Snatch Land Rovers before butter

On Sunday 7 March Andrew Marr interviewed Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox.

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

ANDREW MARR:

Now to this week's politics, dominated by Gordon Brown at the Iraq Inquiry, controversies over the Tory Party funding, and Mr Brown's current trip to Afghanistan. I'm joined by the Shadow Secretary of State for Defence and key Conservative figure, Dr Liam Fox. Welcome.

LIAM FOX:

Good morning.

ANDREW MARR:

Let's start with the Afghan trip, which you've been highly critical of. I suppose Gordon Brown would say that he goes there relatively regularly. You know he can't stop going because there's a General Election at some point and, after all, you know he's made further announcements about the replacement to Snatch Land Rovers.

LIAM FOX:

Of course, it's quite normal for prime ministers to visit. Gordon Brown tends to pick his moments. If you remember, of course, he went famously during the Conservative Party conference in 2007 just before he bottled that particular election. The problem this time is that he's been at Chilcot. We've got three former chiefs of the defence staff talking about under funding of the military, brushed off by the Prime Minister, and then goes off to Afghanistan and gets some very nice pictures. Makes an announcement.

ANDREW MARR:

Is it not possible that when he says, "I gave them everything they asked for", that that is true and that the problem might have been that they didn't ask for enough?

LIAM FOX:

Well what he was doing was very carefully and very particularly Gordon Brown: he chose his words with great care, saying nothing that was specifically asked for was refused. But of course this isn't the point. Lord Walker, the former Chief of the Defence Staff, said that the government's 1998 strategic defence review as under funded by about a billion pounds. Then we know that the budget was cut by about a billion in 2003. And of course Sir Kevin Tebbit, the former Permanent Secretary, said he was working on a "crisis budget." The helicopter budget was then cut by 1.4 billion in 2004 in the middle of two wars. The point is not the specific requests were not acceded to. The point is that the MoD was working on a peacetime budget effectively fighting two wars. That's what the chiefs were complaining about, and that of course is what Gordon Brown evaded at Chilcot.

ANDREW MARR:

And what about these Land Rover replacements?

LIAM FOX:

Well we've been waiting for years for replacements to the Snatch Land Rovers. There is one very curious element about this, however, because the public tender that was put out was for 400 vehicles to replace Snatch. The Prime Minister yesterday said it would be 200. Now what happened to the other 200? Tomorrow in Parliament, I'll be tabling questions to find out whether this is yet another cut to the equipment on Treasury orders.

ANDREW MARR:

If you win the election, you'll be taking over a very, very dangerous military situation at a time of very difficult and dangerous economic problems as well. Under the Conservatives, would the defence budget be ring-fenced?

LIAM FOX:

Well the first thing we have to do is decide what the defence budget's for. Now it's 12 years since we had a proper defence review in the United Kingdom. We need to decide what we have to invest in for future threats and look at the sort of capabilities we have for legacy programmes. Now …

ANDREW MARR:

It's hard to see what we shouldn't be doing, isn't it?

LIAM FOX:

Well I think that we need to have our defence review alongside a review of NATO of what we're expected to do inside the alliance.

ANDREW MARR:

Do you think we're being asked to do too much?

LIAM FOX:

Yes, I do. I think that if you look at the sort of areas that NATO is involved in, we've got defence of continental Europe, we've got international maritime operations with the rise of piracy, we've got expeditionary land based campaigns like Afghanistan, we've got problems in the high North at the moment in the Baltic, the Barents Sea in the Arctic. And we have to decide which bits we do within that alliance.

ANDREW MARR:

Could we move to a single force rather than the traditional three services, all with their own budgets and all with their own commands?

LIAM FOX:

Listen, Andrew, we're going to be under enough trouble with the budgetary pressures we have without starting a civil war inside the armed forces.

ANDREW MARR:

(laughs) Okay.

LIAM FOX:

We need I think to accept the traditions that we have. Work with that. Could there be better cooperation between them? Yes.

ANDREW MARR:

Yes.

LIAM FOX:

Could we have better procurement policies that made more sense of what we're doing rather than developing the same sort of vehicles and capabilities in three services? Yes, we could. But will all three services survive? Yes, they will.

