26/03/2012 Daily Politics

Afternoon. Welcome to The Daily Politics. David Cameron has just

announced he will publish details of the tone fars who visited his

Downing Street flat. The Prime Minister has promised an

inquiry, following ex-Conservative treasurer, Peter Cruddas, offering

access and influence to a Sunday Times reporter in return for a

donation. Ed Miliband is demanding an independent inquiry. We will get

reaction from both parties and ask what can be done to clean up the

system. Do children now have too many rights? Teaching unions

complain a significant number of children are worrying more about

their rights and less about their responsibilities. We will speak to

the children's commission and to the journalist Toby Young. Is it

any wonder MPs are stressed? We will speak to a psychologist who

says MPs should be regularly screened to test their menal health.

With us today is the children's commission, Maggie Atkinson.

Welcome to the show. David Cameron is desperate to show it is business

as usual. The Prime Minister is announcing funding into dementia

will be doubled to �66 million by 2015, to try and make the UK a

world leader in the field. Now, as far as you are concerned, money is

one thing, but do you think this is an issue which needs to be talked

about a lot more as well? I do. I lost a grandma to Alzheimer's. I

was an adult at the time, but can't help thinking had I been a child I

would have needed the adults in my life, from school, through to my

family to try and help me understand why my grandma didn't

recognise me, for example. Or towards the end didn't recognise

anybody in the family. Children need to be taken seriously. They

have concerns. If you spend the time and patience to work with them,

they will understand frightening changes in their life far better

than if you try and keep it from them or don't explain. And it is

something which does seem to be affecting more and more families

because people are generally living longer. Apart from just talking

about it, there is the serious issue of money and funding. David

Cameron, the Prime Minister, has said it is a crisis they will look

at. Has it come too late? They need more than �66 million to tackle

such a big issue? I am not a practitioner in the field of ageing,

so notions of numbers wouldn't be something that I'd have even half a

hope of being able to answer. What I know is that I meet children and

young people all over the country who are, for example living in

households where grandma or granddad have come to live because

they are incapable of looking after themselves. Families do save the

state a great deal of money in being carers. Very often the

grandchildren are as involved as are the sons and daughters of the

people concerned. It's much less about money for me than it is about

the home and dimension. Family is very important to children and

young people, even when families are in difficulty. If you have the

added difficulty that you have a younger person acting differently

or losing their personality, then children are very concerned.

There's only one real story in town today - the Conservative Party is

reel from the revelations that their party treasurer, Peter

Cruddas, offered private dinners with David Cameron in return for

donations. Dinners for donors joined cash-for-honours and all the

rest in the long history of party funding scandals. Post Budget it

does not look good - following the 50p tax break it creates an

impression there are a different set of rules for the well off. The

Prime Minister has announced he will publish the list of dinner

guests. There are calls for him to extend the inquiry into a full-

blown independent inquiry. He will look at will to re-start political

talks on how parties should be funded. It It is unlikely the

Labour Party would be willing to compromise their links with the

trade unions. This is a story that sets to run for quite some time.

Downing Street the position is this, in the two years I have been Prime

Minister there have been three occasions when donors have come to

dinner in my flat. There was a post election dinner which included

donors in Downing Street before the general election. We will publish

full details of all of these today. None of these were fund-raising

dinners. None of these were paid for by the taxpayer. I have known

most of those atending for many years. Let me add that Peter

Cruddas has never recommended anyone to come to dinner in my flat,

nor has he been to dinner there myself. I publish details of

external meetings - the first Prime Minister ever to do so. I publish

all meeting I have with newspaper editors and proprietors. From now

on the Conservative Party will publish details every quarter of

any meals attended by any donors whether at Downing Street, Chequers

or any official residence. That was the Prime Minister. Mr Add damns is

a journalist who helped prompt the Sunday Times investigation. Well,

he'll publish the list of who has attended in terms of donors. Are

you satisfied? That is a good start. We have seen over the past 24 hours

the position has been that that is private, it can remain secret. I am

delighted that is happening. I don't think it gets to the end of

the story, does it? I think what is concerning people, it is what

concerns me, is that a substantial donation to the Conservative Party,

buys you this kind of private, secret access to the Prime Minister

and potential influence over policy. Peter Cruddas was clear that they

will listen to policy suggestions from these wealthy donors.

suggestion is that actually Peter Cruddas has been discred ited,

hasn't he? He himself said it was bluseter. David Cameron has been

very clear in what we heard there that the things that Peter Cruddas

was promising do not happen. Well, that is why I reported this

matter both to the police and this morning to the Electoral Commission

because Peter Cruddas was referring to a system that seemed to me to be

indem nick the way that the Conservative Party goes about

raising funding. It happens in the Labour Party in a similar way. You

are a Labour Party support. You know what happens there as well.

would condemn this if it was in the Labour Party or the Liberal

Democrats. This is not the way that parties should raise funding. I

agree with the Prime Minister on. That I want to get to the bottom of

whether this is a late conversion or whether up to now he has thought

this is the way to raise funds for the Conservative Party. I condemn

it. As it happens, it was a Tory lobbist I sat next to at the

conference. I could have sat next to a Labour lobbyist at the

previous week's conference, the Labour Party conference. If I had

heard this story I would have reacted the same way. This is not

the way we should be doing politics. I am delighted we are exposing it.

