On Sunday 26 July Andrew Marr interviewed David Cameron MP, Conservative Party Leader
Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.
Cameron on "the mess that's being left in terms of the economy".
ANDREW MARR:
David Cameron MP, Conservative Party Leader
Remember when David Cameron was the husky hugging, let the sun shine in, new Leader of the Conservative Party?
Well it wasn't actually that long ago, but it seems like a different political age.
Now the emphasis is on toughness and austerity - an approach perhaps more familiar to Tory traditional supporters - so will it secure for Mr Cameron the next job he wants, that of Prime Minister?
Well he came into the studio a little earlier this morning (he's off to France shortly) and I began by asking him if he thought that this was the last summer break before entering Downing Street?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well I take one step at a time. I mean obviously the Norwich North by-election was a great success for the Conservatives - getting 40% of the vote, a brilliant new MP, Chloe Smith, elected - but there isn't literally one ounce of complacency in my body, nor in the body of my team. You know we are well aware that Margaret Thatcher had to win around 40 seats to get an overall majority. We want to win 120.
We still have an enormous mountain to climb. And what I've found on the streets of Norwich North - and one of the reasons I kept going back - was that there is still a real anger, combined with a cynicism and an apathy about politics and politicians that means actually we have to work incredibly hard to win back people's trust. And that means getting on the doorstep, it means holding public meetings, it means really listening to people. And that's what I'm going to be thinking about over the summer - is what more can we do and how can we, as I put it before, rebuild confidence in the political system and in politicians...
ANDREW MARR:
What are you going to be reading and thinking about in detail as you look forward to that big test?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well I always start when I go on holiday with a really trashy novel. You need something to completely empty your mind and take you back. But I think the big challenge for the political system is a twin one really. On the one hand, politicians are more reviled and hated than they have been in a long time. Parliament has sunk in people's public esteem. We've got to work out how we restore some faith in that, not because of feeling proud about being politicians but I still think politics is the best way to get change.
If we want to change things in our country, then we need a political system that works. But allied to that, this massive economic problem and fiscal crisis - the fact that we are going to be next year borrowing 14% of our national income, twice as much as when Denis Healey took the country to the IMF, we've got to think very seriously about how we are going to restore that balance. I think we've been very frank and open about the need to do that, but there's a lot more to do there.
ANDREW MARR:
I'm very interested that you mentioned both Margaret Thatcher and then Denis Healey because what people say is that this is not like 1978/1979; it's even harder in terms of the job ahead, in terms of what's happened to the economy. When you look at the scale of what you would have to do if you did take power, are you worried about that, are you frightened about that? Do you look inside yourself and think I'm no Margaret Thatcher?
DAVID CAMERON:
It is... Well I don't think anyone is a Margaret Thatcher. (laughs) She is unique. But it is, it is...
ANDREW MARR:
But you know what I mean?
DAVID CAMERON:
It's incredibly daunting, the scale of the challenge and the mess that is being left in terms of the economy and particularly the budget balance. I mean it really is a daunting prospect. And that's why I've said... You know I can't remember an opposition leader who in opposition has looked the British public in the eye and said you know we are going to cut public spending. We have to do that. We have to be clear about that. But I do believe...
I think the British people recognise this and they are crying out actually for someone who's going to lead them and who's going to say right, we're all in this together, we've all got to take these steps together. Let's start by making parliament smaller, by having fewer ministers, by cutting the cost of politics. We're going to share in these difficult decisions and in this pain, but then the whole country has got to take part in this. Now...
ANDREW MARR:
This may be a very important...
DAVID CAMERON:
(over) And also saying if we get through this and if we sort out the budget problems, this is still a great country. We've still got fantastic opportunities for the future. Now I think if we level with people like that, actually they will be led and they will come with us. And of course it'll be difficult.
ANDREW MARR:
So let's hear you level. Where are the big targets for reductions?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well we've said very clearly what is ring fenced in terms of we think we should protect overseas aid...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) Health, overseas aid.
DAVID CAMERON:
...and health, and everywhere else we're going to have to look at some you know very proper savings. Now you're going to ask me well which ones exactly? And what I've said is this. First, the first stage to get to is being clear that public spending has to be cut.
Now we have said that; the government has not said that. We are well ahead there. The second is to stop making things worse. We opposed that VAT cut. I think that's very significant. We've been hammering the government about their looseness with public spending. They've still got big plans for spending increases you know both this year and next year...
