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We're in Leicester tonight. Welcome to Question Time. | 0:00:02 | 0:00:04 | |
Good evening to all of you watching at home | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
and to our audience here, and of course to our panel, | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
a Conservative Culture Secretary and Equality Minister, Maria Miller, | 0:00:13 | 0:00:17 | |
Labour's Shadow Environment Secretary, Mary Creagh, | 0:00:17 | 0:00:21 | |
the Liberal Democrat peer Susan Kramer, | 0:00:21 | 0:00:23 | |
who sits on the parliamentary commission investigating the banks, | 0:00:23 | 0:00:27 | |
the Respect MP George Galloway, | 0:00:27 | 0:00:30 | |
who returned to parliament last year after the Bradford West by-election, | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
and the editor of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:00:37 | 0:00:40 | |
I'm not sure our first question | 0:00:49 | 0:00:51 | |
will come as an amazing surprise to everybody. | 0:00:51 | 0:00:53 | |
It's from Nadine Lynes, please. Nadine Lynes. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
Who is to blame for the horse meat scandal? | 0:00:57 | 0:01:01 | |
Is it profit-driven supermarkets, incompetent food industry regulators | 0:01:01 | 0:01:07 | |
or consumers demanding ever-cheaper food? | 0:01:07 | 0:01:09 | |
So we've got three options - profit-driven supermarkets, | 0:01:09 | 0:01:12 | |
incompetent regulators or consumers wanting cheaper food. | 0:01:12 | 0:01:17 | |
Mary Creagh. | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
Well, I think it has to be, erm, | 0:01:19 | 0:01:22 | |
I'm not going to blame people on very low incomes for wanting to buy | 0:01:22 | 0:01:27 | |
meat products for their families to feed them that are good value, | 0:01:27 | 0:01:30 | |
so I'm certainly not going to blame consumers for wanting a good deal | 0:01:30 | 0:01:33 | |
when everybody is really feeling the squeeze | 0:01:33 | 0:01:35 | |
from wages stagnating and prices going up. | 0:01:35 | 0:01:39 | |
But I do think there is an issue about what is happening to our... | 0:01:39 | 0:01:43 | |
the food system. I think there's an issue about criminal, | 0:01:43 | 0:01:48 | |
systematic adulteration of the food system, | 0:01:48 | 0:01:51 | |
which we now know spreads across Europe, | 0:01:51 | 0:01:53 | |
and I think that the processors have been too quick | 0:01:53 | 0:01:56 | |
to look for very cheap meat, | 0:01:56 | 0:01:58 | |
and the supermarkets have also perhaps pressed them down on prices | 0:01:58 | 0:02:02 | |
and not conducted some of the testing that they could have done | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
to get ahead of what is now a very widespread problem. | 0:02:06 | 0:02:10 | |
It seems to get...by the minute, more and more stories come out, | 0:02:10 | 0:02:13 | |
more and more supermarkets withdraw stuff. | 0:02:13 | 0:02:15 | |
Is any of it dangerous, or is it a matter of being lied to by people, | 0:02:15 | 0:02:18 | |
that you think you're buying beef | 0:02:18 | 0:02:20 | |
and you're getting horse meat instead? | 0:02:20 | 0:02:22 | |
Well, people have a right to know that the food that they're buying | 0:02:22 | 0:02:25 | |
is correctly labelled, is legal and is safe for them to eat, | 0:02:25 | 0:02:29 | |
and what started out as a bit of a... | 0:02:29 | 0:02:31 | |
three or four weeks ago, when Ireland announced they'd found | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
the adulteration in the burger products, it was a bit of a joke, | 0:02:35 | 0:02:38 | |
there were a lot of horse jokes going around. | 0:02:38 | 0:02:40 | |
I think with last week's developments with Findus, | 0:02:40 | 0:02:42 | |
where we saw that it was coming in from another route, | 0:02:42 | 0:02:45 | |
from continental Europe, | 0:02:45 | 0:02:46 | |
the events that we've seen even just this evening | 0:02:46 | 0:02:49 | |
with arrests taking place, with schools, | 0:02:49 | 0:02:53 | |
Staffordshire County Council | 0:02:53 | 0:02:54 | |
withdrawing products in its schools, and erm, | 0:02:54 | 0:02:58 | |
it now turning up in a fresh product this evening in a supermarket, | 0:02:58 | 0:03:02 | |
we're finding that it's actually, | 0:03:02 | 0:03:05 | |
it's much more widespread than we could have first thought, | 0:03:05 | 0:03:07 | |
and obviously, the more you look for it, the more you find. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:10 | |
You, sir. | 0:03:10 | 0:03:12 | |
Could this food crisis have been prevented | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
had the Labour government in 2003 | 0:03:15 | 0:03:18 | |
not withdrawn random processed meat testing? | 0:03:18 | 0:03:21 | |
Well... | 0:03:21 | 0:03:23 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:03:23 | 0:03:25 | |
-Fraser Nelson. -I was rather waiting for Mary's answer on that. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:30 | |
You'll get it in a moment, but she's had two answers already. | 0:03:30 | 0:03:32 | |
It's true that the Food Standards Agency was Labour's creation, | 0:03:32 | 0:03:35 | |
and at the time the Conservatives were saying, | 0:03:35 | 0:03:37 | |
"Look, these guys are not going to be able to keep a proper check | 0:03:37 | 0:03:41 | |
"on the supermarkets," but I don't think you can blame | 0:03:41 | 0:03:43 | |
either Labour or the government for this. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:45 | |
This is the problem, simply, of the food companies. | 0:03:45 | 0:03:48 | |
I would lay the blame squarely at the door of Findus. | 0:03:48 | 0:03:51 | |
We've been amazed by the length of the supply chain. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:54 | |
A Swedish company using Cypriot, Dutch, French, Luxembourg, all these | 0:03:54 | 0:03:59 | |
companies, and in a way, it's not surprising that a scamster | 0:03:59 | 0:04:02 | |
would try to insert some fraudulent product into that supply chain. | 0:04:02 | 0:04:06 | |
But who's responsible for making sure? | 0:04:06 | 0:04:07 | |
I think it's the company, and the company should be punished. | 0:04:07 | 0:04:11 | |
See, for the last ten years, | 0:04:11 | 0:04:13 | |
we're not sure what meat we've been eating. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:16 | |
And what I'm really annoyed about is the fact that that's happened. | 0:04:16 | 0:04:20 | |
For the last ten years, we do not know. | 0:04:20 | 0:04:22 | |
Now we're being told that, "It's just horse meat, it's safe." | 0:04:22 | 0:04:26 | |
How do we know that? | 0:04:26 | 0:04:27 | |
We do not know how this meat's being transported, processed or stored. | 0:04:27 | 0:04:31 | |
OK, George Galloway. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:33 | |
But the back end of the pantomime horse has to be government. | 0:04:33 | 0:04:37 | |
We don't elect Findus. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:38 | |
We don't elect food companies. | 0:04:38 | 0:04:40 | |
We elect government to protect us. | 0:04:40 | 0:04:44 | |
And the reality is that not only, as you put it, | 0:04:44 | 0:04:48 | |
did the Labour government abandon random testing of processed foods, | 0:04:48 | 0:04:53 | |
but the Tories have cut 700 food standards officers. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:59 | |
Now what kind of false economy is that? | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
What's the cost to the country as a whole? | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
And they throw their hands up and say, | 0:05:06 | 0:05:10 | |
"We didn't know what was going into the food." | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
Well, if they didn't know horse was going into the food, | 0:05:13 | 0:05:16 | |
what else is going into the food that they don't know about? | 0:05:16 | 0:05:19 | |
That's the point. | 0:05:19 | 0:05:20 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:05:20 | 0:05:22 | |
And so, the answer to the question, David, | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
is the responsibility lies with profiteering food companies, yes, | 0:05:25 | 0:05:28 | |
but the people who are supposed to regulate the activities | 0:05:28 | 0:05:32 | |
of business in this country are the elected politicians, | 0:05:32 | 0:05:36 | |
and they're just not even at the starting gate on that. | 0:05:36 | 0:05:39 | |
OK, well, we've got two, we've got the former Labour | 0:05:39 | 0:05:42 | |
and the current Tory. Let's come to the Tories first. | 0:05:42 | 0:05:45 | |
-Have you cut 700, is that the figure you gave? -Yes, 700. | 0:05:45 | 0:05:48 | |
I think what the chief executive of the FSA has made very clear... | 0:05:48 | 0:05:51 | |
that she has exactly the right resources that she needs. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:54 | |
She would say that! You're paying her a big salary to say that! | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
-And we're still undertaking... -You sacked 700 officers. Yes or no? | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
And we're still undertaking 90,000 tests a year, | 0:06:00 | 0:06:03 | |
and I think that's important, | 0:06:03 | 0:06:05 | |
but what we mustn't do here is get away from the fact that | 0:06:05 | 0:06:08 | |
there has been potentially a mass European-wide fraud going on, | 0:06:08 | 0:06:13 | |
and I think as things unfold, we can see that, | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
certainly when it comes to the Great British public being able to | 0:06:16 | 0:06:21 | |
go out and buy food on our shelves and know what they're buying, | 0:06:21 | 0:06:25 | |
yes there has been, I think, some enormous problems in people's... | 0:06:25 | 0:06:29 | |
But is the Food Standards Agency responsible for making sure | 0:06:29 | 0:06:34 | |
that if you buy a cut of meat or a hamburger which says it's beef, | 0:06:34 | 0:06:39 | |
it is beef and not beef plus pork or beef plus horse? | 0:06:39 | 0:06:43 | |
Is that the job of the FSA? | 0:06:43 | 0:06:44 | |
What the FSA is there to do is make sure that we do have good standards, | 0:06:44 | 0:06:47 | |
-but it can't account for... -No, but is it responsible for the content? | 0:06:47 | 0:06:51 | |
But what it can't account for is the fact that there has been | 0:06:51 | 0:06:54 | |
potentially a mass fraud on a European scale here, | 0:06:54 | 0:06:57 | |
and we have to take that into account. | 0:06:57 | 0:06:59 | |
Why can't it account for that, if it's doing its job? | 0:06:59 | 0:07:01 | |
When it comes to looking at who is culpable here, | 0:07:01 | 0:07:05 | |
we have to say that those individual companies | 0:07:05 | 0:07:07 | |
that are putting products on our shelves, | 0:07:07 | 0:07:10 | |
labelling them as beef and then not being beef, | 0:07:10 | 0:07:12 | |
then the responsibility really has to lie at the manufacturing arm. | 0:07:12 | 0:07:15 | |
So George is wrong to say | 0:07:15 | 0:07:16 | |
government should be able to do anything about it? | 0:07:16 | 0:07:19 | |
I think that the first | 0:07:19 | 0:07:20 | |
and prime responsibility has to be with the manufacturers, | 0:07:20 | 0:07:23 | |
because all of us who go into our supermarkets | 0:07:23 | 0:07:26 | |
expect the products on our shelves to be what is on the label. | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
OK, no hold on, you've had your say. The woman up there, sorry. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