But, as a lobbyist you know that is how it works. That is how it works

in the sense that party donors expect some sort of access to

senior politicians, both the Labour and the Conservative Party have

websites, where it is very clear and very transparent you can go on

to those websites and they have either the 1,000 club for the

Labour Party or these leaders' clubs for the Conservative Party.

So, nothing is hidden in that broad sense. No. Come on - I think it is

the scale of these allegations which is the point. I give money to

the Labour Party. I have been invited to receptions by the Labour

Party. Yes, that is proper within limits. What we are talking about

here is the scale of revelations. The idea that a truly staggering

donation - I will never donate �250,000 to the Labour Party, sadly

for them, sadly for me that I don't have that money to give. But it's

the scale of the donations and what that bought people is the issue,

not the fact it happens. We don't know what has bought in that sense,

do we? That is why the police should investigate. It is clear

what Peter Cruddas was offering the Sunday Times. If it was bluseter,

presumably that will come out now in the course of the inquiry and

this can be laid to rest N the mean time there are serious questions to

be answered. Well, listening to that is the Conservative MP,

Damiean Fielding. Thank you for listening to us on the -- is Mark

Field. Thank you for listening to us on the programme.

Are you satisfied he will publish the list? Yes, I am satisfied. It

is good to see David Cameron getting on the front foot on this

issue. Quite slow? Quite rightly he looked through to see if he could

produce these lists in double-quick time. I would be happy for a full

list of everyone who goes through Downing Street on a quarterly basis

to go through. When people don't understand this, there are dozens

of people a day going into 10 or 11 Downing Street to see either the

Prime Minister, the Chancellor or the Deputy Prime Minister to

discuss these issues. You would be unhappy with the idea that people

who make big donations, let's say in the region of �250,000 that did

buy them a more exclusive dinner with the Prime Minister? I don't

think it has brought them exclusivety at all. There has been

a three-year campaign, meeting with many ministers over that time and

coalition ministers. There's never been any sense of an exclusive

arrangement there. That is part and parcel of how politics operates.

What is essential now, and I am sure David Cameron will have this

in mind, is to clear up this issue of party funding. A scandal of

three years ago in relation to MPs' expenses led to the creation of an

independent regulator. I think we probably will need now to go down

this path. There will, therefore, I think be ceilings on donations. We

may well, I am afraid and I don't say this with great joy be heading

towards a situation where there will be state funding. How damaging

is this affair for the Conservatives? It is not great.

Obviously these are bad headlines for anyone in Government for this

sort of story. Clearly coming on the back of the Budget, the concern

is that the party is regarded by many people, wrongly in my view,

and unfairly, but it is regarded by many on the side of the rich. I

support the idea of reducing the top rate of tax which is very

damaging for entrepreneurs and damaging as a message. Can you see

the link being made here? In the Sun they say it looks as if

millions has been taken off high earners as a result of cosy

political lunches? One can see how it could be disunderstood. This

goes beyond 2010. We had the cash for peerages under the Blair era.

It has been in the Labour Party's interest to delay and drag this

process of dragging party funding because they are dependant on the

trade unions who literally give them every �9 of �10 they get.

don't believe the claim made by Peter Cruddas in that film, that

actually those donors can buy access, which one might argue is

self-evident, but it buys influence? I don't think that is

right. I think the word, as I say, you look at the number of people

going for the doors of Downing Street every week who are trying to

influence ministers about legislation or about the mood of

party policy, Government policy, that makes me think that this thing

you can overstate that. As I say, there are many, many people who go

to Downing Street, who are trying to make their case, that applies to

donors as well as countless industry representatives. Thank you.

Joining me in the studio now is is Michael Dugher. Pleased, like

everyone else that list is going to be published? That is what you

wanted? I think is Government has within complacent today about what

are extremely serious allegations. Why are they being complacent? We

have heard not only are they going to and already do publish lists of

meetings that the Prime Minister and senior ministers are out on. He

will publish the list op donors who have attended private dinners in

the Number Ten and number 11 private flat? What Peter Cruddas

was saying at the weekend in the Sunday Times, he was saying if you

give up to �250,000 to the Conservative Party, if you are not

happy with policy, they will feed your views into the policy

committee of Number Ten. We know there is not a policy committee.

