On Sunday 22 March Andrew Marr interviewed William Hague MP, Shadow Foreign Secretary.
Please note ' The Andrew Marr Show ' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.
The Tories will have to make "tough and difficult choices" on tax if they win the next general election, Shadow Foreign Secretary says .
ANDREW MARR:
Now then, from 14-year-olds to a man who first make his mark in politics as a 16 year old.
The Conservatives have accused Gordon Brown of pinning his hopes of political resurrection on international summits.
After failing to sort out Britain's domestic problems, they say the hard work has got to be done at home.
And how hard is it going to be not just for politicians, but the rest of us?
I'm joined now from Yorkshire by the Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague. Mr Hague, thank you for joining us.
WILLIAM HAGUE:
Good morning.
ANDREW MARR:
Can you clear up the situation as regards the top rate of tax policy for your party? It looks as if you're going to go into the next election pretty much committed to people earning over £150,000 a year paying a 45p rate.
WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well it's not going to be a priority to reverse that. Let's be clear, the Conservative Party wants people to pay lower taxes. That's one of the things that we believe in. But we look like inheriting, if and when we win the next election, the worst financial position in terms of the government's own finances that any government has ever inherited in peace time. Taking over from Gordon Brown is going to be like taking over from somebody who every time they've reached the limit on a credit card has just taken out some more credit cards. And so we want to bring some honesty back into this and we will have to deal with the level of government debt. What would our priorities be in helping people with lower taxes when we can? Well we've indicated we want to freeze council tax for 2 years. We've recommended for this year getting rid of the basic rate of tax on savings. The Labour government have built in after the next election increases in national insurance contributions that affect everyone on more than £19,000 a year. So it would be our priority to try to do things like that rather than to reverse a higher rate of tax on people over £150,000 a year.
ANDREW MARR:
You say reverse. But if the election is roughly when we expect, this tax rise won't actually have been implemented. It may have been legislated for, but it won't have been implemented. Lord Tebbitt is expressing pretty much outrage about it, saying you're going to drive away a lot of natural Conservatives by doing this kind of thing. Even Boris Johnson has said it's sending the wrong messages.
WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well you say it's not a question of reversing it, but of course it may very well have been legislated for in the coming year's finance. But we don't that. We'll have to see what is in the Budget. And are there disadvantages? Yes of course there are always disadvantages to having any tax higher than it is at the moment. All taxes in a sense are taxes on enterprise, as some people have said. But we are going to have to get a grip on this country's debt. We have a government that is planning to double the national debt in the next 5 years, and everybody out there in the street knows you cannot carry on like that. That's one of the reasons we can't carry on with the current government and with Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. So we are going to be honest with people. There are going to be some tough and difficult choices. It's partly the current government who came to office saying there would be no tax rises at all. An extraordinary thing to say - they said no tax rises at all - and then they've delivered over 100 different tax rises; who have undermined the faith of people in politics. And I think David Cameron and George Osborne being honest and straight with people has some chance of giving people their faith back in politics.
ANDREW MARR:
On the spending side, your party has talked about scrapping the ID card scheme, scrapping the data register for children and various other relatively small-scale things. Anybody who looks at the numbers says that you're going to have to go vastly further in squeezing public spending and you're going to have to take some really hard decisions. I'm wondering whether, to what extent this is still sort of year zero for your tax and spending plans; that you have to look again and again and again at what you're proposing, and whether you have any ideas at all about more drastic spending cuts?
WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well, again, we've pointed to some of the things that we would do. We would, for instance, pay for the freeze of council tax by cutting out the excessive waste in government spending…
ANDREW MARR:
Ah, waste!
WILLIAM HAGUE:
… on consultancy and advertising. They're budgets that have reached extraordinary levels. We've said that if we were in office in the coming year, we would be able to reduce the growth of government spending by £5 billion. It's growing by 30 billion in the coming year. Now it is possible to do these things. When Ken Clarke was Chancellor the last 4 years of the last Conservative government, we did bring down year by year, all of us who were ministers, the administrative spending of government departments while at the same time having real terms increase in health spending and bringing the government's budget much closer to balance than it is today.
