=================================================================================== .................................................................................... ON THE RECORD WILLIAM HAGUE INTERVIEW RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE: 14.3.99 .................................................................................... JOHN HUMPHRYS: But first, the Conservative Party. Some say "crisis" is the best word to describe the condition it is in. There is no sign of it recovering from the hammering it got at the last election. Indeed the opinion polls suggest it's still bouncing along the bottom. Well now William Hague has said there must be a break with the past. The party has to get away from its old thinking and its old agenda and Mr Hague is with me. In what way, Mr Hague, will the new agenda differ from the old? WILLIAM HAGUE: Well it will be much more about quality of life for a start. What we had to respond to in the 1980s was a severe economic crisis in this country. What people wanted us to respond to was that and we did so. And we did so successfully and I think we're respected for having done that. But as we go around listening to people around the country now, they don't say: there is a British economic disease that you have to deal with, they say there are other things that governments have to take on. And so the Conservative Party will have to develop an agenda in which quantity of money is part of quality of life but it's not only about quantity of money. HUMPHRYS: So Thatcherism was right for its time but you now need a new prescription, as it were. HAGUE: Yes that's right, parties have to move on, parties have to let go of the past and move on. Where would we have been if the party in 1951 had fought the election on the same basis as 1945. It didn't, something happened in between, there was a Labour government that made a lot of changes, well the Conservative Party had to acknowledge that and move on. Where would we have been if Margaret Thatcher had fought the '79 election on the same basis as Ted Heath fought the '74 election. Parties have to move on to a new agenda and the sooner they realise that the better, they can either go on for years thinking about it and agonising about it, or they can say: right, we know this is what we always have to do when we hit a period like this, let's get on and do it. That's what I was saying to the party yesterday. HUMPHRYS: So the end of the Thatcher era, the start of a new era, that's it in a nutshell. HAGUE: Well it is just a case of moving on. It's not a case of disowning what Margaret Thatcher did, we transformed the position of this country. Margaret Thatcher and John Major between them completely transformed the economic position of this country. But it won't be the same platform at the next election as the platform that they fought elections on. There are new challenges and there are things that are changing, whether we like it or not. There's going to be a Scottish Parliament whether we like it or not, a Welsh Assembly whether we like it or not. The House of Lords is changing. So there is a whole new constitutional agenda which may not have been our original choice but now we have to adapt to that. HUMPHRYS: And you're talking about new values. HAGUE: I'm talking about an agenda which supports values, which is about values. People are worried about crime, people are worried about drug abuse, people are worried about the condition of inner city housing estates. They are still worried about the quality of public services, they are worried about public transport because they see motorists being persecuted by the government without anything being put in its place. So you will find a Conservative Party that is much more interested in things like public transport than it ever appeared to be before. HUMPHRYS: So from being a party that seemed to be, to many people anyway, to be the hard hearted party that cared a bit more perhaps about cash than about caring. You want to be seen to be more interested in caring than cash. HAGUE: I want to broaden it. In order to care you have got to think about cash. But it's always been the case and I want to make it much more obvious and really bring it to life that people in the Conservative Party were also interested in caring. In fact most of our members around the country are the same people who are in the voluntary organisations and the charities and spend a great deal of their time actually caring for people. HUMPHRYS: But the emphasis was different wasn't it. HAGUE: The emphasis may have been different, well now I am going to give it a new emphasis. I believe in our public services, I went to a comprehensive school myself, I've always used the National Health Service myself. I don't have to take lessons from Labour politicians about the importance of good public services. The Conservative Party is going to be for those things but we'll have to produce some innovative new ideas and better ideas than the actually rather old ones being pursued by the Labour Party in order to demonstrate that that is the case. That is a big policy challenge but I am saying to the party now we are going to get on with it. HUMPHRYS: And you are saying that because that is now where we are heading, that's the direction we are now going in, some of our priorities in terms of our approach to those policies have to change. HAGUE: Some of our priorities will be different. It may be that a future Conservative Government that we at a future election will say there are same things on which we want to spend more money, which we won't have been associated with in the past. We'll say we believe in higher spending on some things provided we can find the money elsewhere. So the Conservative Party won't always be the party that wants to spend less on everything. It will be a party that