Lord Heseltine - UK Deputy Prime Minister 1995-97 HARDtalk

of her last known movements. Now on BBC News, it's time for

HARDtalk. Welcome to HARDtalk. I'm Stephen

Sackur. The Scottish people voted 'no' to independence, but they may

just have changed British politics forever. More powers are to be

handed to the Scottish parliament and now English MPs want their own

form of self`determination. With alienation from the Westminster

status quo fuelling calls for reform, is the UK in the throes of a

dangerous identity crisis? My guest is former cabinet minister, Lord

Heseltine. Lord Heseltine, welcome to

HARDtalk. It has become the conventional wisdom that after all

of the passion and heat of the Scottish independence referendum,

the United Kingdom will have to change and will never be the same

again. Do you believe that? I can't think of the period in history when

it wasn't true. All of our history is one of evolution. We had a dozen

kingdoms fighting each other. There have been huge historic evolution

over the centuries `` has. I don't think the Scottish Referendum has

actually done anything other than to accelerate changes that were well

under way and long overdue from my vantage point. David Cameron invite

to me to come to Liverpool with him several years ago before he was

Prime Minister. He invited me to do two reports on devolution included

in the manifesto was the proposition to have mayors in big cities and he

agreed to the recommendations of my report which, a few weeks ago, saw

?6 billion given back to local people to make decisions. And you

have always been a champion of localism within British politics and

we will talk about that but it is a question of scale. I am going to

quote David Cameron, now he says, after this result, which seems to be

leading to substantial default powers, he says they have heard the

voice of Scotland and now muster the millions of voices of England the

implication being that something profoundly new is going to happen to

the political arrangements for England. It is and so it should.

Basically, from the view I take, it is to return power to where it was

when we created the great Britain that we understand. London did not

create the United Kingdom. It was part of it but Manchester,

Liverpool, Newcastle, Birmingham... You were vital parts of what we are

`` they. Over 150 years, London sucked the political power away from

them and concentrated on itself now two things are happening first, the

government wants to return it and power is going up above the

nationstates have huge issues are emerging which are not easily within

the grip of a nationstate to deal with. I am thinking of the rules of

global capitalism. And the European Union which is a source of power

which your party am a ``, has huge suspicion of. Much more important is

the fact that we have global warming, international crime and

drug problems, the rules of capitalism which limit what any

nationstates can do. The frustration of that, of democracy seeing power

drifting away and the inability of their politicians to actually do

much about it, it is part of the frustration born of years of the

worst economic conditions of modern times. What you're saying is

interesting because you are saying that the status quo cannot hold

because Adomah in the big picture and on the close picture, it will

not hold ``, . I want to focus on this question of how England enjoys

self`determination at the same time as it is planning to devolve powers

to Scotland. The Conservatives appear to believe that the best

solution is English votes on English laws and the rearrangement of

Parliament so that, perhaps for a certain number of days a week,

English MPs get to vote on specifically English issues and

Scottish MPs and presumably the Welsh and Northern Irish as well are

locked out. Is that workable? I think it is workable and desirable

but I don't like the word block out. `` locked out. They would have

to recognise that a great number of the powers that affect Scotland are

already determined in Scotland. There is more to do for Wales and

Northern Ireland. They already have serious degrees of devolution. These

issues are all understood and have been on the agenda and much

discussed all of my political life. But they have never been settled and

nobody has ever come up with a convincing solution to the obvious

problems, one of which is that you are painting a picture of a bizarre

2`for`1 Parliament that is part of the time a national and sovereign

Parliament and other times is only for the English. But there would be

no English government answerable to that English Parliament because the

government would remain a UK government. It seems to be very

problematic. I think the solutions are well established. I think a

self`respecting civil servant could produce, in a month, a way to

resolve these issues. It won't get any easier in 18 months or ten

years. These issues have been around for some time. The problem is that

with all the vested interest involved, it won't get any easier. A

are not one the way. `` they are not going to go away. They have to

choose an option and put it to Parliament. Let me ask you a simple

question. I am assuming that you were an ardent supporter of the No

vote in the Scottish Referendum. You wanted to keep the union?

Passionately. What sense does it make that you are now asking for

greater dividing lines within the union and sending a message to

Scotland which is that, frankly, devolution, yes you can have it but

we are going to have it as well and the dividing line is going to get

ever deeper? You have missed the key point. What the referendum was about

was saying goodbye to Scotland. Separation. And I have never

believed in that. Alex Salmond said that it devolution came to Scotland

and the English go their own way with self`determination, the

Scottish people will look around and realise that though they did not

vote for it, they had de facto independence anyway. Alex Salmond

has not been terribly reliable in some of the forecasts he has made

and mercifully so. He has now retired. I think we should put him

on one side quite frankly. What we have now got is a clear promise to

devolve powers to Scotland for those things that the Scottish can more

effectively determine themselves. It is a very interesting question. Is

that really devolution to Edinburgh or the components of Scotland? One

of the things I've found when I went to Cardiff and Edinburgh and Belfast

was that the argument for devolution was actually talking about

devolution to the capital city is. A replica of the London model ``

cities. I think we should be spreading power to the economic

centres of the various components of the United Kingdom and that is the

model I think the government is working on and rightly so. When you

talk about an English Parliament in all but name, you acknowledge the

growing powers of the Scottish Parliament and you say we have to

work on Wales as well. Is this becoming a formal federation? No.

