13/10/2011 Question Time

We're in the Queen Mary University of London. Welcome to Question Time.

And with me on our panel tonight, the Health Secretary, Andrew

Lansley, the former Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who is hoping to

win that post back. Dr Phil Hammond, a GP, a stand-up comedian and who

writes for Private Eye. Mark Littlewood, director a free market

think-tank and the deputy editor of the Evening Standard, Sarah Sands.

APPLAUSE Our first question from Peter

Mammato, please. Is it appropriate for the Defence

Secretary to bring a friend to work?

Andrew Lansley? I hope all have friends at work and friends who

visit us at work. The purpose of your question is to say, where are

the boundaries? Liam himself, I saw him at the House of Commons and say

to the Commons he had made mistakes and apologised for those because he

allowed the distinction between his private life and his public

responsibilities to be blurred. He accepted that and apologised for it.

Ynd that there are investigations being con-- beyond that there are

investigations being conducted. I will not judge anything beyond that.

Do you think, as one of his friends said today, it would turn the Prime

Minister into John Major if he bowed to pressure and got rid of

Fox? No, I don't think there is any comparison. I don't know what that

is supposed to imply. From my point of view, I work with Liam, I have

known him for a long time. I think he's been an excellent Defence

Secretary. He's had a terrible legacy from Labour. He had to go

through a tough process of dealing those and doing a strategic

security and Defence Review. I think he's given leadership and

support to the armed services in Afghanistan and libyafplt over this

year-and-a-half they have -- Libya. Over this year-and-a-half they have

performed magnificently. I think if you look from the public interest

point of view, is he a good Defence Secretary? Absolutely, I think he

is. You would like him to stay? I think Liam Fox has got every

right to bring someone in to give him advice. The root is you appoint

them as a special adviser. They are paid about �60,000 a year. I think,

given the track record of civil servants in the Ministry of Defence

and senior military officials who have almost bankrupted one

Government after another with dire advice I am pleased to see a sharp

mind brought in from the outside. Why was it not made a legitimate

appointment. As it hasn't been, I think we need to know what rules

the finances around here. What was he earning and who was he getting

the money from. If they answer that the issue will go away. You had

special advisers, paid a lot more. �120 how thousand. Brought in, they

ran everything. They had to go.... They ran everything, not you?

no. It is different. The American model of politics is what Tony

Blair brought to London. The advisers were running the system.

We didn't have all those civil servant types. I found it easier to

get things done. I would like to see a lot more clearing out of

senior civil servants and people brought in to make sure Governments

can get their policies through an often resistant Civil Service. They

should say, who was paying what and was there any undue influence?

Until he does say that.... What would you call "Undue influence?"

commercial interest? If a commercial firm was paying that

adviser and that adviser was influencing the contract that is a

huge problem. We need to be told and the issue can go away. I can't

understand why it's being allowed to drag on and on and more

speculation around it all. Sarah Sands? Well he is becoming less a

friend by the day. By yesterday he was an imagine farry friend. He was

described as a Walter Mitty figure. By the end of the week he may have

no relationship at all with Mr Fox. I think it is Dr Fox. Obviously, it

looks odd to have best man on a business card, so adviser was the

option. I mean, you say... You mean, According to Ken if you want

someone in because you cannot trust your civil servants he seemed to

get a good deal. Mr Werritty didn't seem to make much money out of this

at all, or he was sponsored. Whether he can survive I think is

an interesting question. We did see all the cavalry brought out in the

House of Commons to protect him. It has slightly become a press verses

the Government, which I think is what Dr Fox is now playing on. Or

his friends, more friends telling Cameron, the Prime Minister, that

he would be looking weak to dismiss. The man there? Isn't this half of

the problem that it has become acceptable by Ken and Andrew and

Government generally in a democracy that it is OK to bring in your

buddys and pay them �120,000 as special advisers? It is ridiculous!

I think that is an excellent point. Actually Cameron did promise to

sort out lobbyingch he said it was the next big -- lobbying was the

next big problem. This chap seems to lobby and he's not in the box.

We are playing the next Where's Wally? It's called where's Werritty.

You don't go on 44 trips for no reason. You could have won him in a

raffle. He could be doing something unusual. We won't know until the

tests are back! With all these things you have to investigate them

independently. My experience of health service investigations f you

do them house and do them in secret you don't get to the truth of the

matter. You need someone independent, putting out the

answers in the public domain. don't count the Cabinet Secretary

as somebody like that? No. You need somebody with the appearance of

being independent. APPLAUSE

Yes? I want to ask Mr Lansley, you say Liam Fox has apologised N this

situation it is a clear miss judgment. Is an apology enough?

you make mistakes it is good to apologise. That is what he did at

the first opportunity. Can you apologise for anything that you

have done wrong? If you make a mistake would you not apologise.

