30/01/2014 Question Time

Tonight, we are in St Andrews Hall in Norwich, and welcome to Question

Time. And welcome to you at home, to our

audience who will be asking the questions, to our panel, who have

not the slightest clue what the questions will be. They are the

Conservative cabinet minister, Ken Clarke, Labour's Shadow Attorney

General, Emily Thornberry, Liberal Democrat peer and former City of

London investment manager, Lord Oakeshott, director-general of the

free-market think tank the Institute of Economic Affairs, Mark

Littlewood, and the comedian and feminist campaigner Kate

Smurthwaite. As Matthew Oakeshott points out, he

is still a City of London investment manager. We had announced that

Charles Kennedy would be here tonight but he had to go to a

funeral in Scotland today unexpectedly and sent his apologies.

Our first question from Jonathan Winslade. Will the revival of the

50p tax rate lead to the wealthiest individuals leaving the UK? If

Labour goes ahead with that policy, will it lead to the wealthiest

individuals leaving, Ken Clarke? Well, it would be a signal that we

were going back to a politically higher tax regime than we have had

for about 20 years, because it was only announced before the election

by the Labour Party. They did not have a 50p tax rate when they were

in office. And this is not the right time to be doing that. We are trying

to encourage entrepreneurs and investment, which is slow coming

because there is not confidence. We need to attract inward investment

and restore London as a financial centre, and attract investors to

make us a stronger manufacturing country. I think the message to the

outside world would be, it is the same old politics in Britain. No

doubt you would get some votes from those feeling hard up at the moment

but the national interest would, I think, be damaged. It is a pretty

old-fashioned, simplistic way to appeal for the votes of people

feeling a bit hard up, to tell them that you are somehow going to raise

vast sums of money from the rich. We never have in the past, and we do

not want to drift back into that again. What do you think? Once

again, we see the Labour Party being delusional with economic policy. We

are just seeing growth getting back to the levels of 2007. Do we want to

damage current and future leaders of business and get them to leave the

UK? Where does that leave our growth. Emily Thornberry. There are

two things that people say who are against it. First they say it will

not raise any money, and other people say it will hurt business. It

can't do both. The reason we think we should introduce the 50p rate is

because we are all in it together. Remember the Tories saying that?

When Cameron said that, he said that was why we should keep the 50p tax

rate, because when they were in opposition they said they would keep

it. When they got into government they gave the millionaire 's attacks

rake in which meant the average millionaire got ?100,000 tax break

each year as a result of lowering taxes. It seems to me that when

people's wagers are worth the equivalent of ?1600 less, every year

people are feeling poorer, prices are rising faster than wages, we are

all supposed to be shouldering the burden equally, and the richer

proportion of society is not. That is why we want to introduce a higher

rate of tax. The question, though, was whether it

would lead to the wealthiest individuals leaving the UK. I don't

believe it would. It has not in the past, and the reason it has not is

because actually Britain is a really good place for people to live. We

have a good, stable society, we have wonderful culture, good schools.

People enjoy a good life living in Britain. In the end, those that move

away tend to come back because Britain is the best place to be. I

just want to come back to that gentleman about his question about

whether the wealthiest, it would encourage them to leave the UK. To

be honest, the wealthiest are not contributing to this country anyway,

because all the wealth is stashed offshore. I don't think we are

taxing the wealthiest in enough. People at the very bottom are

suffering and struggling, and that step is not going anywhere near to

redressing the balance in this country. Emily said there are two

criticisms of bringing back the 50p rate. One that it will not raise

money, and the second that it will harm business, and they can't be

true. I'm afraid they are both true. If you are to believe the

independent experts, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, this might raise

