28/02/2013 Question Time

Tonight we were live in Eastleigh with the polls close in the by-

election that set the two coalition parties set against each other and

saw UKIP apparently coming up on the rails. Welcome to Question Time.

Good evening to you at home. Good evening to our audience here.

Welcome to our panel. On our panel the Liberal Democrat Home Office

Minister brown brown Brown, lab's shadow leader of the Commons,

Angela Eagle, the Conservative MP, adviser to David Cameron, Claire

Perry, the former Tory MP, Neil Hamilton, who lost his seat over

accusations he took cash for asking questions if in the House of

Commons, a charge he denies. And he now sits on UKIP's National

Executive. And the radical left- wing film maker, Ken Loach.

APPLAUSE I should just say, obviously if we

get any news from the by-election, we'll bring it to you, and Andrew

Neil's programme follows Question Time and it will stay on air until

the result is announced. Our first question, from Jon Senior, please.

What lessons does the bruising election campaign in Eastleigh have

for the parties at the general election in 2015?

The election is over, so you can all speak your minds. I hope there

are people here who voted in the election. What lesson does this

election hold for the parties in the general election. Do you think

your party has beaten the stpwirs third place? I think Eastleigh --

Has beaten the Torys into third place? I think Eastleigh, there is

everything to play for for UKIP. Get used to UKIP, because we'll be

providing the real choice in 2015. Labour, Liberals and the

Conservatives are all led by euro fanatic leaders and are wholly

committed to membership of the EU, which stops us from doing so much

that we want to do - stopping open- door immigration and cutting taxes

and so forth. So you don't think we'll have a referendum on Europe?

The last time he reneged on the Lisbon Treaty. I'm personally sorry

for the amount of rubbish I have put through your doors and

contributed to your recycling. You must be happy that the caravan is

moving on. Apologies from all of us. You bored the electorate did you?

We welled the electorate. There are leaflets yesterdayisation, I've

made my mind up, just go away. That was good. Immigration, which is

down 30% year on year, but people are busy, they have busy lives.

They are not all tuning in to watch political programmes. We need to be

talking about the things that matter to people, the cost of

living and local issues. The lesson we should take away if we are

trying to talk about the big, important stuff like fixing Britain,

we have to keep making it relevant. No-one here tonight is going to go

home and say, hooray, the deficit is down. You are going to think

about filling your car. We should get into our constituencies and be

normal. Are you saying fuel duty is coming down? We've frozen it every

time... Sit coming down? Well, we've spent �5 billion helping

motorists, I would love it to come down. You think you have come third

to UKIP? I would love to see some fantastic, more fantastic women in

Parliament, across all parties. If we don't get Maria in we are

missing a chance to get in a really great candidate. If she hasn't won?

If she hasn't won. Do you think the Liberal Democrats have won, Jeremy

Browne? I don't know. Do you think? I hope we have. That's obvious too.

As everybody here will testify, the parties have fought themselves to a

bit of a standstill. I think the big message, you look at the

opinion polls, you look at the difficulties the parties in

Government have trying to get our country back on its feet in

extremely difficult times. You look at the circumstances, let's be

blunt about it, under Which? By- election was called. I don't think

anybody would think the Liberal Democrats have had a good week in

terms of national media coverage. Against that backdrop the big story

for me is not that the Liberal Democrats are crumbling away but

the resilience. We had the best candidate, I think that was

accepted by people who didn't even vote for him. We are here year on

year and day in and day out, not just flying the flag at election

time. I think people have appreciated that level of service

and the care we've shown to the people of that community. I hope

that is a winning combination and we'll show people tonight that the

Liberal Democrats are alive and kicking. I have one comment on the

literature that came round to. My mind it was lots of pretty pictures

mainly of candidates and sometimes of green fields. It said very

little. There was lots of paper with not a lot of information on it.

But vote today? Yes I did. Were you torn between the 14 parties?

didn't vote for any of the minor contenders. Although some of them

had very interesting points they clearly weren't going to get in and

it would've been a wasted vote. Personally I regret that Chris

Huhne is not still standing. I think he was a politician of great

significance, with what I felt was a very strong view which I agreed

with on climate change and energy policy. I think we've lost a

considerable personality there. APPLAUSE Angela Eagle? Well, I

don't think anyone could say that this is our biggest ever prospect

in the country. I think we would have a majority of 362 if we had

taken Eastleigh, but what we've done is fought a vigorous campaign,

gone around and talked to a lot of people about the things that matter

to them. There is no doubt that immigration's been a big issue in

the campaign here. We've had discussions about what we can do to

deal with that, to bring it down, to ensure that no foreign worker

should take a job at less than minimum wage and be exploitsed and

forced down people's wages, that we can deal with exploitative agencies

who only employ foreign people and bring them in. What lessons does

this campaign... To get out on the doorstep, to talk, listen and react.