There is a policy unit. Government today, because they hold

the information already, could publish meetings that members of

David Cameron's policy meeting have had with senior donors in Number

Ten. They could publish it now. That would go some way... That has

himself said it was bluseter when he boosted, to some eke tent, about

the.... So we have to take Mr Cruddas's word for that? No we are

taking Francis Maude and others who have said it was bluseter. He has

been discred ited, he has also -- discredited. He has also resigned.

A lot were saying it was nonsense, including Francis Maude. What we

need is an independent inquiry. It is just intolerable the idea that

the Conservative Party can investigate itself on this. You

know, if they have nothing to hide, What influence to the trade union

leaders have in terms of the Labour Party? Actually, our biggest source

of funding comes from our members. Last time you interviewed me, I was

having to defend Ed Miliband, who was having a public disagreement

with the general secretary of the Unite union. Yes, but let's have a

look at the influence of the unions, they are represented on the

National Executive, which has always been the case, but there

have also been accusations that they try and influence the

candidates to be chosen to represent Labour in parliament, is

that true? I don't think so. We have an historic link with working

people, that keeps Labour's feet on the ground, that we have that

relationship with ordinary people. And look at the money that we are

talking about, most trade unions do not affiliate to the Labour Party,

but for those that do, it is individuals giving �3 a year.

you're saying the unions have no influence a tall on Labour Party

policy? I'm saying it is not the influence that the Conservatives

like to believe they have. We have a relationship with working people

which goes back 100 years. That is to our strength. Those links are

something which are very good for politics. If you're proud of that

relationship, as you say, why doesn't Ed Miliband publish any

dinners or meetings that he has with Len McCluskey, for example, or

Dave Prentice? I'm sure Ed Miliband would be more than happy to publish

his meetings with the representatives of working people

in this country. He has got no problem with transparency. Will we

have, in the same way, since you're in opposition now, but these are

the sort of things which Labour talk about when they were in power,

complete transparency, those meetings, those conversations and

those dinners with big union backers? The truth is, most of them

are publicly known anyway, not least because the trade unions tend

to talk through the media immediately thereafter --

immediately after they have had a meeting. But there were serious

allegations this weekend, and I don't think it is good enough for

David Cameron to say that we are not having an independent inquiry.

The idea that you can do a News International, if I can put it that

way, remember the phone hacking scandal, and they said, leave it

with us, we will have an internal investigation, it is not good

enough, we have got to have an independent inquiry. If we look at

donors and donations, even during Tony Blair's time as Prime Minister,

we had the cash-for-honours investigation, but Lord Levy has

today admitted that Tony Blair had private dinners with party donors.

It has happened under every single government. A Yes, and I think

think that politicians... That was wrong, was it? What is wrong is not

that you are accessible to people. It is good that you talk to people

at the coalface, but what is wrong is that people can buy special

access and special favours and buy influence on government policy. I

think that speaks to the conduct and character of David Cameron's

government and is really serious. But it was Tony Blair's government,

too. There is no suggestion that at any stage Ed Miliband has been

going around charging donor's �250,000 to influence policy.

you do encourage donors to give money, and they then get access to

receptions, for example. In our club, people pay 80,000 -- people

pay �80 a month, whatever it is. But there is a very important

distinction, there is no suggestion at all in Ed Miliband's Labour

Party that we are going around, that Ed Miliband's treasurer is

going around selling excess to the leader of our party, and flogging

influence on our policies, it just doesn't happen. What have you got

to say to that, Michael Fallon? trade unions were directly

controlling the last Labour government, directly influencing

policy. You had the Unite union actually choosing the next Labour

leader. They provide 80% of Labour Party funding. Our donations are

spread right across the board. This is a party which is run by the

trade unions. But big donations go to dinner with the Prime Minister.

They do not. They do, because the Prime Minister is going to publish

a list of these dinners at the flat. There have been three occasions in

the last two years where he has had supper up in his own flat, where,

amongst the friends invited for supper, there will have been some

people who had earlier made donations to the Conservative Party.