The woman up there on the left, on the gangway. | 0:07:32 | 0:07:35 | |
The supermarkets don't much care where their products come from | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
as long as they get it for the right price and can make | 0:07:38 | 0:07:41 | |
a lot of profit on it, and that's the issue at the end of the day. | 0:07:41 | 0:07:44 | |
It's just profit, it's getting things as cheap as possible. | 0:07:44 | 0:07:46 | |
And it's a shame, really, that we can't go back to using local | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
independent stores that source their products locally. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:52 | |
I appreciate the supermarkets for people that are on a really | 0:07:52 | 0:07:54 | |
tight income are the answer, but we really need to get back | 0:07:54 | 0:07:57 | |
to supporting our own local independent stores | 0:07:57 | 0:08:00 | |
that can help us to know what we're eating. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:02 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:08:02 | 0:08:05 | |
Susan Kramer, I'll come back to you about Labour's role, | 0:08:08 | 0:08:11 | |
but Susan Kramer, what do you think? | 0:08:11 | 0:08:13 | |
Well, I strongly agree with the lady who just talked about local food. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:17 | |
This is fraud, it's got to be prosecuted, it's got to be hit hard, | 0:08:17 | 0:08:21 | |
and I hope people end up in handcuffs and in jail as a consequence of this, | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
but I am worried about the length of the food chain. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:28 | |
This starts out in Romania, it goes to France, it goes to Holland, | 0:08:28 | 0:08:31 | |
Sweden...I don't know that any regulator, | 0:08:31 | 0:08:35 | |
no matter how staffed they are, | 0:08:35 | 0:08:38 | |
and how good and strong they are, can really keep | 0:08:38 | 0:08:41 | |
a grip on a food chain that is this long and this complex. | 0:08:41 | 0:08:45 | |
I hope that when we come out of this, | 0:08:45 | 0:08:48 | |
there is some review of the sort of length of the food chain | 0:08:48 | 0:08:51 | |
and whether or not we can shorten this and build much more focus | 0:08:51 | 0:08:56 | |
and intense traceability throughout the whole system. | 0:08:56 | 0:08:59 | |
-More expensive, though. -It may be more expensive, | 0:08:59 | 0:09:02 | |
but there is a price to pay when you go cheap. | 0:09:02 | 0:09:05 | |
And that price is that you create an opportunity for bad people, and | 0:09:05 | 0:09:09 | |
unfortunately there are bad people, to come in and exploit the system... | 0:09:09 | 0:09:13 | |
And do you make it easier for them | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
by abolishing 700 Food Standard Agency officers | 0:09:16 | 0:09:19 | |
or do you make it harder? | 0:09:19 | 0:09:21 | |
The sad part is, you could probably have the 700, | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
and I've no idea what different things they were doing. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:27 | |
My question is, even if you had them back again, | 0:09:27 | 0:09:29 | |
would that have made the key difference or is this | 0:09:29 | 0:09:32 | |
so complex and so wide and so interesting, essentially, | 0:09:32 | 0:09:36 | |
to the criminal bodies, that that isn't going to be the answer? | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
Sometimes you have to look at the structure of things, | 0:09:40 | 0:09:43 | |
not simply say, "We just have to have a stronger regulator." | 0:09:43 | 0:09:46 | |
I want a strong regulator, but we must look at structure. | 0:09:46 | 0:09:49 | |
So, you know, support your local butcher, and... | 0:09:49 | 0:09:52 | |
What, and make your own hamburgers? | 0:09:52 | 0:09:55 | |
If you have to eat a little less meat but better meat, that is tough, | 0:09:55 | 0:10:00 | |
and I know that's not easy, but there are other benefits that come with it. | 0:10:00 | 0:10:04 | |
Well, everybody... | 0:10:04 | 0:10:06 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:10:06 | 0:10:08 | |
We could all become vegetarian. | 0:10:08 | 0:10:10 | |
There are a lot of people with their hands up. | 0:10:10 | 0:10:12 | |
So I'd like to hear your views, actually. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:14 | |
The person there in spectacles, in the fourth row. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:17 | |
I've got two young children and they're even asking me now, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
"What is safe to eat?" They're looking on the news as well, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
and it's not just the beef burgers, | 0:10:24 | 0:10:26 | |
it's the chicken coming out with the chicken nuggets | 0:10:26 | 0:10:28 | |
and everything, and it is very worrying, and you think, | 0:10:28 | 0:10:32 | |
"Well, who can you trust... what can you trust to eat?" | 0:10:32 | 0:10:35 | |
What do you say to them, and do you go on feeding them...? | 0:10:35 | 0:10:38 | |
Oh, well, obviously you feed them, yeah. | 0:10:38 | 0:10:40 | |
LAUGHTER DROWNS SPEECH | 0:10:41 | 0:10:44 | |
No, I look on the boxes and it says 100% beef or 100% chicken, | 0:10:44 | 0:10:49 | |
and it's not. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:50 | |
There's 98% or 50% or 76%, so it's like, what are you actually eating | 0:10:50 | 0:10:56 | |
that's, you know, it's packed with all these different ingredients. | 0:10:56 | 0:11:00 | |
-What can you trust? -OK, and the man, bang in the middle there, up there. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:05 | |
-Yes, you. -This horse meat scandal | 0:11:05 | 0:11:06 | |
has been going on for almost a month now | 0:11:06 | 0:11:08 | |
and we're still no closer to finding out where it actually | 0:11:08 | 0:11:11 | |
comes from or how many products are affected. | 0:11:11 | 0:11:13 | |
Why is the government being so slow to act on this? | 0:11:13 | 0:11:16 | |
And in regards to the lady's comment before about how it's | 0:11:16 | 0:11:19 | |
travelling from Romania to France to Sweden, | 0:11:19 | 0:11:21 | |
so it's too big, that's a bit of a cop-out answer. | 0:11:21 | 0:11:24 | |
Saying, "Well, this task was too big, | 0:11:24 | 0:11:26 | |
"so we're not going to take it on," isn't right. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:28 | |
If the task is too big, you need to take it on. | 0:11:28 | 0:11:30 | |
The panel listening carefully to this, | 0:11:30 | 0:11:32 | |
but we'll hear from one or two other people. | 0:11:32 | 0:11:35 | |
You, sir, the man in the blue and white striped shirt, yes. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:38 | |
I think the Food Standards Agency is in the same situation | 0:11:38 | 0:11:41 | |
the financial services was in four years ago. | 0:11:41 | 0:11:43 | |
I think the government hasn't got any hold of what's going on | 0:11:43 | 0:11:46 | |
and it's...I think we're just being run by a bunch of Eton grads | 0:11:46 | 0:11:50 | |
who don't know how to run a country. | 0:11:50 | 0:11:52 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:11:52 | 0:11:54 | |
The man in the bright blue with silver on. You there, sir. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:58 | |
I think what the problem is is the government is, erm, it's not | 0:11:58 | 0:12:02 | |
putting enough funds into the study of where the meat comes from. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:05 | |
This horse meat, you know, horses get given this drug called, | 0:12:05 | 0:12:08 | |
-what is it? Phenylbutin? -Bute, yeah. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:11 | |
Now, that is obviously hazardous to humans | 0:12:11 | 0:12:13 | |
so surely that should be a red light for the government to say, | 0:12:13 | 0:12:15 | |
"Hang on! Why aren't we really being stringent with this | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
"and protecting people's lives?" We can't really buy meat | 0:12:18 | 0:12:21 | |
if everyone's going to start becoming ill because A, | 0:12:21 | 0:12:23 | |
people are going to lose faith in the producers, supermarkets, | 0:12:23 | 0:12:27 | |
the government, and then it'll just be a total collapse. | 0:12:27 | 0:12:30 | |
OK, Mary Creagh, do you think it's as dangerous as that, bute, | 0:12:30 | 0:12:32 | |
because somebody was on television saying you'd have to | 0:12:32 | 0:12:36 | |
eat 500 hamburgers a day to get even a trace of this bute. | 0:12:36 | 0:12:42 | |
That's presumably in adults, | 0:12:42 | 0:12:44 | |
but the dose for children would be a lot lower. | 0:12:44 | 0:12:46 | |
-So you're alarmed by it, are you? -No. | 0:12:46 | 0:12:49 | |
What I say is that I raised the issue | 0:12:49 | 0:12:50 | |
of bute-contaminated horses being slaughtered in the UK | 0:12:50 | 0:12:53 | |
with ministers on the floor of the House of Commons | 0:12:53 | 0:12:56 | |
exactly three weeks ago. | 0:12:56 | 0:12:57 | |
I had evidence that they were entering the food chain. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:01 | |
What I want to know is, | 0:13:01 | 0:13:02 | |
why did the government then start testing every horse in UK abattoirs, | 0:13:02 | 0:13:06 | |
but still keep releasing them into the human food chain? | 0:13:06 | 0:13:10 | |
That is simply not good enough. | 0:13:10 | 0:13:12 | |
Ministers have been asleep on the job on this, | 0:13:12 | 0:13:14 | |
and I'm afraid they cannot just keep hiding behind FSA officials, | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
when actually they've been | 0:13:17 | 0:13:19 | |
so catastrophically slow to act, and I just want to come back on this... | 0:13:19 | 0:13:23 | |
George Galloway said about Labour. | 0:13:23 | 0:13:25 | |
Well, and the gentleman at the front who said we ended random testing. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:28 | |
We did not end random testing. The last time we had intelligence | 0:13:28 | 0:13:32 | |
that horse may have been in the food chain was 2003. | 0:13:32 | 0:13:35 | |
There was no evidence from then to 2010... | 0:13:35 | 0:13:37 | |
GALLOWAY: That's not random. That's intelligence-led. | 0:13:37 | 0:13:40 | |
That's right, it's intelligence-led | 0:13:40 | 0:13:42 | |
and the last piece of intelligence that the government received | 0:13:42 | 0:13:44 | |
was in November last year when the food safety authority of Ireland | 0:13:44 | 0:13:47 | |
said, "We're going to start testing for horse," | 0:13:47 | 0:13:50 | |
and they thought, "That's lovely. Ring us when you've got the results." | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
Look, I think we're really got to be very careful here. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:57 | |
You've been attacked for being dozy on the job. | 0:13:57 | 0:13:59 | |
OK, I think we've got to be really careful here. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:02 | |
Yes, we need to have strong regulation in an area like this, | 0:14:02 | 0:14:05 | |
but also we should expect that people who are producing products, | 0:14:05 | 0:14:09 | |
putting them on our shelves, labelling them as beef | 0:14:09 | 0:14:11 | |
and they're not beef, they have to be held to account. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