Clare wants Maria to win but I think that it is a lot more

important than that for the Conservative Party. This is they

are 16th target Lib Dem seat. They need to win this seat, so they can

win the next election. I think it's 258 on our list, so if the

Conservatives tonight fail to take the seat and the circumstances that

Jeremy's alluded to, the difficult times they've been having, that

would be a worrying result for them. I also think... Hold on a second

Angela. If the Conservatives come third they've got a right to be

very worried. This is only informal but the latest tweeting from a

Liberal Democrat councillor is the Liberal Democrats have held the

seat and UKIP is second. Last time the Conservatives won an an overall

majority, last time they came second and now they are fourth.

do think it is much more serious than this. The Westminster tittle-

tattle we are listening to is what puts people off politics. APPLAUSE

I think there's a lot of people in this country who share a lot of

thoughts. They hate the break-up of the NHS. They hate the

privatisations and the outsources and the labour agencies and the low

wages. They hate the mass unemployment. They hate the casual

destruction of the environment that we see, and the gentleman referred

to. And there isn't a broad movement, a broad party that they

can vote for. People spend a lot of time saying, who are we going to

hold our nose and vote for? We need a broad movement on the left the

one thing I have in common with Neil is UKIP have done it for the

right. I disagree with everything that UKIP stands for... APPLAUSE

But, we need a broad movement of the left. It is now time it came

together. How would you get that? Every time the party moves to the

left, historically it seems to have lost votes. Well, I think there are

a number of things that should happen. The unions should stop

paying money to a party that's going to kick it in the teeth. The

Labour Party is a market economy party. It won't look after the

interests of working people, so I think the Labour Party should cut

off that tap and we should start again like they started over a

century again and form a new Labour Party. There'll be a problem,

because there was an a protecting the NHS candidate here, who I'm

sure said good things, and a good trade union canned day. But they

get no presentation. Every time I turned on the BBC or ITV to see the

election discussed, you never saw that point of view. There's got to

be a determination that the left has its voice, because it is

has its voice, because it is excluded at the moment. APPLAUSE

The gentleman alluded to the surprising number of independent

and minority parties that stood in this election. We've heard there's

a possibility that UKIP may have surprisingly come second - sorry

Neil. I love you too! Is that a simpton of perhaps the electorate

being sick of the big three parties? That so many people stand?

Absolutely is. There a certain frustration. There is a huge degree

of voter alienation in this country. I entirely agree with Ken. The vast

majority of the people of this country have lost faith in our

political system. When I was young, 85% of the country voted in the

general election. Last time it was down to 60%. The lifeblood of

political parties has been sucked out. They no longer represent real

people. Ken was right this, Westminster tittle-tattle, they are

all Westminster politicians, not all, Clare wasn't, but there is so

much careerism in politics today, you don't have the trade unions in

Parliament. Yes you do. Not so much as in the 1960s. The big lesson of

what lesson are we going to learn is that politicians have got to be

real again and not be in this bubble in Westminster wholly remote

from real people. We get your point. Third is what we are told

Conservatives are going to be. What will the effect of that be on the

Tory Party and on the Prime Minister? The last time the

governing party won a by-election was during the Falklands war, when

10, you talk about mass unemployment, unemployment is

coming down. Whereas the apology from Labour for the appalling

things that happen under Labour's what? I accept that politics is

broken. These people have been in Parliament a longer time than me.

We need people to come in who are committed to transparency and want

to fix Britain. If we look at what is happening between our two

parties who came together in the national interest, things are

improving. It is tough medicine. is not working. Growth is

increasing and employment -- unemployment is coming down. Growth

is not increasing. Wait, we will come to the economy in a moment.

Let me hear from a couple more members of the public. The problem

is that there is no alternative, is there? Pick Aberdyfi UKIP because

it is different. Batman people have voted for UKIP because it is

different. But Labour, Conservative and the Liberal Democrats are just

different colours. There is no real choice.