You're going to get that information published, and from now

on, you're going to find out about everybody who has come for meals at

official residences. Which everybody seems to welcome, but why

the change? Yesterday it was private, people who attended Number

Ten in that capacity, they were not going to be published, so what has

changed? We are always looking for more transparency. This is the

first government which has ever published details like these. We

have had enormous public interest in the last 24 hours in the idea,

which is wrong, but Peter Cruddas was boasting about getting access

to number 10, and we need to show that this was not right. How did

those donors get to that Dinnet unless it was because they had

donated those large sums of money? The Prime Minister has people up

into his own private apartment, I'm sure you do the same thing. They

have not paid me �250,000. He has people in his private apartments,

and amongst those people, occasionally, there will have been

donors. Those names are going to be published now. Will records have

been kept of those meetings? I hope so, and the work is now being done

to establish who was there. what was said? Summer we are going

to get a tape recording, but the two points which Peter Cruddas was

boasting about were both wrong - when you do not get special access

to Downing Street, and you're not able to dictate policy.

Understandably, you're not going to have notes taken from a private

dinner, but it is the impression that it leaves, now that we have

heard this tape from Peter Crowe does, that donors were having

dinner with the Prime Minister -- Peter Cruddas -- so how can we know

that these people were not having any influence at all? Making

donations to the party does not buy you any influence over the policy.

What is the point of making a donation, then? Because you were

shared the policies of the party. It is the commitment to free

enterprise, supporting business and advancing jobs in this country. You

share those values, it is not because you have any influence over

policy. You look at the website, and it has the leader's Club, if

you pay �50,000, I think, like any party, but does that have to stop

now? Are we getting to the stage when only that kind of thing will

satisfy voters, but you should not be appealing to donors in that

sense? I think all political parties offer that kind of access

to their leaders and prominent members of the Cabinet or Shadow

Cabinet, that one of the ways political parties attract donations.

The Labour Party has always done that, we do that, you might get to

meet senior ministers and so on. The difference here is that we need

to make it absolutely clear that that should not happen in Downing

Street itself, and it should not lead to any direct influence over a

particular policy. Let's ask our guest of the day, are you convinced

by what Michael Fallon has been saying? I'm not a politician, so I

cannot say who influences whom. What I will talk to about is what

young people expect of their leaders, of broader adult society

as a whole. Your viewers may remember that the United Kingdom

Youth Parliament meets once a year in a meeting chaired by Mr Speaker.

The youth parliament is more diverse in many ways than the main

parliament in either House. What our young people have, and I meet

young people all over the country, in poor and rich circumstances, who

have high morals and high ideals, and want to live in a society like

that. They expect a society where their own transparency, you know

how transparent young people are, they do not lie, they tell you

their stories, they are very keen to live in a society where, if they

vote, it counts, and however political parties are funded in the

future, and I really do not care about that, I am completely neutral

and bound to be so by law, I meet young people with a huge range of

political ideas, but they want to be able to aspire to be MPs

The youth of today have been a cause of concern for ever, really.

Each generation seems to think the kids they come across are more

badly behaved and less respectful than they were, perhaps

conveniently forgetting their own youthful high jinks. It has the

balance of power swung too much towards pupils and away from

parents and teachers? We went to find out. We will do one lesson of

revision, period three, and then period four, we will do the test.

Scenes from a British classroom, teacher in control, well-behaved

kids. If only it was like this all the time. If you believe what you

see in some papers, corridors like these are ruled by little kids who

the teachers cannot touch because they know their rights. There is

some evidence to suggest that that might be partly true, but really,

are the young people of today worse than those of yesterday, or is it

us? Things are more challenging and difficult for teachers, routinely,

with children and young people. I do not want to put young children

down, but there are unfortunately a significant minority who think they

have all the rights, but not the responsibilities. Is there any

empirical evidence that children are actually ruling the most? The

number of permanent exclusions has actually halved since 1997. But the

number of serious assaults on teachers reached a five-year high

in 2010, with 44 needing to be rushed to hospital. A survey for

teachers in the same year found that 92% thought behaviour had

become worse or much worse over the course of their careers. But is

that evidence of a culture where children are untouchable because

the pendulum of rights has swung too far in their favour? I think

this is a myth. What it has done, if anything, is it has changed the

way in which adults deal with children. In the end it is the

adults who bring children up, it is the teachers who manage children,

and it is their expectations, not those of the children. So, do

discipline and respect start at home? If they have got no

experience at home of doing things they do not want to do, of parents

setting appropriate boundaries, then they do not to stand -- they

do not understand that it needs to happen in school. My teachers tell

me that it is not just working- class children, it is many middle-

class children who do not understand those boundaries,

because they have been over- indulged. But does there have to be

a constant struggle? We need to present a really clear, simple,

positive direction will signal in the language that we use.