And we need to make sure that people are not let off the hook | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
here by some political will to try and point score... | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
But can I clarify one point, Maria. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:24 | |
Is it, in your view, the government's job to make sure, | 0:14:24 | 0:14:27 | |
if I buy a can, and it says "Beef," | 0:14:27 | 0:14:31 | |
is it your job to make sure it is beef or somebody else's job? | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
I think it's absolutely squarely the role of both the manufacturer | 0:14:34 | 0:14:38 | |
and also the retailer | 0:14:38 | 0:14:39 | |
to make sure the products that are on their shelves... | 0:14:39 | 0:14:42 | |
-And not yours? -..are absolutely as they should be. | 0:14:42 | 0:14:44 | |
Everybody is blaming government, both governments, | 0:14:44 | 0:14:47 | |
for not checking that that's beef. | 0:14:47 | 0:14:49 | |
The government has got a role to check that, | 0:14:49 | 0:14:51 | |
-but the primary responsibility... -CREAGH: You haven't done it. | 0:14:51 | 0:14:54 | |
-The primary responsibility... -You haven't conducted any... | 0:14:54 | 0:14:56 | |
..when you're dealing with a mass fraud on a pan-European scale... | 0:14:56 | 0:14:59 | |
GALLOWAY: David, they're trying... | 0:14:59 | 0:15:01 | |
All right, you say the government has a role, | 0:15:01 | 0:15:03 | |
but I'd like to know what the role is, | 0:15:03 | 0:15:05 | |
whether you've been fulfilling it. George Galloway. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
They're faffing around in this debate. | 0:15:08 | 0:15:10 | |
The Liberal Democrats and the Tories want to blame it on criminals. | 0:15:10 | 0:15:15 | |
I may say, if it's all just a criminal matter, | 0:15:15 | 0:15:18 | |
why did the Tories take three weeks to call in the police? | 0:15:18 | 0:15:21 | |
Because that's what it took them before they asked | 0:15:21 | 0:15:24 | |
the police in this country to start treating it as a crime. | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
But this goes to the heart of the matter. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
There are consequences to deregulation. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:34 | |
The Tories are always talking about, | 0:15:34 | 0:15:36 | |
"We need to get rid of red tape and deregulate this." | 0:15:36 | 0:15:40 | |
These are the kind of consequences that occur when you deregulate, | 0:15:40 | 0:15:43 | |
and there are consequences to sacking public servants. | 0:15:43 | 0:15:46 | |
So George, you want to let the manufacturers off the hook, then? | 0:15:46 | 0:15:49 | |
No, but I hold you responsible for what happens in this country, | 0:15:49 | 0:15:53 | |
not Findus! We didn't elect Findus! We can't remove Findus! | 0:15:53 | 0:15:58 | |
But we can elect and remove you, and I promise you, the British people | 0:15:58 | 0:16:01 | |
-are about to do it. -So you'll turn a blind eye | 0:16:01 | 0:16:03 | |
to people who are potentially committing a fraud? | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
Not a blind eye, throw them in jail instead of in the House of Lords! | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
The House of Lords is filled with...I don't want a blind eye! | 0:16:09 | 0:16:13 | |
I want you to face up to this! | 0:16:13 | 0:16:16 | |
If you sack police officers, there are consequences. | 0:16:16 | 0:16:19 | |
If you sack Food Standards Agency inspectors, there are consequences. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:24 | |
It's time to end this cutting of public service workers as if | 0:16:24 | 0:16:28 | |
public servants were some rubbish that can be easily dispensed of! | 0:16:28 | 0:16:32 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:16:32 | 0:16:35 | |
You, sir. | 0:16:36 | 0:16:38 | |
Just like to point out that in 2008, | 0:16:39 | 0:16:41 | |
when the banks collapsed all over the entire world, | 0:16:41 | 0:16:43 | |
we blamed Gordon Brown and Alastair Campbell, | 0:16:43 | 0:16:45 | |
at least the Tory government, the Tory people did. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:48 | |
Now that the entire country's food processing is in problems, | 0:16:48 | 0:16:52 | |
we need to blame David Cameron and George Osbourne. | 0:16:52 | 0:16:56 | |
The buck stops with them. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:57 | |
Fraser Nelson? | 0:16:57 | 0:16:58 | |
Food labelling is a competence of the European Union, actually. | 0:16:58 | 0:17:02 | |
We don't know if you can have any control over it any more. | 0:17:02 | 0:17:04 | |
What happens happens in Brussels. | 0:17:04 | 0:17:06 | |
The crime that happened happened in France. | 0:17:06 | 0:17:08 | |
The thing is, George, if your 700 food inspectors, | 0:17:08 | 0:17:11 | |
you could have 7,000 of them, | 0:17:11 | 0:17:13 | |
they would never be able to probe every freezer, every | 0:17:13 | 0:17:17 | |
supermarket, cos we've got millions of lines of food in this country... | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
Is it better now there's 700 less? Is that what you're saying? | 0:17:20 | 0:17:23 | |
Are you arguing it's better that we've got 700 less? | 0:17:23 | 0:17:25 | |
Also, their job is not to look for horses, | 0:17:25 | 0:17:27 | |
their job is to look for food safety, which means food poisoning, | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
and there are 500 people who die every year of food poisoning | 0:17:30 | 0:17:32 | |
and that's what the FSA does. | 0:17:32 | 0:17:34 | |
It doesn't go around, to answer your question, | 0:17:34 | 0:17:36 | |
checking to see if horses, perhaps it should, | 0:17:36 | 0:17:38 | |
but if that's what these guys were doing if they were back, | 0:17:38 | 0:17:40 | |
perhaps...they probably would not have detected this. Now that... | 0:17:40 | 0:17:44 | |
CREAGH: No, Fraser, you said that it's a European competence. | 0:17:44 | 0:17:48 | |
This government has blocked attempts by the European Commission | 0:17:48 | 0:17:51 | |
to get country-of-origin labelling on processed meats. | 0:17:51 | 0:17:56 | |
They blocked it in 2011. | 0:17:56 | 0:17:57 | |
Owen Patterson went to Europe yesterday, came back and said, | 0:17:57 | 0:18:00 | |
"I want this labelling in by December 31st." | 0:18:00 | 0:18:03 | |
Suddenly, he's had a Damascene conversion to European regulation. | 0:18:03 | 0:18:06 | |
The Euro-sceptic suddenly wants more of it! | 0:18:06 | 0:18:08 | |
It's been an extraordinary week in parliament where | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
we've had Bill Cash and Christopher Chope, | 0:18:11 | 0:18:13 | |
the arch Euro-sceptics suddenly saying, | 0:18:13 | 0:18:15 | |
"The European Commission has got to do something about this!" | 0:18:15 | 0:18:18 | |
We don't have the power to do it any more in our own country. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:20 | |
That's a convenient Tory myth to cover up the fact that the | 0:18:20 | 0:18:23 | |
Food Standards Agency, when it was set up by Labour, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:26 | |
was a world leader in the whole area | 0:18:26 | 0:18:27 | |
and it was independent from government. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
-Did it work well, given the results? -It worked well, and this government, | 0:18:30 | 0:18:34 | |
when it came in, removed nutritional labelling to health, | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
it removed compositional labelling, what is in the product, | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
over to Defra. It's Defra ministers | 0:18:40 | 0:18:42 | |
that are responsible for the labelling of your food. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:45 | |
And you think it is possible to check hamburgers, | 0:18:45 | 0:18:49 | |
tinned food, the whole range of things if Defra | 0:18:49 | 0:18:53 | |
is doing its job properly? If Defra is doing its job properly? | 0:18:53 | 0:18:57 | |
Defra has moved it back in-house. It is clearly not the right place | 0:18:57 | 0:19:00 | |
for it to be. They've broken up the system. | 0:19:00 | 0:19:02 | |
They've got to get on with it, put it right. If the system | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
can't tell us if our food is fit to eat, | 0:19:06 | 0:19:08 | |
the system is not fit for purpose. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:09 | |
Not fit to eat, it's whether it's what it says. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:13 | |
That's fit to eat. We don't want to eat beef when it's actually horse. | 0:19:13 | 0:19:16 | |
You're making a very dangerous blur here. | 0:19:16 | 0:19:18 | |
The lady's children are asking, is this food safe to eat? | 0:19:18 | 0:19:21 | |
To listen to the Labour Party in the last few days | 0:19:21 | 0:19:23 | |
you would get the impression that there was a health hazard, | 0:19:23 | 0:19:27 | |
and there isn't. Horses are actually fine. | 0:19:27 | 0:19:30 | |
In The Spectator we've got a guide about what to drink | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
with horsemeat in this week's magazine. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:35 | |
If it is coming in from criminals, I doubt | 0:19:35 | 0:19:37 | |
they've followed proper food hygiene standards on the way in. | 0:19:37 | 0:19:40 | |
Let me just quote... | 0:19:40 | 0:19:41 | |
The Chief Medical Officer... | 0:19:41 | 0:19:43 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:19:43 | 0:19:45 | |
I don't know whether you trust what she says, | 0:19:45 | 0:19:50 | |
but she says a person would have to eat 500 to 600 | 0:19:50 | 0:19:55 | |
100% horsemeat burgers, just think of this, a day, | 0:19:55 | 0:20:00 | |
to get close to consuming a human's daily dose of bute. Who knows? | 0:20:00 | 0:20:06 | |
The woman up there, the blonde lady on the right. Yes. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
What we haven't mentioned is actually who is eating these products. | 0:20:10 | 0:20:15 | |
It is the poor, the people on low incomes, | 0:20:15 | 0:20:17 | |
those that have been made unemployed by the Government. | 0:20:17 | 0:20:21 | |
People whose benefits are going to get squeezed because of bedroom tax, | 0:20:21 | 0:20:26 | |
council tax changes and so on. These are the people | 0:20:26 | 0:20:29 | |
that are buying the value products. It's the poor | 0:20:29 | 0:20:32 | |
that are being defrauded, | 0:20:32 | 0:20:34 | |
both by the way the Government is treating them | 0:20:34 | 0:20:37 | |
and scapegoating them and by now by these alleged criminal gangs, | 0:20:37 | 0:20:41 | |
which are making their money out of other people's poverty. | 0:20:41 | 0:20:44 | |
A lot of people are having to go to food banks because they can't afford | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
to buy the food that they choose. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:52 | |
So those that can buy their food are buying the lowest things | 0:20:52 | 0:20:55 | |
because that's all they can afford | 0:20:55 | 0:20:57 | |
-and they are the ones being conned. -OK. | 0:20:57 | 0:20:59 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:20:59 | 0:21:01 | |
On that note, though I know a number of you are waiting to speak, | 0:21:04 | 0:21:08 | |
we'd better move on. We've got a lot of questions to come. | 0:21:08 | 0:21:11 | |