ANDREW MARR:
But you…
WILLIAM HAGUE:
So it is possible for a sensible government to do these things.
ANDREW MARR:
You know and I know that all oppositions talk about waste, and we both know that what's been proposed so far is in global terms pretty tiny. What I'm wondering is whether the Conservative Party actually has the guts to look at really big decisions, whether it be Trident, whether it be some major aspect of welfare spending, because these are very, very serious times. A lot of people would look at your party and say well they mean well, but they're not… this is not Margaret Thatcher in 78/79. These people don't really have what it takes.
WILLIAM HAGUE:
Oh I can tell you, working every day with David Cameron and George Osborne, these people absolutely have what it takes. There is no question about that. But a lot of the right approach to government spending is, as President Obama has said, "going line by line" through government departments for every example of waste and inefficiency. And that is something that he is setting about in the United States, but not something that has happened here under Gordon Brown in the last few years where the administrative spending of government has mushroomed over the last 12 years. So I believe there are significant savings to be made in government spending and we will have to tackle that, but it's because of the difficulty of doing that that we're also being cautious and honest on the tax side of the equation and not pretending that we can do things that we can't.
ANDREW MARR:
On the economic side, there are great debates inside Europe of course about protectionism, about the way Eastern Europe is going to be dealt with, and indeed about any reflationary packages ahead. Is this the right time for the Conservatives still to be committed to standing outside the main Centre Right grouping in the European Parliament and trying to find some new group of kind of more eurosceptic smaller party? Shouldn't you be in there alongside the other Centre Right parties?
WILLIAM HAGUE:
First of all, we're in there in discussions with governments. We've had excellent meetings, David Cameron and I, with President Sarkozy on several occasions over the last year, with Angela Merkel when we last went to Berlin. Which grouping we're in in the European Parliament doesn't affect those things. They want to be able to deal with the next government of the United Kingdom.
ANDREW MARR:
Okay.
WILLIAM HAGUE:
But is it right to create a new grouping in the Parliament? Yes, it absolutely is, so that there is a Centre Right, non-Federalist grouping that can campaign for the sort of Europe we believe in - dealing with global competitiveness rather than being obsessed with building more powerful institutions in Brussels. That's the right thing to do.
ANDREW MARR:
Turning to the G20, what would you like to see coming out of this summit? What would you regard as success?
WILLIAM HAGUE:
I think we'd like to see some actual practical steps. There is a danger of having talked this up so much on the part of the government that then practical steps are either not achieved or seem rather disappointing by comparison. The best thing that could come out of the G20 is a fresh agreement on free trade across the world. And if it's not possible to bring the Doha Trade Round to success, then at least an agreement on freezing tariff levels, freezing tariff barriers under current world trade agreements. That would be an important practical step. And, yes, we would like to some international agreement on some of the things that Lord Turner has recommended - you were talking to him earlier - such as countercyclical provision for the reserves that banks have to keep, so they have to put more money aside in the good times. International agreement on things like that would be very much worthwhile.
ANDREW MARR:
And one other area of foreign policy. You'll have seen the pretty appalling looking reports coming out of Israel where members of the Israeli Defence Force who were involved in the Gaza operation have talked about effectively being told to shoot at civilians. Now governments almost never say anything about this because they don't want to offend people diplomatically. As the opposition spokesman, how did you react to those stories?
WILLIAM HAGUE:
Well those are absolutely appalling stories. There is no question about that. We don't yet know the truth of them. I think it's very important to say that. This is evidence that now has to be looked at, of course, by Israel's military investigations unit; and it is a good thing that Israel does have provision for that, for investigating these things and for bringing to book any who were responsible for behaving in such a way. But we will expect… I think across the world, we will expect Israel to deal decisively with anybody who committed such crimes. It will be very important for Israel to do that if it is to keep any moral authority in these situations in the future. So we're all appalled by that and we hope that it will be dealt with.
ANDREW MARR:
Mr Hague, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
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.
Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy
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