Nobody knows what you're doing with that! I see the point you're making.

Actually, you know, he, not only did he apologise, but he had taken

the step of instigating an investigation, which the Prime

Minister said, I would like the Cabinet Secretary to do it. That is

fine. I'm surprised Ken says it is dragging on. It's only been about

six days. I mean are we not capable of realising if you're going to

have a welter of accusations, allegations against people, which

include, much of which may not prove to be true, it's better

actually to have a proper investigation and not to prejudge

it. So long as the... As long as the NHS reforms take! My brother's

in the Armed Forces. I don't think a sorry, a simple sorry for

somebody who just follows the Ministry of Defence around is

correct. What about the security of the country where he was following

him around - the information he was partial to? It's just wrong. My

brother, he serves in Afghanistan. He had two terms there. He's

serving now and you can't get a word out of him for where he's been,

where he's going. He takes it serious and serves Queen and

Country. You can't just, "Oh, let me take my friend around." He has

duty to this country. There are failings there for recognising what

his duties are. APPLAUSE

The original question was this, wasn't it: Is it OK to have friends

visiting you at the office? No it is OK for the Defence Secretary to

bring a friend to work? I wish our politicians listened a lot more to

experts and their friends rather than following what the civil

servants advise them. In Liam Fox's case it is straightforward. Look,

on the face of it looks like odd behaviour. I don't know many people

who take their best man with them on 18 trips to Dubai. It looks odd

behaviour. Something which looks like odd behaviour is not a firing

offence for the Secretary of State for defence. There are two things

we need to discover. I think the Cabinet Secretary will get to the

bottom. Was there any impropriety? If there was a suggestion that

defence contracts were being skiched up, that is a firing --

stitched up, that is a firing offence. Was security breached? If

yes, Fox has to go. But for God's sake n a mature democracy, let's

take a few days, at least, to sort this out. These are serious charges.

We only need the patience of a few more days to get to the bottom of

them. Does Liam Fox's own statement, on Sunday, answer one of those

points, when he said, I do accept that given Mr Werritty's defence-

related business interests my frequent contacts may have given an

impression of wrong doing? Because the code covers the impression of...

He says Werritty has defence- related business interests.

don't know what they are. Is there real impropriety here? If it turns

out he is a Walter Mitty character, that is odd, but relatively

harmless. If it turns out worse than that, then he has to leave the

Cabinet. Do you not think that the British taxpayer is sick and tired

of seeing their money get wasted? APPLAUSE. It's not taxpayers' money.

We don't think he's paid by the taxpayer. He seems to be able to

travel around the world on little money. We don't know how he's

funded this, he probably can sort out the economy by the money he

makes by doing relatively little. Who is funding all this?

Echoing the previous comments from the middle of the audience, Liam

Fox is a public servant, and you know, if this was the head of an

NHS Trust, who may have a friend, a best man who may be the head of a

pharmaceutical company, or something like that, if they were

allowed confidential meetings there would be an outcry and his position

would be in question. So, there's no question that Fox has given this

guy too much access. OK, let's go on. Chandrika Chopra?

How wise it is to persist with the NHS reforms when health

professionals oppose them so strongly? All right, Andrew

Lansley? But not the whole sorry, but jaust the answer to that

question, if you would -- just the answer to that question, if you

would. The premise is that health professions are against this. Take

one central principal here, which is that doctors and nurses should

take greater responsibility for designing services on behalf of

their patients. Actually, across the NHS that is supported. The

Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA and the

Royal College of Nursing have supported that principal. The

principal of the legislation that there should be greater democratic

credibility. People by and large support that. Now, I know there are

a lot of things people say they don't like. Half the time they are

saying there are things in the bill which are not there that they don't

like. Things they imagine the bill is introducing competition to the

NHS. Actually it does not change the scope of competition at all. If

you construct a different argument and base it on a miss

representation of what is in the bill, it is easy then to get people

to say, I am against the bill. We've had a lot of miss reputation.