You know at home you can join this debate by Twitter or by text. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
Our hashtag is #bbcqt. We've got this new idea running | 0:21:15 | 0:21:21 | |
of a Twitter panellist who comments. | 0:21:21 | 0:21:23 | |
You can comment on what the Twitter panellist says. | 0:21:23 | 0:21:25 | |
It's Mark Pack form the website libdemvoice tonight. | 0:21:25 | 0:21:29 | |
He's @bbcExtraGuest. If you want simply to text, 83981 | 0:21:29 | 0:21:37 | |
and the little red button will tell you what others are saying. | 0:21:37 | 0:21:40 | |
Let's go on to another question. This is from Michael Joyce, please. | 0:21:40 | 0:21:45 | |
Should the 10p tax be reinstated? | 0:21:45 | 0:21:47 | |
This is the rage today apart from the beef. Should the 10p tax, | 0:21:47 | 0:21:51 | |
which was abolished by Gordon Brown, be reinstated? | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
It seems all the parties are circling around this, | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
with the Tory backbenchers saying it should be | 0:21:58 | 0:22:01 | |
and Labour saying it may be, and I don't know where we've got to. | 0:22:01 | 0:22:05 | |
Maria Miller, would you like to see the 10p tax reinstated? | 0:22:05 | 0:22:10 | |
Certainly I want to see the taxation regime in this country | 0:22:10 | 0:22:14 | |
work better, particularly for people on lower incomes. | 0:22:14 | 0:22:16 | |
That's what we've been working on | 0:22:16 | 0:22:18 | |
for the last two-and-a-half years. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:20 | |
My concern is the way the Labour Party have said they are going | 0:22:20 | 0:22:23 | |
to pay for this, through what they call a mansion tax. | 0:22:23 | 0:22:27 | |
That may sound on the surface very attractive. | 0:22:27 | 0:22:31 | |
Yes, it does. | 0:22:31 | 0:22:33 | |
But when you try and work out how that is | 0:22:33 | 0:22:35 | |
actually going to happen, | 0:22:35 | 0:22:37 | |
that anybody in this room who pays council tax would then be subject | 0:22:37 | 0:22:41 | |
to their house being revalued. I think that if you remember | 0:22:41 | 0:22:44 | |
the record of Labour | 0:22:44 | 0:22:45 | |
under the last Government, where they doubled council tax | 0:22:45 | 0:22:48 | |
for every single household in this country, | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
saw the equivalent of a doubling of their council tax, | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
I think we should all be very concerned indeed. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
-What would a mansion be? -I'm not sure I've seen the detail of that. | 0:22:56 | 0:23:01 | |
-£2 million. -£2 million. £2 million. It's nicked straight from the... | 0:23:01 | 0:23:07 | |
Poll tax, Maria. You're old enough to remember the poll tax? | 0:23:07 | 0:23:10 | |
It is not that the mansions over £2 million would just be revalued, | 0:23:10 | 0:23:15 | |
every household would need to be revalued. | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
Let's come back to the 10p tax. From the Tories' point of view, | 0:23:17 | 0:23:21 | |
are you in favour of it being reinstated? | 0:23:21 | 0:23:23 | |
The 10p rate? | 0:23:23 | 0:23:25 | |
We've already cut taxes for 24 million people in this country. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:29 | |
-Yes or no? -I'm not going to write the budget. | 0:23:29 | 0:23:33 | |
-Would YOU like to see it? -I would like a tax regime that supports | 0:23:33 | 0:23:38 | |
-people on lower incomes, whether it's a 10p tax... -You're the government. | 0:23:38 | 0:23:43 | |
-So you don't rule out the 10p thing? -I don't rule it out. We need to | 0:23:43 | 0:23:48 | |
understand how it is going to be paid for. | 0:23:48 | 0:23:51 | |
That's the concern that I have got. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:52 | |
You would like to see it in the budget if it could be paid for? | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
I think anything that reduces taxation's got to be a good thing. | 0:23:55 | 0:23:58 | |
-Well, I hope George is listening. -I am. -Susan Kramer? | 0:23:58 | 0:24:02 | |
The 10p isn't good enough. What we've done so far | 0:24:03 | 0:24:07 | |
is raise the starting point of tax. All the people | 0:24:07 | 0:24:11 | |
who used to be in that 10p band and then Labour put it up to 20p, | 0:24:11 | 0:24:15 | |
but that's all the people who used to be in that 10p band | 0:24:15 | 0:24:19 | |
are no longer paying tax at all. They are completely out | 0:24:19 | 0:24:22 | |
of the income tax category. We are getting it up to, | 0:24:22 | 0:24:27 | |
by the end of this Parliament the starting point of tax | 0:24:27 | 0:24:29 | |
will be £10,000 of earnings, that's up from | 0:24:29 | 0:24:33 | |
£6,490 when Labour was in power. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:38 | |
We are arguing that that should carry on up to the point | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
that you are looking at minimum wage. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:43 | |
Somewhere around the £12,000 mark. That is much more effective. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:47 | |
It genuinely takes those people out of tax, | 0:24:47 | 0:24:50 | |
but it means that other people on the standard rate | 0:24:50 | 0:24:53 | |
also benefit from the higher start. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
Are you in favour of the 10p tax being reinstated? | 0:24:56 | 0:24:59 | |
-It is not enough. It is not enough. -But you are saying | 0:24:59 | 0:25:02 | |
all these other things have been done. | 0:25:02 | 0:25:05 | |
No, it will be done by 2015 up to 10,000. | 0:25:05 | 0:25:08 | |
It's now at 9,000. It has got to go on to 12. | 0:25:08 | 0:25:12 | |
That's a far better way to use your money. It's more costly | 0:25:12 | 0:25:16 | |
but it is far better than this silly business of a 10p rate | 0:25:16 | 0:25:20 | |
affecting £1,000 of income. | 0:25:20 | 0:25:24 | |
I thought the Liberal Democrats wanted this? | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
We want to raise the threshold, which is a far more effective way. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:31 | |
The people who used to pay 10p, | 0:25:31 | 0:25:34 | |
on that band which Labour raised, | 0:25:34 | 0:25:37 | |
are out of tax altogether. That's exactly what we should be doing. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:43 | |
Our tax cuts have to come to people at the bottom | 0:25:43 | 0:25:46 | |
and people on standard rate. | 0:25:46 | 0:25:48 | |
Are you against what Ed Miliband said today? | 0:25:48 | 0:25:52 | |
-It is insufficient. -But are you against it? | 0:25:52 | 0:25:56 | |
I'm not going to water down what I'm talking about | 0:25:56 | 0:26:00 | |
and what my colleagues are fighting for in order to do a sort of | 0:26:00 | 0:26:04 | |
pettiness of the Ed Miliband. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:06 | |
-Petty? -It's not sufficient. It's too petty. | 0:26:06 | 0:26:08 | |
The man in the middle with the black hair. You're waving, not drowning. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:15 | |
In the last decade, Labour put the personal allowance up just over | 0:26:15 | 0:26:18 | |
£2,000. When you removed that 10p rate, you clobbered | 0:26:18 | 0:26:22 | |
some of the most poorest people. | 0:26:22 | 0:26:23 | |
My brother is only earning £11,000 and that really hurt, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:29 | |
so Labour don't put this gimmick in, "Here's a 10p" | 0:26:29 | 0:26:33 | |
and whack it back off poor people, because it is not fair | 0:26:33 | 0:26:37 | |
and it gives them false hope. | 0:26:37 | 0:26:39 | |
Don't do it just to take it away from people, | 0:26:39 | 0:26:42 | |
-it's not fair. -Mary Creagh? | 0:26:42 | 0:26:44 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:26:44 | 0:26:45 | |
Well, in response to your point, what we are | 0:26:49 | 0:26:52 | |
saying today is yes, removing that 10p tax band | 0:26:52 | 0:26:55 | |
was a mistake and here's what we plan to do | 0:26:55 | 0:26:58 | |
at the next election to put it right. We are clear | 0:26:58 | 0:27:01 | |
that we've had some very difficult economic news. | 0:27:01 | 0:27:04 | |
The Bank of England talking about | 0:27:04 | 0:27:06 | |
living standards being squeezed over the next three or four years. | 0:27:06 | 0:27:09 | |
We know the economy is flatlining. | 0:27:09 | 0:27:12 | |
The economy shrank over the last three months, | 0:27:12 | 0:27:14 | |
so it is imperative that we have | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
a recovery that is led from the bottom upwards, | 0:27:17 | 0:27:21 | |
not from the top downwards, | 0:27:21 | 0:27:22 | |
which is what this Government is doing. | 0:27:22 | 0:27:25 | |
And Susan's colleagues voted for a tax cut for people | 0:27:25 | 0:27:27 | |
earning over £1 million a year. | 0:27:27 | 0:27:30 | |
They are going be getting a £100,000 tax cut this year. | 0:27:30 | 0:27:34 | |
We don't think that's the right way. | 0:27:34 | 0:27:37 | |
We don't want trickledown economics. We want bottom-up recovery. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:40 | |
That's what this country needs. | 0:27:40 | 0:27:42 | |
In ten years though, you only put the personal allowance up £2,000. | 0:27:42 | 0:27:47 | |
That's not good enough. Ten years and only 2,000. | 0:27:47 | 0:27:50 | |
You need to look at the whole package, | 0:27:50 | 0:27:52 | |
in terms of working tax credits. | 0:27:52 | 0:27:54 | |
I know that didn't work for people | 0:27:54 | 0:27:57 | |
-who were single and without children. -Or the young people. | 0:27:57 | 0:27:59 | |
We lifted a million people out of poverty. We lifted a million | 0:27:59 | 0:28:02 | |
children out of poverty, a million pensioners. | 0:28:02 | 0:28:04 | |
What about young working people? | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
A significant achievement in dealing with the problem | 0:28:06 | 0:28:09 | |
of poverty in our society. | 0:28:09 | 0:28:11 | |
Can I just check one thing? Do you want to see this 10p tax rate | 0:28:11 | 0:28:14 | |
as part of the next manifesto? | 0:28:14 | 0:28:17 | |
We've said today this is our clear direction of travel. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:20 | |
-It is a priority for us. -What's a direction of travel? | 0:28:20 | 0:28:24 | |
Unlike George Osborne, who promised to raise the inheritance tax | 0:28:24 | 0:28:29 | |
threshold to over £1 million, and this week said he | 0:28:29 | 0:28:32 | |
wasn't able to do that, we are not going to make promises | 0:28:32 | 0:28:35 | |
that we can't keep. We must not make promises | 0:28:35 | 0:28:40 | |
and then renege on them. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:43 | |
We want a fairer tax system and we are consulting | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
on how to get it absolutely right. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:49 | |
-So nobody can believe you will do it. -No. It's not | 0:28:49 | 0:28:52 | |
even in their manifesto. Ed Miliband and Ed Balls said | 0:28:52 | 0:28:56 | |
it's not going to be in the manifesto, so what is today | 0:28:56 | 0:28:59 | |
-all about? -It's not a manifesto promise, | 0:28:59 | 0:29:02 | |
-we're two years away from the election. -Well, there you go. | 0:29:02 | 0:29:04 | |
Absolute waste of time. You've given people false hope. | 0:29:04 | 0:29:07 | |
