As mentioned the other day, I recently interviewed David Cameron for the lastest issue of the Spectator. We’ve just uploaded that article onto the website – you can read it here. But he also answered your questions, and at some length. I grouped together many which were on the same theme. To business:-
So, why Follow Gordon Brown’s spending plans?
* Last Thursday showed that the country doesn’t believe Brown. Why does he together with George Osborne still believe that Brown’s spending plans are sustainable ? (Gavin, 10.22am)
* Now the Tories have proved they are a credible opposition and the public is listening to what you say will you break from Labour’s spending plans that are leading this country to ruin? (Mike, 9.19am)
* I’d love to know why, at this point, Mr. Cameron does not simply go to the electorate and say “I know I said I would match Labour’s spending plans over the first two years of a Conservative government, but the economic situation has changed and this would no longer be a wise or prudent way of spending money up to 2012. (Stuart, 8.52am)
CAMERON: “I look at it a different way which is that I think actually the course I set of saying no unfunded tax cuts and all of that…”
NELSON: “Come off it, no one is calling for ‘unfunded tax cuts’ as well you know.”
CAMERON: “No, no, no, the argument of being prudent, very careful, not sloshing around all over the place, given the scare of the government’s deficit – we’ve been proved right about that. So that is the ‘tax’ part of the equation. On the spending part of the equation, I know there are some people who say it is terribly limp-wristed to have stuck to government spending plans. But what we are sticking to is 2%, 2%, 2%. That is very tight, that is very tough – particularly with public sector organisations that have been used to 6% and 7% increases in some years. So I don’t accept the argument that 2% isn’t tough. And we’ll see the proof over the coming years as I think Labour will have a very tough time keeping public spending and public sector pay and other things under control. I am a realist and not a dreamer. I know that 2% spending growth is tough and I don’t want to live in the pretend world of saying ‘I’ll be even tougher and we can use these proceeds to cut your taxes’ because I think that will be very difficult to deliver. So I would rather try and deliver something that can be delivered and win people’s trust and demonstrate competence that way than to promise what I think will be very difficult to deliver.”
Brownies
* Please, please, please ask Cameron why he and the Tory party allow Brown to get away with what we at Coffee House have named ‘Brownies’. (Tom, 9.22am)
* Please ask him why the Tories allow the Labour party to get away with all these outrageous Brownies. (Jonathan, 10.29am)
* Why are the Tories so poor at capitalising on Brown’s Brownies? (Duncan, 10.52am)
CAMERON: “I think this is a very fair point and I am going to try and do this because I have noticed at Prime Minister’s Questions he produces one stretched figure after another. I think the problem with Prime Minister’s Questions, or indeed in interviews, is that you want to try and spend the time on the things that you want to talk about rather than endlessly unpicking everything that they have got. But I think I could do more on this because I think he does it knowing that no one is going to pick him up on it. He just wants to get to the subject he wants to talk about but it’s a fair point.”
So, where are your Policies?
* Please can we raise the threshold and take the poorest out of tax and welfare dependency? Tories need to make this their policy before anyone else does. (Michael, 11.51am)
* Which taxes will you cut and why? (Tom, 12.06pm)
* Other than a greater sense of empathy, what exactly are you offering “hard working families?
* While it is a good idea to keep one’s powder dry in terms of actual policy, particularly with Labour currently imploding, at some point concrete, costed, proposals will be required by both the media and the electorate. Assuming we wait until 2010 for the next election, when will those policies be forthcoming? (Richard, 9.20am).
CAMERON: “This is the perennial problem in opposition. The right time to set out your tax and spending proposals is at an election – and I don’t believe in producing fully worked up Shadow budgets every single year. I am not saying, Clint Eastwood-like, that there are only two sorts of policy in this world – good ones that get stolen by your opponents and bad ones that get hung round your neck forever. But it is a thought to keep in your head. Many people have said we’d never make any breakthroughs in politics until we had more policies. To which I would reply: this train has just gone through Conservative-controlled Nuneaton.