will believe in the lowest possible taxation. But it wont' be a party that says you've always got to try to spend as little as possible, perhaps we need to invest more in some things. HUMPHRYS: Champion the public services. HAGUE: Champion the public services and make sure that more of the money that goes into them actually reaches the actual teaching and actually reaches the actual care for patients. You know we've got a government that talks about these things at the moment but they are wasting millions on grammar school ballots, they're wasting tens of millions on re-organising GPs and as a result whatever their good intentions, it's not working very well. The waiting list to be on the waiting list in the Health Service is increasing dramatically. Class sizes are still going up in some parts of the country. This isn't what people were led to expect by the Labour Party. So I think there is going to be quite a disappointment about the capacity of politicians to deal with these problems in the next few years and our party has got to respond to that. So, economics is important and we will still be about sound economics but we will be about a lot more than sound economics at the same time. HUMPHRYS: And it isn't just a question, frankly, from what you were saying of redistributing the money that is available, tinkering at the edges and saying instead of spending this fiver on that thing we'll spend it on that thing instead. What you're saying is that it may well mean, will mean, more commitment, more resources for certain things like health and education? Hague: Well it may do but it's not just about money..... HUMPHRYS: No... no I take your point but it is about money as well as about other things...... HAGUE: Political decisions are always partly about money, so it is partly about that and it will be partly be about money and economics in other ways and we will have to sort out the mess in savings that this government has created. We will have to produce new policies on savings because we have an emerging disaster in this country on that and the over taxation of pension funds and savings that this government have introduced. We'll have to produce new policies on tuition fees because the government have made a terrible hash on that. We'll have to produce new policies on welfare reform because they said they were going to do that and actually they're not coming up with any radical welfare reform. So we will have policies to improve taxation, to reduce public spending where it needs to be reduced but we'll be doing that in order to provide good public services in other ways and our agenda will not just be about money, it's also about people making their own decisions, it's about getting rid of red tape and regulations, it's about local government being able to make decisions for itself. So it's not just an economics and money agenda any more. HUMPHRYS: But it's money where the problem lay in the past. I know you don't want to talk about the past at great length and neither do I but your problem was seen to be, rightly or wrongly and let's not argue about that, was seen to be that you were more concerned with, for instance cutting a penny off income tax than you were about spending a bit more money on health and education. That was the perception that dogged you for a very long time, you were seen to be uncaring and that was part of the reason for that - that's what you want to get away from? HAGUE: Well I certainly want to get away from that but it's not just a case of perceptions...... HUMPHRYS: No... no absolutely..... HAGUE: It's not just a case of presentation, it means there will be actual policies that will be different and these beliefs that I am setting out will give rise to innovative policies to changes in policy, we've already had some examples of them, we're in favour of having a mayor for London, we would have been against it in the past and we're in favour of stronger local government...... HUMPHRYS: Can I come to the constitution in a moment because I do want to deal with that but can I just stay with the question of money for a moment? It might be that you would go into the next election, I'm not asking you to give us your manifesto at this precise moment because you've got to have a bit more time to think about it but it might be that you would go into the next election pledged to spending more money on health for instance than this government, than the Labour party. HAGUE: Well it might be, we don't know the position that we'll arrive in at the time. It may be that we will have much more innovative ideas than them on how to enlarge the resources of the health service one way or another by better co-operation between the health service and the independent sector. There may be...... HUMPHRYS: But you wouldn't rule it out.....? HAGUE: I'm not ruling anything out about our policies for the next election on the public services, I want the party to think, my whole point is that it's free to think and I want to have other innovative policies for instance on education, let's have teachers able to lease a school and run it for themselves, let's have genuinely innovative policies about giving choice and diversity in education that can help people in all parts of the country whatever their standard of living and whether it be the better off or worse off parts of the country. I was in East Harlem a few weeks ago and saw there what some radical education policies could do having four schools in one building all competing with each other, all with different time tables, all with a different emphasis but an extraordinary success story of the poorest district of New York now having schools where people from the better off districts want to go into it - they call it a miracle in East Harlem. I want to see miracles in parts of this country. So that illustrates my point that