George Galloway? | 0:29:08 | 0:29:09 | |
I thought that it was a promise. | 0:29:09 | 0:29:13 | |
I must have been driving up the M1 when this reneging on it occurred. | 0:29:13 | 0:29:19 | |
I was about to congratulate Mr Miliband | 0:29:19 | 0:29:22 | |
on finding some real Labour guts for a change, | 0:29:22 | 0:29:26 | |
to say that a situation where some people live in £2 million mansions, | 0:29:26 | 0:29:32 | |
and if they earn £1 million a year or more | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
they are getting a £100,000 tax cut | 0:29:36 | 0:29:38 | |
is the Tory-Liberal way. | 0:29:38 | 0:29:41 | |
The Labour way is | 0:29:41 | 0:29:43 | |
to cut the taxes of the people at the bottom. | 0:29:43 | 0:29:46 | |
Not least because the people who earn the least, | 0:29:46 | 0:29:49 | |
if you give them more by cutting their taxes, | 0:29:49 | 0:29:52 | |
they will spend it, and they will spend it here, | 0:29:52 | 0:29:54 | |
in our shops, on local services, local goods, | 0:29:54 | 0:29:59 | |
and that will drive the economy. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:02 | |
If you give a £100,000 tax rebate to a millionaire, | 0:30:02 | 0:30:06 | |
he is spending it in Monte Carlo or spending it on his villa in Nice, | 0:30:06 | 0:30:10 | |
or on another foreign tour. APPLAUSE | 0:30:10 | 0:30:18 | |
The reality is the poorest people, the best engine for the economy | 0:30:18 | 0:30:23 | |
is to cut the taxes of the people at the bottom. | 0:30:23 | 0:30:25 | |
George, when you were in the governing party you did not do it. | 0:30:25 | 0:30:30 | |
Let me tell you something. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:31 | |
-Ironically... -Thanks for the reminder. | 0:30:31 | 0:30:35 | |
I'm one of the very few people who told Gordon Goldfinger Brown, | 0:30:35 | 0:30:41 | |
the man that sold off all our gold at the bottom of the market, | 0:30:41 | 0:30:46 | |
I told him that scrapping the 10p tax rate was a grave mistake, | 0:30:46 | 0:30:50 | |
one which has been acknowledged by Balls and Miliband today. | 0:30:50 | 0:30:54 | |
OK. The man there in the second... very far back? | 0:30:54 | 0:30:59 | |
What is the Government doing about tax evasion in this country? | 0:30:59 | 0:31:03 | |
Tax evasion? It's a slightly different point. | 0:31:04 | 0:31:07 | |
Anyway, Fraser Nelson? | 0:31:09 | 0:31:10 | |
The important thing about the 10p tax is that | 0:31:10 | 0:31:13 | |
there's even less to it than meets the eye. Ed Balls was asked, | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
what will it mean to the worker? And he said £2 a week. | 0:31:16 | 0:31:21 | |
When you withdraw the benefits and Working Tax Credits, | 0:31:21 | 0:31:26 | |
it works out at 66p a week. | 0:31:26 | 0:31:29 | |
That's what they call a promise, except it's not even a promise, | 0:31:29 | 0:31:32 | |
even that has been reneged upon. I think the low-paid in this country | 0:31:32 | 0:31:37 | |
deserve a lot better than these pitiful suggestions and overtures | 0:31:37 | 0:31:41 | |
that on close inspection just collapse. | 0:31:41 | 0:31:43 | |
One of the best things this coalition's done is cut tax | 0:31:43 | 0:31:48 | |
for the poor by lifting people out of tax altogether. | 0:31:48 | 0:31:51 | |
George talks about this as a Labour mission. | 0:31:51 | 0:31:53 | |
The Tories and the Liberal Democrats have done this, | 0:31:53 | 0:31:56 | |
that is the irony. We need to go further. Youth unemployment | 0:31:56 | 0:31:59 | |
is at crisis levels so I think we need to have a major tax cut | 0:31:59 | 0:32:03 | |
for the low-paid and by that, I would say | 0:32:03 | 0:32:05 | |
give people the equivalent of a month's extra salary a year. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:10 | |
That really would bring help to those that need it. | 0:32:10 | 0:32:13 | |
I wish to God we would stop | 0:32:13 | 0:32:16 | |
talking about these 10p tax things, which always end up being a con. | 0:32:16 | 0:32:20 | |
They sound nice to start with. | 0:32:20 | 0:32:23 | |
If the Labour Party was serious about helping working people | 0:32:23 | 0:32:26 | |
it would come up with something that would genuinely | 0:32:26 | 0:32:28 | |
leave more money in their pockets. APPLAUSE | 0:32:28 | 0:32:31 | |
Just briefly, but a similar point, how would you pay for that? | 0:32:36 | 0:32:40 | |
-One month? -There's many ways you could do it. There's lots of | 0:32:40 | 0:32:43 | |
waste in Government, for example. | 0:32:43 | 0:32:45 | |
I wouldn't be against borrowing more money to pay for that too. | 0:32:45 | 0:32:48 | |
I don't think we have got the option of not cutting taxes | 0:32:48 | 0:32:51 | |
because the Government's heading | 0:32:51 | 0:32:53 | |
for economic failure and probably political failure as well. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:57 | |
So increase the deficit? You're a Keynesian? | 0:32:57 | 0:32:59 | |
-This is basic economics, really. -Really? | 0:32:59 | 0:33:05 | |
Why don't they do it if it's basic economics? | 0:33:05 | 0:33:07 | |
Good question. They did it in Sweden recently. It worked. | 0:33:07 | 0:33:13 | |
We have talked about whether the 10p will affect poorer people | 0:33:13 | 0:33:16 | |
and Fraser mentioned people out of work. A question from | 0:33:16 | 0:33:18 | |
David Hawkes which is relevant to this, please? David Hawkes. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:22 | |
Should people on benefits be made to work somewhere like Poundland | 0:33:22 | 0:33:25 | |
to justify receiving their money? | 0:33:25 | 0:33:27 | |
This is the case of Cait Reilly, who complained | 0:33:27 | 0:33:29 | |
that she had been forced to work at Poundland | 0:33:29 | 0:33:31 | |
or told she would have to work there or she would lose her benefits | 0:33:31 | 0:33:37 | |
and she took it to court and the court decided something rather odd | 0:33:37 | 0:33:41 | |
which was, perfectly all right to tell people to go to Poundland, | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
but that they hadn't got the procedure right, | 0:33:44 | 0:33:46 | |
as far as I can understand it. George Galloway? | 0:33:46 | 0:33:49 | |
I want to beatify Cait Reilly. | 0:33:49 | 0:33:51 | |
I think she has done Britain a great service by | 0:33:51 | 0:33:54 | |
taking this case and the court, by its decision, has done so too. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:58 | |
This is a young woman who had a voluntary job, unpaid, in a museum | 0:33:58 | 0:34:04 | |
who was forced by Iain Duncan Smith to take a job in Poundland. | 0:34:04 | 0:34:09 | |
That's what we have become. Poundland. | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
Where people are frog-marched into working in Poundland | 0:34:12 | 0:34:16 | |
and told that they are actually doing a job. | 0:34:16 | 0:34:19 | |
We are deporting people from Camden, from Newham | 0:34:19 | 0:34:22 | |
to the north of the country. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:24 | |
We are cutting public expenditure on a massive scale. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:28 | |
We are introducing a bedroom tax, | 0:34:28 | 0:34:32 | |
which I warn you now in case I don't get a chance later, | 0:34:32 | 0:34:35 | |
this is David Cameron's poll tax, the bedroom tax. | 0:34:35 | 0:34:39 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:34:39 | 0:34:40 | |
This is Britain today. A land where you go into a cheap chicken shop | 0:34:40 | 0:34:44 | |
and you get horse, | 0:34:44 | 0:34:46 | |
where the only economy in many of our northern cities is Poundland | 0:34:46 | 0:34:49 | |
and where the Tory answer is to force people into working | 0:34:49 | 0:34:57 | |
in these dodgy places for pitiful wages rather than a real economy, | 0:34:57 | 0:35:00 | |
the one that we need to build. | 0:35:00 | 0:35:02 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:35:02 | 0:35:03 | |
-Maria Miller. -I'm not sure I really accept the way | 0:35:03 | 0:35:10 | |
that George is talking down the really important role | 0:35:10 | 0:35:13 | |
that work experience can have in many people's lives. | 0:35:13 | 0:35:17 | |
-Actually, the facts here... -In Poundland? | 0:35:17 | 0:35:20 | |
OK, the facts, because we can't let facts get in the way | 0:35:20 | 0:35:23 | |
of a good story, the facts are, the court said the Government was quite | 0:35:23 | 0:35:27 | |
right to use things like work experience to give people | 0:35:27 | 0:35:30 | |
the opportunity to get into jobs. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:32 | |
These are people who are on Jobseeker's Allowance, | 0:35:32 | 0:35:35 | |
they are not people who are unpaid | 0:35:35 | 0:35:36 | |
and it gave them the sort of experience which might get them | 0:35:36 | 0:35:39 | |
their next job. Surely we should be applauding organisations | 0:35:39 | 0:35:43 | |
that do that and give young people in this country the opportunity | 0:35:43 | 0:35:46 | |
to get the skills to get ahead. I just don't think it's right | 0:35:46 | 0:35:49 | |
to be writing people off to a lifetime on benefits. | 0:35:49 | 0:35:52 | |
Let's give them the opportunity to get ahead. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:54 | |
She was working in a museum. You put her into Poundland, for God's sake. | 0:35:54 | 0:35:58 | |
Let's be clear here. | 0:35:58 | 0:36:00 | |
All the court said was that there was a technical issue | 0:36:00 | 0:36:03 | |
around the Government policy but the main thrust of the policy | 0:36:03 | 0:36:06 | |
was perfectly acceptable and I think that's something that's important. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:09 | |
I think we should be again applauding those employers | 0:36:09 | 0:36:11 | |
that go out of their way | 0:36:11 | 0:36:12 | |
to give young people in this country a chance. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
-OK. You, sir? -Whilst it's important for young people | 0:36:15 | 0:36:20 | |
to get experience, you have to make sure it's relevant | 0:36:20 | 0:36:23 | |
to their skills and in getting them into a job. There is no point giving | 0:36:23 | 0:36:26 | |
it to a person who's one, volunteering, | 0:36:26 | 0:36:29 | |
two, educated at university | 0:36:29 | 0:36:31 | |
to then force them to do cleaning jobs, menial jobs that | 0:36:31 | 0:36:34 | |
don't actually help them get into work. | 0:36:34 | 0:36:37 | |
You have to provide meaningful placements that will support them | 0:36:37 | 0:36:41 | |
in developing skills and getting into real job prospects, | 0:36:41 | 0:36:44 | |
not just simply using it as a form of punishment | 0:36:44 | 0:36:47 | |
because you are on benefits. It has to be driven by providing skills | 0:36:47 | 0:36:51 | |
to help people into jobs. | 0:36:51 | 0:36:54 | |
Susan Kramer.... | 0:36:54 | 0:36:56 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:36:56 | 0:36:57 | |
Is she suffering a form of punishment, in your view? | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
I'm a huge fan of work experience. If I had been unemployed | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
for over a year and my volunteer job wasn't doing me any good in terms | 0:37:07 | 0:37:11 | |
of getting an employer to take me seriously and somebody offered me | 0:37:11 | 0:37:15 | |
a few weeks or couple of months' work somewhere, I'm getting my benefits | 0:37:15 | 0:37:24 | |