We've had a lot of occasions when frankly from my point of view we've

had to explain. There have been occasions when people wanted

reassurance. We went to enormous lengths to make certain when we

were listening to people and pausing the bill, to take the NHS

Future Forum, a team of experts and professionals from across the

service, go out across the country, hundreds of meetings, thousands of

contributions, to arrive at a place where the forum told us what the

professionals across the service, as well as the patients and the

public needed. We accepted every This depends on trust. APPLAUSE

difficulty with this is it is 353 pages - it is impossible to

understand it. It is unreadable. What did you say? It is wonk. This

is unreadable. There is no narrative. You would think if you

would read that you would hear words like transparency, openness,

accountability. They are not in there. How many times does the word

"competition" appears? 86. Co- operation? Nought. Integration.

appears. There is a duty... Collaboration? There is a duty in

the legislation for integration of services. 86 competitions, four co-

operations, no integration, no collaboration. The point is the

reason... There is no reason to argue about it. Andrew, I let you

speak. Let me speak, please. What is your impression about the

reaction of the NHS professionals? Does it matter? Yes, it does.

the professionals always against reform? It is not just the

professionals, it is probably the vast majority of patients. Nobody

has managed to read this thing. The thing they... You clearly have. You

have done a word count on it! thing that worries people most is

this element of competition. The NHS needs to rediscover its

humanity. If you look at Mid-Staffs, there is a real problem. If you

look at competition - and Labour did this - the competition cherry

picked the easy cases. In the NHS20% of patients take up 80% of

resources. I can see patients here, you are fairly fit, I will cherry

pick you. You have five or six diseases, you are a bit expensive,

I'm not interested in you. The only way to focus the NHS is to

integrate it. Although Andrew will say there has been a change in here

- it has never happened yet. What they want is collaboration and keep

as many patients out of hospital as they can. It doesn't change...

says it, but will it do it? You are not trusting the doctors and nurses

themselves. We designed the service around the needs of patients. We

give the doctors and nurses the ability to commission the services

that they need for their patients. Then we make certain that it is

democratically accountable... right. There are five people around

- hang on. We have five people on this panel and a lot of hands up.

Mark Littlewood? We need a bit of a reality check. I know the National

Health Service is thought of very fondly by a majority of people. It

saved my live seven years ago. Let's not kid ourselves. Let's not

fall for a myth. Let's not believe it is the envy of the world - it

isn't any more. Better health provision is being given in much of

Europe, many other OECD countries and we have a substantial financial

problem. NHS spending has trebled in the last 30 years. Life

expectancy amongst the poorest elements of society has not

improved as much as life expectancy of the richest elements of society.

So it is not even helping the people at the lower end. We need a

reality check. The NHS model, if it is the envy of the world, has been

copied by no-one. It isn't the envy of the world. I would like to say I

welcome Andrew Lansley trying to tackle some of these problems about

efficiency. I would like to see something which gives patients

control and power, you, the guys in the audience, not the doctors, or

the Commissioners - patients. One of the problems we have got is that

it is not responsive enough to patients who need care. There are a

lot we can learn from other systems in the world that produce better

results at much lower costs. APPLAUSE The person there in the

fourth row? I think you are completely wrong. The NHS...

APPLAUSE When the NHS was established in 1948, whatever it

was, all the OECD countries followed suit. There was Japan,

Australia and Canada, they all used the same system. Everything you

have just said is wrong. It has one of the highest rates of

satisfaction in Europe. It has one of the greatest levels of outcomes

that there are and it has a lower percentage of GDP use than any

other countries. Let's be careful. Please not just... Are you saying

they have better healthcare policies? Yes. Your chance of

survival if you are diagnosed with cancer in the US... You are

completely wrong. Let's not fall for this nonsense that the only two

available healthcare systems on the planet are the National Health

Service or the USA. I don't think the USA is a good system at all. We

can learn a lot from Singapore. They don't spend as much. It is not

just what we have got or America. We can do better than that. The

European systems use insurance models, a more market-based

approach. Which have lower satisfaction rates and longer

waiting times. We really think we are the only people who have

cracked this? It is nonsense. woman in green? Ultimately, this is

a time sensitive issue. There are people's lives at stake. How would

the panel answer the Shadow Health Minister's point that while we are

having these protracted debates, it is stopping us from fixing the NHS

we have got now. We are not making those reforms because we are having

this debate. He says drop the bill and we will help you reform NHS

commissioning, the new - Andy Burnham. Ken Livingstone?

simple reality is that we, according to the Commonwealth

Institute, have the most cost- effective healthcare in the world.