ANDREW MARR:

Okay. Lord Ashcroft. When do you understand that David Cameron knew about his real tax status?

LIAM FOX:

I understand that David Cameron knew about his non-dom status about a month ago, certainly within the last month.

ANDREW MARR:

Now William Hague said originally that you know he would be domiciled for tax purposes and that this should be worth tens of millions of pounds to the Treasury. Have you any idea if any money has gone into the Treasury from Lord Ashcroft?

LIAM FOX:

Oh well he's been paying tax on his UK income, so I imagine …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) But is there more UK income?

LIAM FOX:

Well I imagine it's probably bigger than mine and I imagine that money's gone into the UK Treasury.

ANDREW MARR:

But there was a loophole and it seems that it surprised everybody, including senior Conservatives. This is quite serious because you know you look back at the early years of Tony Blair - came in with all the kind of plaudits and got into terrible trouble over financing, over shadowy people in the background and financial deals - and your party seems to be going in exactly the same direction.

LIAM FOX:

Well I think put this in perspective. Lord Ashcroft's given the Tory Party what less than 1% of its total funding over the past year, and it's amazing that there's been …

ANDREW MARR:

(over) There's a lot more before.

LIAM FOX:

Well it's amazing how this focus has been so intense on one donor - who incidentally, after a very expensive investigation by the Electoral Commission at the taxpayers' expense, was discovered to have done everything perfectly legal. Sir Hayden Phillips said that the whole area surrounding the peerage was perfectly legal. And I do begin to wonder why we're getting such focus on one person. I notice, just for example, we weren't asking Vince Cable about what happened to the two and a half million that the Lib Dems should have paid back from a donor who's on the run from the authorities.

ANDREW MARR:

Michael Brown we're talking about?

LIAM FOX:

Yes. It just seems ridiculous that it's focused on one person to this extent.

ANDREW MARR:

Because he has been such an important figure, as you know, in the Conservative Party for so long.

LIAM FOX:

And Lord Paul hasn't been an influential figure in the Labour Party?

ANDREW MARR:

Influential, but possibly less influential than Lord Ashcroft. Let me ask about the opinion polls as well. I know we're supposed not to take them too seriously and all the rest, but there's been quite a lot now suggesting that we might be heading towards a hung parliament and I notice that Vince Cable did leave open the possibility of some kind of coalition after it and you know sitting alongside Conservatives and others. Is that something that's plausible? Is that something that you're talking about behind the scenes?

LIAM FOX:

There are two problems with a hung parliament. One is that at the moment we require confidence in the markets, in the UK economy, and we've seen when the polls got a little narrower that we had quite a wobble on the markets, including the value of sterling. That's a big issue for the future. But my biggest problem with a hung parliament is that the actual policies to be followed by the government are decided by politicians behind closed doors after the election rather than by the voters at the ballot box when they have a clear choice of the policies that they're going to follow. I think that we fight in this country for a clear mandate; a clear, new direction for Britain. The choice is between the current Labour government and a new Conservative government or, worse, between instability and a government that can actually give the country clear direction.

ANDREW MARR:

And so if that's the case, why is it that so many people seem to be saying neither of the above?

LIAM FOX:

Well if you look at where we are in the opinion polls today, we're back at 40 points on ICM. Of course, as we all say, we don't take …

ANDREW MARR:

Not too many more.

LIAM FOX:

… we don't take any polls too seriously. But that's exactly where we've been for about the last 17 months.

ANDREW MARR:

Yuh.

LIAM FOX:

What we're seeing is you're seeing some bobbing up and down between Labour and the Lib Dems, but I don't see a major change. I think most people in this country have quietly decided we need a change of government.

ANDREW MARR:

And just reflecting on what you said about David Cameron and Lord Ashcroft, isn't it a bit extraordinary that after being Leader for 4 years, he only knew a month ago? Shouldn't he have been demanding answers before that?

LIAM FOX:

Well David's always taken the view that taxation status, which is what that particular problem was, is a personal matter. But let me put it this way. David Cameron found out less than a month ago and it's now in the public domain.

ANDREW MARR:

Alright. Liam Fox, for now thank you very much indeed.

INTERVIEW ENDS

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