26/01/2012 Question Time

Bishops, bankers and benefits, all on the minds of our audience here

in Plymouth. Welcome to Question With me on the panel, the Liberal

Democrat Foreign Office minister and in the Government, Jeremy

Browne. Labour's former higher Education Minister, David Lammy.

The Conservative MP, Elizabeth Truss. The Daily Mail columnist

Melanie Phillips and comedian Mark Thank you very much. Our first

question tonight from Mary O'Connell, please. Who is more in

touch with the public's view of benefit capping? The bishops or

David Cameron and the coalition? Melanie Phillips, are you for the

bishops? No, I'm not for the bishops. I think the bishops are

completely out to lunch, quite frankly. When you consider that

many of their own vicars earn less than the amount of �26,000 per year

which they say would be a level at which people live in dire poverty,

then you have to ask yourself what on earth is going on. I think it's

very laudable that Mr Cameron's Government is trying to bring some

justice, social justice, to the welfare system to restore the

incentive to work. It's surely only common-sense that if on average you

can get more by being on benefits than going out to work, you don't

have an incentive to work and that it's extremely unfair and unjust

for all those people who are working and who are bringing in

very much less than �26,000 per year to see that money is going on

benefits to people who are not working and then to be told that

they can't possibly survive on that amount. There are many people

working for long hours for very low pay for home �26,000 income per

household is untold riches. They are being completely abandoned.

When did we hear the bishops stand up for the working poor of this

country? Mark Steel, are you with the

bishops, do they occupy the moral high ground? Well, I think compared

to David Cameron they do. You see, I think it can look as if David

Cameron's in touch with the common people, but if you step back for a

moment and see what they're doing here, it's not just a one-off issue,

a one-off cut. This is part of this Government's overall strategy which

is to make the poor pay for a mess that the rich have created.

APPLAUSE That's their overall strategy. Of

course, the people - there's only 67,000 households receive this

level of benefit, most of the money goes on rent, that's why half of

these people live in London where the rents are highest. If you just

consider for a moment when it's posed as being fair and posed as

being in defence, as Melanie says, of hard-working people, you've got

to think to yourself, hang on a minute, in some ways, maybe what

the Government's complaining about is that these people aren't

claiming enough. If these claimants weren't claiming �26,000, but were

claiming �1 million and then �1 million bonus on top of that as

well, instead of the cap being put on it, there would just be a mild

call for them to show some restraint. If they were having

millions of pounds that they were taking out of society and then they

were putting that money in their wife's name and shoving it over to

the Cayman Islands so not to pay any tax, instead of a cap being put

on it... APPLAUSE

Instead of a cap being put on it, then the Inland Revenue would be

meeting them, as they did with many business businessmen before

Christmas and wrote off in one day �25 billion of tax that was avoided.

�25 billion is so much more and therefore what's pernicious about

this argument is it's trying to divide all the different people

who're being hammered. Yes, the working poor are being hammered.

That's how pernicious it is to say, do you know who are taking it, the

people who're even poorer than you. This is what they do all the time,

put up the fees... APPLAUSE Make you pay tuition fees

so that we can protect the working poor. The danger here is that all

the different people they're hammering are all squabbling

amongst themselves over who it is taking it while the rich run off

and get away with it. That's why I think when you step back from this

argument, it looks as if David Cameron is in touch with people but

I really don't think he is. APPLAUSE

The woman there? Surely what the bishop was saying

is that we should be protecting the children. The children don't decide

whether their parents go out to work or whether they stay home and

claim benefits. Surely we should be thinking about them and not whether

we should be going after these people that we've decided don't

deserve money. APPLAUSE

Jeremy Browne, you are a Liberal Democrat. Paddy Ashdown, who used

to lead your party, would agree with that lady there and said this

was completely unacceptable. Is he right or wrong? I think he was

wrong and I support the benefit cap and I support it for two reasons.

The first is it won't have escaped the attention of people in the

audience that Britain has an absolutely colossal budget deficit.

We are borrowing, as a Government, over �400 million every single day.

�400 million a day. That is money that you, in this audience, and

your children will be paying back for years to come. We have to get a

grip on that situation. Mark Steel says you could have got a grip by

not allowing people to get away with not paying tax? We have to get

a grip on that situation. Welfare is the biggest single item of

Government expenditure and we can't exempt welfare payments and hope to

have any chance of balancing the budget of this country and we need

to do that in all our interests. This is my second point, perhaps

the biggest point. We do need to have some transitional arrangements.