Frequently, we ask way to many questions both as parents and

teachers, giving youngsters the opportunity to get into what could

become a conflict. If we had not asked the question, there would not

have been a conflict in the first place. All of this matters, because

getting the balance between responsibilities and rights is

after all one of life's great lessons. We are joined by Toby

Young, who has set up a free school in west London. The general

impression is that children are not as respectful these days - do you

agree with that stereotype? evidence is mixed. I would frame it

slightly differently. Rather than rights versus responsibilities, I

would say it is the old-fashioned British culture of stoicism, the

bulldog spirit, keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity,

versus a kind of therapeutic, touchy-feely culture, in which the

priority is on fostering a cells of self-esteem among children. That

has led to a general lowering of expectations, typified by the last

government making modern foreign languages optional at GCSE. If you

look at the performance of Britain's schoolchildren in the

international league tables, measuring comparative performance,

you will see that British schoolchildren have plummeted, when

it comes to science, for instance, from seventh to 25th in the

developed world, and from eighth to 28th when it comes to maths. You're

saying this is because of this change in culture? Absolutely. If

you look at the countries which are doing really well, at the top of

the league tables, countries like South Korea, Hong Kong, China,

Taiwan, those clearly are not countries in which the emphasis is

on children's rights and boosting their self-esteem. Respect has to

be earned, it cannot be given to them on a plate. Do you agree with

that, that state schools have I go in and out of them all the

time. I would say no. The drop out rate in South Korea is the highest

among the world. Let's not believe there aren't cliff edges in those

countries as well. If you look at the UN conviction of the right on

the human rights, there are three Rs here. There are rights, John

Major signed it in 1991. We are bound by it. It comes with other

two Rs - climate of respect and mutual responsibility to make sure

if I have rights then so do you and so do you. We are mutually

responsible. I go in and out of aspirational schools, academies,

maintained LEA schools, Catholic and other faith schools where that

culture is there. The children know the boundaries. You do need

authorities, you do need boundaries. You need respect in every classroom.

Teachers deserve the right to teach. Children who leave school with no

self-esteem and no ability to be entrepreneurial or lead, you are

doing them a disservice as well. It has to start when they are children.

Hapbt that children's ex-- what about that children's expectations

are not there? Children are praised for doing anything? The children

who really suffer from this culture are children from deprived

backgrounds, where they are not pushed at home, in the way that

middle class children are. If you look at schools, I visited many

myself. I recently visited a school in Hackney - one of the most

deprived boroughs in the UK, somewhere like 50% of the children

have free school meals. The children are sent home if they come

to school wearing the wrong colour shoes. That is not liked by

progressers. If you look at the number of children who went to

Cambridge at Mossborne, ten children went to Cambridge. Every

child in the sixth form went to university. I I have also been

there. The children will confirm it is a caring environment and the

results are because of the human self-esteem. They teach them in

special places with some of the best staff in the school. There are

two sides to Mossborne. It is a disciplined school, but also a very

caring school. Let's look at the discipline - let's look at uniform,

homework handed in that is sloppy, even if the content is good. Are

these things that would inch standards up? If children feel they

cannot get away with getting to school five minutes late, it does

matter. And they cannot come into school without their homework,

because it does matter? Of course it does matter. In desperately

scattered and drifting rural places I don't meet that complacentsy.

am glad you acknowledge the discipline in schools. In the past

you have advocated prosecuting mums who smack their children. No I

haven't. Are you saying they should be allowed to smack? There are

circumstances where it is reasonable to discipline your

children if they are misbehaving. Your issues of school uniform may

not seem important but actually does seem to make a difference. It

is how far you take it though. is pointless having a uniform in a

school if you don't enforce it. Too often up and down the country their

ties are down to their nave vels, their shoes are not polished.

It may sound old fashioned, but we can see where it is enforced the

children do better, particularly from deprived backgrounds. What

about how students treat teachers. Some teachers say they feel -- if

someone is disrupting a class they are removed from that class. If

they disrupt sha class consistently they should be ejected from that

school? That is the sort of system that is in place. Children are

removed. It is difficult to do. Children are taking away from the

30 children they are otherwise disrupting. They are taught in

special units. Children can be taught in small groups and held to

being on time, doing the homework, getting right support, asking the

right questions to get them through their exams. The exclusions issue -

if exclusions are done properly and above board and in a proper, formal,

corresponding with home fashion. Are they? They mostly are. There

are schools who have admitted to us that there is also, every now and

again, a casual exclusion, go home for a few days and sort yourself

out. We need to do more work on that. The Government is keen also

to crack down on illegal exclusions. I would hesitate to defend a

practise which is illegal, but I think from the point of view of the

head teachers in the schools to try and ensure that proper learning

takes place in the classrooms, sometimes to go through a formal

exclusion procedure, in which there is an appeal and appeals panel

which can reinstate the child and if they exclude them they have to

take a child from a neighbouring school - sometimes they don't want

that on their record. It is against the law.