One of the curiosities of our Constitution is that it is not

written. That. To change. `` that will have to change. When we get

onto the model of how we operate England, the Parliament of the

United Kingdom has laid down all sorts of structures, counties,

districts and so forth. It is that that Parliament has determined and I

don't think that makes us federal. We will, I think, find ways of

establishing motives that apply to the four components. The bottom line

is that England, because it dominates in terms of demographics

and resources, if it has its own English Parliament it will come to

be seen as entirely dominant within the United Kingdom and that is not

just my thought. Significant members of your own party say that an

English Parliament within Westminster is a constitutional

non`sequitur. They would need to correspond with the government which

this wouldn't and federal structures would control huge amounts of the

population and resources and that would be so unbalanced as to make

any future union unstable. That is a judgement I don't personally share.

I don't think it is more profound than the belief that London today

dominates the English countries. The Southeast of England has a totally

disproportionate economic impact on the whole of the United Kingdom but

also of the English component. That has to change? You can't change

that. You can try to engineer change. You can try but you will not

end up in the world today without anything other than London in the

Southeast. Looking at the facts of London's dominance today I'm a a

recent report said that if you look at transport in `` infrastructure

investment, they get 24 times as much as the entire North of

England. That has to change as part of this new deal for the United

Kingdom. Six weeks ago I stopped listening to the Chancellor

outlining the most imaginative transport devolution processes that

I can remember linking Hull with the Mersey and creating a massive

complex that would join together the great cities of the North. That is

an aspiration but what we know is happening is the high`speed rail

link the Queen London and Birmingham `` between London and Birmingham.

The crossrail is a London project. Something of the order of ?2 billion

a year. HS2 is the same sort of money and it is not about Birmingham

but about Manchester and Leeds and Liverpool and possibly onwards to

Scotland. One thing we could agree on, the public relations for the

project about the quarter of an hour saved was a disaster but it

completely missed the point. It was never about London to Birmingham.

I'm trying to get to grips with how far you see this new localism

going. Would you give the big cities of the United Kingdom tax raising

powers? Business and property taxes? They have already been given

an element of tax powers. And elements but if you look at the

percentage as opposed to the national government of the UK, it is

a tiny proportion of what American cities get. Would you change that? I

would not go for a default tax system for many reasons. You have to

have equalisation and because we have rich and poor parts of the

South being much richer than the North, it would... The South still

dominates? Your localism is tokenism? It is not. It is about

where power and initiative should lie. And returning to the cities the

power they enjoyed in the 18th and 19th centuries. They still had a

central government. What you have to think about is not absolute power.

You have to think about partnership and the balance of power and the way

you can bring this about, it is already happening, we're talking

about combined authorities with big cities, city deals and ministers

were already negotiating deals on an unprecedented local basis across the

United Kingdom. All you have to think about if you want to see how

to make this work is to say, what are the options for going further? I

could tell you what many of them are but I could gather 20 people around

this table and they would all tell you because we all know what the

options are. They might come up with many different solutions.

They would. And I am very aware that for 30 years you have been banging

the drum for a new deal for the regions, and the cities and

governments come and go, and they all talk about their commitment to

it, but frankly not very much gets done. Even Mr Cameron, who appointed

you to come up with a new set of proposals on getting growth going in

the region, he spent something like ?15 billion on local enterprise

initiatives, and in the end about ?2 billion came in. No, let me remind

you. I looked at what was already happening, and I came up with a

figure of about ?50 billion to ?60 billion over a five`year period,

that was already being hypothecated by central government for local uses

through local government. Already happening. But all of that was

tightly controlled as to what they could do with the money they got.

What I was saying was loosen the controls, give them much more

ability to initiate because they know what the problems are on the

ground. The government accepted the principle of what I was doing and

produced something of the order of ?12 billion. ?6 billion was

allocated months ago. It is a starting point. But it shows it can

be done. And the thing which is particularly exciting is that now in

England there are 32 of these local enterprise partnerships. Everyone

has got a plan, which they designed and which the government has started

to fund the plans. It is a beginning. Now if you want to go

faster, and I do, give them more discretion over their money, augment

their plans. The thing is, however, over the last decade, various cities

and regions in the UK have been asked if they want elected mayors

with some greater real powers, spending powers and political

powers. They have also been asked in the north`east of England whether

they wanted a new Regional Assembly. And by and large, the answer from

the public has been a resounding no, mostly because it seems they

distrust politicians so much that the idea of another layer of elected

political authority in their lives simply turn them off. `` turns them

off. Well, we can discuss what it is. The truth is, they are bored.