ANDREW MARR:
Yes.
DAVID CAMERON:
...which we think they could change. And the next thing is to then identify those things I'd like to get rid of. Now you know national identity cards, regional government, those things - they are significant. Just one little example since Alistair Dar…
ANDREW MARR:
But...
DAVID CAMERON:
Hang on, one little example. Since Alistair Darling became Chancellor actually the budget for government advertising, now running at half a billion pounds, has gone up by 50%. That's just in the last few years. So there are some things we would like to cut.
Then the next and the crucial stage is, right, what are those things that you would like to do as a country but you're still going to have to cut back? That is the next stage. The work is under way. We will have more to say about that. But I would argue we are well ahead of where the government is...
ANDREW MARR:
Okay.
DAVID CAMERON:
...and we are where the government ought to be and yet at the moment they're still arguing about it.
ANDREW MARR:
Can I just test you on a couple of things because when George Osborne was in, he was talking about for instance looking at what he called 'transfer payments'...
DAVID CAMERON:
Yeah.
ANDREW MARR:
...which is another phrase for what people call 'the middle class welfare state'. Is that the kind of thing perhaps this country can't afford anymore?
DAVID CAMERON:
I think there are elements there we have to look at. For instance, tax credits we support. We think that they're a good idea to get payments to working families on low incomes - but they do go to families who earn over £50,000, so we have to look at that.
And also I think in saying to the country that we need to reduce public spending, we need to get the budget balance under control, we've got to be able to demonstrate to people that this is fair and seen to be fair and that everyone is putting their shoulder to the wheel and sharing in the difficult decisions. And that means the wealthy have to pay their fair share. I think that is very important that we...
You know this is going to be a really big national endeavour and you've got to try and take the whole country with you. And that starts with honesty and being frank about it, explaining how you do it, having a big national conversation about it, but then also saying this is fair.
ANDREW MARR:
I'd like to ask you about tax because there is an argument - the Liberal Democrats are making it at the moment - which is to say that although you focus on overspending as being the big problem, really the collapse in tax revenues is as big a problem and that the whole tax system needs to be looked at again. You know too much tax has been coming from the City.
When the City goes down, a huge amount of tax simply disappears. Take something like inheritance tax, the inheritance tax promise. If you're saying the wealthy need to do their bit, isn't that the kind of thing that you now need to put off?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well the only reason we were able to make that inheritance tax promise - and it's a promise, something we want to do obviously in a parliament - the only reason we were able to make that...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) Maybe towards the end of the parliament?
DAVID CAMERON:
...is that we found a group of people who we think are under taxed and who are relatively wealthy who could pay for that promise, and that is the non-domicile tax residents - people who are domiciled elsewhere for tax...
ANDREW MARR:
Yes, yes.
DAVID CAMERON:
...and we've said what they will pay.
ANDREW MARR:
Though of course with the demise of the City and what's happened, they may have gone - many of those people - already.
DAVID CAMERON:
Well also, but also actually the cost of reducing inheritance tax has also come down as well. Anyway, we're confident that the two match up and that one pays for the other. But, no, I mean I stand by what I said. You've got to demonstrate that if you're going to have a programme of some austerity, that you're going to say we've got to get public spending down, everyone has to share in that. And also you know I think...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) So that might be... Just on that, I read that for instance you're going to stick with the 50p tax rise, and you've said that to some quite well off people who were slightly alarmed about it, but you said that's the kind of thing we have to stick with.
DAVID CAMERON:
Well we don't want to.
ANDREW MARR:
Sure.
DAVID CAMERON:
We think it's a bad tax rise. There is a danger that we're currently putting up a sign over the British economy saying 'closed to entrepreneurs, closed to enterprise, closed to business'. And I think when we look at this collapse in tax revenues, one of the things we have to look at is what is it that is driving, that has been driving a lot of businesses to locate overseas or to go to low tax...?
We've got to be a business friendly country. It's business and entrepreneurship and enterprise that's going to help us get out of this recession and we need to give some clarity, simplicity and certainty in the tax system to actually help people locate here and say this is where I want to do business.
ANDREW MARR:
But that 50p rise stays for the moment?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well it's not in the list of things that we can get rid of quickly.
ANDREW MARR:
Right.