I don't think you can suddenly change people's circumstances from

one day to the next. But, if we had a balanced budget, if we didn't

have a problem with the deficit, I would still support this benefit

cap and the reason is... transitional measures are what

Paddy Ashdown wants and you say he was wrong? This is for me... Hang

on a second, that's what he said? think he's wrong to oppose the

position of the Government's position. There is a moral issue

which Melanie touched upon which is, if you go up the road to my

constituency in Taunton, there are a lot of households who earn a lot

less than this proposed cap. They work full-time often in low paid

unglamorous jobs, working nights in supermarkets for example. They have

to make sacrifices, they can't always live in the part of town

that they would like to and I think it's unreasonable for people to be

earning more or to be having more household income as a principle

when they are not in work than people in work who're earning and

taking it home to their houses. APPLAUSE

Thank you. The man at the very back in the blue shirt?

Yes, you mentioned people in Taunton not earning that much, but

I wonder how many people are claiming benefits in Taunton would

be receiving this top limit because it's been talked about that

actually lots of people will find it very difficult to get housing

and there'll be crowding fam of families into smaller rooms and

accommodation, a return to the tenement days, that's my fear of it

-- crowding families into smaller rooms.

The woman there with the spectacles? In the West Country,

�26,000 is a lot of money. I have to be earning �35,000 a year to be

in the same position and there are a lot of people I know who'd love,

David, to take home �26,000 a year. So when you start talking about

this, I whole heartedly do agree with the �26,000 cap.

OK. And the woman here in the third row? Returning to the question over

who was more in touch with the people, the bishops or the

coalition government, it seems that a vast proportion of the electorate

are very in favour of some reform to the welfare system and if the

coalition Government is actually making steps to do something to

reform the system, it surely shows the coalition government are the

ones in touch with the public. APPLAUSE

David Lammy, your party's also in favour of a cap on benefits, isn't

it? Yes. So you are with the Government? No, no, no, I'm with

the bishops. But they are against the cap? The bishops' job is to

scrutinise this policy. That is what they are doing. It's a bad

policy. In my constituency, one of the poorest in London, �1,750 for a

bed -- three bedroomed flat. Were going to be moving people from

Inner London to outer London. I'll tell you what we are going to get,

something similar to Paris, a suburban ring of the very poorest

in overCrowded Houseing that will lead to lots of problems in the

year ahead and of course it's the bishop's job to challenge that.

What happens to the churn in large families that find themselves

virtually on the streets or in overcrowded, as the gentleman said,

tenemented buildings? That's going to cost all of us a lot more than

the saving that the Government are going to make. That's why the

bishops are right to challenge this. You say your party, and it's the

official line, is that you are in favour of it, what is it?

prices should be regional. Prices in London are higher than prices in

Hull. That's not rocket science, it's obvious. People in work

shouldn't be receiving less than those out of work and claiming

benefit, but you've got to get this right, you have got to get into the

detail. This slapdash idea also that people receiving Housing

Benefit are somehow all scroungers is just wrong. Most of the people

on Housing Benefit are there because they can't get employment.

They're part of the 2.68 million people in Britain currently

unemployed. APPLAUSE

Elizabeth Truss? Well, I think the issue is that it's not

compassionate to leave families on benefits for year after year. What

we have is, we have second and third generations of families on

benefits which have been left by successive Governments. I think the

bishops have got it wrong because compassion is about makes those

work less households households with work. The lady in the audience

talked about children, but children do much better if their parents are

working. What the Government is doing is, it's taking active

intervention with those families getting those people back into work.

At the moment, we are wasting a huge amount of talln't from people

who're capable of working who're capable of being trained up --

talent. We need to start competing with other countries and getting

those people back into work. At the moment, benefits are a trap because

it's difficult to get out of benefits if you find that you are

earning less when you are going into work, rather than being on

benefits. In response to David's point, there are people in my

constituency who get up at five in the morning to commute into London

because they can't afford to live in London. You know, there are huge

amounts of people who don't have the privilege of having any kind of

home anywhere near London but their job is there. So I think we have to

think about those people as well. I'm very worried about the idea of

a regional cap for that point of view.

Members of the audience now. The woman on the right?

I don't agree with the �26,000 cap because each family's household is

different and it's the families circumstances that are different.

In Plymouth, we have some of the lowest wages but the biggest

increase in housing costs in any city in Britain. Also, going back

to the lady's point on the panel, I don't agree with that, necessarily

that children for familys that are working are better off because they

might work 24 hours seven days a week and not see the kids, they go

to breakfast and after school clubs, you know, where's the interaction

there if they are working all the hours they've got to?

The man in the white shirt? It's great to have a Government that's

tackling this issue rather than the previous Government who let it get

out of control. Gadd to tackle the issue? To have a Government that's

tackling the issue. The man in the checked shirt? It's ironic that

Labour can criticise policy when Labour have no policy. We are in

this situation in the first place because of Labour's deficit and it

was their Chancellor who claimed to Who is going to get the money? Who

is getting the money in housing benefit? Slum landlords, on the

whole, in many parts of the country. What we need, and Ken Livingstone

is proposing this in the London elections, his rent control. That

is what we need. Not private landlords profiteering from the

poorest in the country. We need rent control, but I suspect neither

of these two will mention that. They don't want to regulate the

landlords. They want to regulate the poorest people in our country.