?100 million. That is thereafter guess. That pays for about 70

minutes of government expenditure. I do not know how the Labour Party

will fund the rest of the annual government budget. It will harm

business, not for the reasons the question implied. It is not as if

you bring in a 50p rate and everybody earning over ?150 flees

the country and gets the first flight out. ?150,000. They are not

going to flee the country overnight. Some of them might decide to leave,

I guess. It is more question of a multinational company thinking,

shall we relocate more people to London, to Singapore? It might be

that they decide to go to Singapore. It might be people who are doing

very well in their 50s and 60s. Am I going to work next year or retire

early? There are a multitude of reasons why it would dis-

incentivise people at the high-end. We are in a global economy and if

you want to help business and see the risk -- the recovery secured,

bear in mind the top 1% of earners in this country pay 30% of income

tax receipts at the moment, maybe not enough as you up -- as far as

you are concerned, but it is 30%. If you put the rates up far higher, you

will not get the money to spend on the poor and other things we want to

help this country with. I would like to pose a question to Emily

Thornberry. Do you think this country, the voting population, do

you think we are stupid? Look what happened under new Labour. Tony

Blair was absolutely complicit in generating the wealth, doing deals

with Murdoch, Bernie Ecclestone, generating all this wealth. Tax was

lower under new Labour. I find it incredible to think that raising the

tax will make you think you are more electable. Just tell me, how

electable work Michael foot and Neil Kinnock when they were leading the

Labour Party. It is total rank socialist hypocrisy. It seems to me

that the problem we have is that the current government has decided it

needs to save money and has turned and hit the poorest and most needy

in the most brutal way. The Labour Party are saying, and I think it is

a fairer and nothing to say, that what we need to do is to start

taxing some of the richer, to increase taxes, but these things

back up. Lots of countries have a 50%, or a higher top rate of tax,

and there is not a flood of people leaving. I think they are right to

do that. But both groups are missing the fact that there is a third group

of people who pay virtually no tax, the very highest earners in our

society. Almost one third of the world's money sits in tax havens,

and we continue to support that. That is where we need to access the

money and stop supporting. Matthew Oakeshott, we will bring in Emily in

a moment but the accusation was that the 50p tax rate is a politically

destructive move. I don't think it is. You are in favour. What really

matters is wealth. I remember the argument, we brought in our policy

of a mansion tax through houses of over ?2 million. We had talk about

people leaving the country. I don't believe it. Frankly, if people are

going to leave because the top rate of income tax is 50p, rather than

45p, I don't want them in this country, frankly. What is more

worrying too big is less than serious business is not what the top

rate of tax is but the increasing threats we are getting not just from

UKIP but the UKIP wing of the Tory party that we might leave the

European Union. That would really destroy jobs and hit investment.

What you have got to do is to have a tax, as Kate said, a tax that people

cannot avoid. That is why we must have wealth taxes. That is where the

really big difference is. It is not on income but on wealth. The Liberal

Democrats had a virtually tied vote at our conference. Most of us are

simple that it to a 50p rate, but we do not think it is the key thing.

The key thing is to tax wealth and deal with tax dodgers. What is the

Liberal Democrat view about how much it would raise? Well, the general

evidence is that most people think it would raise a bit. And there is

no evidence, I think... What is a bit? 100 million, 200 million. That

is enough? No one is saying it would not raise any money. I think it is

important, when things are so difficult, that there is a message

of fairness. At the key thing is to deal with the enormous inequality in

wealth in this country. -- but the key thing is to deal with the

enormous inequality in wealth. The amount it would raise must be

important. Answer that gentlemen, it is a destructive socialist policy

that will lose the election. If it is going to raise 3 billion a

year... The Tory line seems to be, don't tax people too much, otherwise

they will avoid tax. don't tax people too much, otherwise

they It seems to me that the role of government is that you set a tax

rate and make sure that people do not avoid tax. Another question we

ought to ask tonight, and Cameron was asked this three times at Prime

Minister 's questions, is is it the Tory policy to lower tax rates to

40p. He has not answered. I don't know if you can help. 40p was the

new Labour rate. These high rates of tax were abolished by Nigel Lawson

as we got into the modern era and developed a competitive economy. Our

big task now is to develop a modern, competitive economy to attract the

right kind of investment to this country. Throughout new Labour's

period, the top tax was 40p. It was a few weeks ago, head of an election

in which you were doomed, that you put it up. The only reason you are

announcing a change is that you are trying to get back to a responsible

economic lessee. You started attending that you have suddenly

been converted, after four years, to the idea of tackling the deficit and

the debt. I am in favour of that. We are well on the way, with Labour

voting against us every time we do it. They are not prepared to say how

they will match us and get us into surplus, how they are going to

tackle the deficit and debt. The only thing they have is this the aft

idea that you raise 100 million or so by going to a level of taxation

which new Labour never levied throughout their time in office.

