................................................................................ ON THE RECORD JOHN REDWOOD INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 10.5.98 ................................................................................ JOHN HUMPHRYS: It's been a week of real mixed fortunes for the Conservative Party. Not a lot to cheer them up in the local elections, many people say anyway, a nasty kick in the teeth from one of their own supporters who's written a book spilling the beans on the deep divisions that still remain (he says) at the very top of the Party. But also the chance to land some damaging blows on a government severely embarrassed by the arms to Sierra Leone affair. John Redwood, Shadow Trade Secretary, is with me. Let's start with that - Sierra Leone Mr Redwood. Robin Cook said this morning that no minister was involved in the whole business. Are you prepared to believe that? JOHN REDWOOD: No, I'm not, and I think a minister should have been involved, and we are going to asking why didn't ministers ask the right questions at the right time - why didn't they do their homework - why didn't they read the papers? Both the national newspapers which were carrying the story as early as March the Eighth and the papers that were circulating within their own department. At the very least we've got two ministers here, the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of State that weren't doing their jobs properly and we may have something much worse. We may have a Foreign Office out of control. HUMPHRYS: But what do you believe to be the case, that they didn't know or that some people are lying? There are only those two choices really. REDWOOD: Well, I suspect that we have very lazy ministers who didn't ask the right questions and didn't take the right action at the right time, but we may have something worse, and that is why we need a further full statement and a proper inquiry into what actually happened. And on March the Eighth the Observer runs quite a lot of this story in the newspaper. Why didn't the Minister of State go in the next morning and ask in his office what the background of this was. Why didn't he get himself properly briefed for the debate he does on March the Tenth. Why are we told that ministers didn't know some of the truth about this matter until the middle of April. At the very least it means that we have ministers who are too idle to get into the big issues in their department, and it may be something worse, we may have a cover-up, we may have all kinds of problems here. HUMPHRYS: What do you believe it is? REDWOOD: Well, I want to see the results of the inquiry, and Michael Howard is asking a whole series of very good questions both oral and written when he gets the opportunity, and I'm sure if anybody can get to the truth of this matter Michael Howard will, because he will persistently cross-examine these ministers. Michael certainly believes at the moment that they fell down on the job, they didn't read enough, they took pride in not reading very much and telling their officials not to send them too much paper, and we now see the results of this laziness. HUMPHRYS You're satisfied with that inquiry. You're satisfied that that is the right way to go about it - two inquiries of course - one in by the Customs and Excise and the other into the other side of it? REDWOOD: Well, we're satisfied that two inquiries have been set up. We want them to be rigorous, quick and independent, and then we will judge them when we see the results. But the main inquiry will of course take place when Michael Howard gets further opportunities in the House of Commons to cross-examine the Foreign Sectretary and the Minister of State, and I trust we will get a chance to debate all these matters at an early opportunity when more information comes up. HUMPHRYS: Are you demanding that? REDWOOD Well, we will be as soon as we think there is enough information to warrant a full scale debate following the inquiry. HUMPHRYS: What you don't at the moment, well, prior to the inquiry? REDWOOD: We tabled a PMQ last week, a proper question, and Michael Howard cross-examined the Foreign Secretary and got some information out. We will be pursuing these inquiries next week at every opportuniuty. HUMPHRYS Should those who it turns out knew what was happening at the time, whether they be officials in the Foreign Office or ministers or even the Secretary of State himself, Foreign Secretary himself - should they go, should they have to resign if they knew what was going on? REDWOOD: Well, of course. If either the Foreign Secretary or Minister of State has misled the House it's... HUMPHRYS: Well putting aside the misleading.... REDWOOD: Or they must go if we discover that their policy was very different from what they said their policy was. I mean, also it looks as if they have broken UN sanctions or some people's view of the UN sanctions. Now that as the Foreign Secretary himself has said, is very serious. Why didn't the British Government go to the UN and get clarification, why didn't they go and say: You can'tmean these sanctions to be directed against the good guys, against the democratic government which is trying to get reinstated. Would it be alright if the sanction doesn't apply to that, and clarify the matter. But this indolent Foreign Secretary doesn't get that sorted out with the UN and so now he's investigating his own department to see whether he thinks they did break the UN sanctions by what they were doing. HUMPHRYS: Let's turn to the local elections. You didn't do very well. I mean you've managed like all the other parties to massage the results a little bit, to suggest that you did a little bit better than perhaps you had expected, but I mean that's the skill in these things.. REDWOOD: We were the only party that won seats. All the other parties lost seats. We were very pleased to win... HUMPHRYS: You started from a very very very low base - you couldn't have started from a lower base could you? And the result of it was..... REDWOOD: We would have liked to have started from a better place..... HUMPHRYS: And then you might have won many seats. (INTERRUPTION). Right, you increased your vote, your popularity compared with the last election - with the General Election by what was it - two per cent. Now that is extremely modest indeed. You should have done better shouldn't you, after a year of government. What's going wrong - why aren't you doing better? REDWOOD: I think it shows that recovery is under-