What the hell is going on with the Labour Party? This year so far they

have said they are against the cuts but they do not want to reverse

them. They have so they are against public sector pay restraint, but

now they want to keep it. -- they had said. And they have said they

are in favour of a benefit cap but they are voting against it. Labour

need to ask themselves when they will get a leader who is a credible

Prime Minister who can put credible policies in front of the British

public. Shaun Leavey Government's idea of compassion should be

creating more jobs for young people and unemployed. -- shore leave. I

have not heard anything from the Lib Dems or Conservatives like the

Labour five-point plan for jobs. I am not sure where that is coming

from. This Government has created a record number of apprenticeships to

get young people into work. No, you have not. It was 250,000

apprenticeships when we left office. And it is now 400,000. That is not

a record number when there are 1 million unemployed on the dole. It

is complacent. Youth unemployment started rising in 2004. It is not

complacent. We are taking action. The woman on the back row. We are

forgetting that benefits are already means tested. It is a

figure that the Government says that people need to live off. So

what is the Government saying? That they are going to give people less

than what they believed to live off? People who take the side of

the bishops in this discussion seemed to be giving the impression

that what is being proposed is that benefits are going to be taken away

from people and they will be left destitute. All that is being

proposed is that benefits are capped at 26,000, and that it is

considered wrong for any household to earn on benefits more than the

average wage. No one is saying people should be deprived of

housing benefit or child benefit. All that is being said is that the

accumulated total coming into a household should not, in all

justice and because of the disincentive effect on working,

should not exceed the average wage brought in by people who are

working. And all of the discussion on the opposing side seems to

ignore the fact that we are talking about people, as has been said also

here, who are working for very, very low pay, and as someone said

over there, all families are different. Of course. People get

benefits according to how many children they have. But what about

the person who is bringing in one wage who has four or five children?

No one seems to care about that person. It is the same thing. Every

family is different, but why are only households on benefits

supposed to be different, that we are supposed to care about the

differences? Why is no one talking about the working poor? We will

move on to another question, also about money. If you want to join in

You can see every rude comment that has been made about the programme

as it goes a long, which we cannot see because we are recording it as

it goes out. The news tonight that RBS has decided that Stephen Hester

will get just under �1 million in shares as a bonus is behind the

next question. Is the Government doing enough to address the

excessive bonuses of the finance sector? David Lammy. No. This is a

man that already has a salary of �1.2 million. And then he gets a

nice top up that takes it over �2 million. And we own this bank.

Shareholders made this decision and the Government is the biggest

shareholder around the table. David Cameron has talked a good talk

about doing something about this but he has done absolutely nothing.