Through three years of the 50p tax rate, ?10 billion was raised. That

is the numbers, OK. We can bandy around numbers as much as we want

but this is about fairness and making sure everyone shoulders the

burden. Let me have the man in spectacles. There is no

manufacturing in this country, we are not building our own stuff, not

making this and that, bringing in products, how we generating our own

money? We are so privatised that we have no room, Nouveau. -- no room

for manoeuvre. No matter what you set the highest

rate of tax at, someone will find a way of getting round it. If you want

a fairer society, pick a flat rate, clamp down on tax evasion and

avoidance, clamp-down on business practices designed to reduce the tax

burden and make sure everyone contributes the same level of their

income, whether a street sweeper or Google. What about the 50%? You

would not have it? It is pointless. Get everybody to contribute the same

amount of their income and cut down on avoidance. now the recovery has

started to take base, I think people have a very short memory. At the

heart of the financial crisis, when the Coalition Government came in and

basically picked it up, two things were said by both party leaders, by

Ed Miliband and David Cameron, the fact that it was time to build a

fairer economy. Miliband called that a responsible economy. Cameron

called that a moral economy. Both of them said this was our chance to do

this. Hasn't happened? I think what has happened now, with the recovery

is that has been forgotten. I think Labour are trying to, if you look at

their policies, they are talking about energy companies, OK? They are

talking about the 50p tax, they are talking about all sorts of things

that talk about the person on the ground and supporting them, trying

to reclaim some of the wealth. But I think that the conservatives,

unfortunately, have forgotten about what Mr Cameron said. At 45p, our

top tax rate is higher now than it was the round Gordon Brown's entire

period as Chancellor of the Exchequer. I mean, we are in a

serious situation in this country. We are slowly getting back to

recovery, it's very hard work, we got to be competitive. We have to

stop fooling about with old-fashioned political gestures

like this. Can I just return on that? No, we have heard from you.

The man above you? It seems naive that people seem to lose track and

think the only way to keep the wealthy happy is to allow them to

keep more of their wealth, while those at the bottom server. Recent

figures suggest that the top 85 wealthiest individuals in the world

have more money than the bottom 70 billion. People say we have to push

that further in favour of the wealthy.

We are going to go back to the question then move on to another

one. I think Ken Clarke's comment about people being a bit harder

shows how elitist and out of touch this government is. It's insulting.

People are having to survive on food banks. You have ministers laughing

about it. I'm not laughing about it. In Parliament, they were laughing

about it. We inherited the problem and we are tackling it. I'm

explaining that in the modern world a 50p tax rate will not help. Doing

what we are doing now, creating a competitive economy, it is the only

way you're going to raise the living standards of ordinary people in this

country. Living standards have suffered because there has been a

recession that we did not cause, because there was irresponsible

mismanagement of the economy in the last arcade. -- decade. I think

people who claim to understand about economic summits in one important

point. When you allow the wealthy to have a bit more money, they put it

in the bank with the other money they have already got. If we have

learned one thing from watching benefits Street, it is that people

will wait until midnight to get hold of it, they spend it within 30

minutes of getting it. If we wanted to get the economy moving, injecting

more money at the top, where it goes into savings, does nothing. We need

to inject money at the bottom, where people need it, they will spend it

and put straight into the economy. That is why we have been

concentrating on taking millions of people out of tax at the bottom,

moving up the tax threshold, with our policies to make sure that

happens. As you say, and pensioners also, they are the people that spend

the money and get jobs going. What is the justification of supporting

the bedroom tax? We are all in it together and people have got to pay

that? It is not fair. It seems to be fair to attack the poorest, but

somehow it is not fair to expect the richest to pay more. A last word

from the person who set the question question mark we have had two embers

of the people saying people will not leave the country. We have had a

property boom in London from people coming from other countries. If we

get rid of them, we are not going to have the money to help the people at

the bottom. I don't think people coming and pushing up house prices

in London is helping anyone. I think it is really hard to live in London,

those under 40 cannot afford to live in London, they cannot afford

council properties or to be able to buy. I think having a boom in the

economy based on house prices in London and the south-east is not

sustainable growth. They are not moving to London, they are buying

blocks of flats and leaving them empty. Was it high taxes in France

that made London the sixth most French city, as it is claimed now?

There are more French people living in London and Bordeaux, because of

tax. I think there are a lot of British people living in Bordeaux as

well. People move around. One of the reasons we have a lot of French

people in my part of London is because of the banking sector. Why

not go for a 75% tax rate? That is what Hollande has gone for. 50p is

fair, because there is a crisis. And because everyone should... At home,

you can join in this debate and all of the other topics we go through

through text and Twitter. I don't know what you've heard is, tweeting?

Twittering? I always say twittering. You can also text comments. You can

use the red button to see what other people are saying.