DAVID CAMERON:
As I've said, it has to take its place in the queue. It's not good for Britain, but it's got to take its place in the queue behind other more painful tax rises, including the one that is you know on the people earning £20,000 that's coming down the track on national insurance.
ANDREW MARR:
When John Major was in recently, he said actually you're going to have to think about something like 5p on basic rate of income tax, VAT up to 20p, and you're going to have to make very substantial spending cuts - otherwise this country's credit rating is simply going to collapse.
DAVID CAMERON:
Well that's the luxury of being a former Prime Minister. (laughs) Look, on tax we've said look you know as an opposition, we have tried to behave very responsibly, and over the last four... - it is almost four years now that George Osborne and I have been doing these jobs - you know we've been very clear we can't promise tax reductions, we can't rule out tax increases. We've never done that because we genuinely believe - and it goes very, very deep - that you've got, as a country, to live within your means.
And making sure the public finances are stable, which is one of the bedrocks of economic stability, comes first. It has to come first. But when you look at the balance between tax and spending, I think it's clear over recent years we've seen a huge increase in spending, we've seen very poor productivity levels in the public sector, and so it's right that public spending should actually bear the brunt of actually trying to get the budget back towards a decent balance. And in doing that, there's a huge amount that can be done to concentrate on waste and bureaucracy and try and avoid reductions to the frontline services.
ANDREW MARR:
Do you think you actually need to crush the size of the central state and radically devolve power, so that you get rid of a lot of the departmental work being done in London and elsewhere and let people locally take decisions?
DAVID CAMERON:
Yes, I mean there'll be a very different approach from my ministers to what you see from the current bunch of ministers. Their approach is any problem, set up a unit, staff it with civil servants, run the ideas from the top, top down targets and control. We think that is completely wrong. We want to see power passed outwards and downwards. And one of the great weapons we're going to use in what I call the 'post bureaucratic age' is transparency. I mean look what's happened with MPs expenses.
Once you start saying to people every penny you claim goes online the moment you claim it, two things happen: they start behaving better and they start claiming less. Why don't we apply this to the whole of the public sector? Complete transparency. Any payment over £25,000 - online, in public; any salary over £150,000 in the public sector - online, transparent. Give people then the ability to look at the public sector and say well why are you wasting that money? Couldn't the private sector do that better? You know small businesses would be able to look at what local government says...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) And say I can do that for you.
DAVID CAMERON:
...and say well I can provide that service. I think you know we mustn't see this effort at getting public spending down and getting the budget balance, we mustn't see it as some dreadful catastrophe. We've got to see it as a big opportunity to deliver public services in a different and a better way, and to totally reform our government and put people back in control. In a way those two challenges we talked about at the beginning of the programme - how angry people are at the political system and the huge concern about public spending - they are linked because one of the reasons people are so angry is they feel I'm not in control of my government. I've got... You know 15 different sorts of people can snoop into my house...
ANDREW MARR:
Okay.
DAVID CAMERON:
...or film me taking my children to school and I'm not in control of this and it makes me mad as it were.
ANDREW MARR:
Sure. Right, let's...
DAVID CAMERON:
Now link that to public spending control and you've really got an agenda.
ANDREW MARR:
Let's turn to one special area of public spending, which is defence and Afghanistan. You haven't seen General Dannatt's shopping list, but would you sign the bill at the bottom of it?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well I've discussed with General Dannatt some of the things that he's concerned about, and I think we have to listen very carefully to what he's saying. I've obviously made the case not just for the last three weeks but the last three years of the need for getting more helicopters onto the frontline. Now of course some of that is about money, but some of it is about commitment. You know we've had these eight...
ANDREW MARR:
Well quite a bit of it's about money.
DAVID CAMERON:
Well we've had eight Chinook helicopters bought for 250 million since 2001, eight years now, sitting in an air conditioned hanger in Hampshire. Now don't tell me that a bit more government application and effort couldn't have actually got that problem sorted out. Some of the other things that the military are now looking for are to combat the threat of the improvised explosive devices, the IED's.
ANDREW MARR:
Spy planes, that kind of thing.
DAVID CAMERON:
So you need more of those sorts of assets. And of course the government needs to stretch every sinew to do that. I do think there's a difference between that, funding properly the war - and let's call it a war because it is a war we're engaged in in Afghanistan, and the MoD and the government needs to be on more of a war footing - there is a difference between that and the longer term questions about whether it's aircraft carriers or eurofighters or the rest of it. I do think they're two quite separate questions and they shouldn't be confused.