There should be a payroll cap for bankers' bonuses. We should be

publishing the ratios of not just the chief executive officers of

these companies, but the very poorest, those on the shop floor

that are barely making the minimum wage. And we absolutely should be

putting employees on the boards of these banks and big business, who

seemed oblivious to the hardship that we see across the country. It

used to be that you would expect someone like this to be happy with

a knighthood at the end of their service. Why do you need �900,000

on top of your salary? It is embarrassing, it is a disgrace, and

David Cameron should do something Jeremy Browne. You would not guess

from what David just said that the pay arrangements for Stephen Hester

were set up by the last Labour Government, and that the bonus

arrangement, the bonus pot for RBS has gone down since his Government

got in, compared to under the last Labour Government when Gordon Brown

was Prime Minister. Are you saying his bonus is a contractual

necessity? The contractual arrangement, as I understand, was

set up in 2009, when nationalisation took place, when

Gordon Brown was Prime Minister and Alistair Darling was Chancellor of

the Exchequer. I want people to start up businesses, create wealth,

create jobs. If people are watching and are inclined to start the

business, go and do it. If you make a lot of money, I am delighted. I

do not mind people who run big international companies making a

lot of money because sometimes they are doing complicated, difficult

jobs with a great amount of skill. And if Wayne Bridge, the Manchester

City 4th choice left-back and get paid �1 million a year, somebody

who runs a big company well can also justify a high salary. But

there are two areas I have big problems with. One is the crony

capitalism, the cosy capitalism which is, you scratch my back and

I'll scratch yours, we will sit on each other's remuneration

committees and decide what chaps like us ought to get paid in order

to have the right lifestyle. Vince Cable and the Government are

completely right to take measures to get to grips with that. Labour

never did that in 13 years in office. My second point is where

I'd basically agree with what David was just saying, which is that

there is a question of honour. Even if there is a contractual

opportunity for him to have a bonus, it does not mean he has to accept

it. He is already being paid more than �1 million a year. His total

package now means he gets paid in about three days' work a soldier

serving in Afghanistan, risking his life, gets paid in a whole year. He

should reflect on that. He is effectively a public servant in a

bank which is almost complete the owned by us, the tax payers, and I

think he needs to think like a public servant who has a duty to

his country and not just to his own wealth. You are saying Stephen

Hester should turn down the bowlers he has been offered? No one is

forcing him to take it. If Stephen Hester wants to leave RBS and set

up a fantastic business, let's say in Plymouth, which ends up

employing 2000 people and makes him an extremely rich man, great, go

and do it. If he is so brilliant I have no problem with him going to

do that. But he is working for a company which is 56 owned by the

taxpayer, and I think he has to think like a public servant, not

like somebody who is there to line his own pocket. To pick up the

point that David Lammy made, could the Government not used their power

as shareholders representing all of us to deny him the bonus in the

first place? Because, according to what we are told, the decision made

has to be put before the shareholders before it is agreed.

The RBS bonus pot, or that I know is that it is lower this year than

last year, and it was lower last year than it was the year before,

and it is lower under this Government than it was under the

Labour Government. Not quite what I was asking. I know. I have made my

position completely clear, which is that I think he has a moral

obligation which he has failed to discharge. Elizabeth Trusts, do you

agree? I do. Both he is essentially a public servant. It is 83% in the

public sector. I think we have seen too many organisations in the

public sector, including the BBC where the director general is paid

650,000, Network Rail, which is largely funded by the public sector.

We have a public sector pay freeze at the moment and it would be an

honourable course of action for him to take. If he gets RBS into a

position where it can be sold back and make the public sector money

when it is sold back into the private sector, that is the time

for him to get a bonus on the basis of performance. But I wanted to

reply to David's point about ratios. The problem with having ratios

between the highest and lowest paid is that it gives companies

incentive to outsource lowest skill parts of their business to places

like India to improve their ratio. It gives them an incentive to gain

the system. I think what we need internationally is better

competition. Shareholders should take control of executive pay and

performance. I am a shareholder through the various pension pots

that I have, and I want the opportunity to improve the

recruitment for top executives. I do not think it is meritocratic

enough. I do not think the best people get the best jobs. I want

more transparency because I think we have had a bloated culture up

here and in the US. If you look at the price of Indian bankers and

Indian company chief executives, they get paid a lot less. We may

lose out internationally. Stephen Hester is getting short shrift.

Would you agree that he should take his bonus, or should he say no

thanks? I think it would be very nice if he said thank you and no

thanks. I think it would be the morally decent thing to do. I very

much agree with what has been said, but with the country owning 83% of

RBS, he should be regarding himself as a kind of public servant. There

are a lot of people who have lost huge amounts because of what

happened at RBS. They have not got their money. There is something

really quite disgusting - forget the amount for a moment - there is

something disgusting about someone taking a large bonus when the

people who have been the victims of what happened at RBS still have not

been properly compensated. But the question was broader than about

Stephen Hester. The question was whether the Government is doing

enough to address, to curb executive pay. I have to say, I am

a little concerned about what I think is a kind of lynch-mob

mentality that has grown up at the moment about bankers. Bankers did

bad things, for sure. But they are being made scapegoats. There were

three sets of people in this calamity - there were the bankers,

there was the Government that failed to regulate, and there was

us, who actually all borrowed as if there was no tomorrow. And if it is

the case that people should not only be rewarded for success but

punished for failure, what about all the Government ministers who

have lost billions and billions of pounds of our money, just poured

down the drain, the Public Accounts Committee regularly tells us how

many billions are wasted on IT calamities, huge amounts of money.

