron.

What a cheesy link, what a link!

That should win an award! He's just back from meeting President Bush in Washington and he has been in lip-curlingly derisive mood at Prime Minister's Questions for weeks now. Here he is last week. "Aren't people rightly asking now, is this man simply not cut out for the job?" David Cameron, who's been called many things but not yet either Stalin or Mr. Bean, I think. Thank you indeed for coming in.

DAVID CAMERON: Good morning.

ANDREW MARR: Good morning. I was talking to Hazel Blears about party funding, not surprisingly.

If the Labour Party did accept a �50,000 cap from any one source, is that the kind of thing that would get you back round the table with them to talk about the detail?

DAVID CAMERON: Yes. I mean I proposed this almost two years ago. And I said, look, let's have a cap of �50,000 that applies to individuals, companies, Trade Unions, so we get away from this impression that somehow wealthy organisations, or wealthy people can have undue influence on parties. That was my proposal. If the Labour Party want to take that up then we can go ahead and reach some sort of agreement.

But the unions have got to be involved in it. You cannot have a situation where somehow they're exempt, and I don't think that would be right. But I think we should sort of stop for a second and recognise that, you know, what happened last week, the scandal last week, is really nothing to do with the more general need to reform party funding. But what's happened here is, of course we all make mistakes in funding arrangements.

But what happened here was the General Secretary of the Labour Party, and the person appointed by Gordon Brown, are professing complete ignorance of one of the most basic bits of the law which is, the money's got to come from the person who says they gave it to you. And it's as simple as that.

And I do think Gordon Brown is a bit like the sort of man with a gun who's been caught waving a gun around and now he's saying well, yes, it's terrible, we really must do something about gun control. You know, this is a simple matter of law-breaking and the issue of party funding is separate from that.

ANDREW MARR: And so what do you want to see the police uncover? What do you expect them to uncover from this?

DAVID CAMERON: Well I don't know. I think we've just got to get the bottom of who knew about this arrangement. As I say, it's a very basic thing that in terms of donations they have to be from the person who says they gave it to you. And the idea that the General Secretary of the Labour Party didn't know this, Mr. Mendelson who was appointed by Gordon Brown, that he didn't know about this law, I find frankly incredible.

And I think what we've got to work out, find out, is who knew about this in the Labour Party, and who was told about this in the Labour Party? I find it pretty incredible really that only one or two people knew about it. I mean every day we find out about more people who knew, and how high up that went and what the Prime Minister was told.

ANDREW MARR: You came pretty close in the Commons to saying that you thought the Prime Minister was being dishonest about this. Is that what you think?

DAVID CAMERON: Well he's trying to spin his way out of a scandal. I mean, actually, the thing at Prime Minister's Questions, the statement by Mr. Mendelson which is hugely important, was released, surprise surprise, at three minutes to twelve so there would be no chance of asking about it in the House of Commons. I mean if you think, you know, spin died with Tony Blair, forget about it.

I mean this lot are, I would say actually worse when it comes to spin than Tony Blair's government. And I think the problem for the Prime Minister is, he appointed Mr. Mendelson to raise money for him before the election. And are we really meant to believe that Mr. Mendelson didn't know what the law was, didn't tell anyone about it, Brown knew nothing? It just beggars belief.

ANDREW MARR: So you don't actually believe him?

DAVID CAMERON: I just don't know. I don't know. All I know is that something is very wrong. Either the Prime Minister appointed someone who is not capable of doing the job, and yet is still in post.

Or, that we have a situation where the Prime Minister appoints these people and then doesn't want to know about anything that's going wrong. I mean what sort of government is it where, you know, the person leading it doesn't actually want to be told what's going wrong in the organisation?

ANDREW MARR: Do you believe he's not fit to be Prime Minister?

DAVID CAMERON: Well I don't think he's doing a very good job of it if I can put it that way. He told us, really three things. He said "I'm going to be competent" and yet we have seen issue after issue of incompetence, not least losing half the country's banking details. He said that he was going to provide change, and yet the one opportunity of change, the General Election, he cancelled. And he said he was going to restore trust in politics and today I think there's probably less trust in politics because of the mess of the last week. And so I just think he is, as I said, people are asking, you know, is this person cut out for the job?

ANDREW MARR: And when you look across at all the stories in the papers today. I mean we're still at the moment talking about the charge of incompetence rather than corruption, as such. But when you see something like Wendy Alexander, the leader of the Labour Party in Scotland, sending a letter to a chap in the Channel Islands and so on. Is that the kind of thing that you think is a resigning issue?