so in a sense I owe back I think for my benefits. I would take it. | 0:37:24 | 0:37:27 | |
If one of my children were in that situation, | 0:37:27 | 0:37:30 | |
I would tell them to take it, | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
because when you are in a job, even if it's in that set-up, | 0:37:32 | 0:37:36 | |
everyone knows it's far easier to then get another job. | 0:37:36 | 0:37:39 | |
You go and apply and you can push. I think work experience, | 0:37:39 | 0:37:42 | |
I don't regard jobs as particularly menial. | 0:37:42 | 0:37:49 | |
There are all kinds of jobs in which you can learn | 0:37:49 | 0:37:52 | |
a whole series of different experiences. It's terrific if you | 0:37:52 | 0:37:56 | |
can find something that fills a real gap in your training. | 0:37:56 | 0:37:59 | |
I think that would be fantastic. But I would go for work experience. | 0:37:59 | 0:38:03 | |
Cait Reilly was a geology graduate | 0:38:03 | 0:38:06 | |
who wanted to work in the museum sector. So surely she was... | 0:38:06 | 0:38:12 | |
I don't want to talk about one particular individual | 0:38:12 | 0:38:17 | |
but we can at least accept, can't we, | 0:38:17 | 0:38:19 | |
that her CV wasn't selling her to employers? | 0:38:19 | 0:38:22 | |
They weren't coming out offering her jobs, so she's either in a situation | 0:38:22 | 0:38:27 | |
of saying "I will take nothing, I'll stay on benefits till I get a job | 0:38:27 | 0:38:31 | |
"in the area I want," or you have to compromise | 0:38:31 | 0:38:33 | |
and take jobs in other areas. That's what I would do personally. | 0:38:33 | 0:38:37 | |
I will take any job rather than be unemployed | 0:38:37 | 0:38:40 | |
and I'd give the same message to my children. | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
From there you build up and find the job in your field. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:47 | |
I don't have a problem with work experience. | 0:38:47 | 0:38:50 | |
-I think we ought to really respect that. -Thank you. | 0:38:50 | 0:38:53 | |
The man in spectacles. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:55 | |
I think the problem is, and why the girl was probably so angry | 0:38:58 | 0:39:03 | |
is that another big failing of the Lib Dems, | 0:39:03 | 0:39:05 | |
the rise in tuition fees and things like that, | 0:39:05 | 0:39:08 | |
increasingly people aren't going to put up with this sort of thing. | 0:39:08 | 0:39:10 | |
She wouldn't be paying under the Lib Dem system, | 0:39:10 | 0:39:14 | |
she wouldn't be paying fees up front | 0:39:14 | 0:39:15 | |
and wouldn't be paying her loan back until she was earning £21,000 | 0:39:15 | 0:39:19 | |
and earning it back at a lower rate. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:21 | |
Why did you pledge the opposite then before the last election? | 0:39:21 | 0:39:26 | |
Why did you sign in blood that you would scrap tuition fees? | 0:39:26 | 0:39:31 | |
We were wrong. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:33 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:39:33 | 0:39:35 | |
I want to go to the back of the audience | 0:39:35 | 0:39:37 | |
because there are many people up there with hands up | 0:39:37 | 0:39:40 | |
who've not had a chance at the moment. | 0:39:40 | 0:39:42 | |
There is a woman in the second row from the back. Yes. You, madam. | 0:39:42 | 0:39:46 | |
Yep, you. | 0:39:46 | 0:39:48 | |
I was just going to say, there are a lot of things wrong | 0:39:48 | 0:39:52 | |
with the welfare state, but I'm glad it's there. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:55 | |
I would rather have it here than it not be there. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:59 | |
And I think that a lot of people who claim benefits | 0:39:59 | 0:40:02 | |
have previously been in work and paid their stamp. | 0:40:02 | 0:40:05 | |
-It's not like they're getting something for nothing. -OK. | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
And the man six along. You with the spectacles on, sir. Yes. | 0:40:08 | 0:40:14 | |
I understand that Miss Reilly is now working in a supermarket, | 0:40:14 | 0:40:18 | |
so it looks like perhaps that scheme | 0:40:18 | 0:40:20 | |
was particularly effective in her case. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:22 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:40:22 | 0:40:23 | |
Mary Creagh. | 0:40:23 | 0:40:25 | |
Well, I think it comes back to the issue of competence, doesn't it? | 0:40:25 | 0:40:29 | |
Because what we had, as you say, | 0:40:29 | 0:40:30 | |
is a judgement that says there's nothing wrong with work experience, | 0:40:30 | 0:40:33 | |
but the way the government laid the regulations, made the regulations, | 0:40:33 | 0:40:37 | |
means it was not legal. | 0:40:37 | 0:40:40 | |
And the failure to explain to the young lady | 0:40:40 | 0:40:43 | |
her right to refuse work, etc, means that the government | 0:40:43 | 0:40:46 | |
laid itself wide open and had this very embarrassing court defeat. | 0:40:46 | 0:40:52 | |
I started my working life in British Home Stores | 0:40:52 | 0:40:55 | |
and I did tights and I did lights | 0:40:55 | 0:40:57 | |
for two years as a Saturday girl. | 0:40:57 | 0:40:59 | |
And I don't think... It was a paid job, | 0:40:59 | 0:41:02 | |
and I learned an awful lot about customer service | 0:41:02 | 0:41:05 | |
and about cleaning and all sorts of things. | 0:41:05 | 0:41:07 | |
So I'm not against work experience, | 0:41:07 | 0:41:08 | |
but what we can't have is a work experience programme | 0:41:08 | 0:41:12 | |
that isn't just for a few months, this can go on for two years, | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
and people only go on it | 0:41:15 | 0:41:16 | |
when they've been unemployed for nine months. | 0:41:16 | 0:41:18 | |
You cannot have people coming out after two years of work experience | 0:41:18 | 0:41:21 | |
and nine months on the dole with nothing to show for it. | 0:41:21 | 0:41:24 | |
There's got to be training alongside it | 0:41:24 | 0:41:26 | |
and there's got to be some sort of training pathway | 0:41:26 | 0:41:28 | |
and hope that there's going to be something better. | 0:41:28 | 0:41:31 | |
We cannot just park people on work experience programmes | 0:41:31 | 0:41:33 | |
and say, "Oh, something will turn up." | 0:41:33 | 0:41:35 | |
-APPLAUSE -Fraser Nelson. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:38 | |
I think there is no doubt that | 0:41:38 | 0:41:40 | |
the government messed up this case. The court has said that. | 0:41:40 | 0:41:42 | |
But it's important to draw a distinction. The easier thing to do | 0:41:42 | 0:41:45 | |
would be to write the welfare cheque and walk away. | 0:41:45 | 0:41:48 | |
I think one of the great failures of the last Labour government | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
is that that's what it did. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:52 | |
It took the easy route, to write the welfare cheque, walk away, | 0:41:52 | 0:41:56 | |
and basically condemn millions of people to poverty. | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
Now, a welfare state, you're right, it's worth something. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:02 | |
It needs to be protected, it needs to work. | 0:42:02 | 0:42:04 | |
But right now, it's creating the most expensive poverty in the world. | 0:42:04 | 0:42:08 | |
That's what we're doing here. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:10 | |
Actually condemning people to live in these jobless, workless ghettos, | 0:42:10 | 0:42:13 | |
who will never be able to get back into the habit of work. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:16 | |
And when the government tries to do better, it will get it wrong, | 0:42:16 | 0:42:19 | |
as it did in this case, but I think, thank God it's trying. | 0:42:19 | 0:42:21 | |
Because the alternative, leaving these people, | 0:42:21 | 0:42:24 | |
is something that we just can't afford to do any more. | 0:42:24 | 0:42:26 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:42:26 | 0:42:28 | |
And I'll take one more point, from the person | 0:42:28 | 0:42:30 | |
with the tinted spectacles in the third row from the back. | 0:42:30 | 0:42:33 | |
I think part of our problem is in education, | 0:42:33 | 0:42:36 | |
that we're not educating the people that society actually needs. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:41 | |
There are a hell of a lot of people today who go to "yooni", | 0:42:41 | 0:42:44 | |
as they call it, and get a degree, | 0:42:44 | 0:42:46 | |
and then find they can't get a job | 0:42:46 | 0:42:48 | |
that's suited to the intellectual level. | 0:42:48 | 0:42:51 | |
And I don't think we're training enough creative and practical people | 0:42:51 | 0:42:55 | |
for the creative, practical jobs - | 0:42:55 | 0:42:57 | |
plumbers, gas fitters, people like that. That is part of the problem. | 0:42:57 | 0:43:01 | |
You're absolutely right. We need to do much more on vocational, | 0:43:01 | 0:43:04 | |
technical education in this country. | 0:43:04 | 0:43:06 | |
For too long there has been a focus | 0:43:06 | 0:43:08 | |
-on the aspiration of 50% to university. -Yes. -And not enough | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
for young people who have these creative talents. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
We've got apprenticeships, which you guys did not work at. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:16 | |
We've also got a work programme... | 0:43:16 | 0:43:18 | |
We now have one million people on apprenticeships. | 0:43:18 | 0:43:20 | |
We have a work programme now where you're more likely | 0:43:20 | 0:43:22 | |
to get a job if you're not on it than if you are on it, Fraser. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
-That is not a welfare system. -All right. | 0:43:25 | 0:43:28 | |
We've got a good heated-up audience here on politics, | 0:43:28 | 0:43:32 | |
and we've got four politicians | 0:43:32 | 0:43:34 | |
on the panel and a political commentator. | 0:43:34 | 0:43:36 | |
So I want to go to the next question and widen this out a bit, | 0:43:36 | 0:43:40 | |
and ask you as politicians not just to list your policies, | 0:43:40 | 0:43:44 | |
but to listen carefully to what the question says. Elliott Hill, please. | 0:43:44 | 0:43:47 | |
Elliott Hill. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:49 | |
With public scepticism towards MPs, similarities between major parties | 0:43:49 | 0:43:53 | |
and a decrease in party membership, is party politics dying? | 0:43:53 | 0:43:57 | |
Is party politics dying? You start, Fraser Nelson. | 0:43:57 | 0:44:01 | |
I think people talk a lot about apathy in Britain, | 0:44:01 | 0:44:04 | |
about how people can't be bothered to vote any more, | 0:44:04 | 0:44:07 | |
but if you look at the amount of engagement in Britain, | 0:44:07 | 0:44:09 | |
we're actually an incredibly passionate country | 0:44:09 | 0:44:12 | |
when it comes to people going on marches, they attend protests, | 0:44:12 | 0:44:15 | |
you get groups like 38 Degrees who did brilliant protests. | 0:44:15 | 0:44:18 | |
The Taxpayers' Alliance and fuel tax. | 0:44:18 | 0:44:20 | |
People get passionate, | 0:44:20 | 0:44:22 | |
but they're not very excited at the menu that they get on polling day. | 0:44:22 | 0:44:25 | |
A lot of people can't bring themselves to choose | 0:44:25 | 0:44:27 | |
one of these parties who'll probably break their promise anyway | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