Should ministers lose all of their pay? Once one goes down this road,

one is into a very difficult territory. I am concerned about the

crudity of the feeling of vengefulness towards bankers. I do

think there should be better regulation... But Stephen Hester

has done nothing wrong, has he? He has just helped to save a bank,

hasn't he? He has not saved the bank yet. You say he should not

have his bonus. I think where the bank has yet to discharge its

obligation to recompense the people who have lost from what happened to

the Royal Bank of Scotland, then the person who is at the head of

that should be seen to be cognisant of that fact and not seek this

enormous bonus. In all of this talk about the need for austerity and so

on there is one layer of people who have become much wealthier over the

last year. The directors of the top 100 companies in the FTSE 100 in

this country have seen their salaries increase by 49%. It is

extraordinary that we have all of this from people who go, what about

the working poor, we have to attack benefits because of the working

poor, and yet they do not bother about his enormous wealth

redistribution that goes towards the very rich. -- this enormous

wealth redistribution. One of the saddest things, when I hear David

he sounds brilliant and I think, I would vote for you. And then when

it comes to being in the Labour Party, the party as a whole manages

to be an organisation that completely refutes its whole

rationale, because the institution that it is is an opposition, and

yet it has ceased to be an opposition. Instead, it agrees with

pretty much everything the Government has done which is why

Jeremy is able to poke fun in that way. That is a terrible shame. I

think if David and the Labour Party were able to stand up for the mass

of people against this tiny bunch of very rich people, I think the

country might be going in a APPLAUSE

The woman there in red? Yes, I agree with you, Mark, you think

this is about an issue of general growing inequality in the world in

general. We are rewarding people for their productivity, for their

increase in GDP and their contribution to that. We need to be

asking, what is that GDP doing, because if it's just people

accumulating wealth, taking it offshore, how is that translating

into well-being which is what economics should be about. As a

country, we need more of a debate about what we mean by economic

growth and what it's doing for the well-being of our people.

APPLAUSE Thank you. The man in pale blue at

the very back? If David Cameron told me as a civil servant that I

have to accept less disposable income in 2015 than I had in 2009,

why can't he pick up the phone to this gentleman and tell him to sort

it out? And the man behind on the very back row? The rhetoric from

this Government and the previous Government was that people would

only be rewarded for success. The last time I looked, the Royal Bank

of Scotland was posting losses, they were making thousands of

people redundant, their share is at a penny level. Where is the success

in that and high should he get a bonus for failure?

APPLAUSE. One more point if we can get to the

woman on the right there? Surely, when we stop paying the price for

this monumental mess-up is when the bankers should get their bonuses

back. When it's all over? Yes. right. Let's go on. We are over

half way through the programme. David Matthews has a question for

us on a different topic. Is Richard Branson right in saying drug users

should not go to jail? Richard Branson, Sir Richard Branson, has

been giving evidence before the Home Affairs Select Committee is is

inquirying for the first time in a decade into drugs and his line is

that people using drugs should not go to jail but should be treated

quite differently. Elizabeth Truss? I don't think he's right. I do

think drug users should go to jail. But, I think the problem is that

too often our jails are full of drugs and actually they create a

breeding ground for people who have drug addiction. So what we need to

do is improve what goes on in our prisons. We need to make them

working prisons so people get in the habit of a working life, we

need to make sure that they are completely drug free, otherwise all

we are doing is exacerbating the problem. Unfortunately, drugs have

become a way of life in many of our prisons and we need to change that.

So you are not in favour of decriminalisation? No, I'm not.

David Lammy, are you? No, because I think if you are living on an

estate riddled with crack cocaine or heroin and there may well be

users selling as well, I'm afraid you do want to see jail time, so I

can't support Richard Branson in his overall call. But I do suspect

that Richard Branson is also concerned about treatment and

better treatment and resources for that treatment and it's clear to me

that we do need to do better in Britain in relation to those issues.

Are you in favour, the woman there? Me, yes. For certain things. Both

the panellists who've answered so far have made a very clear link

between drug use and antisocial behaviour and non-working and being

unemployed. I think there's a very big difference between people who

maybe occasionally smoke a bit of pot and people who inject heroin.

There should be a difference made between the two and not all drug

users lumped in together because I just don't think that's not right.

Would you like it not to be a criminal offence for instance not

to smoke pot? Yes. You would like that not to be an offence? Yes.

man in the checked shirt? Yes, I come plaitly agree with what he

said. Richard Branson? Yes, completely. If they were to

legalise all drugs, for example, tomorrow, I'm pretty sure that

everybody here would still not go out to a store and buy some

heroined -- heroin. The amount of money spent on keeping people who

use the drugs in prison could then be used on people to help them get

off the drugs, rather than just sticking them in a place where they

could then use in that prison as well.

It's still really readily available in that place.

The woman here? I wouldn't agree to the extent of

Richard Branson of not putting drug users in prison. But I think that

the previous Government have really failed within their view that

prisons actually work. The best thing, in my opinion, would be to

find a way of reforming the attitude and the behaviour of drug

abusers to educate them properly. When putting them in prison may not

even do anything for them at all and there are a lot better reasons

for them to actually be there. OK. Jeremy Browne, you put yourself

forward as a liberal on a whole lot of social issues. Are you a liberal

on this issue? I will come to that. Did he say users, dealers or

traffickers? Did he definitely say users? Decriminalising users?

isn't an automatic presumption at the moment that users will go to

prison. There are quite a lot of people who're not in prison who are

on drug rehabilitation programmes, on substitutes for heroin, for

example. They're not criminalised, despite it being known to the

authoritys that they use drugs, so that it seems to me, is the

existing situation. In terms of the wider point, look, we have more

people in prison in Britain than we've ever had before in our

history. You get people in prison, sad, mad, bad people in prison. I

would rather that a higher proportion of the people were bad.