“We have produced detail policy work, I think in a way that oppositions haven’t done previously and I think I am going to do this at my own speed, in my own way, to my own timetable in order to deliver good government rather than just to satisfy a media that always wants even more detail. Although many times when you give them the detail they don’t actually bother to report it. So I am going to do it in my own way, in my own time.
“I think that you have got to, what you have got to deliver is that combination of policy and direction and vision and judgement and I think sometimes people misunderstand that. It is that mixture of things that people want to see, to know what your government is going to be like rather than knowing the 14th piece of legislation you are going to produce. So I argue that we have produced policy, it is good policy. The proof is: who came up with the ideas on inheritance tax, on a points-based system on immigration, on synthetic phonics in schools? I could go on forever on ideas we have come up with, the border police force, that the government has either half copied or wholly copied. So I think the Conservative party has been setting the agenda pretty much ever since I became leader of the party on things like environment, education or whatever. Lots of the policies we have produced have been stolen, so I don’t accept we haven’t produced any policies.”
Do you really get on with Boris?
* Much has been reported over the last few days about relations between himself and Boris Johnson, ask him to set the record straight. (Carol-Ann, 9.26am)
CAMERON: “Relations are good. Just in the last few days I have spoken to him on the phone several times, we get on very well. No, I think people always want to try and find mischief between people.”
That Pesky Lisbon Treaty
* Will you put the EU constitution, er sorry EU reform treaty to a public referendum? If that referendum rejects the treaty will you withdraw from it? (Mike, 9.27am)
* What is the Tory policy on Europe? (batman, 11.58am)
* What will he do with the Lisbon Treaty if the tories win the general election after it has already entered into force? (Francisco Mendes da Silva, 12.00pm)
Cameron is studiously tight-lipped on this. Any discussion could draw the party into a maelstrom at a time when unity is needed. But one theory, which I have now heard from two Shadow Cabinet members, is that the Conservatives would insert in their manifesto a pledge to renegotiate the terms of Britain’s membership of the European Union and then hold a referendum on the result. It would be a herculean task, which would take years. But when I put the proposal to Mr Cameron, I did not receive the denial I expected.
CAMERON: “These suggestions are options for how to deliver what I’ve spoken about,” (ie, his promise not to let “things rest”) “I am not going to comment favourably or unfavourably on any option like that until we are ready to do so.”
* Please ask David Cameron what he will do about the Lisbon Treaty? and will he give us the referendum he promised? (Elizabeth Elliot-Pyle, 2.53pm)
CAMERON: “We haven’t had the Irish referendum, it is still live in the capitals of Europe, if there was an election in the next few months it would still be possible to have a referendum. What I mean is if the Treaty goes through and it is passed in Westminster and Brussels and we wanted to come forward with our proposals for how we would rectify that and what we want to do about it and we will do that in time in our own time, if it does become ratified by every country in Europe. But I’m a great believer that, you know, my deadlines are to get the decisions right, to think them through carefully, to make sure that the policy works and to have it all in place for the next election whenever that is. Other people’s deadlines are rather different and I have to work to my deadlines rather than other people’s and that’s the only way to deal with it. “
A Tory Policy in Europe
* Even if you want to stay in the EU how about signalling that we will work as true Europeans just like just about every other member country? i.e take what benefits us, and ignore the rest of their stupid legislation (Travis Bickle, 9.25am)
* How do you reconcile unelected Brussels bureaucrats dictating how we run our affairs with Parliamentary Democracy? (wonderfulforhisage, 10am)
Travis, I put this slightly differently. The French have a very good way of telling Brussels to go to hell – okay, see you in court in seven years’ time, they say. Should Britain not approach this more muscular approach to Europe? Instead we goldplate all legislation, making it even stronger.