Let's have a question from Chris Lambert. If you have chosen to live

below sea level in Somerset, is it reasonable to assume that you will

be flooded? If you've chosen to live below sea level, is it reasonable to

assume you'll be flooded? When people bought their homes,

nobody said, I'd like to live next to the sea, where is the sea? Up

there? There are places below sea level but they have been reclaimed

land, a lot of projects in place to make liveable over hundreds of

years. What we have now is a situation where some of those

defences have not been maintained, rivers have not been dredged, that

have been dredged for many years, and where protections and barriers

have not been maintained. What we are seeing is that now the

combination of the expected flooding and the impacts of global climate

change mean that people are much more at risk than they have ever

been. At the same time, we have an Environment Secretary who will not

confirm he even believes in climate change. He has slashed the budget

for climate change and it is... -- climate change initiatives, we have

initiatives working out where it is going to be, it includes carbon

capture and all of that stuff, that is about half what we spend on the

Queen and that is what we are spending on what scientists around

the world agree is the single greatest danger to the future of the

human race, that is appalling. Is it reasonable to assume that you

will be flooded? I think it is reasonable to expect people assume

they are taking a risk of that. I live in a high crime area in London,

I am aware I am running a higher risk than most people that I will be

mugged, stabbed or whatever. That is part of the risk of the place I

choose to live in. That doesn't mean that I don't have sympathy for the

people afflicted by this. Yes, but people who choose to live... In

places which flowed, -- flowed, the solution is not to have Owen

Paterson, however he sent a man he may be, and the Environment Agency

in Whitehall trying to coordinate all of this. What we need to get

back to is to give the powers to the local communities and the local

councils to deal with particular local problems. My local area would

have a crime problem, not a flooding problem. Somerset will have a

flooding problem and less of a crime problem. There has been a lot of

criticism of the Environment Agency and you used to be their press

spokesman. Do you think they are a good outfit? Do they do a good job,

do they work their socks off, like Lord Smith does? I think they do

their best, but I don't think they are set up the right way. How you

deal with Somerset, the problems with draining and dredging,

whatever, from an office in Whitehall, is ridiculous. We have

got to get these powers and responsibilities back to ground

level. It is not a criticism of the Environment Agency, it is a

criticism of the structure. It should not be organised by a cabinet

minister in Whitehall. You have to put these powers on the ground.

Allow people to raise the resources and spend the resources on combating

these problems at local level. The woman up there? There was flooding

in Norfolk recently as well. David Cameron actually came to see the

flooding there. There was an example of local people actually managing

that situation. Local flood wardens were able to coordinate it, and it

was efficiently run. Were their criticisms of the Environment

Agency? I don't know, but it was well run by local people and saved a

lot of disaster. Over the last few weeks, we have seen a lot of local

people in all of these areas that have been flooded in the

south-west. They mostly come out with the same historic information,

that they have always known that when rivers were dredged all the way

down to sea level that this was never a problem, even when we had

torrents of rain. When have the so-called experts who are paid a

huge sum of money in their salaries, when they going to start

taking notice? With great respect, I think it has become a bit of a

modern cliche that every time we have a disaster, and no doubt this

is a terrible disaster for people living there, they must be having an

absolute nightmare time for the past few weeks, somebody has to be

blamed. I don't blame the inhabitants, that is for sure. It is

famous wetland. The background is that they have had more rain there

than anybody for 100 years. And it is still raining. You know, it is a

once in 100 year episode. Nobody can find in historic times such heavy

rainfall in January. When this is all over, of course, you need green

checks burps, actually, to examine what more can be done. -- drainage

experts. In perhaps a sensible way. I am not an expert in land

drainage. I understand why the locals are clean to things like

saying, oh, you should dredge the rivers more frequently. If it would

make a difference, I think that is highly controversial. Obviously you

need to dredge them occasionally. This is a real tragedy, a

consequence of a freak... Well, not a freak, it is the kind of thing

that happens now and again. It is the winter, it is wet, it has

rained. I don't know if we can put it down to climate change. I have

noticed some windmills, solar panels, I have noticed energy bills

going up and people saying we are going to have a political price on

energy, when you have an international wholesale market and

we are trying to reduce carbon levels. I do think the present fewer

or about Somerset, who is to blame, somebody has to be summoned and it

is lynch mob stuff. I don't think it is relevant to the people suffering

there. I believe in climate change. How much more evidence do we need?

We just had January, the wettest month in this country ever. Clearly,

the pressure is building up. Answering the question, many people

in many parts of the world live at sea level or below sea-level. The

question is if it can be managed and if you are having many more floods

and than you used to. You buy a house for a long time. To me, the

evidence is building up quite quickly that we are having far more

variable weather and far more problems. We have got to face up to

this and deal with it. It will not just be Somerset, but all sorts of

places in all sorts of ways. It is actually pretty shocking you have a

climate change denier responsible for this problem.

Who are you saying it's a climate denying charge? Isn't he extremely

sceptical about it? The Prime Minister seems to think he is rather

convinced. That is excellent, news to me. You are agnostic, Ken Clarke?

No, no. The little egret is now eight common bird across the country

and I used to get excited when I saw it in southern France. We have

policies in climate change. It's difficult, energy policy. You've got

to get the balance right between getting down carbon emissions to the

right level while keeping it sufficiently affordable to stop

praising all of our businesses out of international markets. We are

engaged in that, seriously. A flood, every flood, to turn it into a

political judgement. It's not every rainstorm and every flood. We have

had one of the wettest winters for 100 years. You keep breaking all of

the records. It keeps happening again and again in different parts

of the country. The reason for that is because of climate change. It is

not global warming. People like the idea, well, global warming, I will

be able to grow olives in my back garden. It is not like that. It is

unpredictable, major weather changes and we need to make sure that we are

up for it and we are protected. The government is doing a good job on

this commie thing? I think somebody who is unable to have a cull in

badgers in charge of defending is against this major change in climate

is not necessarily the best policy. I know he was going to have a

review, a concrete policy, he said, in six weeks time. The Prime

Minister said last night he was going to call in the army. The army

arrived and went home again. This is policy-making by photo opportunity.