it's not just about money it is about innovative ideas and I think the current government have fallen into the trap in the public services of thinking that it is either all about money or all about regulation. If you put more money into it and you regulate it and make rules standards will rise. That isn't actually what happens. HUMPHRYS: But there is a change of approach here quite clearly a change of approach in the new, may I call you new Tory? I don't know. We've got new Labour perhaps new Tory? HAGUE: I don't like the expression new Tory because it suggests we're doing exactly the same as new Labour and actually this is not the same as the process New Labour went through. They had to say black was white. They had to say everything they'd said in the past was rubbish, which it was so that went down pretty well with the country. This is not the same. I'm not saying everything we've done in the past..... HUMPHRYS: No indeed.... But you are saying on this crucially important area or one of the crucially important areas of spending on the public services that where you have been seen in the past to be the party that would rather save a penny in income taxes than spend a bit more on the health service don't think that of us in future, that may not be the case. HAGUE: That may not be the case. We will have to chose our priorities if we're going to suggest spending more money in one area we will have to show where we're going to save it in others but we will be ready to make a radical reassessment of priorities and we will be ready to come forward with policies which are genuinely innovative and not just the same old solutions tried out again which is what we're getting from the current government. HUMPHRYS: So it's not just tax cutting at any cost that's the point I'm making really? HAGUE Well I believe in people paying lower taxes...... HUMPHRYS: Sure - we all do...... HAGUE: But I believe in that not because I want to take money away from something but because it's part of people having independence and being able to establish their own quality of life but what we have to do is to deliver a lower tax burden with very good public services and there are examples around the world of politicians doing that...... HUMPHRYS: But sometimes they conflict and when they conflict you might well say in future, 'let's spend that extra penny rather than cut it off income tax', that's really what I'm saying. HAGUE: Yes, I'm saying there will be circumstances in the future where the Conservatives say - 'We'll have to spend more on that because the country needs more investment in that'. HUMPHRYS: Would you have chopped the penny off last time. In this last budget or would you have spent it on health or education? HAGUE: I'm always going to be in favour or - I'm always going to vote in favour in the House of Commons of a Government reducing the burden of Income Tax, but what it should be doing accompanying that is actually reducing the total of public spending. What they're doing is spending the money on the wrong things, and people are saying, where is the money going to. It's going into hugely escalating welfare spending under the current government and that is what they said they were going to tackle, that they're failing to tackle and it's by tackling that that you can deliver lower taxes and better public services. HUMPHRYS: The Constitution, you touched on it earlier. You have accepted that you got things wrong in the past, some things wrong in the past. Devolution is one of those things is it, or do you still think that the day Scotland voted for devolution, was, I think that was the quote, was a sad day for Scotland. Is that still your view? HAGUE: Well, I think we were right to oppose it, and this is a good example actually of an argument that we fought very hard where we campaigned for what we believed, but now we have to let go of it because the world has changed, and so really what I'm saying on this is, whether we were right or wrong about the Scottish parliament it's irrelevant now what we said before. We are going to have to have a new agenda and we are facing a government that is having half-baked reform of the constitution. The government are a bit like somebody who comes into your house, knocks down one end of it, puts up a bit of timber and a tarpaulin over it and says: Right, how do you like your new house? Now that is what they've done with the Scottish parliament and the Welsh assembly. They think that's the end of it but it's not the end of it at all, because they have now unbalanced the British constitution. The voters of England are going to want to have a fair say, and the Government's reaction seems to be that of the ostrich with its head straight into the sand : oh no, don't worry about the voters of England, the so-called West Lothian question. We will have to respond to that, and so my party must now become a party that actually advocates constitutional change, and that is going to have to give the voters of England a fair say, and that was one of the commitments that I made yesterday. HUMPHRYS: But you are not embracing it, you are accepting it reluctantly as opposed to saying, yes, the people of Scotland have voted for it, in the case of Scotland, therefore we think that is right and we are absolutely committed to it. It's much more subtle than that? HAGUE: I say they voted for it and now we have to make a success of it. Now you can call that (INTERRUPTION) .. you can call that embracing it or not, but well not reluctant because it's irrelevant now whether it's reluctant or not, we have to make a success of it. If we don't make a success of the Scottish parliament within the United Kingdom the United Kingdom is going to be destroyed, so the Conservative Party has got to join in making a success of the Scottish parliament. We have to prove ourselves wrong in