In a similar vein, getting to their election campaign, all the three

main parties did sound very scripted. On the campaign trail,

they all sounded similar. I would like to congratulate the Labour

candidate. I did not vote for him, but at least he came across as

fallible, funny, interesting and willing to talk about his own

agenda. And a loser at! I will take one more point and then go to

another question. Actually, the Labour Party candidate, I thought

the quote in his book about Margaret Thatcher was the most vile

thing I have ever heard. How anyone could put that is beyond me. Then

we had the Conservative candidate, who gave us a potted history of

Roman Eastleach, which made the Eastleigh residents laugh with

gusto, because it was just a field. Who did you go for? Lib Dem. Well,

I would have done. I am actually a Lib Dem councillor. A planted

audience! If we get any more news from the by election fund, I will

let you know. Let's have this question from Michael Fitzgerald.

Following the loss of the triple A rating, isn't it time we stepped

down the austerity and concentrate into on growing the economy? Let's

stick to the Ohuruogu about whether the Government should change its

policy with the loss of the trouble a rating. Was not trade too many

statistics that are incomprehensible to anyone except

the person who using them. Claire Perry? Well, nobody is celebrating

that we have lost a measure of Britain's responsibility. But the

question I constantly wrestle with and one of the reasons I came into

politics is, we know we had a borrowing crisis. We can either

borrow more, and I would love to hear Angela explain how borrowing

more means you borrow less, all we can tackle this deficit so our

children don't have to. Since the election, the global growth

forecasts have been downgraded. We have had a head wind of slow growth

across the world that has hit Britain's ability to grow. But the

government is trying to stop spending money on things that don't

deliver value and focus forensically on investment in

infrastructure. We are seeing it here and in the south-west. We are

spending half a billion quid in terms of new rail links to the

south-west. We are spending an enormous rail in -- an enormous

amount on CrossRail and high-speed rail. And we have created a million

jobs in the private sector since the election. It is slow and

difficult, but it is working. did you lose your trouble a rating

if it is working? If you read the small print, it says that if we did

not have this commitment to sorting out Britain's problems, the rating

would go down even further. If you want to join in this debate, get in

touch. We have a put a panellist tonight, the blogger Mark Wallace.

His day job is head off the Media Institute of Directors. You can

text commenced to us. Press the red button to see what others are

saying. Claire Perry says we are losing a measure of our credit

rating. But it is a measure that her party said it was important.

Surely this is a complete failure of the government's policy?

other side of the coalition, take up the cudgel? Like every Western

economy, we have a huge fight on our hands. The question is, are we

up for that fight as a country, or are we running away from it? Do we

lose our nerve? I think we have to be up for that fight, because all

of these countries across the western world have a pretty dire

economic outlook. Unless governments show the resolve to get

to grips with that and balance the books, the situation will get worse

rather than better. When this coalition government was formed in

2010, almost three years ago, for every �3 the Government was raising

in tax, it was spending �4. That is completely unsustainable. Whether

it is your household, your business or your country, you can't live

beyond your means indefinitely, so we are having to turn that round,

and we are making progress. The deficit is down by a quarter. About

a million jobs have been created in the private sector. We have low

interest rates. But will this be achieved overnight? No., and nor is

it being over -- achieved overnight in other countries across Europe.

There is a general election in Italy this week. I don't think they

will be able to form a coherent coalition government that can get

to grips with their problems. We have in this country. But for all

the rhetoric, it was George Osborne who made this the first of his

eight conditions for the economy. It was he who said the triple-A

rating was what he would be judged by. The two major economies that

have the top rating are Germany and Canada, and there are other two

countries that have got to grips with their deficit. Angela Eagle?

We now have two governments boat people talking about this, but the

loss of the trouble -- the triple-A rating is a total humiliation for

the Chancellor. He has failed the test he set himself as the number

one priority in the Tory manifesto, and that is because his economic

policy is failing. He has flatlined the economy, there is no growth

because he sucked the life out of the economy. What would you do?