way. We've always said that it will be a slow process at the beginning. This government came in with a lot of popular support and a lot of people were prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt for the first year. I think that's changing quite quickly now. We take encouragement from the number of seats we won, we take encouragement from the fact that we are polling above our national opinion poll rating, whereas Labour is polling massively below their national opinion poll rating, and we see Labour now getting the kind of problems the Conservatives had in the eighties and early nineties in government, their supporters staying at home, their supporters reluctant to go out, some of their supporters now saying unprintable things about the Labour government, the way they've broken their word, the way that power has gone to the heads, the way that they are behaving, in a way very different from that which they promised before the General Election. So I think there is a steady recovery underway, and of course we regard that as a platform for the very important elections next year when even more people will be voting. HUMPHRYS: Talking of unprintable things. There were some things said about your own leader, by your own advisor, Harold Williams, actually they weren't unprintable because they were printed. But nonetheless pretty damaging stuff, indeed damning stuff about your own leader and the implication was that you shared those views - did you? REDWOOD: No, that's not true. My memory of events and statements are very different from Mr William's. I don't think Mr Williams is a card carrying Conservative member and I don't think he's a Conservative activist anymore. I'm very sorry he's made all these statements but they are not the same any anybody else's recollection of those events. HUMPHRYS: Did you believe at the time that Mr Hague won that he was the worst of all candidates? - that was the extent of all of it. REDWOOD: Not my view. I think there were five candidates and I always thought William and Ken were the two most difficult candidates to beat, as it turned out to be the case. HUMPHRYS: Well that's different isn't it. Difficult to beat is different- REDWOOD: I also urged all my supporters on several occasions that they should recognise that this was a Conservative Election, that win or lose we had to work with the other candidates immediately after the election result was known. So I urged them to concentrate the fire on Labour, to show how we could be an effective opposition, not to concentrate the fire on other candidates in the leadership election. HUMPHRYS: You will know this quote very well, his - that is to say Mr Hague's claim was one of unredeemable trainspotting vacuity
overlaid by the gloss of management theory. Did you, whether you do or not now, did you share that view at the time? REDWOOD: No, certainly not. HUMPHRYS: Are you sure Mr Hague is now the right - bearing in mind what's happened since the election, bearing in mind the impression that he is or is not making on the country, are you sure he's the right man to lead the country? REDWOOD: Yes I am. He is a democratic choice and I was quick to wish him every success once he was chosen as our leader and I've given him every support ever since, as a good democrat should do. I want my party to do well. I think William is a very effective performer in the House of Commons. I think it is a pity that he doesn't get more television attention for those performances in the House of Commons. Because I see a man, week after week exposing the dithering and the dangers of this Labour Government, showing that the Prime Minister often can't answer or doesn't want to answer the difficult questions, showing that we have a government that won't face up to the hard choices which he says it has to face up to. And a government which is always saying one thing and doing another, divided amongst itself over Trade Union rights, over the Minimum Wage, over the collapse of manufacturing and the recession they're forcing the economy into, not knowing how they can sort those problems out, not able to answer William Hague's very perceptive questions. HUMPHRYS: Get's no more, nor no less coverage than anybody else would do doing that job. But look at what the polls are saying about him and indeed one only needs to look at what your own party members say about him. I mean at the moment he's not even on the scale. Mr Ashdown is regarded as a more effective leader even my members of your own party, than is Mr Hague. Are you telling me you are not at all worried about that. REDWOOD: No, I'm not. Because I see a very effective Commons performer who will hold this government to account- HUMPHRYS: -more than that isn't it, as leader of the opposition- REDWOOD: -as the media loosens up and understands we're in a democracy, they need to give reasonable coverage to the opposition in parliament as well as to the government. HUMPHRYS: Oh he does get people going - that's a smoke