We spent 8% of our wealth on the NHS. In America it is 16%. France

and Germany, it is 10%. I think what the reason the Government is

doing this is it can't go to the American system in one big step,

they couldn't get it through. It is starting to push down the road of

more and more privatisation, more and more profit and when you are

adding profit to the cost of an operation, there will be less

operations done at the end of the day. When you think that this

Government promised not just that there would be no top-down

reorganisation of the NHS, they promised, Cameron promised to

increase spending on the NHS in real terms and a moratorium on

hospital closures. I have never seen such a deliberate pattern of

lies in an election... APPLAUSE Ken, Labour's line was to say it is

irresponsible to increase NHS spending? Not just Labour's line,

Andy Burnham's view. That is Labour. Exactly. Sorry, I don't get your

point. And he is still their Shadow Health Secretary. He has been

reappointed in circumstances where he was telling us that we ought to

be cutting the NHS budget and we are not. We are increasing the NHS

budget by �12.5 billion. I don't know where you have been around all

my life. I'm not here simply to parrot the Labour Party line. I am

broadly in agreement with the vast majority of Labour's policies. I

was profoundly unhappy with the partial privatisation measures Tony

Blair's Government introduced which has helped land us in this mess. It

should all be free at the point of delivery. There should be no profit

motive at all. It will be. The man there? If you keep your remarks

brief, I would be grateful. Yes? was wondering when 60 senior

medical officials have sent off a letter describing the health

reforms as "unpopular and undemocratic" surely it would be

reprehensible to follow through with them? APPLAUSE Sarah Sands?

Talking earlier about the issue of trust and the public trust doctors,

they don't trust politicians. It doesn't mean the doctors are always

going to be right. I think there is a problem and we have seen from the

protests outside that people feel very strongly about this. The

National Health Service is the religion of the British people. The

trouble is then you say anything must happen to it and any

efficiencies are a back door privatisation. It means we can

never talk about it in a rational way. That does worry me. Very

important, I want old people treated with dignity, I want

children treated in medical emergencies. We have had feelings

of a powerless in the face of a monolithic bureaucracy. If you can

find a better way of ordering paper for the National Health Service and

do it a bit cheaper, I think the fact we can't look at it because

this is an attack on the NHS and I know your motives are impure, that

puts us in a difficult position. APPLAUSE OK. There are still many

people with their hands up. You have a clipboard in front of you. I

beg you to speak briefly if you would? A few pressing points.

you mean you will speak briefly? Absolutely. 80 to 100 billion will

be handed to United Health America. It has been called the derevolution

of the National Health Service. Let's talk about the 120 billion

uncollected through tax avoidance. Let's talk about the 1% of tax

breaks that the richest, the ten billion... All right. You are now

reading it. Dr Hammond? Do you want to answer his point? I think it is

an interesting point. If you involve private providers they are

there to make a profit motive. I have no objection to them coming in

on occasion if the NHS can't deliver. Every single model are

moving towards integrated care. It is patients who fall between the

bits of the NHS, particularly the elderly. You must do everything you

can to keep them in their homes. The NHS are a bit like the French

rugby team. While we have had headless management, some really

good things have been happening on the ground. There have been falls

in emergency admission. There is a wonderful organisation in North

West London where they are working, they are sorting out their chronic

diseases and stopping people going into hospital. All of this has been

done without the Health Bill going through. The bit of legislation -

you can't win over the hearts and minds. If people don't believe in

competition, it will never work. Integration is the way forward.

me reassure you. It is whether they trust you. Of course. I am looking

for trust, particularly because I have spent now nearly eight years

as Shadow Health Secretary. My responsibility in all that time has

been to arrive at a place where people do believe the NHS will

improve continuously under a Conservative administration. My

commitment - and I made it to the Conservative Party - was that while

I am Secretary of State the NHS will not be privatised, it will not

be fragmented. The reason why there are general practitioners is

because they are getting the opportunity as doctors and nurses

to design services themselves. is happening now. If it is

happening now, why? We have arrived at a point where the Primary Care

Trusts and the Strategic Health Authorities know that they are

going to be abolished when the Bill goes through. There is an argument

that has been put that you needn't have brought up this Bill. You have

had eight years to think about it. You could simply have built on what

Labour was already doing and... That is the point about legislation.

Difficult though it is to go through that process... You need it.

You do. You can't abolish Primary Care Trusts without doing it. In

the year before the election, Labour increased the management

costs in the NHS by �350 million. All right. We reduced it by �329

million. All right. No. Wait, please. This is a programme. I know

there are a lot of important points and you have made many. I must stop

you. We have to hear what the audience say as well. The woman in

the striped shirt? There seems to be a myth that the NHS reforms are

a future act but as someone that works in the NHS the impact is

already being felt and the lack of confidence is having an impact now.