I know it's crude and a simplified way of putting it, but there are

people who end up in prison because they have all kinds of other

difficulties in their lives, because they've fallen into

difficult circumstances. It might make society feel good that those

people are no longer in circulation, but it doesn't actually achieve

very much. I would much rather those people were getting some sort

of specialist care, rehabilitation, treatment, whatever their

requirements are, and the people who're a genuine threat to people,

that's where the priority should lie in terms of people going to

prison. So you are in agreement with Branson in principle? Well, I

am generally liberal and I go so far as to say libetarian. But uem

not an absoluteist. I don't go for a clamour of drugs to be sold in

shops, so I'm not somebody who thinks that we should have come

plaitly liberalised drug laws. man in the third row? When you

listen to Richard Branson, he uses very strongly his evidence of the

way that drugs have been managed in Portugal and the huge success rate

they've had there. Basically, if you got caught with drugs, you

weren't sent to the police station, you were sent to a health centre to

try to rehabilitate you and stop it becoming a problem. He marks this

out with a huge level of success in Portugal. I think that's what he's

trying to emmate late. Do you agree with him? I do -- emulate. It's too

simplistic. I am a pharmacist and dispense methadone every day. I can

actually see that the drug dealers have much less power because of the

services that we provide. There's also very serious cases recently

where women had to turn to prostitution just to get the money

to buy methadone or heroin and providing good Public Services cuts

out drug dealers and reduces public, reduces crime. You would like a new

approach, would you, the easing of penalties? What Branson's said is

far too simplistic and there's far too much prison overcrowding which

is very expensive for the country anyway. In comuck terms, were

basically helping the social situation by providing a service of

supervised supply of methadone -- economic terms.

The woman in front of you there, yes? I for one thank Richard pran

son for bringing this up in the public agenda again -- Branson.

Addiction by its nature is very complex and we should have

difficult discussions about what works well for those who suffer

from substance misuse, whether it's drugs or alcohol per say.

Thank you. The man there in the purple tie?

Whether it's a criminal offence or not, it's a mute point, with our

police forces being scaled back, there's going to be nobody out

there to catch them as criminals anyway? Mark Steel? Well, if people

are in a right mess with drugs, if they're heroin addicts on the

streets and they're jacking up and everything, their lives are a

complete mess, you shouldn't put them in prison. You wouldn't bang

up a schizophrenic. David's wrong we he uses the example about the

estate, send these people to jail because look at the crack dealers,

you would want to send them to jail, but they don't go to jail, it

hasn't worked. The current method of just say no and we must put up

this barrier against all drug drugs and not even listen to it and so on

clearly hasn't worked. If you listen to almost anybody who works

in the area of drugs, like the man at the back there, almost anybody

who's close to the problem will say the same, that just criminalising

it simply doesn't work. I have to also add that the most disturbing

part of this story for me is that I find myself agreeing with Richard

Branson and I find that a little bit unsettling.

We'll see if you agree with Melanie Phillips as well? Melanie Phillips?

Oh, I think not. This is completely bonkers. The idea that our jails

are full of drug users is false. Sir Richard seems to think this is

true, I don't know what planet he's living on. The vast majority of

drug related offend, in jails are dealers and general Lynn quite big

dealers, people who deal death and destruction to our young. Richard

Branson is dangerously wrong. For example, he's so dangerous, he's

persuaded some of these good people in the audience that Portugal,

since it decriminalised drugs, has had great success. The very

opposite is the case. Sir Richard is drawing on one flawed report,

much more authoritative data shows that since Portugal decriminalised

drugs, drug use there has gone up, the number of people using drugs

has gone up, the number of homicides related to drug use has

gone up by 40% and drug related HIV AIDS and hepatitis C is up and is

now eight times the rate in Portugal as it is in other EU

countries. The stpact Sir Richard thinks we have a failed war on

drugs -- the fact is. If only, we don't have a war on drugs. We have

a war on drug laws. For years, our policy has drifted away from law

enforcement towards what's called yuef mistically harm reduction,

which is half way to legalisation - - euphamistically. Signals are put

out by well meaning people who're naive and easily led betrillion

dollar campaigns to subvert and undermine the UN drug conventions

which commit countries to try to eradicate drug use and instead to

legalise. There has been a procession in Britain of useful

idiots of whom Suhr Richard Branson is but the latest who've been used

as front men for this pr Nish shus campaign. Every single argument

they use is false -- pernicious. They say if you legalise drugs, you

will get rid of crime and the black market. 20% of tobacco is in the

black market. The only way you will get rid of crime related to drugs

is if you make all drugs free completely and available to

everybody. That is the only way you will get rid of... Is that what you

are advocating then? I know you would like that, but let's not go

there for the moment. All right, all right. Would you have an

automatic presumption that somebody who was a drug user, even if they

were in the terrible state that Mark described, that they would go

to prison, rather than have medical treatment? No, I would not say drug

users should go to prison, I very much approve of treatment, but the

best way you get people to have treatment is that you use the law.