Borrow more? Stop interrupting me. The issue here is that the

government's policy is failing. Claire, you say there have been a

million jobs new created, but you have sacked 520,000 people from the

public sector. You have reclassified 200,000 people from

the education sector into the private sector. So one-in-five of

the half million extra jobs there are are actually fiddled. But there

are more jobs. And there are over a million people who want more powers

and are under-employed. They are suffering from squeezed living

standards. What would you do? have no policy. Claire, let me

check this. -- let me chair this. You may get on very well with the

Speaker, he will get on less well with me if he did accept my

chairmanship. You can't talk over of the body. She is doing a pretty

good job so far. We have to have a fiscal stimulus. We need to try to

get people back to work. We have to cancel the tax cut for millionaires

that is coming in in April. And we have to introduce a 10 pence tax

rate. Do you borrow more, or not? There is good borrowing and bad

borrowing. If you borrow to invest in infrastructure, to build houses,

to put unemployed construction workers back to work, to create a

place where homeless people can live, that is good borrowing. If

you borrow �212 billion extra because your economic policies are

failing and the economy has ground to a halt, that is bad borrowing.

So your response would be to borrow more. You have to borrow more in

the short term, to put people back to work, to create infrastructure.

Claire Perry said they were investing in rail. All of that

investment is in the next Parliament. High Speed 2 will not

happen until the mid- 2020s, and not finish and which the North

until 2035. That investment will not get us out of the difficulty we

are in now. She alight introduce an air of reality into this

discussion? The reason why the Government has lost its triple-A

rating is because the ratings agency think they have not got to

grips with the deficit. And they are right. You would think there

would have been massive cuts from the way this discussion has gone.

Actually, government spending has increased since the last general

election. It was 670 billion in 2010. It is 730 billion this year.

This year, the deficit will still be �130 billion. These are colossal

sums of money. We can't go on burning money in this way. Hard

decisions have to be taken. Angela Eagle's policy is preposterous, to

borrow our way out of debt. That is not what I said. I said there is

some good borrowing for investment. If we had a Labour government

committed that, you would not have a double A rating, you would have a

double Z rating from the ratings agency. And that would make it more

expensive for everybody to borrow. It would be the kiss of death for

the economy. Jeremy was right in pointing out that Canada and

Germany have got the triple-A rating because they have got to

grips with their financial problems. They have got surpluses. Let's hear

from some members of our audience. The lady said we need to get more

construction jobs in this country. But I am unemployed, and I look on

the JobCentre website for jobs, and I would say almost half of the jobs

are for construction and places. The most available jobs are for

construction and nurses. So there are obviously places for people to

work. If you are building the high- speed railways and things like that,

you are not making jobs, you are just moving people off from some

two others. But non-jobs suitable for you? No. I could not go and

start bricklaying. Let me go back to Angela's point

about good borrowing and by a boring. What was the past Labour

government's boring, good or bad? Well, the issue here is that if you

are going to borrow money to do things that helped the country in

the future like build infrastructure projects at very low

interest rates, capital expenditure, that is a good thing. So the Brown

borrowing was good borrowing, was it? It re-equip the economy. We did

not have a recession and a banking crisis in 38 countries because we

spent too much on schools and hospitals. It is a massive failure.

Osborne said there was a test. He failed. The structural deficit has

also gone down the pan, but only through creative -- the deficit has

gone down a bit, but only through creative accounting. They are

failing on every front. But the economy lives in people, not just

in statistics and people's speeches. It lives in people. We have an

economy in a terrible state. There are 2.5 million people out of work.

1 million of them are young people. What future are we given to them?

And of course, there are all these cuts. The 1000 richest people since

the crisis began, their wealth has increased by �155 billion. The

range of inequality is massive. And meanwhile, the bottom 10%, the

poorest families, through these cuts, their average income has been

cut by 30%. This is 30% of nothing. People are living on air. So yes,

we have to change. We need a whole new economic strategy that gives

people a decent way of life. We are not doing it at the moment. And the

free market will not do it. It cannot do it. You never hear

politicians talking about full employment now. Never, because they

know they can't provide it. And if we can't give our kids the prospect

of a secure life with work, then Ken, I think it is an interesting

concept, but what is it we want people to do? Do we want to grow

our way out of this recession? By the way, the right thing to do,

Angela, would be to put something aside when the times were good.