It is very unfortunate. You can't just say the army arrived, two

Majors arrived. If that is the army, we are in real trouble. It will be,

soon. We heard he had called in the army, than we see that it was two

Majors that went home. This is not the way we should be running things.

The problem is what Ken Clarke has just said - I have noticed windmills

and solar panels. We have not noticed the greenest government in

history. We were told that and we didn't get it. We have an enormous

energy Bill, green levies, a big investment in offshore wind and

solar going ahead, a pattern of subsidies. And fracking as well. We

have a serious policy on climate change which is interrupted by daft

pumice is about fixing the energy price. -- daft promises. Our weather

is not going to change. What are we going to do to help these people? We

have millions of pounds put into foreign aid, but what about English

aid. Can't we have a big bucket for all of these extra taxes going to

English aid to support these people? Some of them can't afford insurance

because they are on the poverty line. Some of them have not got

houses. When are we going to help our own people? You would give a

large sum of money to people in Somerset as an area in special need?

People are talking about wealth taxes, but we need a new bucket for

ordinary people, when we have not got enough money to help ourselves.

You in the third row. With the increase in what is called global

warming, wouldn't people see that, I guess, that things like this are a

much higher possibility, and shouldn't things have been put in

place such as flood offences, or the need to stop this?

The grey-haired man. Well, it is not what it was when you were born,

exact early! When I was 11, doing geography at high school I learned

that flood lanes were for floodwaters. When are we going to

stop building houses and factories on flood planes, which pushes water

further down the system? The man in the brown jacket. I think it is a

strange thing to complain that we are not giving enough money in

English aid, when things like Syria are happening right now. Yes,

flooding is terrible, but as the question pointed out, you accept

that the risk by living on a flood Lane. If you are Syrian, you have

not accepted to be in a civil war. -- you accepted the risk by choosing

to live in a flood plain. Should foreign-born criminals be

able to have their citizenship revoked? This is this complicated

thing. There was a proposal from the Home Secretary that citizenship

should be taken away from people born outside this country who then

came in, and she was told it was not support. Also through the House of

Commons today, there was an argument about whether you can say, if you

are found guilty of a criminal offence, that you are entitled to a

family life and can therefore stay in this country. They are two

conflated issues. Should foreign-born criminals be able to

have the dish citizenship revoked? -- British citizenship. I bow to no

one in support of human rights and Civil Liberties. But I think in

certain circumstances the answer to this question is yes. I am not

saying there are no circumstances in which citizenship should not be

revoked. Had Osama Bin Laden qualified for British citizenship

presumably we would sought to revoke it. That does not mean you kick

people out for being shoplifters, but it means there needs to be a

test under which, in certain circumstances, if you were not born

here and have been granted British citizenship, it can be removed. To

the supplementary point about under what terms can we expel you from the

country, again, I think that is a relatively high test, but if you

have earned British citizenship, or qualified for it by means other than

being born here, you have actually been granted a privilege as well as

a right. I think that river which can and should be revoked in certain

circumstances. You need to make sure it is fairly done, not arbitrary. I

am a bit worried about politicians making the decision rather than

judges, but yes, I reckon if you are given citizenship and you miss

behave in a criminal fashion to an intolerable level, then it is

reasonable to revoke that citizenship. Emily Thornberry,

Shadow Attorney General. I was in Parliament today and I have to say

was really confusing as to what on earth was going on. We had

amendments being rushed up overnight, announced on the today

programme, others being handed in in handwritten script. We had people in

Parliament saying, I do not even know what we are debating. It is on

a piece of paper outside. If I go outside I cannot be in the debate.

So it went on. You have the Home Secretary saying the amendment was

illegal, as far as her advice was concerned. You had Dominic Raab

saying that the Home Office advice was that it was legal. The Prime

Minister was saying he would like to support the amendment but could not.

And so it went on. We had all of these different things. What do you

think? What I think... The point I was trying to make work that the

chaotic way in which it was being dealt with in Parliament today is

not the way of dealing with it. And what is your answer to the question?