End of. I will thank you both at this point. With just two day left

before Easter recess, let's see what is still to come before MPs

jet off - questions on cash for access are likely to dominate the

next couple of days. Meanwhile, with incredible timing Nick Clegg

has managed to get away from Westminster and the scandal. He is

spending today and tomorrow in South Korea, meeting businesses and

politicians. The Government is expected to reveal more details

about its controversial changes to planning rules. There are fears

from some groups it could amount to a carte blanche for developers.

Joining me now is Anne McElvoy and Nick Watt. Anne McElvoy, first of

all, has he done enough, David Cameron, by announcing he'll

publish details of the dinners held with private donors at Number Ten?

It gets him off the initial hook, which looked very bad for him and

the Conservative Party that many of the things that it said in

opposition about cleaning up politics and cleaning up the whole

donor question were looking thread bear. It didn't take long for them

to change their minds. If there is such thing as giving credit where

it is due, that is where I would give it. When I saw their initial

resistance I was surprised and I wondered how long that line would

last. David Cameron is prepared to take the hit on showing who he has

dinner with, as long as it shows he is trying to get back into the

driving seat on openness. Surprise, surprise, big done nations to

political parties, you get access to the Prime Minister and you get

to chat to him, so tell me something I don't know? I can just

about hear you, but there is a very loud helicopter. I will shout it

again. I am saying, surprise, surprise, donors to political

parties give lots of money, they get access to senior ministers and

the Prime Minister ee tell me something I don't know! -- They

would like you to think that you can 236 give �100,000 and it will

not have an effect on David Cameron. Peter Cruddas blue it oup, give us

�250,000, you'll be in if Premier League and get to influence policy.

He is not meant to say that. There is a gentleman's agreement. You

might get to meet the Prime Minister over dinner, of course it

will have no impact on what he does. That is the offence that Peter

Cruddas has committed. What will be interesting from this, I agree with

Ann, that obviously the Prime Minister is dealing the immediate

crisis with greater transparency, but the deeper crisis is how are

they going to deal with this point that clearly you do get access, you

do get influence with ministers if you pay all this money. What

influence can you get? We don't know what influence, in that sense

is brought to bear. The timing is unfortunate for the Conservatives

because it comes after the Budget and their big policy announcements,

particularly on the top rate of tax. Does it have a direct influence?

You don't have a direct link. This was raised when Labour went through

its own cash for honours issue. People will suspect there is a link.

It is unlikely that anyone turns up and says, here Prime Minister, can

we sign this list off over the desert? It does not work that way.

If you pay a lot to the Conservative Party and get access

at high level it does not look like you sit around discussing the

spring sunshine. Although it is hard to say what you got out of it,

what you got was the ear of the Prime Minister to put your case

across. Peter Cruddas used the phrase "bosh, there you are." They

look from one party to another and think this never gets better. That

is what David Cameron has to challenge. He cannot be seen to be

in the company ofty cons. It is interesting that -- of tycoons.

It is interesting that which must be forthcoming eis this the revenge

of the media mogul? It was a Sunday Times story. Good nor the Sunday

Times - a really important -- good for the Sunday Times. A really

important story. Rupert Murdoch thought David Cameron was a light

weight. He is furious at the Leveson Inquiry and that it has

been set up. Len, looking at the public -- then, looking at the

public response, will people be - they are bothered obviously by any

sense of donations in political parties - but will they see it

different from previous scandals? It is another brick out of the wall.

It is the old animal farm thing, you look from man to pig and pig to

man and wonder which is which. We've had this coalition for a

relatively short amount of time. I bet Nick Clegg is pleased to be

off to South Korea today. It is a short time to get into the

situation where people are saying, you are exactly the same as the old

lot who had been in office for too long. I think that is where David

Cameron will feel he has allowed a silly situation to arise. Of course

he cannot entirely be blamed for the stupidity of Mr Cruddas in

making the kind of promises he was making. It was clearly an open door.

Trouble was going to march through it. What about hostage to fortune

in terms of the opposition and Ed Miliband? Is it rich for the Labour

Party to be pushing this issue too far, Nick? Well, of course Ed

Miliband thinks this is an absolute gift for him. He is planning he

will reply to the Francis Maude statement, to put the pressure on

the Prime Minister. Yes, of course the Labour Party has its own

problems. The Prime Minister, in his statement today was saying I

think we should be moving in the direction of the �50,000 cap,

individual cap on donations. Well, we all know what that is about.

