Maude responds

Here are Francis Maude's answers to the questions posed by CoffeeHousers:

Sue Denim

"The Tories are ignoring their base to chase the votes of the soft centre-left. Discuss."

I don’t really know what this means.  We have to be a national party, generous in outlook and broad in appeal.  I’ve always thought that most people’s instincts and preferences are in line with ours: for social responsibility rather than central state control; believing that there is such a thing as society but that it’s not the same thing as the state.  We’ve never believed that everything can be left to the market or that individual responsibility is all.  We know that there are deep-seated social problems that require pro-active intervention – for example getting people who’ve been out of the labour market back into work, or reducing crime by getting ex-prisoners back into the mainstream rather than back into prison as happens with two thirds of them currently.  But these are areas where the state has failed, and we believe the answer is to mobilise voluntary and commercial organisations.  In addition, we know that public spending has to be restrained.  These are Conservative approaches, applied to the Britain of today and tomorrow.  We hope they’ll appeal to voters across Britain, wherever they see themselves in the political spectrum.

James

"If Labour manage to win the next general election, where do you think the blame will lie?"

I’m simply not interested in apportioning blame today for something that we profoundly hope won’t happen.  I’m much more interested in avoiding the occasion for it.

DM Again

"Do you accept the BBC is institutionally biased against the Tories?"

I don’t think it’s institutionally anti-Conservative.  But I do think the BBC does have what even Andrew Marr called an “innate liberal bias”. And it can get very out of touch with the public, as the Russell Brand Jonathan Ross debacle illustrated.

With ITV news devoting less coverage to politics and newspaper circulations in decline the BBC’s role in delivering high quality objective news and programming is more important than ever. It must set the benchmark in good broadcasting and its mission must be to attract large audiences to quality programming. However it shouldn’t chase ratings at the expense of decency and standards.

We also need to look closely at the how the BBC is regulated. There should be a body clearly independent of the corporation that can hold it to account.  We need the BBC but we also need healthy competition to boost choice and drive up quality.

David Lindsay

"Why did you sign the Maastricht Treaty?"

A question my friends often ask me!  It had to be signed by Finance and Foreign ministers from each member state.  When the date approached Norman Lamont, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, consulted his diary and found he had pressing business elsewhere.  So he offered me the opportunity to put my footprints on the sands of history by signing as his deputy.

Seriously though, I was a member of the government, and along with all other ministers, none of whom resigned, I agreed that the opt-outs on the single currency and on the Social Chapter ensured that the most damaging parts of the Treaty could not be imposed on Britain.  It didn’t seem to me that actually appending my signature to the Treaty was significantly different from voting for it in the House of Commons, as did the entire ministerial team.  I signed the Treaty as the representative of the Government when I was already accepting collective responsibility for its actions as one of its members.

Gawain

"As Coffee House has highlighted, Brown is winning the propaganda war with a stream of dodgy statistics, particularly his debt figures and dubious economics. He is getting away with blue murder (pun intended). Is there anything the opposition can do to use Parliament to expose this and to hold the ONS and Brown to account?"

This weeks’s ONS figures put the Government on course to borrow a record-breaking £67 billion this year. Gordon Brown’s failure to prepare Britain means that borrowing has reached record levels before we’ve seen the worst of the downturn and before he embarks on a further borrowing binge. He has maxed out on the nation’s credit card and now he’s planning to take out another one. That is why the Conservatives have said that to clear up this mess and set Britain on a path to lasting tax cuts we need to slow the growth of government spending from 2010, and we need an Office of Budget Responsibility so that never again can a Government play havoc with the public purse.

Melissa Forward

"It is well known that you and Douglas Hurd signed the Maastricht Treaty on behalf of the UK. How would you vote in the referendum on the Lisbon Treaty that your leader has promised (subject to caveats) - for or against?"

Easy.  I’ll vote No.