On Sunday 18 October Andrew Marr interviewed Shadow Defence Secretary Dr Liam Fox. Please note 'The Andrew Marr Show' must be credited if any part of this transcript is used. ANDREW MARR: The first Prime Minister's question of the new session started in a way that gave us all - or should have done - a jolt. The names of all of those British servicemen killed in Afghanistan since the Commons had broken up were read out by the Prime Minister, and that list took four minutes to get through. Public backing for the war appears to be dwindling and even supportive newspaper editorials this week asked how do we get out? But if the government is struggling, what exactly would a Conservative government do differently? Liam Fox is the Shadow Defence Secretary. Thank you for coming in. Looking at your speech and David Cameron's speech and the various statements, I struggle to see what in strategic terms you would do that's so different from what Gordon Brown is doing. LIAM FOX: Well I think the point about the public support for the war is crucial here because if you're going to have the resilience to see through a long mission, you have to have public support. The first thing that the public require is a very clear definition of why we're there, and that means to be very explicit about the national security implications. We're there to stop Afghanistan becoming a failed state, which terrorists can use. Also to stop the potential contamination and collapse of Pakistan. That's … ANDREW MARR: But that is exactly what the Prime Minister says. LIAM FOX: Well that is what they sometimes say. Because just before the summer recess, to give you an example, Harriet Harman was asked in the House of Commons, "What is the government's strategy in Afghanistan?", and she began by talking about how many girls had gone to school and so on. Now it's very noble to want to see better education, better human rights, better democracy and so on. That is not why the military are there. Now if you try … ANDREW MARR: (over) It's a nuance, I would suggest. LIAM FOX: No, I would suggest it's not … I fundamentally disagree with you because I think you have to be very clear about what the military mission is and what the subsequent mission about reconstruction and so on, which is for the international community to do. Because … ANDREW MARR: Okay. LIAM FOX: … the public understand sending our troops to fight for our national security. They don't understand the concept of fighting for an education policy on the other side of the world. ANDREW MARR: Well we now know that the government was asked for 2,000 extra troops by the military before the summer break and said no. Would you give the military what they asked for in terms of extra troops? LIAM FOX: Well you couldn't give a blank guarantee like that. But when I was last in Afghanistan and I visited some of the training camps for the Afghan National Army, our commanders on the ground said if you had given us or if the government gives us more British troops to do the training, we can get the Afghan national security services up to speed much more quickly, and that of course means our troops can come back from what is the national security mission. Now I think that we should have given those troops because if you can get the Afghan forces able to manage their own security, then we will see a disengagement more quickly. ANDREW MARR: So you're in favour, therefore, obviously of the 800 troops that the Prime Minister has announced are going out there. What about the conditions that he's put on that - that our allies in Nato, the French and others, have got to step up to the mark? Because they haven't been recently, have they? LIAM FOX: Well they haven't been at all in some circumstances. ANDREW MARR: Is that a reasonable condition? LIAM FOX: Well it's a reasonable thing to ask that they do more. Is it a reasonable condition to apply to this particular deployment? I have my doubts about that. Because the reasons given for the deployment of these extra troops was to help reinforce the mission itself, to improve the protection of our forces already there, and speed up the training of the Afghan National Army. Now those three things in themselves seem to me to stand alone. Now … ANDREW MARR: But … LIAM FOX: And it's been very difficult for us to actually get a straight answer to the question well how many of our overseas allies would have to do what to meet those conditions? ANDREW MARR: Okay. Well let me give you a straight question and hope for a straight answer. How many extra troops would you put in beyond what the government has suggested, and how much extra money would you spend on the Afghan war? LIAM FOX: Well we had said that if they wanted the 2,000 extra troops, we'd be sympathetic to that. Of course we now are waiting for what General McChrystal says about the wider mission. In fact everything is really being held up now until we get a clear idea of what the future strategy's going to be because that's … ANDREW MARR: You've been told by the military commanders they would like more troops. I'm asking you will you give them more troops? LIAM FOX: Well we had said … Well we had said we would have given them had we been in government at the time and had we been asked for that. ANDREW MARR: But you're not making commitments for the future? LIAM FOX: Well we don't know what they'll ask for in the future. It really does depend on what happens now because we are in a phase now where with the big extra American deployment, they're very much going to be calling the shots in what happens. We're waiting for what President Obama says. And what General McChrystal says is a very different approach to what's happened before because up till now it's been about killing insurgents, getting on top of the Taliban. What General McChrystal's talking about is protecting the population. 