DAVID CAMERON: I, actually I haven't followed what exactly Wendy Alexander's been up to in Scotland. But I mean, the point of all this stuff, I mean the tragedy of all this is, you know, this is the weekend we should be talking about why we've fallen from 3rd to 19th in the world reading tables. What are we going to do to reform our schools?

That's what we're focused on, and the Conservative Party has been unremittingly positive about, let's do school reform and let's have new organisations coming in to the state sector to provide good schools. Next week we'll be talking about the environment, decentralised energy, amazing welfare reform proposals to come through in the new year, prison reform, that is, you know, that is what I think policy should be about. And that is what we're focused on.

ANDREW MARR: Up to a point, and yet when you get the chance at Prime Minister's Questions, that's not what you're asking about, you're asking about all this stuff.

DAVID CAMERON: I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't actually ask about the big issues of the day. And frankly this is a big issue of the day because it goes to the question of "do we have a Prime Minister who is competent?" No, I don't think we do. And do we have a Prime Minister who's going to restore trust in politics? No.

ANDREW MARR: But, you know that if you go back 15, 20 years, we've had a series of scandals and problems about money and politics. They've dragged down both your party and now the Labour Party. If we carry on like this people are going to turn off politics completely. So there has to be some kind of deal. And my question really therefore is are you engaged, are you going to go back into this process and try and get a deal?

DAVID CAMERON: What I said a few weeks ago in a letter to the Prime Minister was, look, we would go ahead and talk if he was prepared to put the Trade Unions into the deal. But the �50,000 cap, which obviously would be disadvantageous for us in many ways, no more big donations from people who want to fund our party, only �50,000. But we can only do that if the Trade Unions and business, if everyone is involved.

ANDREW MARR: Well it sounds a bit as if what Hazel Blears was saying, that that might indeed be her policy?

DAVID CAMERON: Well I mean it was difficult to understand exactly what she was saying. But that I think is the way it should go forward. And I think the problem here is that, you know, if you have a cap of �50,000 which we support, then I think, you know, you would need some state funding, some extra state funding of political parties.

We would only support that if you can really show you're going to cut the cost of politics elsewhere. People do not want to pay more for their politicians, so we've got to be very tough on this. But it would be completely unacceptable I think, to people, if the politicians stitched up a sort of deal on party funding that didn't involve the unions, and then said excuse me and we'd like some money to pay for it all.

ANDREW MARR: But of course you all get money at the moment anyway?

DAVID CAMERON: We get short money. But I think people would be very wary about any extension of state funding unless there really was a deal that said, right no more wealthy individuals, wealthy businesses, wealthy Trade Unions with these enormous donations.

ANDREW MARR: What about Lord Ashcroft? Because it was promised by the former party leader, William Hague, and indeed by Lord Ashcroft, way back, that he would be registered in this country, and a lot of people feel that he's not properly registered in that way. Are you absolutely happy and satisfied that he is in a position to be making the kind of funding commitment to your party that he is?

DAVID CAMERON: I am satisfied that the undertakings he gave are being met and I have had reassurances on that. But I would like to put it in context.

ANDREW MARR: Being met, but haven't been met.

DAVID CAMERON: No, in terms of the reassurances that he is resident in the UK and pays taxes in the UK. But the point, the point I would like to make, if you look at the last year actually Mittal and David Sainsbury have given more money to the Labour Party than Lord Ashcroft has given to the Conservative Party. So, I think people get his importance out of all, you know, relative significance.

ANDREW MARR: I mean people say that he is, I mean, he is almost as much running the Conservative Party as you are.

DAVID CAMERON: Well it's rubbish. I mean, the point is he is a donor to the party, that's very valued. We don't have big Trade Unions pouring money in. We have to go out and raise the money. I have to say over the last two years I've raised, helped raise, over �30 million.

We've cleared �14 million of debt for the Conservative Party. I've massively increased the number of people who are giving in the thousands because I want to be less reliant on the big donations. And as I say, in the last year, actually Sainsbury and Mittal gave more to Labour than Ashcroft gives to the Conservatives. So if we're going to have, you know, a big thing about it we should look at those donations instead.

ANDREW MARR: Well I mean they would say that they're not based in Belize. Do you know how much of his business is over there?

DAVID CAMERON: I don't know all that, all his businesses. But all I know is that the donations he makes are properly declared. That is the most important bit of the law. As I said...