How dare the Government have their hands on our public service before

going after the money at the top. Close the loopholes. Don't even

think about abolishing the 50% tax rate. Let's get the money back from

the top and then we can work down. Hands off our public service - all

of it! The man at the top right there.

was mentioned earlier, when we arrived today we were met by a

lively demonstration against the Health Secretary's proposals. They

even burst into our pre-Question Time coffee and cakes. This shows

how passionate they are to protect their's and our National Health

Service. Are they right? They are. Is there any vested interest?

Everybody in the world has some vested interest. They don't trust

the meddling of bureaucrats and politicians. We've heard a lot of

complaints here. Anybody coming to the support of what the Government

is trying to to? I think there is actually a misconception about the

NHS being perfect, considering the fact that on the policy of life

index, published this year, the UK had a massive dip in its health

care section. Whereas other countries, such as France, scored

near perfect in that area. I don't necessarily think we can get

benefits from the system being implemented now, the privatisation

of it. We can learn from other countries, such as France, in this

area and improve the NHS rather than keep it as it is. The person

there? How do you make sure that you micromanage this reform,

especially at the GP, primary care level, to make sure the

consequences don't actually happen? The intention may be good. How do

you make sure that the unintended consequences don't happen. What

kind? Abuses, I mean at the moment, GP power. You give them so much

money. Who is going to make sure that the money is well spent? The

GPs don't clog up time and claim money which can happen at the

moment. Rip off their clients? have to have somebody making the

decision about how and where the money is spent. Shall we buy this

service from this company or that from that company? Somebody has to

make the decisions. I prefer Andrew Lansley's view that those decisions

are better made by medical professionals than bureaucrats.

They won't necessarily get everything right, all of the time.

They won't. Errors will be made. The question is whether you put in

place a system more likely to produce better results. The thing

people like about the NHS is the equal access to all. That, I think

everybody is agreed with. It won't be the question of if you are rich

you get good care and if you are poor you get none. How you deliver

it, to deliver it in the most efficient way possible. You don't

micro-manage it. I don't want Andrew Lansley doing that. I want

to work it myself with medical advice on the ground. It won't be

perfect, but that is a better system than the creeping

bureaucracys. If you have comment on this at home and you are

on this at home and you are tweeting, you can join our debate D.

Is it acceptable for MPs to tweet while in a parliamentary debate?

They decided that tweeting was allowed. The procedures are often

so tedious I would sit out of line and I notice a lot of

correspondents do it. Should they tweet? From the point of view of

the journalists the more that tweet the better. It is all stories for

us. Are you in favour of your colleagues tweeting? I think I

wouldn't do it myself. If you're in the House of Commons, you're there

in order to participate in the debate. I think it is a good idea

to concentrate in the debate if you are in there for that purpose. The

truth of the matter is people do it everywhere now. I suspect they will

in the House of Commons. That is the way the world is going. You can

use any hand-held electric device, providing it is silent and used in

a way that does not impair decorum. You can take papers into the House

of Commons with you. I suppose that technically means we are getting to

a place where people could be providing prompts on iPad screens

or something. Instead of being whispered to.

If anybody can reduce this to 146 characters I will give them a

medal! 146 characters. I would say this,

the House of Commons is a stuffy old place. Its ability to connect

with the public in any meaningful way is zero. The protocols are

absurd. It is stuck in the past in a lot of procedures. You don't have

to rip that up to embrace some modern ways of MPs communicating,

not just to journalists but to their constituents. We will be

living in a very, very old fashioned democracy if we start to

say that MPs cannot use mobile devices to say what they are

thinking. You be the judge about whether they are concentrating in

the debate or whether they are passing comment on to you as the

constituent. A brief comment. Are we in fear of

allowing our MPs to become celebrities almost rather than

catering for society? Trying to trend. The person up

there on the far left. If they are tweeting it shows they are awake in

the chamber for a change! APPLAUSE

And you, Sir? Maybe it will allow them to communicate with their

unofficial advisers. OK! Let's go on. Anita Chin, please.

Should we be encouraging the nation's youth to follow their

Irish counter parts and emigrate around the globe to look for work?