My answer is that people have different and competing rights. We

have a universal declaration of human rights which is universal, it

is in the title, and everyone should have rights, no matter how

despicable they are, no matter how much we hate them. They have rights,

and we have rights, too. We have rights to be protected against these

people. They have rights to have a family life, and their children have

rights to have a parent. If I was the child of a foreign-born

criminal, I would want my father around, and the court would need to

decide whether my right to have a dad was greater than someone else's

right to be protected. Those decisions are made within the

courts. What they were trying to do today was pass laws that would not

allow the courts to make decisions. It seems to me that these are

difficult, delicate issues that need to be debated carefully. And the

chaotic way in which the government were doing it today was more about

posturing and trying to get the right headlines in a chaotic party

that cannot hang together on this issue. To Reza May was talking about

terror suspects, stripping them of citizenship. -- to Reza May. What we

have said is that we cannot have overnight this sort of clause being

put before parliament without being able to look carefully at what it

means. Does it mean somebody who is Somali born, come to Britain, has

British nationality, has gone off and Fort Al-Shabab, come back and

raise money for Al-Shabab and then gone back to Somalia and then we are

trying to take away citizenship, that might be one circumstance. The

point is, how do you pass a law... Would that be justifiable, in your

view, to strip them of citizenship? I think it is something we need to

think about. I think it is something that we need to consider because of

the right that we have to protect ourselves, but we need to make sure

that when we pass laws in relation to issues as difficult as that, we

get it right and we do not pass something that the Dangerous Dogs

Act, which we passed in a moment of, we have to do something, and passed

a law which is bad. These rules are very difficult and have to be got

right. We have just had a very long and complicated example of how

Labour, and it was even worse under Tony Blair, do not know where they

stand on Civil Liberties. I am not defending the position the

Conservatives got themselves into today, where they had more positions

than the Kama Sutra in Parliament this afternoon. We had Labour and

the Lib Dems voting one way, the Tory government abs staining on

something they said was illegal, others voting against. But I must

say, it would be good if Labour could say more clearly which civil

rights they believe and what they don't. We believe in the human

rights act which we introduced into law. I am saying, as the audience

can see, that you have spent a long time not saying where you are. I am

trying to... You spent a long time talking about Parliamentary

procedure which no one is interested in. I think people should know that

this particular proposal is actually not about the courts taking

citizenship away, but the Home Secretary being able to. Are you in

favour or not. I am very doubtful about it. No, I am not. It is only

if people are made stateless. This is just the kind of thing that comes

out, that we in the House of Lords have to look at very carefully and

have many amendments and protections. We need to be very

careful. You teased her for not having a view. What is your view on

that issue? I am very sceptical indeed. That does not mean anything.

She gave an example of somebody from Somalia who had fought for

Al-Shabab, raised money in Britain, gone back to Somalia. In those

circumstances, would you agree that citizenship should be withdrawn? It

could be. You would need a lot of safeguards and I do not want this

done by the Home Secretary. I want it done in the courts. First of

all, I think this debate is horrible. If people commit crime in

this country, we should deal with it in this country. This is different

if people want them extradited overseas. What is our role as a

responsible global player, to say we do not like people so we will send

them around the world? Secondly, there is something absolutely

frightening in the language I have just heard and the language the Home

Secretary has used. One minute we were talking about foreign

criminals, and the next minute we were talking about terror suspects.

As soon as we are deporting people because we suspect them of something

they have not been convicted of, it is us who are the criminals. Do you

agree with that, Ken Clarke? I am very proud of our record on the rule

of law, protecting human rights. We take a very strong stand on human

rights against dictatorial governments around the world and it

would be ridiculous if we abandon our standards in this country,

saying it was all for the Chinese but not quite the same here. I was

at a meeting with businessmen in Ipswich today. If this comes forward

as a proposal, I will recall, when I studied international law, my

understanding was you could not make people stateless. You were not

allowed to say you would not take your own citizens back. If this is

actually a proposition that's going to be put forward and develop, I

would consult my very good friend the Attorney General, Dominic

Grieve, and ask for his opinion, and ask him to satisfy me that we were

doing so in a way that was compatible with the rule of law. And

I don't think he would give a long, rambling don't know, like his

opponent. He would have been able to read it through properly, not to be

expected on the basis of a couple of hours to make a decision. That is

what you were doing today. I know you weren't there. You used to be

Lord Chancellor. Your advice today would have been quite welcome. I am

sure the businessmen you were speaking to enjoy your company but

it would have been good for you to have been in Parliament, because the

Tory party were in disarray. I don't think your only problem was that you

did not have time to read it. Your obvious problem was that you didn't

know what to say. I made perfectly clear that we need more time to

consider it properly, and thank goodness we have the House of Lords

that will have more time to consider it rapidly. You should not be trying

to pass legislation like this as fast as you did. It is wrong. It was

not being proposed today, not being put forward. Just leave the

Parliamentary procedure to my. Just for a moment. We almost that

politicians can talk forever about that. It is so much easier than

talking about the issue of and support. I find it really worrying

that the pair of you can't be clear about your stance on this issue and

how all you can talk about is how chaotic it is in parliament. Why is

that? Why can't you be quite clear about it? I don't think we need to

go any further down that road, we have seen the evidence. We have ten

or 15 minutes and I would like to get a couple more questions in. Amy

Rust. Is the UK Government doing enough to help Syrian refugees?