ANDREW MARR: You're not turning a blind eye just like they turned a blind eye?

DAVID CAMERON: Very important this. All political parties have made mistakes with respect to the party funding rules. And there's a reason for that, actually, which is the law obviously applies to every individual, every constituency party, no matter whether it might just be, you know, one old lady doing the typing and trying to sort out the donations.

So, all of us have made mistakes. But I think what we've seen from Labour last week is of a different order, because you've got the General Secretary, the person who is in charge of compliance at that party saying "I didn't know the money has to come from the person who gave it". That is an absurd situation and raises real questions about competence and the integrity of the system and the people within it.

ANDREW MARR: And on your side you've got, for instance, the Midlands Industrial Council. Are there any more big donors joined that, because that's an anonymous organisation?

DAVID CAMERON: It isn't actually. All the members of the Midlands Industrial Council are...

ANDREW MARR: You published the names of 22...

DAVID CAMERON: They're all declared. This organisation has been looked at by the Electoral Commission that investigated and gave it a clean bill of health. But what I'd say, Andrew, is I want this �50,000 cap. And that �50,000 cap would apply to Lord Ashcroft, to the Midlands Industrial Council, but it's got to apply to the Trade Unions.

Because I think actually the one, if you like almost corrupt, financial relationship left in British politics is the fact the Trade Unions fund the Labour Party, and in response for that they get policies. They're actually able to, you know, negotiate and determine with Labour what the policies are. Now I'd like to get all of that out of politics.

ANDREW MARR: So you would stop doing things that you do at the moment in order to clean the whole thing up?

DAVID CAMERON: I would say let's have the �50,000 cap. Let's apply it to everybody, Trade Unions included. But let's not pretend that this is all connected with what happened last week.

What happened last week is the Labour Party were found out for effectively not obeying one of the most basic bits of the law. And as I say, we all make mistakes, we all get things wrong in party funding. But when you're General Secretary and the person you appointed to raise money for your party don't know the law, I think that raises real questions about competence which is why they're in the mess they're in. And people rightly say look, if they can't run the Labour Party properly no wonder they're making such a mess of running the country.

ANDREW MARR: Now you've got another set of polls just out, putting you way ahead, you get an overall majority in the House Commons if these polls sustain. Now you know polls go up and down and all the rest of it.

DAVID CAMERON: I've spotted that over the last couple of years.

ANDREW MARR: Indeed. You may have the best part of a couple of years yet before there's an election. How do you maintain this momentum? Have you changed your strategy completely, given what's happened?

DAVID CAMERON: No, I mean I think what was important when I first became leader of the party was to get the party back into the main stream, into the middle ground of politics, to address a wider range of issues frankly. I mean the environment as well as issues like crime. And I think the party has broadened out like that, we've selected many more women candidates, I think we're doing very well in local government. So the party has changed, and the party is now, I think, being listened to by people in a way that it wasn't a couple of years ago.

Now what we need to do is set out a really compelling case for how we're going to change the country for the better. And I think you're beginning to see in terms of the changes we announced at our conference, what we're going to do to strengthen families, make society more responsible. But above all to give people more power and control over their life, because I think there's a big change taking place in, not just in Britain, but in our world. I think people recognise that the sort of bureaucratic age, the government telling you everything, arranging everything for you, not giving you any choice, I think that age is over and people want a society and a government that sets them free, that gives them more power and control over their life. And that's what we're going to be setting out in the next few months.

ANDREW MARR: Before we finish, tell us about George Bush. First Conservative leader for a long time to have a proper session with the American President.

DAVID CAMERON: Well it was very interesting. We spent almost half an hour together, first time I've met him. We got on well, we talked about a range of stuff from Iran to Afghanistan, climate change...

ANDREW MARR: He was quite cross with the Conservative Party over its attitude to the war and so on for a while, wasn't he?

DAVID CAMERON: Well, you know there have been some ups and downs in the relationship. But I mean in politics you've got to say what you think and, you know, I did support the decision to go to war in Iraq but I've been critical of some of the decisions made since. I mean I think frankly it's a job to say what you think, and I think the great strength of the Atlantic relationship is it's a relationship of best friends. Britain and America are very good friends, and to your best friend you should be able to talk about the things you're not happy with as well as the things you are happy with. But it was a very, also meeting Condoleezza Rice and the Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, and having a good day.

ANDREW MARR: Thank you very much indeed.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

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