In Sweden, it flirted with liberalisation, their drug use went

up completely. They criminalised use in order that people are then

made to have treatment. I think we My understanding is that the vast

majority of drug-users who are in prison are not there because of

their drug use but because they have turned to criminal activity,

theft or prostitution in order to get money to buy the drugs. It

seems to me that the biggest issue is getting appropriate treatment

for those people, ideally while they are in prison or immediately

they come out. I think some of the comments have completely missed the

point of where the real issues are. Let's take another question. Wendy

Milne. Are considering there is no evidence of Iran having anywhere

near the number of nuclear weapons that Israel has, will our

Government back Obama if he decides to attack Iran? Jeremy Browne, you

are a Foreign Office minister, what is your view? I am probably the

only person on the panel who has lived in Iran. I know a little bit

about the country. It is an amazing country in lots of ways, an ancient

civilisation with lots of very talented people, doctors, academics

and others. They should be a very successful country. But the fact of

the matter is that they are a very threatening, pernicious regime in

the most unstable part of the entire world. And it is a genuine

threat to the security of the Middle East, and by extension a

threat to us, if Iran has nuclear weapons, or sparks some sort of

nuclear arms race in that part of the world. Do you think it is not a

threat that Israel has nuclear weapons? That is a separate point.

That was her question. In case people think that somehow Iran

should not be treated as a category which should concern us, it really,

really should concern us. It is the only country I am aware of that is

actively making threats to obliterate other countries. It

sponsors terrorism not just in the Middle East but recently in America.

We have just had to close our embassy because the government

sponsored protesters, putting our own staff at risk in that country.

It is an extremely serious situation. It is a country where

people are routinely tortured, they execute children and pregnant women.

It is a very dangerous situation. We do not want a war with Iran.

That is why we have this package of proposals at the EU this week. In

passing, what a good example of working constructively with other

EU countries to magnify and project our own foreign policy, a great

success. We are seeking... Do not gesture at me. Just answer one

point on this. I want to put a supplementary question. We want to

put the pressure on to make sure the Iranian regime come to their

senses and we do not get to that situation. But what account do you

take of the fact, as she put it, that Israel has many more nuclear

weapons and other countries around the world have many more nuclear

weapons and there is no evidence of Iran having anywhere near that

number? What accounts do you take of that? We know there has been a

gradual growth of nuclear weapons since the Second World War,

including Britain, for instance. Well, we don't know with the

certainty with which you have just stated it, Israel's position. But

Iran have made a fundamental international undertaking. They

have signed the treaty is not to develop nuclear weapons. They are

telling us at the moment that they are not developing nuclear weapons.

We do not want to stop them having civil nuclear power. They are

perfectly entitled to have that. But for the reasons are just

explain, including their stated desire to obliterate other

countries, and their active sponsorship of terrorism, it is a

very serious matter whether Iran acquires nuclear weapons. We do not

want the conflict but we do have an obligation to the people across the

Middle East and to people in this country and across the wider world

to try to make sure that a very dangerous regime does not

destabilise the most unstable part of the world. So would you back

Obama, who said he takes no options of the table to achieve the goal of

Iran preventing getting a nuclear weapon? That is the position of the

British Government as well but we do not want to get to that stage.

David Lammy, when you were in Government, your Foreign Minister,

Jack Straw, said not only is it inconceivable that there would be

bombing of Iran but the prospect of it happening was also inconceivable.

Would you agree? I do not want to speculate on what is conceivable or

not. But I think that clearly Iran having nuclear weapons would hugely

destabilise the Middle East. I would be deeply, deeply

uncomfortable with any unilateral action in relation to Iran, and I

am pleased that so far this is being done through the process of

the UN and the European Union. But I do also think that for people of

my age, who grew up in an era where it seemed the whole Western world

was concerned with nuclear disarmament, it is very sad that we

seem to be seeing proliferation and not a discussion about how we can

withdraw from nuclear weapons per se. War is a terrible thing in all

circumstances, but when it comes to protecting this country against

things like terrorist attacks, the British public see things put in

place like not being able to take liquid onto a plane without putting

grip -- in a plastic bag, so how come they trust the Government to

protect them against more serious damage? -- how can they trust the

Government? And do you think they should, if the Americans decided to

take action against Iran, do you think the British Government should

support them? I disagree with war in any circumstance.