a way, we have to prove somehow that you can hang the United Kingdom together with a Scottish parliament in it, because the Scottish parliament is not going to go away. In order to do that we have to play an active part in the Scottish parliament and be enthusiastic about what it can achieve for the people of Scotland, but we also have to redress the balance in the Constitution as a whole, and we will produce in the next few weeks our proposals on that, which will almost certainly involve changing the voting position of Scottish Members of Parliament at Westminster in some way... HUMPHRYS: So they wouldn't be able to come down here and vote on our things because we can't go up there and vote on there's as it were. HAGUE: Basically yes, and I'll come to the details of that in due course when we make our announcement, but we have to respond to that, and I don't think people in Scotland can object to that. And if we don't respond to it we will see the rise of English nationalism that really would destroy the United Kingdom. We're seeing a a bit of it already, and there is nothing wrong with a legitimate English political conscientiousness, but I don't want to see it become English nationalism. HUMPHRYS: There would have to be a pretty substantial bit of re-balancing in that case then wouldn't it, something like an English parliament perhaps? HAGUE: Well, not necessarily. We'll come to the specific proposals... HUMPHRYS: But that isn't something that you - I know you're not going to give me the details because you haven't published them, but that isn't something - and English parliament isn't something that is ruled out when you sit down as you are at the moment and think about what you're going to do next. HAGUE: It's one of the logical options people have to look at and really the point I'm making is the Conservative Party now has to move on to those things - we've not been associated with constitutional change before, and we wouldn't have chosen this, to go into constitutional change. But that's now where the country has had it. Somebody is going to have to finish the job that the Labour think they can do half of. Somebody is going to have to try to make sense of what they're doing with the second Chamber of Parliament, starting out on the reform of the House of Lords without having a clue what they want to turn it into except into some sort of neutered body that will do the bidding of the Prime Minister of the day, which seems to be what they are really after. I say that's not good enough. We wouldn't have started blundering about with the House of Lords at this point, but if we're going to change it we must get a stronger second chamber out of it, we must get a stronger parliament out of it that is better equipped to hold the government of they day to account and that means reform of the House of Commons as well as of the House of Lords. HUMPHRYS: So to deal with the second chamber first, does stronger mean as far as you're concerned, a more legitimate second chamber. That means obviously a degree of election. You're electing members, some or all of the members, or does it mean a more powerful one? HAGUE: It many mean both. It certainly means a more powerful one. If we are going to change the second Chamber of Parliament then I believe we want to finish up with a chamber more readily able to hold the government of the day to account. We have a Government at the moment that is diminishing parliament, that tries to use it as little as possible, that makes announcements outside parliament, that tries to take as little notice as possible of parliament. I want to make sure that the second chamber of parliament can give greater scrutiny to what the government of the day are doing, and that the House of Commons can do so as well. HUMPHRYS: Now that does make the House of Commons weaker though wouldn't it. Inevitably, I mean if you have a more powerful second chamber overseeing the things that the first chamber does....... HAGUE: No, because that is not a zero sum game, you can actually enhance the power of the legislature vis-a-vis the executive, and you can actually have a stronger parliament as a whole, and so you can end up with a stronger second chamber and a stronger lower chamber. HUMPHRYS: If you became Prime Minister you and your cabinet would have relative to parliament less power in future. That's the way you would like to see it.? HAGUE: Yes. I would want to put in place in the early stages of a new government, changes to the way Parliament operates and gives Parliament greater power, expertise and authority and I am going to set up the policy making work in a few weeks time which will fashion the precise ideas by which we will do that. It is vital, I think, for democracy in this country that we strengthen representative democracy. That's one of the reasons I'm in favour of local government being stronger rather than weaker.. HUMPHRYS: Not another reform of local government? HAGUE: Not.. HUMPHRYS: Please. HAGUE: I do not mean a reform of the structure of local government, which I think we should be fed up with reforming and which can waste a lot of money and I'm definitely not going to be embarking on that. But it does mean incrementally giving more authority and freedom to local government. It does mean strengthening representative... our principal representative institution which is parliament. At the moment democracy is being weakened by the functions and authority of parliament being taken away, that needs to be turned round and to do it successfully you have to do it in the early days of a new government. HUMPHRYS: Right, can we turn to another part of your speech. You talked about the family, you are going to reintroduce into the tax and benefits systems, I'm quoting, an explicit and special recognition of marriage. So, unmarried couples will be excluded