if they go into coalition with somebody else. | 0:44:30 | 0:44:32 | |
I don't think our politics in Britain is broken, | 0:44:32 | 0:44:35 | |
but I do think our party political system is broken. | 0:44:35 | 0:44:38 | |
These guys try to copy each other too much. | 0:44:38 | 0:44:41 | |
They don't follow through on what they say they will do. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:43 | |
And I really do think that we need | 0:44:43 | 0:44:45 | |
renewal of politics in this country, | 0:44:45 | 0:44:48 | |
because the way things are going, really, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:51 | |
the turnout is going to get lower and lower and lower, | 0:44:51 | 0:44:53 | |
because people think "Well, what's the point? | 0:44:53 | 0:44:55 | |
"No matter who you vote for the government still gets in." | 0:44:55 | 0:44:58 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:44:58 | 0:45:00 | |
Maria Miller. | 0:45:00 | 0:45:02 | |
The accusation is that political parties, not just the Conservatives, | 0:45:02 | 0:45:06 | |
your party, but all political parties, don't follow through | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
with what they say and people have become cynical about it as a result. | 0:45:08 | 0:45:11 | |
I simply don't agree with that. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:13 | |
When I go into schools and colleges in my constituency | 0:45:13 | 0:45:17 | |
and I hear the passion that young people have for issues | 0:45:17 | 0:45:21 | |
like the environment, like climate change, like, | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
I was talking recently to a group | 0:45:24 | 0:45:26 | |
about the work of Amnesty International. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:28 | |
I think there is an enormous passion amongst young people | 0:45:28 | 0:45:32 | |
for political issues. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:33 | |
I think the challenge for all of us at the moment is to make sure | 0:45:33 | 0:45:37 | |
that we're communicating to that new generation, | 0:45:37 | 0:45:40 | |
make sure that we're showing them the very different approaches | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
that each of the parties take to these issues. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:45 | |
And I do think there's a difference. | 0:45:45 | 0:45:47 | |
The real challenge at the moment is something new for our country - | 0:45:47 | 0:45:51 | |
well, for the modern day - which is coalition government. | 0:45:51 | 0:45:55 | |
And making sure that individuals know that, voters know that, | 0:45:55 | 0:45:59 | |
whilst you can work with a party on issues, | 0:45:59 | 0:46:03 | |
there are still considerable differences between your parties | 0:46:03 | 0:46:07 | |
on many of those issues | 0:46:07 | 0:46:08 | |
that you may want to vote on at the general election. | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
I think that's an interesting challenge. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
But you think people are not sceptical towards MPs, as Elliott Hill suggests? | 0:46:14 | 0:46:17 | |
I think of course there'll always be scepticism about people in power, | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
but I think in terms of politics, | 0:46:20 | 0:46:22 | |
the important role that politics has in the lives of all of us, | 0:46:22 | 0:46:26 | |
and particularly young people, I don't see that. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:29 | |
Too many similarities, Susan Kramer, between the major parties. | 0:46:29 | 0:46:31 | |
You got involved in coalition, | 0:46:31 | 0:46:33 | |
you may be in another coalition, I suppose, after the next election. | 0:46:33 | 0:46:36 | |
Well, we think coalition has a lot to offer. | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
-Because, when I talk to people... -LAUGHTER | 0:46:40 | 0:46:42 | |
When I talk to people and they see this sort of, if you like, | 0:46:42 | 0:46:45 | |
the time when party politics is the sort of clash, | 0:46:45 | 0:46:49 | |
at Prime Minister's Questions for example, | 0:46:49 | 0:46:51 | |
they regard that as sort of entertainment. | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
But actually they want people to work together. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:57 | |
And I do think this sort of pressure, particularly when we're in | 0:46:57 | 0:46:59 | |
a time of financial austerity, with such economic difficulties, | 0:46:59 | 0:47:04 | |
the notion of people having to work together, | 0:47:04 | 0:47:06 | |
that there aren't instant answers, that it's the art of the possible, | 0:47:06 | 0:47:11 | |
that you have to move things, | 0:47:11 | 0:47:12 | |
particularly when you're trying to remedy | 0:47:12 | 0:47:15 | |
the damage that's been done to an economy | 0:47:15 | 0:47:17 | |
essentially over a 20-year period, | 0:47:17 | 0:47:19 | |
you're trying to change all those fundamentals, | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
get people to have skills, get businesses started, | 0:47:22 | 0:47:25 | |
get the banks functional again after all that they've done to themselves. | 0:47:25 | 0:47:29 | |
Hang on, you're going to policies now. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:32 | |
Is party politics dying? | 0:47:32 | 0:47:35 | |
Is the politics, the commitment to MPs, was the question. | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
Well, I think we are in a period where cooperation | 0:47:38 | 0:47:41 | |
and consensus have a lot more to offer if people look at it that way. | 0:47:41 | 0:47:46 | |
As for MPs, I think it's true. | 0:47:46 | 0:47:48 | |
With the scandals that we had in the past, MPs lost trust, | 0:47:48 | 0:47:52 | |
and I think you can say, rightly so. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:55 | |
And I recognise I'm part of the political group that has, | 0:47:55 | 0:47:58 | |
collectively, if not individually, lost that trust. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:02 | |
And we have to earn it again. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:03 | |
But I do think that consensus has a lot to offer. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:06 | |
Let's hear from our audience. The person in purple there, | 0:48:06 | 0:48:08 | |
then I'll go back up there. You. | 0:48:08 | 0:48:10 | |
I was just wondering, if you say that you're all fighting for the people, | 0:48:10 | 0:48:15 | |
when do you listen to the people that you are there for? | 0:48:15 | 0:48:19 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:48:19 | 0:48:20 | |
You think that doesn't...? | 0:48:20 | 0:48:23 | |
You don't listen to the people. You've got to listen to the people. | 0:48:23 | 0:48:27 | |
-What THEY want. -Are you talking about any particular party, or all MPs? | 0:48:27 | 0:48:33 | |
-All MPs. -George Galloway. Does George Galloway listen? | 0:48:33 | 0:48:37 | |
Does George listen to you? | 0:48:37 | 0:48:39 | |
I think the only people | 0:48:39 | 0:48:41 | |
that's a party for the people is Labour. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:44 | |
Because they actually listen to the people. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:47 | |
George Galloway, what do you make of the main question? | 0:48:47 | 0:48:50 | |
Well, I agree with Fraser Nelson, and that doesn't happen often! | 0:48:50 | 0:48:53 | |
Actually, people in this country | 0:48:53 | 0:48:55 | |
are fantastically interested in politics. | 0:48:55 | 0:48:59 | |
I have hundreds of thousands of people following me on Twitter | 0:48:59 | 0:49:02 | |
and Facebook, and not only are they absolutely engaged | 0:49:02 | 0:49:06 | |
with all the vital political issues of the day, | 0:49:06 | 0:49:09 | |
they are extremely well-informed, | 0:49:09 | 0:49:11 | |
often times better informed than I am | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
about some of the issues that are in front of us this evening. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:17 | |
The problem is in this country, | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
the political parties, | 0:49:21 | 0:49:24 | |
Tweedledee, Tweedledum, Tweedledee and a half - | 0:49:24 | 0:49:26 | |
if a backside could have three cheeks, these would be | 0:49:26 | 0:49:29 | |
the three cheeks. There is no difference. | 0:49:29 | 0:49:31 | |
We've heard that one before. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:32 | |
-It's a good one, though. -People say "stop me if you've heard it before," | 0:49:32 | 0:49:37 | |
-I have it, George. -Why don't you think of something memorable | 0:49:37 | 0:49:40 | |
to say that people will remember? | 0:49:40 | 0:49:42 | |
I will be slapping yours at the end of the show. | 0:49:42 | 0:49:45 | |
CHEERING AND LAUGHTER | 0:49:45 | 0:49:46 | |
The reality is, these three parties believe | 0:49:46 | 0:49:51 | |
that politics has only an inch in which we can differ. | 0:49:51 | 0:49:56 | |
That we differ about the colour of the walls | 0:49:56 | 0:49:58 | |
that the we'll paint the departments in Whitehall. | 0:49:58 | 0:50:00 | |
That it'll be a penny off this, a penny on that. | 0:50:00 | 0:50:04 | |
In reality, people know that this country isn't working. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:08 | |
That our institutions are in a state of collapse, | 0:50:08 | 0:50:11 | |
and that a radical change is necessary. | 0:50:11 | 0:50:13 | |
And if you put forward a radical change, | 0:50:13 | 0:50:17 | |
people may or may not agree with the radical change you propose, | 0:50:17 | 0:50:21 | |
but they are ready to listen to it. | 0:50:21 | 0:50:23 | |
My last point is this, and I'm sorry, I don't want to get personal. | 0:50:23 | 0:50:26 | |
But we have a parliament full of expenses frauds. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:30 | |
We have a parliament that's almost always on holiday. | 0:50:30 | 0:50:34 | |
Since I was elected 11 months ago, | 0:50:34 | 0:50:36 | |
Parliament has been on holiday almost 50% of the time. | 0:50:36 | 0:50:40 | |
And the rest of the time they're filling in their expenses forms. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:44 | |
That's the face of British politics so far, | 0:50:44 | 0:50:48 | |
including in the House of Lords. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:51 | |
Unless I'm deaf, George, unless I'm deaf, | 0:50:51 | 0:50:53 | |
when you arrive, they complain that you're never there now. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:57 | |
-I'm there every day! -Where are you? We never see you. | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
I am in Parliament every day. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:02 | |
And my expenses are virtually the lowest in England. | 0:51:02 | 0:51:05 | |
And people are following what I have to say | 0:51:05 | 0:51:08 | |
because I'm different from these three cheeks of the same backside. | 0:51:08 | 0:51:12 | |
If you were actually doing your job as an MP, | 0:51:12 | 0:51:14 | |
when we're in recess, what we're supposed to be doing | 0:51:14 | 0:51:16 | |
is actually in our constituencies working with our constituents. | 0:51:16 | 0:51:19 | |
You're lying on beaches! | 0:51:19 | 0:51:20 | |
All right, the woman behind you, four behind. Four rows behind. | 0:51:20 | 0:51:23 | |