I am tired of the same old rhetoric that I heard about weapons of mass

destruction in Iraq. Are we going to be told the same lie over and

over? It is nonsense sabre-rattling every time. Well, the IAEA and

virtually every Western Government believes that Iran is racing to

develop a nuclear weapon. It is behaving entirely as if it is. It

is boasting that it is. It is hiding its uranium, some of its

uranium manufacturing centrifuge Best in a very deep mountain, very

deep in the mountain so that it cannot be bombed. To come back to

the question that Israel has nuclear weapons, what's the problem

with Iran, that is a terribly confused cemetery which I think is

very dangerous. As has been said, Israel does not ever acknowledge

that it has nuclear weapons, but let's assume that it does. It does

for one reason alone, to protect itself against the threat of

genocide, against countries such as Iran. Iran is threatening genocide

against Israel virtually every week. And it means it. You are dealing

with Iran with people who are not rational, people who believe that

if they provoke the a pop -- the Apocalypse, the End of Days, they

will bring to earth the Messiah or. So they are in the business of

provoking an apocalypse. It does not matter if it -- to them that in

a nuclear exchange they may lose half of their own country. It does

not matter. This is the mentality you are dealing with. And the

threat is to all of us. It is extraordinary to think, since 1979

when the Iranian Islamic revolution happen, from that moment, the

Iranian regime declared war upon the West. Since then, large numbers

of Western interests and people have been attacked by Iran. I think,

personally, there is no major terrorist atrocity in which Iran

has not had hand. It was Iranian roadside bombs that were blowing up

our troops in Iraq. Melanie, I am going to have to ask you to bring

the remarks to a conclusion. Just on one point, do you believe this

British Government should back Obama if the Americans decide to

attack Iran, willy-nilly? Bombing Iran is the most appalling prospect,

because it will possibly unleash terror, it will unleash thousands

of rockets upon Israel. Yes or no? But the alternative is worse. A

nuclear Iran would paralyse the West, would mean nuclear terrorism

in our cities. Mark Steel. I wonder if people like you, Melanie, and

people in the Government that are going along this road, I wonder if

at any point you sit around and think, if only there was a

precedent in recent times for us going to war, invading a country on

grounds that we thought it had weapons of mass destruction, we

might be able to... We might be able to possibly learn from that,

to see whether it had gone well or not. And the nonsense... When both

you and Jeremy start talking about the obligation we have two people

in the Middle East, as outsiders, to going and try and sort things

out and help, how do you think that looks? I will tell you what most

people in the Middle East will think immediately. Babel thing, we

have an appalling regime - it is an appalling regime - but what about

Mubarak, he was appalling. How did we deal with him? We sold him

weapons and made him a friend. Gaddafi, he was pretty ropey, how

did we deal with him? We sent Tony Blair to pose in front of cameras

smiling. The Saudi Arabia, not the nicest country... Again, we have

got the point and I have to curtail this. Ma, you are absolutely right,

there is a precedent, it is the 1930s when this country was in to

appeasement... These are the same things you said before we invaded

Iraq. You would have been saying the same thing in the 1930s.

think example is Libya, which was not started all led by the US. We

should look at the other countries who stand to lose out from the

Middle East becoming unstable, such as China and India, we import a lot

of oil from Iran. I think we need to be looking for a more pan-

national solution, putting more pressure on police actions. All of

those countries need to be involved in the solution. I think it is

dangerous carrying on with this idea that we still have won global

superpower. We do not. We have a changing world and it is better if

we act in Coalport. That is why the Libyan campaign was successful,

because we had the support of the Arab League in mounting a campaign.

A couple of points from the audience. I would say, yes, we

would do whatever America wants. You think we should. I do not think

we should, but we would. We just do whatever America wants. The woman

in red with spectacles. How can we criticise a country for having

nuclear weapons when we have them ourselves? Two wrongs do not make a

right. And you. How are we meant to cope if we do follow Obama when the

Government keeps cutting the cost of the army and the armed forces?

One more point from the man in the blue shirt. What concerns me is

whether we have the capability to take the fight to Iran. Have we got

the capability now? All right, you, and then we must stop. I was

thinking, if Iran is like Iraq and sitting on how oil, then yes, we

ought to attack them. We have just voluntarily decided to stop buying

any royal from them. Just because they both start with the same

letter and are in the Middle East, it does not mean it Iran and Iraq

are the same places. Liberal Democrats voted against the war in

Iraq, but Iran is a different category. We do not want a war in

Iran but it is in our interest to prevent them getting nuclear

weapons. We have to stop, because We will be in Southport next week

and the week after in central London. If you would like to take

Or you can go to the website and we will give you a call. I hope you