therefore. HAGUE: Yes, if you have an explicit recognition of marriage, it applies to people who are married. And I think that is very important. I think it is a con to say that a Budget is for the family to destroy the last recognition of marriage in a tax and benefits system, which is what Gordon Brown set about doing this week. Successful marriages are an important part of families, an important component of having successful and stable families in the country. And yet he seems to think you can just cast all that aside and say the Budget is for families in other ways, although a lot of it wasn't very specific about how it would help families. Well I think we will need to change that and we will need to do better not only than this government, but better than our last government about reinforcing the importance of marriage. HUMPHRYS: Can I give you two quotes, first one: "We've allowed...." (this from your speech) "We've allowed a left-wing liberal consensus to emerge that says that marriage doesn't matter, that society should be neutral about the kind of way people would lead their lives" quote one. Quote two, this is from an interview in this studio I think it was just before you became the Leader of the Party "I am not going to preach to the public about moral values." So now something has changed in that time. Is it that you have got married? - Is that what has happened. HAGUE: It encourages me to believe that marriage is a good thing. Well, no, actually it's - nothing has changed. HUMPHRYS: Well yes, on the one hand you were being neutral, on the one hand you oppose neutrality, on the other hand you were being neutral. HAGUE: The important thing about this is not to be absolutist about it. I believe a country to have a stable, successful society needs a large proportion of stable and successful marriages. I believe the state should do what it can to help that, although it can't absolutely control it. But I am not saying everybody has got to get married. We have got to respect and understand the situations of people who prefer to live in a different way who don't want to get marriage, or whose marriages fail. Everybody has seen it in their own families. So I am not saying everybody has got to get married. I am not going to fall into the trap of saying we are in favour of marriage in such a way that every time somebody in my party does something inconsistent with marriage it's an embarrassment to the whole policy. The policy is not that everybody has got to get married and be married and have a successful marriage. The policy is that the state should send out the signals and send out whatever help it can to people who want to make a success of being married. HUMPHRYS: When you talk about sending out signals, does it every worry you that the signals we send out now, according to some people in your own party, deliver the wrong message to youngsters. We saw the Royal College of Nursing this week advocating that school nurses should be able to prescribe the Morning After Pill to eleven year olds. Does that sort of thing worry you? HAGUE: Yes these things do worry me actually. There needs to be good sex education but sometimes we do send out the wrong signals and a government that says marriage is no different from anything else is sending out the wrong signal to the country. Thankfully governments aren't powerful enough to destroy the institution of marriage and that is one of the mercies in this whole thing. It will persist - most young people today still aspire to be married and to make a success of it. HUMPHRYS: Alright. Inclusivity - including everybody - what you are saying to your party is we have a new agenda. That means that you must have within your party MPs who are more representative of society than some of those you have now. What you don't want is an elitist party that stands only for the few. And yet, the way things are going in your party at the moment, is that it is going to continue to be just that isn't it, how are you going to change that? HAGUE: Well we've started making the change and I recognise that we've got to make more of a change. We're not going to do it through quotas and shortlists. I don't believe in all-women shortlists which they had in the Labour Party for a time in the last Parliament, I think that's patronising for women. I think it often produces the wrong candidate. I do want to see, for instance, more women succeeding on merit in the party, my party, and becoming candidates, and becoming senior figures in the party. To do that I have to bring them in and I've... HUMPHRYS: You've also got to change things within your own party haven't you. HAGUE: A bit of that too. HUMPHRYS: Because we saw that very bizarre business this week of one of your women candidates being asked whether - because she's an actress - whether she'd starred in a porn film. Bizarre sort of stuff isn't it. HAGUE: We have to change some attitudes within the party, although it's not always..sometimes these things get exaggerated but we do have to change attitudes within the party and we do have to bring in more people and that is why now we are going out to look for candidates as well - I'm not just sitting in Central Office, saying: anybody who wants to be a candidate roll up and be interviewed. I'm sending people out to look for good candidates. Particularly among young talented women who can come into the party and make a success. HUMPHRYS: But they'd want to feel that they were welcome and you say you don't want all-women shortlists, fine but one woman on every shortlist perhaps. I mean that wouldn't exactly be radical in this day and age would it. HAGUE: I want them to succeed on merit and that is what I am setting out to do.. HUMPHRYS: But your constituencies aren't selecting women, that's one of the problems isn't it. I mean merit or no if you're telling me that.... If