screen isn't it, but he does get coverage- REDWOOD: First of all Mr Blair has stopped him getting coverage twice a week and only allows him to cross-examine him once a week. HUMPHRYS: For a longer time. REDWOOD: That does make - yes but you don't get double the amount of television time because you are only doing it once a week. It used to be the case that Mr Blair, as leader of the opposition, was regularly on television on Tuesdays and on Thursdays, scoring a hit against the government of the day, whereas William only gets that opportunity once a week. He still uses it very effectively and I think we can do more to support him, to get more articles in the papers, to carry the campaigns that he wishes us to carry to the country, around the country and work hard to set out our case. This country desperately needs strong opposition. This government is off the leash, it is doing all sorts of things that are very foolish.... HUMPHRYS: ..a lot of things that you were doing and carry on with your policies, which is one of your criticisms. I mean what has he got to do, you know, what does- REDWOOD: I don't accept this, that Mr Blair is just another Conservative leader, Mr Blair is a very radical and dangerous politician. He is busily destroying the constitution he inherited. He and Mr Brown are busily wrecking the economy legacy which they inherited from us, which was an extremely successful one (interruption). Manufacturing is now in recession in this country. It looks as if we've now had two quarters with falling manufacturing activity, and you talk to most manufacturers in this country and they will say, yes, of course, why has it taken the politicians so long to realise this, we have been in recession for some time, we are very damaged by this government's policies. The Independent Monetary Committee which is falling out with itself, the Interest Rates they've set- HUMPHRYS: Which you applauded at the time. REDWOOD: We certainly did not, we opposed the the Independent Monetary Committee. HUMPHRYS: But you wanted the Bank of England to be able to set-everybody seemed to think that was a jolly good idea at the time. REDWOOD: We opposed the Bank of England bill in the House of Commons. That's exactly a good example of how I think we need more media attention for what we are actually saying and doing. I and my colleagues warned about the dangers about what the government was proposing. We pointed out that none of this was in the manifesto or in the pre-Election statement. HUMPHRYS: You certainly did that. REDWOOD: Mr Brown did not promise to do this. He's now done it, I suspect privately he's beginnging to regret doing it, because he's let loose a monetary committee which is divided amongst itself because he's given them an impossible task. By taxing savings, by taxing pensions, by damaging all those people who would otherwise make a prudent contribution to the economy, he has given the Monetary Committee a very difficult task to do. HUMPHRYS: But if all of that is true. If things are as dire as you suggest and I'm not sure that all of your Party thinks that they are because I was talking to Lord Parkinson, the Chairman of the Party on Friday morning and he said quite the opposite to that, he said people may change their minds when they think that things aren't quite as good as they are at the moment, or words to that effect. Given that background, why isn't Mr Hague romping away. I mean why aren't people saying, look he's, this Party, this government is a mess and we need William Hague. Quite the opposite, he's going down as Mr Blair is going up. REDWOOD: Cecil Parkinson and I, quite agree that most of the economy is still very strong on the back of the inherited legacy from the Conservatives. I was very careful to say that it is manufacturing, that is being sandbagged and damaged. About a quarter of the economy, an important one quarter, but not the dominant part of the economy anymore. We still have a very strong boom in the rest of the economy, which of course gives people a good feeling. We don't think this can carry on because we see a very distorted economy. You can't have an economy lasting for several years of success, where one quarter, the manufacturing quarter is being as badly treated as it currently is. They have to change policy somehow. So we are saying to the Chancellor and the Prime Minister: take away those taxes on savings, restore the tax breaks for pensions, do something more generous than PEPS and TESSAs, rather than undermining the PEP and TESSA saver. It's very foolish to tax savings when you have a boom running. HUMPHRYS: Can I just give you a small example of where you seem not to be opposing effectively. Tomorrow we've got the second reading of the Competition Bill; now the Liberal Democrats know exactly what they are doing, they don't like predatory pricing on the part of newspapers, they are going to oppose it. You don't seem to know what you are going to do at the moment on that. REDWOOD: Of course we know exactly what we are going to do. We are opposing the Competition Bill. We are allying with the hundred and eighty-odd Labour and Liberal MPs, who are critical of the government's measures which would damage retail pharmacies for example and I have tabled an amendment to the motion tomorrow, to put the Conservative weight of numbers behind exactly those criticisms on retail pharmacies. But we think this is a botched bill, an ill-thought out bill, which will do a lot of damage. On predatory pricing, we are strongly against predatory pricing in any industry. We don't think the amendment, which was passed in the House of Lords, is necessary, as predatory pricing is already an offence. HUMPHRYS: John Redwood, thank you very much indeed. ...oooOooo...