80% of civilian deaths in Afghanistan are a direct result of the Taliban. ANDREW MARR: So you're following the Americans, as the government are. You can't promise any extra troops at this moment or any extra money. And it seems to me that the exit strategy is just the same. I can't see any difference. LIAM FOX: No, we've been very clear for some time that what we needed to have was the sort of counterinsurgency strategy that's now being described by General McChrystal, and that is much more … ANDREW MARR: (over) And getting out again? LIAM FOX: We can get out when we succeed in achieving the mission. And this is crucial because what do we mean by success? ANDREW MARR: Exactly. LIAM FOX: Success in Afghanistan means in military terms that we have a stable enough Afghanistan able to exercise its own sovereignty, maintaining its internal and external security by its own forces free from outside interference. ANDREW MARR: Does it matter - and I put this brutally - if the Karzai regime is in power on the basis of a rigged election? LIAM FOX: What matters is does the government have legitimacy in the eyes of the Afghan people. We've got to stop judging … ANDREW MARR: It seems the answer to that is no. LIAM FOX: Well we've got to stop judging Afghanistan by Western standards. We're not trying to apply a Jeffersonian democracy to a 13th century state. If we try that, we'll be unsuccessful. ANDREW MARR: So should there be a second round of elections? LIAM FOX: Well that remains for the commission there to decide whether there should be a second round of elections. Again I think we've got to stop trying to make judgements from outside about what's good for the Afghan people. What we want to see is a stable enough Afghanistan, so it's not a risk to our national security. ANDREW MARR: Is your budget if you arrive in power going to be subject to the same kind of constraints as everybody else's budget? In other words, are you going to have to make cuts? LIAM FOX: Well we don't know what the total economic wreckage is going to look like should we win an election. I've already made it very clear that I … ANDREW MARR: (over) A pretty good, a pretty good idea at this point. LIAM FOX: Well I'm not very sure that you can trust many of the figures given by the current government. If I shook the hands with the Chancellor, I'd count my fingers afterwards. And I think that we have to be very clear, however, that what we do in the Ministry of Defence has to be about giving things to the frontline. We cannot afford, for example, to have 16% of the whole British Civil Service in the MoD. We can't afford the level of cost of delivering that. ANDREW MARR: Looking for straight answers, can I pick you up on that? You've said I think that you could take out about a quarter, 25% of the MoD bureaucracy. Not the frontline people. That would mean, let's be absolutely clear, 22,000 people losing their jobs as a result of you coming into power. Is that a fair and accurate assessment or not? LIAM FOX: No, it's not because it's not what I said. What I said was we should be able to take out 25% of the costs of running the MoD. Now … ANDREW MARR: But that's mostly, that's people. LIAM FOX: Is it? It's also … ANDREW MARR: Pretty much. LIAM FOX: … it's also big structures like the fact that the MoD owns the Met Office with all the costs - salaries, pensions - there are … ANDREW MARR: (over) Will you privatise the Met Office? LIAM FOX: I think there are … there's a very strong case to look at the assets of the MoD and say do these deliver anything for the frontline or would we be better to use that money to support our armed forces. ANDREW MARR: (over) That's an interesting thought. I haven't heard this made … this suggestion before, but privatising the Met Office … LIAM FOX: (over) See that's the value of coming on these programmes, Andrew. ANDREW MARR: Yeah, we could see that. What about the other big capital programmes because there's the aircraft carriers - very, very expensive - as well as the Trident boats. If you decide that you're going to make savings there - and I know that in the past you've said you wont, but nonetheless looking at the crunch on the budget you may have to - that's a decision you'd have to take pretty quickly, isn't it? LIAM FOX: Well we have to do that within the scope of a proper strategic defence review. We've not reviewed our strategy for Britain for 12 years. We need to look at all the programmes within that. The one we've exempted from that, as I've said before, is the strategic nuclear deterrent because we know that we're living in a more dangerous world where nuclear weapons are proliferating. We couldn't possibly leave Britain without that protection. But we have to look at the other programmes as a whole, not pluck one out of the air, and say this is how much it costs. And we have to do it also by looking at the concept of joint procurement, for example, with the United States, which may give us a huge economy of scale. ANDREW MARR: When General Dannatt was appointed to your party, one of your colleagues said it was a political gimmick. Then he realised it was a Conservative gimmick rather than a Labour one and had to apologise. And then General Dannatt said that he'd been appointed because of "a lack of experience on the defence front bench." That can't have made you feel very happy? LIAM FOX: Well you know it takes a bit of training to be a politician, and I think that … You know I'm very happy to have any extra help, any extra advice that leads us to better decision making. If we come to government, it will be at a very, very difficult time both in terms of security and in terms of finance, and to have as much expertise as possible, I'm very, very happy to have … ANDREW MARR: (over) But he has the authority of having headed the army. Is it not going to be difficult for you - I mean he's going to be subordinate to you - when he comes to you and says, "I want this and this is what we need to do"? Hard man he's going to be to turn down. LIAM FOX: Well, as someone once said, "advisers advise, politicians decide." ANDREW MARR: Turnbull, Lord Turnbull, the former Head of the Civil Service, has criticised this. And you know he's no sort of bleeding heart liberal in these matters, but he thinks it's the wrong thing for people to come out of the Civil Service and move straight over to a political party. He does have a point about that, doesn't he? LIAM FOX: Well what he was criticising, if I interpreted his remarks correctly, was the fact that General Dannatt would get a ministerial appointment right away. That's never been the point of this. He was agreed to become an adviser, a working peer, and, as David Cameron has made clear, that would make him eligible to serve in a future Conservative government. No ministerial role has been either offered or accepted. So Lord Turnbull I think was perhaps speaking, having misunderstood the detail of the argument. ANDREW MARR: As many of us do. Liam Fox, thank you for now very much indeed. INTERVIEW ENDS
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