you answer Ken Loach's point? your market economic system, will

you ever see full employment again? Are we going keep training kids in

the right things, getting manufacturing, you are talking down

the British chi. We are exporting more British cars now. Do you want

to employ nerve the state? We've tried that, under Labour in the

state, we have to have private sector growth daging us out of the

recession. -- dragging us out of the recession. If AAA is not bad at

what point is the rating bad that the Government would worry about

that, an A or a B? I take that question was rhetorical. You don't

seem the realise that the practical results of losing the AAA rating at

the moment is that in the local area we are losing 800 jobs at Ford,

which no politician fought for... APPLAUSE Not a single one of you

fought for that, the unemployment ratings in the cities have gone up,

so that unemployment rating sucks as well. APPLAUSE Straight away on

the back of that credit rate dropping, we lost was it 26, 26 out

of 28 housing associations had their credit rating dropped the

other day, so they are not a good investment. There is not going be

no more social housing built. the BBC had its credit rating

dropped, the properties in London and Salford have had their credit

rating reduced because they didn't know what's going to happen to the

BBC. I want to go on to another question. This is from Anjelica

Finnegan, please. Is the British political system a safe place for

women to work? APPLAUSE

The allegations against Lord Rennard, the former chief executive

of the Liberal Democrats, that led to this allegation, that he

absolutely denies. Jeremy, Brown, is the political system a safe

place in the light of everything we've been hearing? The question is

clearly aimed, as you just say David, at the revelation which have

been extensively covered in the media this week. Let me put it like

this. When I joined the Liberal Democrats I joined the Lib Dems,

this makes me a career politician, when I was 18 years old. I joined

the Lib Dems because I believed in the values of the party. I believed

in liberalism. I believed that you could combine being responsible

with the economy with having an enlightened, compassionate,

generous-spirited society where people could be free but also

realise their full potential. I want people who share those

instinctive Liberal values, regardless of whether they are men

or women, or their ethnicity, their age or whatever else it might be,

to feel they can join the Lib Dems, be a Lib Dem councilor or stand for

Parliament, and if there are people in this case, women, who feel they

couldn't pursue their Liberal instincts within the Liberal

Democrat party that is profoundly wrong and at source of great regret

to me and the party as a whole. We are now going to have two inquiries.

One into the specific allegations and one into our internal

complaints procedures. In a way there is no more I can say about it

at this stage. Those inquiries have to run their courses. Lord Rennard

has denied the allegations that have been made. Obviously it is

only reasonable that everybody concern should have a fair hearing

as part of that process. We are very committed to making sure that

people who share our Liberal values and instincts should have a home in

the Liberal Democrats. Do you think Nick Clegg handled it well? He

seemed to be all over the place, saying one thing and then another.

For me the rolling media story about who said what to whom at what

point isn't the central feature. To me, the central feature is that the

women who make these allegations, understandably feel upset. They

feel aggrieved. They are allegations that we take seriously.

That's why Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have set up these

two inquiries. They will be full, thorough inquiries and we will get

to the bottom of the truth. Obviously we want to make sure the

Liberal Democrats is a party that is appealing to women as well as

male members. I hope and believe that will also help the political

culture right across the board. I'm not just saying this to deflect

attention, but I don't think this is a situation that's unique to one

particular party. I hope it leads the wider cultural change. I don't

believe you are taking it seriously actually. I don't think the way

obviously with Nick Clegg trying to avoid it was taking it seriously. I

don't think this is just going to be a problem in the Lib Dems. I'm

doing a PhD in politics and teach a lot of students parliamentary and

constitutional politics in Britain. I don't know what to tell some of

the girls in my class, because I don't think they are going to have

the right opportunities to pursue a career this politics and I don't

think I would encourage them either. Angela Eagle? I think it is

unacceptable that women are put in this position and it shouldn't be

tolerated in any political party in any workplace and in our society

more generally. This is an issue that's often not talked about. It

needs to come to the surface and be dealt with. Women who are victims

of this need to be taken seriously and treated with respect. All too

often in many workplaces and in many instances we know that women

are basically pressurised into not saying anything, because they know

the consequences for them will be worse than the consequences for the

perpetrator. This is about the behaviour of men. In many ways men

need to stop and think about that and see that's unacceptable. We

need to develop different norms in our society. If this issue and the

way that it has come out helps us do, that all the better, but there

are too many places in our society that are male dominate, where the

power structures are male dominated and where this unacceptable

behaviour to women goes on and is tolerated. We need to put an end to

it. APPLAUSE And do you include the Labour Party in those strictures?

I've just said it happens everywhere. We've all got to ensure

that we've got the right processes in place to put a stop to it. I

think that it's far less tolerated in some places than others.