Isn't it our democratic system that's actually broken? | 0:51:23 | 0:51:26 | |
I go to a polling booth and have to vote for the best of a bad bunch, | 0:51:26 | 0:51:30 | |
because I don't want the Tories to get in. | 0:51:30 | 0:51:34 | |
It's not who I want to vote for, | 0:51:34 | 0:51:38 | |
but it's who's going to stop a different party getting in. | 0:51:38 | 0:51:41 | |
If AV had gone in or we did have proportional representation, | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
I would be able to vote for who I believed in | 0:51:44 | 0:51:51 | |
-rather than who would stop the Tories from getting in. -We tried! | 0:51:51 | 0:51:54 | |
-Mary Creagh. -Well, I don't think our society is broken. | 0:51:54 | 0:51:58 | |
And I don't think politics is broken. | 0:51:58 | 0:52:01 | |
And I think that George Galloway's rhetoric about | 0:52:01 | 0:52:03 | |
how awful everything is is actually dangerous and deeply, deeply cynical. | 0:52:03 | 0:52:08 | |
I'm ambitious for this country. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:10 | |
I didn't come into politics to just make, | 0:52:10 | 0:52:14 | |
to govern slightly better or make little changes. | 0:52:14 | 0:52:17 | |
I came into politics because I wanted to change the world. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:20 | |
I started as a local councillor, I carried on being elected to be an MP. | 0:52:20 | 0:52:25 | |
I go out, every Friday when I'm at home in Wakefield | 0:52:25 | 0:52:28 | |
I go out and listen to the people, | 0:52:28 | 0:52:29 | |
and meet them picking up their children from the school gates. | 0:52:29 | 0:52:32 | |
In the snow, in the hail, in the sun. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
I've got 30-odd schools and I go round every one of them. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
I listen to what people tell me. When they tell me stuff, I act. | 0:52:38 | 0:52:42 | |
I take out the police with me sometimes. | 0:52:42 | 0:52:44 | |
And I'm passionate about the role that politicians can play. | 0:52:44 | 0:52:47 | |
If you go to countries where politics really is broken, | 0:52:47 | 0:52:50 | |
I went to South Sudan last year, I went to Rwanda, I went to the Congo, | 0:52:50 | 0:52:54 | |
I've been to places where terrible things | 0:52:54 | 0:52:56 | |
have happened because of catastrophic political failure. | 0:52:56 | 0:52:59 | |
I don't think people in this country really understand | 0:52:59 | 0:53:01 | |
-just how lucky we are with our system. -All right. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:04 | |
Can I go back to Elliott Hill, who asked the question? | 0:53:04 | 0:53:06 | |
What do you think of what you've heard? What's your view? | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
I think there's a big difference between passion over politics | 0:53:09 | 0:53:12 | |
and passion for parties in politics. | 0:53:12 | 0:53:15 | |
I know it's a lot... | 0:53:15 | 0:53:17 | |
A few panel members sort of talking about Amnesty International, | 0:53:17 | 0:53:20 | |
I think Maria Miller said, | 0:53:20 | 0:53:22 | |
and people being really interested in these political issues, | 0:53:22 | 0:53:25 | |
and that's definitely true. | 0:53:25 | 0:53:27 | |
But whether they're so interested in parties is a different matter. | 0:53:27 | 0:53:32 | |
I think they're on the way out if they don't do something. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:34 | |
And the minute the public do realise that parties are expendable | 0:53:34 | 0:53:37 | |
and politics can work very well without them, | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
it might well change the entire political system. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:44 | |
-To more independent MPs, you mean? -Perhaps, yeah. | 0:53:44 | 0:53:47 | |
The man in the white suit. You, sir. | 0:53:47 | 0:53:50 | |
The thing with talking about coalition | 0:53:50 | 0:53:52 | |
and working together as being the solution | 0:53:52 | 0:53:55 | |
to the political problems, I have to disagree with that. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:59 | |
When the Liberal Democrats | 0:53:59 | 0:54:00 | |
voted against boundary changes for constituencies very recently. | 0:54:00 | 0:54:05 | |
Therefore the public see | 0:54:05 | 0:54:07 | |
that politicians are playing their own game. | 0:54:07 | 0:54:10 | |
"If it's in their favour, we'll vote against it." | 0:54:10 | 0:54:13 | |
But that's playing against what the public need, | 0:54:13 | 0:54:15 | |
which is a fair say in who gets elected. | 0:54:15 | 0:54:18 | |
Fraser Nelson, do you agree with that, on this boundary change point? | 0:54:18 | 0:54:21 | |
Yeah. This is the thing, politicians go on about constitutional reform, | 0:54:21 | 0:54:25 | |
but only the type that benefits the own party. It's really depressing. | 0:54:25 | 0:54:29 | |
You broke the deal, you can pretty much write the script. | 0:54:29 | 0:54:32 | |
But I'd say to Elliott, if you think the situation is bad now, | 0:54:32 | 0:54:35 | |
then wait until they get state funding for political parties. | 0:54:35 | 0:54:38 | |
I mean, right now they're losing members, | 0:54:38 | 0:54:40 | |
all the main political parties, and they've got to find financing. | 0:54:40 | 0:54:44 | |
If they say, "Nobody wants to give us money, let's get the government | 0:54:44 | 0:54:47 | |
"to give us a bailout," that's still on the cards, | 0:54:47 | 0:54:49 | |
which is why it's so important it should never happen. | 0:54:49 | 0:54:52 | |
They should be forced, all of them - Labour, Tory, Lib Dems - | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
to go and find ideas that people think are worth supporting. | 0:54:55 | 0:54:58 | |
Either do that or go bust. | 0:54:58 | 0:55:00 | |
And the drop in membership is absolutely staggering. | 0:55:00 | 0:55:04 | |
The Tories have halved under Cameron alone, | 0:55:04 | 0:55:06 | |
-pretty much. -In the '50s, the Tories had three million members. | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
-Labour had a million members. You, sir, on the left, here. -Yeah. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:12 | |
Doesn't the panel think that the despondency shown | 0:55:12 | 0:55:15 | |
by the general public at the moment towards political parties, | 0:55:15 | 0:55:21 | |
is it not because before an election, they promise, | 0:55:21 | 0:55:25 | |
all parties promise this, that and the other, | 0:55:25 | 0:55:27 | |
so they vote them in, and then after they renege on what they promise? | 0:55:27 | 0:55:32 | |
-Has it ever been different, in your view? -It was... -No. | 0:55:32 | 0:55:36 | |
Every single... | 0:55:36 | 0:55:37 | |
Every single election, they've always gone back on what they said. | 0:55:37 | 0:55:42 | |
Parties used to be very different, but now | 0:55:42 | 0:55:44 | |
the Tories are giving us just as much debt | 0:55:44 | 0:55:46 | |
as Labour was planning to, | 0:55:46 | 0:55:48 | |
-so you do wonder what all the fuss was about. -OK. | 0:55:48 | 0:55:50 | |
We're a bit out of time, but because of where we are, | 0:55:50 | 0:55:53 | |
I'm just going to take this question from Joseph Sharp, | 0:55:53 | 0:55:56 | |
and it'll be a yes or no around the panel. Joseph Sharp, please. | 0:55:56 | 0:55:59 | |
I'd just like to ask the panel, | 0:55:59 | 0:56:00 | |
where should Richard III be buried - Leicester, Westminster or York? | 0:56:00 | 0:56:03 | |
-Or indeed Gloucester, as some have said. -George, quickly. | 0:56:03 | 0:56:07 | |
Has to be York. He built a mausoleum for himself there. | 0:56:07 | 0:56:11 | |
BOOING AND LAUGHTER | 0:56:11 | 0:56:13 | |
And a person's last wishes should be honoured! | 0:56:13 | 0:56:16 | |
-He wanted it to be York, it must be York. -Maria Miller. | 0:56:16 | 0:56:19 | |
We've made sure that Leicester University has got some say in this, | 0:56:19 | 0:56:23 | |
and I think there's sort of a rule generally | 0:56:23 | 0:56:25 | |
that when you exhume bodies from the ground, | 0:56:25 | 0:56:27 | |
you try and rebury them somewhere close to where they were taken out. | 0:56:27 | 0:56:30 | |
OK, Mary? That's one for Leicester. | 0:56:30 | 0:56:33 | |
APPLAUSE AND CHEERING | 0:56:33 | 0:56:36 | |
Westminster, where his wife is? | 0:56:36 | 0:56:38 | |
Richard has been lying under Leicester council | 0:56:38 | 0:56:41 | |
social services car park for the last 500 years, | 0:56:41 | 0:56:44 | |
I think he deserves a decent burial in Leicester Cathedral. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:47 | |
-APPLAUSE AND CHEERING -Susan? | 0:56:47 | 0:56:51 | |
Finders keepers! | 0:56:51 | 0:56:53 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:56:53 | 0:56:56 | |
I thought you were saying "Findus" for a moment! | 0:56:56 | 0:56:59 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:56:59 | 0:57:01 | |
-Not that bad! -I think he should be buried | 0:57:01 | 0:57:03 | |
with his wife, Anne Neville, | 0:57:03 | 0:57:05 | |
who's buried in Westminster. I know I would certainly like to be. | 0:57:05 | 0:57:08 | |
If he were alive, which obviously is not, | 0:57:08 | 0:57:11 | |
he would probably want to be with her. Most people do. | 0:57:11 | 0:57:14 | |
-Westminster Abbey? -Yeah. -OK. Fine. | 0:57:14 | 0:57:17 | |
That's it. I'm sorry. | 0:57:17 | 0:57:18 | |
It's perfectly obvious where everybody here wants him buried. | 0:57:18 | 0:57:22 | |
Our hour is up. We'll be, oh, we're going to be in St Paul's Cathedral! | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
We didn't mention St Paul's! | 0:57:25 | 0:57:27 | |
St Paul's Cathedral, where Nelson is buried. | 0:57:27 | 0:57:29 | |
SUSAN: Richard I is buried in three different places. | 0:57:29 | 0:57:32 | |
-They kind of broke him up and scattered them. -Thank you. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
We've got to stop, Susan. | 0:57:35 | 0:57:36 | |
LAUGHTER | 0:57:36 | 0:57:38 | |
-I like dissections! -Thank you. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:40 | |
And St Paul's Cathedral next week, and in fact it's the first time | 0:57:40 | 0:57:43 | |
question Time has come from St Paul's. | 0:57:43 | 0:57:46 | |
Our panellists are going to include Vince Cable, | 0:57:46 | 0:57:48 | |
Michael Heseltine and Diane Abbott. | 0:57:48 | 0:57:50 | |
And the week after that we're going to be at the site | 0:57:50 | 0:57:53 | |
of the Hampshire by-election in Eastleigh. | 0:57:53 | 0:57:55 | |
We'll be going live just after the polls close on that by-election | 0:57:55 | 0:57:59 | |
triggered by Chris Huhne's plea of guilty, of course, in the courts. | 0:57:59 | 0:58:02 | |
If you'd like to come either to St Paul's or to Eastleigh, | 0:58:02 | 0:58:05 | |
you can apply by our website. | 0:58:05 | 0:58:07 | |
The address is on the screen. | 0:58:07 | 0:58:09 | |
Or you can call us, 0330 123 99 88. | 0:58:09 | 0:58:13 | |
You'll be catechised by our administrators. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:16 | |
It would be extremely nice to see you for those two occasions. | 0:58:16 | 0:58:20 | |
My thanks to our panel here, | 0:58:20 | 0:58:22 | |
and to all of you who came to take part in this programme. | 0:58:22 | 0:58:25 | |
From Question Time here in Leicester, | 0:58:25 | 0:58:27 | |
until next Thursday, good night. | 0:58:27 | 0:58:29 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:58:29 | 0:58:31 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:58:57 | 0:58:59 |