CAMERON: “You have got two questions slightly muddled up there. One is: should you gold plate the EU legislation like we do and the answer is no, we shouldn’t. My whole Ministerial team I think would come from a different position to Labour who – I think – are always thinking ‘what more laws can I pass to make people better’ whereas actually Conservatives instinctively think ‘how can I make sure that this regulation and this law does not interfere with people’s lives unnecessarily’. So you can stop the gold plating. But there is a second issue in there which is once a law has been passed in Europe or elsewhere, should it be obeyed? I think the British tradition of only passing laws that we think we are going to obey is a good one and I think it has been weakened by this government, by passing lots of stupid laws and I don’t want us to slip into the kind of Sicilian approach of oh well, never mind, it’s a European law. That is I think one of the strengths of our country, is the rule of law and obeying the law and not just treating it as a kind of interesting guide to life.”
NELSON: “That’s because we come from a common law tradition where laws normally represent the settled will of the people – whereas the Europeans have Roman law – often alien to their culture, so they don’t respect this. And isn’t this the problem, that this common law country is being force new Roman Law-style regulations?”
CAMERON: “Yes, it is a problem and it has been made worse by the gold plating so the two issues are linked but we do need to in our minds separate them out and try and deal with the one which will help with the other.”
Scotland
* Oh yes ask about the Barnett formula and whether Osborne will reform it (Cindy, 9.47am).
CAMERON: “Now that even Lord Barnet has said the Barnet Formula needs to be looked at, I think the time is approaching when it does. But I just keep trying to reassure people or trying to explain to people that there isn’t some vast pot of money for the English if this were to happen. If we had a needs based formula, Scotland has very great needs and those will be reflected in any new formula so I’m determined not to play to a sense of, a false sense of English grievance.”
I asked him his thoughts about cutting the financial chord and granting the “fiscal autonomy” to Scotland that Spain currently grants to the Basque Country.
CAMERON: “I’m happy for us to look at those sorts of things but as we discussed earlier, I am a genuine and convinced and heartfelt unionist and I know how important it is that the Conservative party doesn’t look like it is jumping on this issue in an inappropriate way, if I can put it that way.”
Justice
* What will Cameron do about increasingly activists judges and their peverse interpretation of the Human Rights Acts that is undermining justice and immigration policy in this country. (Jeff, 9.56am)
CAMERON: “You have to disentangle the European Convention on Human Rights and the European Court of Justice and what are the consequence of our membership of the European Union and what are the consequences of our being signatory to the ECHR and our passage in the Human Rights Act. You have got to separate those two things but taking the Human Rights Act, what we have said is that we think it would be better to have a British Bill of Rights where you can write down more clearly rights and responsibilities so you give the Strasbourg Court the margin of appreciation in your benefit when it comes to the interpretation of whether …”
NELSON: “But your Bill of Rights would still be junior to Strasbourg.”
CAMERON: “That is true, the options are you can either have the status quo which is full incorporation via the HRA, you can pull out of the ECHR altogether – I’ve always thought that’s not the right option because I think the message it sends to other countries in Europe that are working hard to achieve better human rights and joining the sort of European family of nations for us to walk out the other end, I think it is something we wouldn’t want to do and that’s why I think the option of a British Bill of Rights that gives you the margin of appreciation that other countries have would help and I hope that would help us with some of the frankly rather loopy judgements you occasionally get.”
Snouts in the Trough
* Will you instruct the Conservative MPs to vote against these rumoured 15% pay rises? (Travis Bickle, 9.25am)
Travis, I asked a different version of the same theme. In his Cardiff speech he referred to the “broken politics” of Westminster – acknowledging public contempt for the nose-in-the-trough approach of Westminster. So why not set an example by returning all the Short money (ie, taxpayers’ cash) and go online for donations as Obama does?
CAMERON: “Yes, it has been suggested! Look, I think running an effective opposition does cost money. There are parts to the job that are very much related to what happens in Parliament and that’s why short money was invented and that’s why I think there is a justification for it. What I have instead focused on is to try and raise money from more people so that we are less reliant on large donations and also paying off the vast debts of the Conservative party and we have made big progress on that. We did have twenty whatever it was three million pounds of debt and we have now got six million so it is a big change and I’m focused on that and on being less reliant on the big donors but at the moment I can’t see the circumstances in which we could dispense with short money and be an effective opposition at the same time.”