This is in the light of the figures that nearly one million young

people are unemployed. Should we encourage them to follow the Irish

example? Sarah Sands? I think it is a global market now. It is

something that probably they have to think about. I am surprised and

so impressed just by the ingenuity and resilience of the young

graduates now. We have seen in universities themselves they are

starting to look abroad. We have to look at job creation. It is the

most important thing. Given the state we're in, that has

to come from the private sector. So, how we do that - we have to

look at it in a hard-headed way of where the jobs are. That may mean

going abroad. I have known relatives of mine who have gone to

be doctors abroad because there were opportunities or where the

skills market is. I was talking to someone from Cisco technology firm

who said there are tonnes of jobs but they don't have the people

trained for it. In Britain? technology. There are jobs. There

are thousands of jobs in technology. They were so wareed about the --

worried about the lack of skills that I are talking about setting up

their own academies to educate people from the start. I think

people will have to think much more creatively about jobs in this tough

environment. Well, I mean there may be some young people, very talented,

who speak fluently a foreign language with go and work in China

or Brazil. The majority of our young people don't have a fluent

second language. We have a duty to provide a range of jobs for kids

coming through our education system, whether they are the 45% who have

been to university or the ones who have not. That means rebuilding and

reviving our economy. We should be seeing something like a cut in VAT.

We should be encouraging with tax breaks, firms to hire and take on

more people. We should be looking at, say areas where there are huge

housing problem. Here in London and other parts of Britain. Putting

people back to work. Building the homes people need. There is a vast

amount we need to do. You will not be able to while the Government is

cutting its own spending. At a time like this, in an economic downturn

the state should be helping to gear up the economy, put people back to

work so they are coming off benefit and paying tax. That is how you pay

back the debt. Some of what Ken said I agree with.

Which bit? The Government can do things to actually help young

people get back to work. Mainly it's getting out of the way. We

live in a country now in which the tax code, the rule book for tax is

about 14,000 pages long. This is Fife or six times as long as the

complete works of Sheikh. What about cutting tax?

-- of cutting Shakespeare. What about cutting the tax? I would

slash tax. And VAT? I think VAT is probably too high. You may even

raise more money by cutting it. think you can get growth back in

the economy for the one million or so unemployed youth? It doesn't

happen overnight. If you had a serious plan to deregulate now and

start to reduce tax now, you could see the results in the next year or

so. The coalition doesn't have that plan. And Osborne's plan is wrong n

other words? Osborne is right to get spending under control. That is

a... The Government's plan for growth seems to be to pray that it

happens. There's very, very small steps in some areas of labour

market reform. I would like to see de-regulation, that helps small and

medium-sized enterprises who tend to pick up those who are not as

well qualified. This war on red tape to get Government out of the

way would do an enormous amount to help these young people find work.

If I may, I would like to go back to the question. I think, yes,

we're in a global market, but actually our young people are our

future. I want them to see their future here with us. Actually when

I look around the world, I and when I think about, for example, the

pressures in terms of immigration to this country in order to do jobs

here, I think actually we are a good place to come and work. Lots

of people believe we're a good place to come and work. Yes, we

have tough times. They are extremely difficult. We have a

legacy and an international set of economic circumstances which make

it incredibly difficult. We have got to have growth and growth is

not going to come through abandoning the reduction of the

deficit, because actually the entire.... He agrees with you on

that. He says there are things you are not doing like cutting VAT.

are doing things. We are cutting tax for people on low incomes so

they will have more money in their pockets. We are putting for

business, we're taking corporation tax to the.... About de-regulation?

We have been, net we have reduced regulation since the election. That

is turning a tide, because there has been a tide of new regulation.

We were promised a bonfire, not a trim.

How does a bonfire of regulation help when the banks are not lending

to small businesses and everybody is crying out for money they cannot

get hold of? APPLAUSE It helps enormously. I will tell

you why it helps. By rowing back on red tape you don't get a boom in

the economy, you don't convert microbusinesses into massive

multinational companies. The amount of time and effort that small

businesses have to go through to comply with the rules, let's say

you have your bank loan sorted, just to comply with the rules is so

intensive that you are making the businesses.... George Osborne, at

the budget, put forward a moratorium until 2015 on impact on

the small businesses. That is where the jobs are coming

from. The question is whether young people are right to travel. Not to

travel? To emigrate. I think, yes, they are. They are

not going on holiday. Going abroad to get a job. It was said, life

without work goes rotten. It is true. We talked about inequality in

this country. They have got wider under Labour. If you have no house,

no future to life you are unlikely to go to Waitrose for the oily fish

and sun dried tomatoes and all the stuff that will keep you healthy.

The knock-on effect for the health service when people become anxious,

depressed T number of NHS managers you have made profoundly anxious

because you announced you would get rid of their jobs at the time we

are trying to make savings. If you put job insecurity into people's

mind it profoundly affects their mental health. The answer to Anita

Chin's question? If they are competing, yes, I think they should

go abroad to get a job. I will go to other members of the audience.