Feminism, that word, we have made progress in some places more than

others The Labour Party we have women-only short-lists. We've had

some big instances about women's advancement and equality in the

Labour Party. I think we are further along than many places. We

are often derided for it though. Harriet Harman has been a doughty

fighter for women's rights. In all her years in Parliament and she is

derided as Harriet "Harperson". We were all called Blair's Babes,

Cameron's Cuties. The way that politics is covered is not

respectable. Women need to be treated with respect for their own

political ideas. Until we change our culture it is very hard to get

51% of people in this country who've a right to be many politics

and change the culture of our politics, which is what we all need

to do. If we can do that, we can change our country far faster and

in a far more profound way than we have today, so let's get to it,

women, and sort this out. APPLAUSE I would like to ask, how do you

actually, how do you propose that you go about doing that? I believe

a few years ago you tried that and you were hit by a legal pursuit I

believe in trying... The women-only short-list. Yes. We changed the law

and we are now legal. I think the fascinating thing, if this had been

a female of any note there would have been lots of commentary about

her meerns, her age. This chap is not a looker, -- about her

appearance, her age, this chap is not a looker. I agree with ang lamb.

I think this is an endemic problem in all institutions that don't have

enough women in it. Ladies, I don't care what political party you are

part of, just get involved. If our voices aren't there, nobody else is

speaking up for us. That is the only way it changes. I think 50-50

is the system I was selected under. I think that's fair. We don't have

enough women coming through the political system of all ages, of

all types. That's what we have to change. Back to your original

question, yes it is safe to go into politics. I would rather be a

female MP in Britain than in Italy or Afghanistan. But we can do a lot

better than we are doing now, so please, ladies, get involved and

get your voices heard. Men have to change too. The Liberal Democrats

turned a blind eye to this didn't they? Nick Clegg's recollection is

just the fact that he turned a blind eye to it, and did the senior

Lib Dems. That will be true in the Savile case as well. There is

something else, it is not just the treatment of women but people

aren't owning up to it or seeing it in the workplace and doing

something about it. Ken Loach? The only thing I would add to what

Angela says, which I agree, with it is about power. It is a form of

bullying. It is the abuse of power by people who are no in a superior

position against people in an inferior position in the hierarchy.

They fear for their jobs. They fear for their careers. They feel that -

- they fear that something bad will happen to them in the organisation,

and that's wrong. It's the abuse of power. I think there are cases

where women have been involved. I don't think it is... Mainly men, I

grant you. Whether the guy was good looking or not isn't the point. Was

a cheap shot. APPLAUSE We've got to be much more serious than that. It

is an absolute evil in big organisations and we've all seen it

at different times. Angela is right. Everyone has to stand up and say

this is not on. I agree, there has been a bit of a cover-up. We can't

lump all sex scandals together. This is not ped fillia. It is not

the Savile -- this is not paedophilia. It is not the Savile

issue. Plainly they are not. Ken, do you think something's happened

as a result of the Savile exposures, which is that has been followed by

more and more allegations of various kinds of sexual harassment

which we had never heard before. could well be that. The danger of

that of course is that there is then a witch-hunt. That's also a

danger, because people are innocent until they've been proved guilty.

We must not forget that as well. APPLAUSE You Sir. I think the issue

about a "zero tolerance" towards sexual discrimination isn't really

contentious. It's a very important point, I don't want to dismiss it,

but I don't want to use it as an excuse to ignore that feg lied. I

think in this age when the trust between the trust and the

politicians at an all-time low. Chris Huhne was a liar, despite

what the gentleman said earlier. Nick Clegg lied and we shouldn't

ignore that. What was his lie? said he didn't know anything about

it and it has emerged that he does. That's unforgivable and people need

to say, that's wrong. After his I'm sorry video, it doesn't really feel

like he is. APPLAUSE Jeremy Browne, you can answer that specific point,

that he lied. My understanding is not that. My understanding is that

the differentiation that Nick Clegg made was between understanding

broad rumours that were within an organisation or hearing those

rumours and knowing about specific allegations that he could act on.

There's a distinction between those two. But I've already said that any

person who feels that they have Liberal values and wants to pursue

that through the Liberal Democrats but doesn't feel able to for

whatever reason, including this reason, that's wrong and that's why

we are having these inquiries and we want to change that culture if

it economists. I'm up front about that. We need to learn from what's

happened. Neil Hamilton? I have a rather Newcastle sideline to this.