Emily Thornberry? I think we are doing the right thing in terms of

the money that we are giving to the campus. I think most of the refugees

have gone to the nearest country, places like Jordan and Lebanon.

Those places are poor countries and it is right for us to give the

amount of aid that we are to make sure that the camps are run as well

as they can be. There are people who, even though on the face of it

it may be a safe haven, going to Jordan, are so vulnerable because

they have been raped or because they are youngsters who do not have any

parents and they need to have more protection than the camps can give.

The United Nations has said there was very vulnerable people should be

sent to rich, Western countries are unaware they can be given more

assistance than they will do in a camp in Jordan. I think it was sad,

in the circumstances, that the British Government didn't sign up to

be one of those countries that would happily give a place to those

refugees. We have a great tradition of giving refuge to people and I

think it was a shame we didn't. I'm glad that the government has had a

change of heart and I pay tribute to the charities that have campaigned

so hard to make sure we finally do the right thing. And what the Home

Secretary said... I don't want to bandy about these figures, what the

Home Secretary said on Tuesday was that 3500 Syrian refugees and asylum

seekers were already in Britain, which compares very favourably with

most other countries involved in the scheme. I don't know if that is

true. Ken Clarke? Saw the country is said to be taken several hundred or

1000 are counting asylum seekers. -- some of the countries. As you say,

we have several thousand here already. The answer to the question

is that we will take several hundred, we are working with the

United Nations on identifying the most vulnerable. There is no point

in counting heads and taking the first 500 that line-up. Also, bear

in mind, we are miles ahead of most of our allies and friends in the

world in the effort we are putting into the humanitarian assistance in

Syria. Only America, only the United States of America has put more money

and funding, and effort, into what is going on in Syria. Some of these

countries that have signed up to the UN saying they would take 500 have

so far given scarcely anything to the humanitarian effort. You need

both. It is a terrible thing that is happening. There is a real politic

reason for it. Those people saying look after our own people, someone

earlier was saying it is always overseas aid, but these are

dangerous parts of the world and your moral behaviour, the fact that

you help, might ease the political tensions. The main thing is to take

in the vulnerable, paying our share, to what we're doing on the

humanitarian effort by trying to identify the most vulnerable

people. That is what we are going to do. I agree, they are in trouble,

right? But that is not our problem. We are helping them when we have got

people who are homeless in that country that can't afford to eat.

Shouldn't the money be going on our own people? Don't shout him down,

what is your point? That we shouldn't be sending aid to Syria?

I'm not saying we shouldn't help them at all, but we have problems in

our own country. We should be helping our own. That's interesting,

but I don't think we can wash our hands on what is happening there. I

think we do need to take our share. The question was, are we doing

enough to help Syrian refugees? My answer is no. I am proud that Nick

Clegg has announced we are going to take some, but the scale is

enormous. 6.5 million people have been internally displaced in Syria

by this awful war. 2.4 million were seeking asylum just recently. I

really hope that we do do more than quite a few hundred. Germany, not

much different from us, they have pledged 7000 people, the Americans

haven't set a limit at all. I hope that we will do more. Mark

Littlewood? If you are going to have an international aid budget,

emergency relief, not giving the Indian government more than it

spends on a mission to Mars. Emergency relief is what it should

be spent on. I have some sympathy with what Matthew said. Let's be

honest, the people that we could give refuge to in the United Kingdom

are likely to be the elderly, the injured, the sexually abused, the

infirm. It is not in our narrow interest to let them in. On this

occasion, I think humanitarian concerns out trump our interests. I

agree with the things about the British aid, we do have to help our

homeless, but everybody's country affect everybody else's. All

economies are intertwined. If you ignore problems in foreign

countries, you are pretty much ignoring the aid that we could get

through economic growth, because it is just... It is ignorant. I'd like

to ask Kenneth Clarke why the Tories took so long to have Syrian

refugees. Can you be brief? We talk about a week. We didn't say 500, we

took a week to do it. But we are miles ahead of everybody else in

intervening in humanitarian problems. You said you weren't going

to. You said the money that you were sending over to the surrounding

countries was sufficient and you're not go to take anybody in. You will

remember that we have been pushing you on this, so have the charities.