That is ensuring Unite and other David Miliband yesterday on The

Andrew Marr Show was coming one the suggestion that we should look

closer at individual members of trade unions, they should know when

they are ticking the levy box. They should make that choice. Maybe that

would be a way around that �50,000 cap for the Labour Party. Thank you,

both of you out there in the sunshine. We will talk about party

funding later on. I do believe now we can join our political editor,

Nick Robinson, who has been following this story closely. Has

he done enough now, David Cameron, even though they refused to publish

the list of the donors of private dinners yesterday, they have

changed their minds? Well, they have published them now. Of course

there'll be scrutiny now of exactly who those names are. Some are

fairly familiar to me. Andrew Feldman. Others less familiar Ian

and Christine Taylor. Henry and Dorothy Angus. They were

not people who gave a donation one day after the Conservatives got

into Downing Street and then arrived at his dinner table the

next. But of course people will still ask, why on earth did he

think it was appropriate to have dinners at all in his flat above

Downing Street for people whose only qualification for being there

was they were donors to the Conservative Party? The questions

will go on about why more information cannot be revealed

about previous dinners at previous locations, other locations, for

example, Chequers. The Prime Minister's aids are saying there

are practical difficulties in assembling that information about

Chequers. They will do it in future but not about the past. The

difficulty with transparency is once you start, people say, carry

on going, please, we want more. Coming to you now, Caroline

Dinenage, do you think there should be an exhaustive list? I think

obviously transparency is really important. This is fundamentally

very undermining for the hard- working activists at a local level.

I was at a fish-and-chip lunch in my constituency on Saturday, where

everybody paid �7.50 to be there. This is what grassroots fund-

raising is about. Transparency is very important, but we have to draw

a line, people are entitled to a private life, they are entitled to

have personal friends. Once transparency starts, it is

difficult to know where it will lend. On the doorstep, what are you

going to say to people? It is difficult, and it is heartbreaking

for those of us that work really hard at a local level, and do not

have constituents who will ever be able to come to be a 8 kind of

money to a party. -- able to contribute that kind of money to a

party. But in actual fact, it appears that this guy was operating

completely against party guidelines, so we ought to be looking into it

and making sure it does not happen again. Were you shop, Jo Swinson,

by the video with Peter Cruddas, and what he said? I think everybody

would have been shocked by that, because that is not an appropriate

way to go about fund-raising. to all political parties do it?

think there is a difference between people who are supporters of a

political party, whether that is by donating money or whatever, and

obviously, at party conferences and so on, they will meet with senior

people, between that and suggestions of buying influence

over policy. I think that is a very, very serious suggestion, which is

why the weekend was so damaging. That's why it is really important,

this is not the first story like this that we have had. You could

rewind this programme over the years and you would have had

various of these events. The political class generally has not

salted its act out, which is what we must do. Then why has there been

no progress in terms of getting agreement on how parties are

funded? I'm not sure, but this is on a different scale to anything we

have seen in the past, this is about access to the Prime Minister

and his wife in Number Ten Downing Street. Not only that, it is about

influencing policy. We do not know that. That's what Peter Cruddas was

saying he could arrange for �250,000, because that amount would

put donors into the Premier League. So, this is actually on a different

scale, which is why we say we need an independent inquiry. What would

you do to make sure that Labour was above any kind of accusations of

this nature? We have money from trade unions, but that is

individual members, who choose to join a trade union, take the

political levy box, but a few pounds a month into that Levy, it

is not about individual millionaires paying �250,000 to see

the Prime Minister and influence policy. Listen, viewers know that

union leaders bring a lot of influence to bear on the Labour

leadership, and one could argue particularly now, because they were

seen as the ones who put Ed Miliband where he is. So, what

could be done to reassure people that that link does not mean that

union leaders have more influence that they showed? I don't think

union leaders do, to be honest with you. They do not have influence

over the policies, the candidate's? The Labour Party represents the

interests of working people. I think we have seen in recent weeks

and months that the Labour Party is not necessarily the friend of trade

unions, some Mum Ed Miliband has been dancing to the tune of the

trade union movement in recent months. The opposite could be

argued. Is it not the problem for David Cameron that he argued so

vociferously for transparency and now looks as if he has not

practised what he preached, particularly as he said that the

next crisis that was going to happen was the relationship between

politicians and lobbyists? As you said, there is no evidence that

this money that changed hands was directly leading to this. But they

are going to be talking about policy, aren't they? Policy which

will help businesses or entrepreneurs, or help people to be

more tax-efficient... We are not talking about like a Bernie

Eccleston giving �1 million for tobacco advertising, we're talking

about somebody who wants access to the Prime Minister, and they may

discuss anything, but the Prime Minister has various influences on

what government policy will be. There's so many other things which

will influence him, he will not just changed his mind on the basis

of one person who has paid to be there. Are you worried that people

might think twice before giving a large amount of money to the

Conservative Party? We have to make it very clear that access to the

Prime Minister is not going to buy you influence. What new can be

done? I don't know, we just have to look at why this was... We have

already got clear guidelines as to how people should behave, and we

have to look at how people ever thought they could have done this.