I think I may be the only member on the panel who was arrested on

suspicion of rape. True. It was a false allegation. One thing you can

never say about the Hamilton household, it is not dull. The girl

ended up serving a prison sentence for perjury and perverting the

course of justice. I believe that the anti-dleevian attitudes which

have been -- antediluvian attitudes which have been exposed. It raise

as few eyebrows. And you get extraordinary responses to these

allegation, such as the one reported in this evening's Evening

Standard, a Liberal peer, said apparently if this sort of

behaviour was really found to be a resignation matter about half the

male members over 50 would not be seen. Well, that doesn't seem to be

to be the appropriate response to what are very serious and

distressing allegations. It is that kind of attitude which should be

Exeter patiented in this country. Are there any women here who fear

they have been harassed in the professions in this way? I have

been harassed, and I worked as a social worker. It was a colleague

who was inappropriate. As I was getting into my car, and I wound

his head in the window. Then I reported it to my female line

manager, and something was done about it. But it was sad to find

out I was not his first victim. But what I would like to say to Jeremy

is, I am surprised you have not been watching the news. If you had

been, you would have seen this playing out. What Nick Clegg said

was a lie. He said, I know nothing about it. But yes, he did. So I can

only say to you, if I believe you, we would both be wrong. What I mean

by that is, I am right, you are wrong. I watched it. Let me go back

to the gentleman's point. I don't want us to focus on the political.

The BBC got itself into a huge turmoil over the Jimmy Savile

affair. There are victims here. We have to sort out the problem. We

should not get galloping down a political who said what to think.

The problem is that crimes have potentially been committed. There

is a culture that is not healthy, and that is the issue to deal with,

not the political nonsense that goes around it. Is it right for

Brussels to cap bankers' bonuses? This is the attempt to announce

today that they will try to cap bankers' bonuses, unless

shareholders decide they can have twice their salary. Is it right for

Brussels to do this? Neil Hamilton, you have strong views about Europe.

Thus the reality of the European Union. If David Cameron thinks he

can renegotiate all sorts of powers back from Europe, here is an issue

which goes to the heart of the City of London's interests, which the

Government has concentrated she strongly on defending and got

nowhere in the negotiations. It will not achieve its purpose,

because the trouble with the laws of this kind is that people will

always find their way around them. We may be able to cap bankers'

bonuses, but a likely consequence of this will be that they will push

up their basic salaries, which will make life more difficult for the

banks, because their fixed costs will increase significantly. And it

will be difficult for them to get flexibility to iron out the impact

of changes in the economic cycle. They like paying by bonuses,

because that is a performance- related element of pay. Looking at

it from the bank's point of view, if the choice is between increasing

people's salaries by a colossal amount and only paying them when

the banks make profits, it is sensible for the banks to choose

the latter rather than the formal. You also have a peculiar situation

where banking is a highly competitive global business. So it

is very footloose and fancy-free. With internet trading, these things

can be done from anywhere. You have global banks with people doing

exactly the same job in Tokyo, New York, Singapore, London. And people

in London uniquely are having their salaries capped, so where are these

people going to go? Away from London, and that means we are all

poorer. Paying these bonuses has seemed preposterous at times, but

the Treasury has been the biggest beneficiary in the tax which is

charged upon them. If we lose all that, we as individuals will be

poorer. This is yet another example of politicians in Europe, none of

whom have the slightest experience of what they are doing, who are

legislating in a way which will cost the earth for us. Their only

qualification is that they support the euro, the biggest financial

calamity in the entire Continent. Calm down! Jeremy Browne, as a pro

European, can you throw light on this? If this is under the Social

Policy, article 151, there is a provision that nothing should apply

to pay. In other words, is it permissible for Europe to say that

they will control the pay of bankers? My understanding is that

they say this is not pay, this is extra to pay, so it is within their

remit. It is not pay? I am not here to answer on behalf of the European

Commission. But money that I hand to you in return for your work, I

wonder what that is? I agree. I am in the strange position of agreeing

with a lot of what Neill said. It might look superficially attractive

to a lot of people who are understandably angry about the

behaviour of bankers and their seeming contempt for wider society.