Isn't it a shame that our youth have to go abroad to get jobs when

investment should be in this country making sure that they get

the right, investment to get jobs here? Isn't it a shame they have to

go abroad? Do you think people should go

abroad, like the Irish? It is rhetorical. The global market is

shrinking. Skills are needed around the world. Many of us in this room

have parents who have come from abroad. Why shouldn't our children

go abroad again to make a living for themselves if it's not possible

here. There are many people who come here to do exactly that.

The Government pumped in �75 billion recently. What seems to be

happening is that it is stagnating in the banks. What is the

Government doing with that money that's going into the economy? What

are they doing to create jobs? will the �75 billion do? That's

right, in order to create jobs. Does anyone know? It will increase

inflation, a year or two down the road. A large amount of it will go

abroad. Instead of spending �75 billion printing money, I would

rather see them spend �20 billion putting people back to work on

works programmes, building houses. APPLAUSE The woman in the striped

shirt? Surely it would be better to encourage British unemployed people

or young people graduating to take jobs in this country rather than

allowing EU migrants to take them? APPLAUSE A quick point - the NHS

would only exist because of workers from overseas. They have propped up

the NHS for over 60 years and we should be grateful. APPLAUSE Andrew

Lansley, would you answer that woman's point? Make your point

again. Surely we should have the right people in this country to run

our NHS? What do you mean by that? Not having people come from abroad?

Yes. We should have the right skills here. 500,000 nurses I think

are from abroad. The NHS has depended over a generation from

people coming to work in the NHS... Why can't you train people in this

country to do it? We are training people to do it. You have 300,000

people in the NHS who have come from abroad? In years past, we

weren't training enough doctors, dentists or nurses. We are training

more. We are ensuring that we can meet our needs. If you are a medic,

a doctor, with the levels of skill we are talking about you are

working in an international - I know I was at... Dubai?!

LAUGHTER I was at one of our leading Children's Hospitals and I

was talking to somebody who was describing his career to me. He had

worked in California, Cairo and he was working in Britain. He was a

very, a leading paediatric surgeon. That is what you have got to expect.

My point is when you look at people from around the world wanting to

work in this country, yes, they do want to work here. So we shouldn't

be so pessimistic about ourselves. If other people around the world

with skills want to be here, we should realise that we are a good

place for people with skills to be here. The man on the gangway there?

Part of the issue that is being discussed here is there's youth

that feel disengaged with the workplace at the moment. Sarah

Sands makes this point of Cisco who are going to the lengths of putting

in place a training programme for the youth. The problem exists that

we need to have qualifications on the same level, academic and

vocational. Instead of these companies going to the lengths of

saying we might have to put in place our own work programme. It

should be encouraged by the Government to do that. APPLAUSE

Yes? You talk all about these apprenticeships, so many hundreds

out there. Where are they? Three people in my family can't get an

apprenticeship. Where are they? What were you saying about your

family? I have three people in my family trying to get

apprenticeships. Not one of them can get one. Explain a bit more.

They get kicked from pillar to post. What apprenticeships are they

looking for? Motor and two in electrical. They go to companies

and say have you got any apprenticeship posts open? They are

given a phone number for a body to go to. They get kicked from pillar

to post. We are pushing as a Government forward... You are not

pushing hard enough! Then we will do more. APPLAUSE We have increased

the number of apprenticeships... Why can't they get one? When Phil

talks about the problems of people not being in work and the

implications that has, the largest part of that is people on

incapacity benefit, that is where the work programme is tremendously

important. In the course of this Parliament we will see 2.5 million

people go through the work programme. It could have the impact

of increasing employment by up to 300,000. One more point, the man

with the beard? I work in the higher education sector. I teach in

it. Let me tell you with the abolition of EMA and the trebling

of tuition fees combined with university cutbacks, I tell you

young people are terrified about what is going to happen to them,

even more so... APPLAUSE Even more so when I graduated in 2006, before

the crash, when the market was flooded with graduates which was

largely caused by Labour's ridiculous 50% target of everyone

going through higher education which isn't workable. Some people

simply are not suited to higher education. That is not saying they

are stupid. We need to get these skills back into the country.