we take a typical constituency there is not a single woman who on merit should be chosen - that's a bit odd. HAGUE: No well wait a minute, we've only had one or two selections so far (both speaking at once)... we've had two by elections in Conservative seats in this parliament and in one case a woman was chosen as the candidate - great, that's good. Now I want to see that happening more often. We're getting more varied people, getting a wider spread of people standing in council elections. In these local elections which take place in six or seven weeks' time we will have first of all more candidates than we had four years ago but we will also have younger candidates, candidates who are more broadly representative of their communities than they were four years ago so it takes time but you have to start at that level and we have started at that level, there are new people coming into the party. You said in your introduction there was no sign of recovery of the Conservative Party..... HUMPHRYS: Oh two by election results........ HAGUE: Actually the membership is going up for the first time, I don't think the membership of any other party is going up. We're winning seats all the time in council elections, of course we'll see on May sixth whether that happens in a big way but we're seeing it every week in by elections. The party has actually started a recovery but now we're at the point where we say - now we break free we develop the new policies and we can get some positive enthusiasm not just the absence of hostility. HUMPHRYS: Inclusivity means also including people on the different policies that divide them at the moment. Europe, letting candidates speak their mind for instance about the Euro. Now what if your local associations start to deselect candidates, people like David Curry and Ian Taylor who take an entirely different view from you, from your party policy on the Euro. What will you say to them to those constituencies? HAGUE: Constituencies are always free to chose the candidate they want to chose...... HUMPHRYS: You won't lean on them, you won't set a lead? HAGUE: I'm not going to lean on them to deselect anybody, equally they are free to chose their own candidates but I do not want to see members of parliament such as the ones you mention driven out of the Conservative Party, excluded from the Conservative Party. Those people are Conservatives and the Conservative Party is going to remain a broad church. There will not be one hundred per cent agreement on European policy in any party in the country and there never will be in hundreds of years because any group of people, get together any group of people in any room in the country and you'll find some disagreement on this and people are allowed to be Conservatives without agreeing with one hundred per cent of the policies. The party's policy on this is clear and it's not going to change. HUMPHRYS: So you've done a sort of, signed a kind of truce have you with Messrs. Heseltine and Clarke? HAGUE: I've not signed anything...I know you don't mean that.. but there is no formal truce of any kind but I think there is a mutual respect that I say it doesn't stop people being a Conservative because they take a different view on one policy and they recognise that I have resolved what the policy of the party is going to be at the next election. I've had a ballot of the entire membership which gave emphatic support to the policy and that policy will be clearly expressed in the forthcoming elections in fact the Conservative Party will be the only party that stands for being in Europe but not run by Europe and I think that will be a big advantage. HUMPHRYS: So you would expect Messrs. Heseltine and Clarke amongst others to vote with you as John Major said he was going to do this morning on the Euro? HAGUE: I expect them to support official Conservative candidates in the European elections...... HUMPHRYS: And if they don't? HAGUE: Well that's a very hypothetical question because they've given every indication that they will do so and I think that will be true of all Conservative members of parliament, we're not at the point of a referendum yet so I respect people with a difference of view but be under no doubt about it we have sorted out our policy on Europe, it's very clear, it's not going to change, it represents the majority view of the people of this country and that's where I'm going to stand. HUMPHRYS: So does that mean the Euro is not going to be a major player..... is going to be a major player in the European elections campaign? HAGUE: I think it will be an important issue in that election. I don't want it to be the only issue because we also have a positive vision of Europe about bringing in the Eastern European countries, about completing the single market, free trade with the rest of the world, we have got a lot to propose about the European Union as well as some things to oppose. So it's not just about the Euro. But the Prime Minister has now elevated the importance of the Euro as an issue, he has in effect committed us to going into it as soon as possible whatever the consequences, he has nailed his colours to that mast so that makes it an important issue. HUMPHRYS: Is that in spite of what Michael Heseltine has said which is that it's not an issue? HAGUE: Well it is an issue........ we can't avoid it being an issue..... HUMPHRYS: Well that's what he said.... (both speaking at once) He said it was irrelevant....... HAGUE: I'm sure interviewers like yourself will make sure it's an issue. You're going to ask me - it is an issue, it is an issue...... but it is one of a series of issues in the European elections and the Conservative party will, as I say, we're only party that stands for being in Europe but not taken over by Europe. HUMPHRYS: William Hague, than you very much indeed. HAGUE: Thank you very much. FoLdEd