But I am not sure it will achieve the objectives that some people

hope it will. At the moment, somebody who is paid �1 million for

the �2 million bonus, does that mean their bonus will go down to �1

million? No, it means they will get the overall same take-home pay they

did before. There is an ideological distinction between nationalised

banks and none-nationalised banks. Nationalised banks should behave

much more like public servants and be much more respectful towards the

taxpayers who pay their salaries. But I don't think the government,

whether in Brussels or London, has the business of telling private

companies that do not rely on the state how much they should pay

their employees, as long as they pay them over the minimum wage. And

a Euro centric point - within a generation, Europe will have 5% of

the world population and 10% of the world economy. There is a big world

out there in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, New York. London is one

of the most important cities in the world. It is important that we

understand that we are competing in a global environment. I don't want

to drive away wealth creators who contribute to our economy. It is

not just the richest, it is people on lower pay, to our detriment.

it more that RBS, who have made a colossal loss of 500 bn because of

its PPI misselling, pays �250 million for bonuses? That is a very

good point, but it is a different point. I want to stick with the

idea of capping bonuses. The man at the bank? Thank you, Neil, for your

original point. If Chris Huhne had taken your advice on speeding

points, we would not be having this by-election. The scary thing is,

you mentioned Mr Cameron negotiating in Europe. The last

time we negotiated there, we ended up paying more from the EU budget,

while Germany paid less. I am pro- European. But if I work as a car

dealer and I sell 10 cars and my colleague cells two cars, I expect

to earn more than my colleagues. As long as it is performance related,

I have no problem with it. In and it's surprising how the rich have

to be tempted to work with salaries of millions, and the poor have to

be driven to work for nothing, or else their benefits will be cut?

Neil gave a very long explanation of why banking is an unsatisfactory

way off organising the way we decide what we produce, how we are

paid and how the world is run. This casino banking is actually just

gambling by a very rich people, with your lives and my life. That

is why we need a new system. The banks should be taken into public

ownership. Then we direct what we should produce, and we do it in a

fair way and protect the environment and live properly. RBS

is mainly owned by the people. As the gentleman says, it is behaving

very inappropriately, to use the current term for bad behaviour.

They are paying vast sums to their employees. So is the EU doing right

by try to cut the bonuses? You, the EU is absolutely doing right. The

EU is wrong in many respects, but in this respect, support it. Angela

Eagle, do you support this? First league, it should not have taken

the EU to be doing this, we should have been sorting out the bonus

culture with our banks more effectively than this Government

have done so far. Do you approve of what Brussels are doing? It is an

interesting idea. Do you approve of it? We have got to get a handle on

this bloated bonus culture. When Neil Hamilton says it is all

performance-related and we have got RBS making a �5 billion loss last

year and paying themselves 600 million in bonuses, it is a funny

definition of performance. Is it Labour policy to support this?

want the government here to sort it out. They should have been doing

this earlier. We have a very large financial sector in the City. What

we do here will be far more effective than what the EU can do.

We need to get international agreements to kill the bonus

culture, and we need to deal with casino banking. It is not in this

country's interest to have banks that are so bloated, gambling with

money and our futures. We have to bring banking back to Kerrin about

its customers. Let me bring you back to the question. The Prime

Minister says he is worried about this proposal to cap bonuses

because of its effect on the banking industry here. Are you

worried by it? He has to ensure that he can do a deal in Europe

that deals with the bloated banking culture and ensures that this

country can be properly looked after. He has no allies in Europe.

He was in a minority of one. He should be demonstrating that we can

put a stop to the bonus culture here, and they have failed. Today

we had Boris Johnson defending bonuses. I must stop you. Claire

Perry? I sit here, and I am absolutely gobsmacked by some of

the things you say. Bonuses tripled under your government. The British

banking industry was one of the most lightly regulated industries

in the world. I worked in financial services. A bid to get good

bonuses? No. Never has so much been paid to so many for doing so little

on your watch. We have to regulate it properly, which we are doing, to

ring-fence the casino banking from the commercial banking. You have

made virtually no progress in three years. Please stop interrupting.

They are not lending. This is an industry that employs 1 million

people and generates �100 billion a year in taxes, which funds the

public services we all want. Is it right or wrong for Brussels to do

this? Brussels does not have a financial services industry.

Britain has the biggest financial services industry in Europe, and we

need to regulate it properly. It is not up to Brussels. They are just

trying to grab the British powers. It was the bankers who got us into

this mess, so if dropping their bonuses makes them go abroad, I say,

good. Our time is up, so we must end there. Andrew Neil is on your

next with a special election edition of This Week. They will

have the results of this by- election, which we have been trying

to guess at. They will be on to the early hours until the results come

through. Next time, Question Time will be in Dover. We will have

Melanie Phillips and Bob Crowe among our panellists. The week

after that, we will be in Cardiff. To come to either programme, apply