ANDREW MARR:
Well except that this is the kind of thing that does confuse people because at the one hand you're saying defence spending up and you're also saying defence spending down. And when you say you want to level with people, have you not particularly after the Norwich by-election, got to the state where you can afford to take the risk of saying actually this is an area we are going to make some serious cuts in?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well that is... As I say, work is under way because we are now at the third or fourth stage of public spending control. We've admitted the problem, we've said it's got to be cut, we've said the things that need to be cut, we've told you what we want to reduce like identity cards. We've also you know been very...
ANDREW MARR:
You haven't given me a single big area...
DAVID CAMERON:
Oh well...
ANDREW MARR:
...where you're going to really reduce spending.
DAVID CAMERON:
Oh I think the national identity card and identity register is a huge...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) Which you've talked about a lot and you've...
DAVID CAMERON:
(over) It's a very big... You know it runs in...
ANDREW MARR:
...and you've spent that money quite a lot already.
DAVID CAMERON:
...it runs into many billions of pounds. The whole, the whole regional...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) But you've spent that money on prisons and police.
DAVID CAMERON:
(over)... the whole regional state is also vast. If you think of the enormous bureaucracy tied up in regional development agencies, regional assemblies, transport strategies, spacial strategies, a huge bureaucracy there. But as I say work is...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) What about charges for some NHS services from the classes?
DAVID CAMERON:
(over) I don't want to see, I don't want to see charging extended in the NHS. I think part of the beauty of the NHS...
ANDREW MARR:
(over) Or roads, driving on roads?
DAVID CAMERON:
Yes, very happy. We've said we're happy to look at road tolls. I don't think that the eye in the sky big government scheme they were planning was going to work, but separate road tolls. You know if you look at the one road toll that has been built - the Birmingham Relief Road - great success, a Conservative idea...
ANDREW MARR:
Yes.
DAVID CAMERON:
...so, yes, very happy to look at that.
ANDREW MARR:
Okay. You mentioned earlier on MPs expenses. There is a general sense that now the spotlight has moved a little bit away from Westminster, it's going to be business as usual; that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority is already being watered down and Conservative MPs have been part of that process.
DAVID CAMERON:
Well I think that the government made a huge mistake with... We wanted an independent authority to run the expenses regime and pay regime for parliament. We all agreed to that. But they then rushed forward a huge bill, which they hadn't thought through at all, and would have ended up with MPs being imprisoned for you know making speeches on the floor in the House of Commons. They made a complete mess of it and the bill was gutted by their own peers as much as by anyone in the House of Lords.
ANDREW MARR:
(over) So this is a transitional period, you think?
DAVID CAMERON:
It is a transitional period. But the most important thing, the thing that will be far more powerful than any new body or any new law or any initiative announced by the Prime Minister - the most powerful thing will be transparency.
Make MPs publish their receipts and their allowances and what they're paid and all of that detail, and you soon find you have the problem under control. That's what needed to be done. That's what the Conservatives have led the way with. My shadow cabinet is doing it now. You can go online and look at the bills, you know.
ANDREW MARR:
Are you happy to see somebody like Julie Kirkbride rethinking as to whether she's going to stand again?
DAVID CAMERON:
Well I don't think anything has changed on this front. I mean she announced she wouldn't be standing. She, like other MPs, has got to be examined by the Legg Committee, which is looking into those arrangements, and as far as I can see nothing has changed from there.
ANDREW MARR:
Okay last and not least. All over the papers, yet again today, swine flu. Is there anything that you would do differently if you were Prime Minister on that?
DAVID CAMERON:
No, I think the main thing is for all the parties to get together and actually to be very clear about what needs to be done. The swine flu helpline is now up and running - that's good. We had warned about that being slow some time ago, so I think that's going. The one concern I have is the critical care bed issue. We may need more critical care beds.
The number we have compared to other countries is relatively low. But I think this is a very important area where we all need to try and give out clear and proper information to the public and try and make sure the system is working, and on that the government know they have our support.
ANDREW MARR:
David Cameron, I hope it's a good trashy novel. I hope it's an enjoyable trashy novel. Enjoy France and thank you very much.
DAVID CAMERON:
Thank you.
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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