Good, you have finally made the right decision, but you should have

done it straightaway. You should not have needed pushing. It's great we

are doing something, it is great we are taking some. As Matthew points

out, it's nowhere near enough. We will take 500 of the most

vulnerable, what are we going to do when the 501st person turns up and

we say, we don't think you have experienced another rape for

torture. We need to take the people that make it to our shores that need

our help. That is part of our responsibility as part of the United

Nations. I think it is shameful that the Conservatives have been

negotiating with the United Nations High Commissioner for refugees. We

should going to them and saying what can we do to help? We want to be

part of the global solution, a global player, and we should be

helping a lot more than that. On top of taking a lot more than 500 Syrian

refugees, we also need to have a really long, hard look at our asylum

process, and one of the things I do is somewhere in London teaching

English to asylum seekers that have come to London. I work with women

that have been in the UK from places where they have been raped, in the

Congo, they have come to the UK because of their sexuality, from

places like Russia and Uganda. They have been kept waiting for eight,

ten years. They have been locked up for no good reason. They have been

treated despicably and been left destitute over and over again. Until

we stop doing that, we have no place telling the United Nations what we

should and should not do. We have to sort our own house first and make

sure we treat everybody with the human rights they deserve.

We have got a few minutes left. Victoria Group, -- Hook. Is banning

smoking in cars with children and infringement of our personal

freedoms? Mark Littlewood, you are a smoker? I am. It's absurd. Hardly a

week goes by without some further restriction on tobacco. I'm not sure

if you are aware in the audience for the viewer at home, smoking tobacco

can be bad for you. Are you aware of that? Most people are generally

aware of that fact. It's fairly unpleasant to smoker on people that

don't like the smell. It might even have some modest, effects on them.

But the idea that the state should regulate whether or not you smoke in

a car is absolutely mad. I think an increasingly, there is basically a

squad of these health nut jobs who are rolling out, day after day, yet

another restriction on tobacco. The argument is that children have no

option, they are sitting in a car and their parents stop smoking, they

can't move away. It is if you want the Labour Party public-health

minister to basically be the parent of your children or whether we're

going to trust parents to drive cars to make those decisions themselves.

I speak as an ex-smoker. I know that I could not have given up without

the smoking ban in pubs and clubs. It was so hard, such a hard thing to

quit. And yet almost every smoker I... But let's talk about the

banning cars. If you smoke in a car with the windows closed, the density

of that smokers about 11 times what you use to get in a crowded, smoky

pub. I think it is of fears that children should not be there. You

are right, most results will parents would not do that. So let's just

pass a law to make sure that the small number of irresponsible

parents also can't do that. Matthew? I actually voted for this ban in the

House of Lords last night. And it won. Can I say one thing to mark?

It's not just about smoking, he says the state can't regulate, they

deregulate people using mobile phones in cars. I don't think people

should be smoking in cars, they should be concentrating on driving.

Hang on, you said you don't think people should be smoking, they

should be concentrating on driving? You would ban adults from smoking in

cars alone? The key point is the damage to

children. I'm afraid I see this morning that Nick Clegg does not

agree on that. But my wife is a doctor and I'm afraid if I have a

choice between defying my leader and defying my wife, there is only ever

going to be one winner. It would not be the first time you have defied

your leader. No, but it would be the first time I defied my wife. Since

we are all admitting our status as smokers or not, I am currently a

nonsmoker and have not smoked this year. I hope I will be able to

continue that. I never wanted to be the sort of is nonsmoker that

dictated to the people and told them what to do. Therefore, I voted

against banning smoking from pubs. And I was wrong, actually. I think

it is right, and I have thought about it somewhat. I also think that

smoking in a car and provincial in at risk, because children are

particularly at risk when they are younger and their lungs have been

formed, you did not smoke in a car with children, and I think it should

be banned. If you smoke with an adult in the car, they can say, put

the cigarette out or I will get the tube. Children are not able to do

that. I was smoking on the way here, it is probably very wise to

advise people don't do it when you've got children in the car. We

do keep creating new traffic offences. I don't think our traffic

police are going to be concentrating an enormous effort in racing up and

down the motorway peering into cars trying to see if there is a child

in. We do create too many traffic offences and I really think it is

gesture politics to pass this kind of thing. They will probably find

two or three people every year, when they are unlucky enough to have a

policeman spot them. Helps change people's perceptions and behaviours.

Sorry, if we go to talk about the lobbyists, Conservative Party and

tobacco, are there not some other things we should mention? You think

this is political? Not at all. You are obsessed! Not at all. Not at

all. What I am saying is that there may be public-health lobbyists that

have a view on what is best for smoking, but if we are going to talk

about lobbyists is influencing Government with relation to tobacco,

we should talk about the plain packaging and the fact that this

Government continues to sit in bed with tobacco companies.

That is for another programme. Our hour is up. We are going to be in

chilling in Kent next week with Tessa Jowell, David Starkey is going

to be there and George Galloway, together on the programme. I know, I

know! I was not warned. The week after that we are going to

be in Scunthorpe. If you would like to be there, you can go to the

website. The addresses on the bottom of the screen. Or you can the

telephone number. If you are listening to this on BBC, you can

continue the debate on Question Time Extra Time. It just leaves me to

thank our panel very much, all of you who came here to take part in

this programme from The Holes in Norwich, good night. -- Halls.