Would you like to see a cap on donations? I think that should be

the way we should go, yes. Where do you think would be a good

standpoint? I think �50,000 would be a good starting point. That will

form the basis of the discussions. My understanding is that those

talks will restart, the Deputy Prime Minister has made an approach

to the different parties to kick- start this some weeks ago, because

it is in the coalition agreement, we need to get the big money out of

politics, which is why I think a cap is important. The committee has

recommended one which is lower, about �10,000. Different parties

will have different views. But I think moving ahead with a cross-

party consensus to get this sorted out... I think we need it any

independent inquiry, in truth. We welcome the Prime Minister's U-turn

on this, but we need an independent inquiry. We saw this Tuesday the

privatisation of the National Health Service. We did not see that.

Let's talk about the talks on party funding. Let's stick to that. One

of the stumbling blocks has been Labour's failure to agree on what

the links should be financially between the unions and the party.

There is this problem over opting in and opting out. Do you think now

it is time that should people should have to opt in rather than

opting out? I agree with what Ed Miliband has said, members of trade

unions ought to be able to decide whether they want to opt into that

political levy or not. You would advise the Labour leader to do

that? I think I would, it is less damaging than capping donations. We

rely on donations from all sorts of people, members of the Labour Party

donate. They pay a membership, subscription fee. And I think that

forms the biggest part of the money we received, to be honest, it is

bigger than the trade unions. -- we receive. I think they are not

mutually exclusive. We have to make progress on these talks, because I

think they should be a cap on individual donations. If you start

to do that, then all of the speculation about people buying

influence becomes irrelevant, because we're not talking about the

same kind of sums. So I think a cap on party funding, and I also think

we need to look at the rules on party spending as well. For the

Liberal Democrats, that's clear, because you do not have the same

sort of money. We have a range of different donors, much of our money

comes from the grass roots, all of those local fund-raising events,

but I think that is a strength. We should be encouraging people, that

if they support issues, donating to a political party is a legitimate

way of doing that and being involved actively. Would you be

happy to ask the taxpayer to give money, and have some kind of state

funding, is that going to be palatable? This is the thing, I

don't think it will be. This is the danger, that inevitably, there will

be a conclusion that all parties should be state funded, but I don't

think there will be an appetite for that. That would be completely

unpalatable, for people to be expected to pay to fund political

parties. People think they pay too much in taxes anyway, to be honest.

To fund the BNP, for example, would be unpalatable follows people.

think in the current climate, it will not happen. It works well in

other countries, and of course, there is some state funding, for

example, for the opposition, in terms of policy development, which

is fair enough. But some am state funding will be the solution. But

we need a system -- but I don't think state funding will be the

solution -- where it is all more transparent. The fear of fuel

shortages is with us again. There is a threat that a tanker drivers

could be going on strike as early as next month. The Government has

announced that army personnel will be trained to take over. Will this

be enough to avoid a crisis? Well, what do you think? Labour really

suffered the last time there was action like this. I'm not sure that

it will. The Government needs to be making contingency plans, but they

need to be encouraging the trade unions to get around the table and

find a settlement, with the management. Last week we were

speaking to small businesses, and the price of a litre of petrol has

gone through �1.40 on Friday - do you think George Osborne should

have done more to tackle the price of fuel? I would have liked to have

seen more on this in the Budget, definitely. But this kind of move

by the tanker drivers is so were responsible, we have got hard-

working businesses up and down the country, trying to grow their way

out of recession. To hang his over their heads I think is so

irresponsible. Are you fearful about a possible crisis like this

again? We all remember what it was like last time. It is right that

the Government puts plans in place so that we do not end up in the

same situation. It is so important to the economy that we keep things

moving. Is it right for the military to be stepping in?

Government needs to look at how emergency services can continue,

and indeed, the economy does not grind to a halt. But that means

having a negotiation which there's some kind of fruit, is that

possible Blunkett -- is that possible? That has to be the

reality. I do not know the detail, to be honest. It needs to be

settled, I don't think anybody want to strike, but we should have the

right to withdraw labour, if that is the only alternative. Even if it

brings the country to a standstill ban ahead -- to a standstill?

there is no alternative, then yes, absolutely, people have the right

to withdraw label. But I want a conclusion to be seen on this one,