Low tax Economics
* Do you and George Osborne feel confident that you could explain the Laffer Curve to the electorate? (Tiberius, 11.12am)
* Do you believe that individuals spend their money more wisely than governments? (Idle, 11.12am)
Again, I put this to him slightly differently. John McCain, whom he so admires, says that there is a philosophical difference between him and the left: that he believes lower tax rates lead to higher tax. The basic Laffer argument, I said to Cameron. Does he agree with McCain, or with Brown whose Treasury regards tax cuts as a static loss. In short, I said, it’s the Laffer argument – where does he stand?
CAMERON: “Laffer is an economist not a philosopher. I think that there is a philosophical difference between the Left and the Right and that philosophical difference which I entirely sign up to is that over time you should leave people with more of their own money to spend as they choose because they make the right decisions more often than government.” (There’s your answer, Idle) “ That is a philosophical reason. Actually Laffer is not a philosophical reason, Laffer is an economic justification which may or may not be true in particular circumstances. I think it was true when income tax rates were 98% under Labour, there was a Laffer curve effect. I think it is far more difficult to argue a Laffer curve effect when the top rate of tax is 40%. Now that doesn’t mean you don’t want to cut taxes, we do and we will, but I think claiming Laffer in terms of income tax reductions in the UK will be pretty hard.”
He seemed to be saying we are at the optimal peak of the Laffer curve. But America’s tax burden is far lower than ours. I said – and McCain argues – there is still some way to go.
CAMERON: “This is a very difficult area. The straight Laffer argument, there were some taxes that were so high that literally in cutting them you got more revenue in immediately, that was almost like a static effect. I think there is a longer term argument which is that if you are able to reduce tax rates you will, over time, build revenues. For example, corporation tax where we are committed to cutting rates I think that over time that will help keep business in the UK, attract business to the UK, so there is a dynamic case for tax reduction but I don’t think, I am at heart a fiscal Conservative rather than a supply side and I think that it is very important for politicians to stick to some basic rules about not spending money you don’t have and managing the nation’s finances carefully and all the rest of it. I think that is right and important and beware the politician that gets too carried away with Laffer because it is often a politician who wants to have his case and eat it and offer tax cuts and when asked the question where is the money coming from, oh it will all pay for itself.”
Poverty
* How will you reduce child poverty – you haven’t published any plans to make work pay more for low income families, or any plans to change the benefits system.(JR, 11.57am)
CAMERON: “Labour has moved a lot of people from just below the poverty line to just above it and claimed success. The left’s answer is to use lots of taxpayers’ money to change benefits and tax credits, so that you solve the symptom of poverty which is shortage of money. The cause of poverty is the drugs, alcohol, the crime, educational underachievement, family breakdown and worklessness What you need is a conservative tool to reach the progressive goal. And that is to solve the cause of the poverty, which in many cases is worklessness, therefore vigorous welfare reform. Or drug abuse – so emphasis is on residential rehab. Family breakdown – so the emphasis on changes to tax and benefits so families come together and stay together.”
One Nation Toryism
* Do you consider yourself a One Nation Tory, or a Thatcherite? (Buckinghamshire Tory, 12.05pm)
CAMERON: “We were talking earlier about Peel, we can talk about Disraeli. The centre-right tradition in politics has always been about the elevation of the condition of the people, ending the ‘two nations’ of rich and poor. For a while in the 1980s, the Conservatives did become the party of economics: free markets and enterprise. I was all in favour of it. But another part of Conservatism is about social reforms, improving the state of society or the nation. I hope I have restored some balance there.”
Abortion
Okay, no one asked about this. But I’m sure Nadine is interested – as am I.
CAMERON: “I will support a reduction from 24 weeks, I have spoken about a modest reduction to 20 or 21. My concern about 20 is the sort of scan date crossover point so I’ll vote for 21 or 20 depending on what options are put on the table but it is not a whip vote, it will be a conscience vote and I am proud of the fact that by actually by pushing Brian week after week on free votes I did actually make some progress on that actually. A lot of people thought what the hell are you going on about this for but I felt really strongly about it. I cannot see how you can have embryology without all sides having a free vote at least on the key issues if not on the third reading as well.”
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