They are not the least bit interested in this sort of arcane

administrative change. Bored or absolutely disillusioned in politics

in the UK? This is semantics. You try and take the mayoralty away from

London, and see what happens. Once they've got it, they can understand

it. We now have mayors, we have them in Liverpool, in Leicester, we have

them in Bristol, and to my judgement, on the ground, it has

been a great success. The reason why it didn't work, two reasons. One is

no`one quite understood what the deal was. Secondly, all the local

councillors were against it because they saw that they were losing

power. So, the very low turnout was actually influenced massively by

local councillors with scare tactics. I mean, I read the local

newspapers. I know what they were saying.

Let me introduce a political element to this.

The Labour Party accuses the Conservatives right now,

post`Scottish referendum, of pandering. Pandering to UKIP in its

desperate desire to offer up this notion of English votes for English

laws. It is indeed true, is it not, that the Conservative Party right

now is very concerned about UKIP and a brand of English nationalism?

The accusation from the Labour Party was based, I am afraid I have to say

it, on the fact they have 40 Scottish Members of Parliament that

they feel will not help to support a Labour majority in the House of

Commons, and therefore deprive them of power. `` not be able to support.

No point in discussing anything else. That is what it is about. Just

like they won't let the Boundary Commission change... I can't imagine

a more partisan answer on your part. What you're saying is that the

future of the United Kingdom and constitutional settlement is going

to turn into another Punch and Judy show. I have never known politics

kept out of politics. It is a very curious thing about politics. It is

just like the Boundary Commission. The Labour Party won't be against

it, just look at what Mr Callaghan in the 1960s said was when he was

Home Secretary. He had to put the Boundary Commission to Parliament,

and then he voted, whipped the Labour Party to vote against his own

proposals. They've got form, these guys. The Conservative Party

arguably has some form as well when it comes to its fear of UKIP, and

its response to UKIP. Look, UKIP is a phenomenon of immigration. Let's

not beat about the bush. A phenomenon of immigration and the

scepticism abroad, and in much of the country, about the European

Union, which you alluded to earlier. No, if you look at all the polls,

there are two things. First is the background which I mentioned of

seven or eight years of real hard economic times, which has created a

massive disenchantment. The nation's politicians have not been able to

deliver miracles. There were no miracles to deliver, but the fact is

it has created massive public disenchantment. Not just in this

country, you have Le Pen in France, Salmond in Scotland, it is all the

same sort of stuff of frustration. Are the Conservatives right to be

concerned? Of course they are. Are they right in their response? If you

look at the polls, you will see that Europe is about ninth in people's

preoccupation. The issue which is right at the top is immigration. I

lived through Enoch Powell and he was an incomparably bigger figure

than Nigel Farage, but the arguments are much the same. Dealing with

immigration, there is no doubt that has to be a top agenda item, but

actually doing something about it is extremely difficult. Stand at any

railway station or airport and look at the scale of the problem. If one

boils down UKIP's message to its most simple, one could say it is

about very tight controls on immigration. It is about getting out

of the European Union, it is about different forms of interventionism,

and protectionism actually, in the economy, and economic management.

Now I come back to this basic point. Are you satisfied with the way David

Cameron is responding to what Lord Ashcroft, a key Tory donor, says is

a very real threat to any real chance of the Tories winning the

next election? Well, Ashcroft has his views. I want to hear your views

on how David Cameron is responding. Let's see where David is on all

these matters. He is 20 points ahead of Miliband in the polls. On

economic management, which is the determinant in a general election,

the Tories are 20 points ahead. And overall they are six points behind,

fairly consistently. There are various polls, but in the key ones

that matter in the general election, the Tories are in a very strong

position. And they have an economy which is improving from the mess

that Labour left behind. I just come back to this point as we close, that

you said around Europe one sees a trend toward these right`wing, one

can loosely say nationalist parties. That could finish the Tories'

chances of winning a majority at the next election, could it not? That

same trend here in the UK? Well, I think that the nation actually will

respond to Cameron's leadership. He will address the European issue, and

it is a very difficult issue. But just like you saw in the Scottish

situation, Britain's self`interest is to be a leader in Europe. The

idea that we are going to pull up stumps and leave Germany as the

dominant power in Europe without any balance, the idea that in the

Scottish referendum we are going to allow the French to be the only

nuclear power in Europe, these arguments will not actually produce

an anti`European majority. We will have to end there. Lord Heseltine,

thank you for being on HARDtalk. And you, thank you very much.

It is an improving story for the end of the week. If you begin cloudy and

damp, things will improve quite