APPLAUSE We will leave it there. We will go on to a final question from

Jon Fawbert. Will overregulating the press put democracy itself in

peril as Paul Dacre asserted yesterday? This is the conversation

going on at the Leveson Inquiry in the press in the light of the phone

hacking and what you can do to regulate. Paul Dacre of the Daily

Mail was against the regulations that were being proposed. Ken

Livingstone, what do you make of what he said? I don't want to see

any stit regulation of the media in that sense. -- any state regulation

of the media in that sense. I don't like the idea that someone like

Rupert Murdoch can decide what we read and what we see. Or Paul Dacre,

so a real free press would be one that wasn't owned by multi-

billionaires. APPLAUSE So what Dacre says is British's

commercially viable free press is the only really free media? It is

in hock to the people who own it. What chance have I got of getting

the Daily Mail, or the Daily Telegraph, or the Times endorsing

me for Mayor next year because their owners won't let them? What

will the London Evening Standard do, Sarah Sands? We will do what's best

for London. We are open-minded. am relaxed immediately(!) You will

have the Guardian behind you. The important thick is it is a

competitive and it is a vibrant press. -- important thing is it is

a competitive and it is a vibrant press. We are an industry that is

on our knees at the moment. Everyone agrees that the News of

the World behaved horribly. I went last week to a police station to

look at a notebook that had all my numbers on, the number of my

numbers on, the number of my husband. It's a horrible feeling. I

think there is a danger that this is going to be used because there

are a lot of other interests in a muzzled press. Powerful people

would like to control the press. I don't think Paul Dacre was

exaggerating when he said what you end up with is Zimbabwe. You may

not love the press. It can be boisterous and vulgar and sometimes

unfair. I take all that. I still believe it is better there than not

there. It has to self-regulate. What have you done? They are

getting desperate. Phil Hammond? would be wary if regulations

stifled good journalism. It is the closest thing, the Private Eye, we

have to a free press. It's patients and parents raising concerns who

then get journalists on their side who hold these institutions to

account. So really good investigative journalism is vital.

You have to invest in it. It is the one thing that holds people to

account. The man up there? APPLAUSE Could the panel please address the

myth that we have of free press? British libel laws are some of the

worst in the world. You need only publish something in Heathrow for

someone to come here and sue you about it? I agree they are

restrictive. You need a good lawyer! I have been writing for

Private Eye for almost 20 years now. I broke the Bristol heart scandal.

I thought my career was on the line. Nothing happened. I guess because

the story was true. If you get your story true, you have an editor who

backs you up, generally, you are protected. Private Eye has never

won a libel action. They have... Never lost! They always lose.

are they still going? Who is funding it?! I agree with much of

what has been said. A free press is extremely important. You have to

bear in mind that that will mean there are a lot of press vehicles,

media outlets that you don't personally like because there will

be a diversity of choice. The BBC has a colossally bigger share of

the TV market than Ru purt Murdoch could ever dream of. Thank God.

Let's have choice. I hope that Ken wouldn't be worried about Fox News

existing in the United Kingdom. It adds to the spread of choice.

you think the Government is gunning for the press? We have got into an

unfortunate situation which is where you want the press and

politicians to be daggers drawn, it has now got to a dangerously

hostile relationship. The press are crucial at holding people to

account. We can be quite confident about it now. The internet, blog

sites, we have a plethora of people who by putting down ten quid and

buying a URL, they can become their own investigative journalists. That

is a very exciting time. OK. OK. Andrew Lansley, let me put a quote

from Paul Dacre to you. "Am I alone in detecting the rank smells of

hypocrisy and revenge in the political classes current moral

indignation over a British press that dared to expose their greed

and corruption." I don't think that is justified. It wasn't politicians

who encouraged the News of the World to go out phone hacking,

trying to get into people's... expenses. It was all before then.

You are getting your own back. indignation is not just amongst

politicians. There is public indignation. There is a sense that

newspapers, the press seriously overreach themselves. I don't think

it was about getting the story right. If it was, there wouldn't

have been any problem. It was going into people's private lives and

often making things up. Is there a move for licensing the press in the

way that... What I think everybody is looking for is to move to a

place where the press are not simply able to be judges and

prosecutors and juries, that there has to be independence and

standards have to be pursued independently. There is a place for

regulation. Mark makes the point about getting a range of voices in

the media. That is why several years ago, when I was a backbencher

with David Putnam, we worked together on putting the public

interest test into media mergers which is the test that was applied

when the News International were trying to take over BSkyB because

regulation for competition and for choice and for plurality has its

place. We can't go any further. Our hour is up. We have to stop

Question Time. We will be in Glasgow next week and Winchester

the week after that. If you want to come to either of those programmes,