:01:30. > :01:40.Refined out of white Margaret Thatcher's home side is divided
:01:40. > :01:40.
:01:40. > :37:10.Apology for the loss of subtitles for 2129 seconds
:37:10. > :37:14.over whether it wants a statue of Here are the headlines: We look at
:37:14. > :37:19.whether the poorest households are being swept up in what one up
:37:19. > :37:24.charity claims is at toxic mix all benefit caps.
:37:24. > :37:31.And while Margaret Thatcher's home town is divided over whether it
:37:31. > :37:38.wants a statue of the Iron Lady. Our guests are Toby Perkins and
:37:38. > :37:44.Craig Whittaker. There is a whole raft of benefit
:37:44. > :37:54.changes and welfare cuts in the pipeline. Will the government faced
:37:54. > :37:56.
:37:56. > :38:06.a revolt in the future? I'd do not think so. It is
:38:06. > :38:08.
:38:08. > :38:17.important that the taxpayer is getting value for money. The right
:38:17. > :38:27.thing to do? The original Conservative minister responsible
:38:27. > :38:28.
:38:28. > :38:38.for the poll tax is talking about poll-tax Mark 2. People see that
:38:38. > :38:48.the changes are not fair. The most recent government statistic says
:38:48. > :38:51.200,000 more children will be put into poverty. We will talk
:38:51. > :38:55.specifically about council tax benefit because Sheffield has
:38:55. > :38:59.become the latest local authority to face a legal challenge over
:38:59. > :39:04.plans to increase council tax bills for some of the poorest households.
:39:04. > :39:09.It blames the government's demand for a 10 % reduction in the amount
:39:09. > :39:16.spent on council tax benefit. We have been finding out how people
:39:16. > :39:26.are affected. The finances of this former bus man
:39:26. > :39:26.
:39:27. > :39:33.are so precarious that an extra bill of �4 per week could break him.
:39:33. > :39:39.In this economic climate with energy bills going up my outgoings
:39:39. > :39:46.just match might income. That is vital. It is a permanent struggle.
:39:46. > :39:55.Last pay-day by the time I had paid the bills I had �2.50 left for two
:39:55. > :40:00.weeks. At �4 extra bill is for council tax bill. He has not had to
:40:00. > :40:08.pay that tax for a few years because his income is so lope and
:40:08. > :40:14.and he and hip injury means he cannot do manual work any more. The
:40:14. > :40:20.government has told local councils they must cut tax relief by 10 %.
:40:20. > :40:28.An estimated 600,000 people across the country will get council tax
:40:28. > :40:32.demands from April. That concerns this social research charity.
:40:32. > :40:36.we are seeing is that we're people have to pay more towards council
:40:36. > :40:42.tax the average amount is �12 per month. That might not sound like a
:40:42. > :40:48.lot of money to some people but when you combine that with other
:40:48. > :40:52.things such as the operating of tax credits to below the rate of
:40:52. > :40:59.inflation at these can begin to combine his two great at toxic mix
:40:59. > :41:03.for some individual households. a report to be published next month
:41:03. > :41:08.it is said that one in five councils will not pass on at the
:41:08. > :41:12.cuts. But big councils have so many on low incomes they cannot afford
:41:12. > :41:22.to do that. In South Yorkshire Sheffield would need an extra �5
:41:22. > :41:22.
:41:22. > :41:32.million per year to absorb the cuts. Their concern it is that this cat
:41:32. > :41:32.
:41:32. > :41:38.is aimed at those on the lowest incomes. Pensioners are exempt.
:41:38. > :41:43.They are 50 % of those who qualify. So the rest have to see a reduction
:41:43. > :41:50.of 22 %. Sheffield is passing that on in full. There are those that
:41:50. > :41:56.say that is not fear. It is very difficult. It is not an
:41:56. > :42:02.easy decision to make. We are taking �50 million out already this
:42:02. > :42:07.year. A further �5.5 million forced upon us by the government will mean
:42:07. > :42:12.more cuts to services across the city. The government says it has a
:42:12. > :42:15.two councils to work out how to impose the reductions. It adds that
:42:16. > :42:19.the government has provided transitional funding to help all
:42:19. > :42:27.councils develop schemes and maintain positive incentives to
:42:27. > :42:32.work. Back in Leeds this man hopes he might be one of those eligible
:42:32. > :42:38.for her transitional financial safety-net. Write me he fears the
:42:38. > :42:45.worst. I wrote to my MP. With the figures being given I would not
:42:45. > :42:49.have the money to pay them. That puts me at risk of losing my house.
:42:49. > :42:55.Is it right that everyone shares the pain of austerity? I think it
:42:55. > :43:01.is right that everyone makes a contribution. When you have very
:43:02. > :43:05.little in the first place you are less able to make that contribution.
:43:05. > :43:15.What we are seeing is people on benefits receiving reduction after
:43:15. > :43:23.reduction. 60 % of the people affected are people in work on the
:43:23. > :43:30.low income, not the idle scroungers that some would have us believe.
:43:30. > :43:38.The us is a gift to Labour. The poorest people are being asked to
:43:38. > :43:46.pay more. But us not forget this is a Labour-run council. They are
:43:46. > :43:50.imposing this all the people. Councils like my council had
:43:50. > :43:56.decided able use the transition fanned and look at different ways
:43:56. > :44:01.of putting the money back. We have private landlords to have empty
:44:01. > :44:09.properties that get a holiday on paying council tax. That will no
:44:09. > :44:17.longer exist. It is not just the poor as that are being hit.
:44:17. > :44:21.labour councils playing politics? Not at all. In a general terms
:44:21. > :44:25.there are more likely to have a lot of people receiving benefits. We
:44:25. > :44:30.have to be clear about this. It is the government's responsibility to
:44:30. > :44:35.decide what the welfare policy is. They are saying they will not give
:44:35. > :44:45.enough to pay for the welfare but it is up to the council to decide
:44:45. > :44:47.
:44:47. > :44:52.whether up to dig into reserves to bail the government out. Local
:44:52. > :44:55.government councils are facing massive cuts already. In
:44:55. > :45:03.Chesterfield they are attempting to use the discretionary fund to
:45:03. > :45:09.alleviate some of that. But it is just impossible. So why is my
:45:09. > :45:14.council doing it differently to Sheffield? Each council has
:45:14. > :45:19.different numbers of people who are receiving benefits. That is why it
:45:19. > :45:25.is important that local councils are the ones that the side. This is
:45:25. > :45:35.at benefits issue. RUC in that local councils are not able to make
:45:35. > :45:40.
:45:40. > :45:44.these decisions? -- are you saying that local councils. Eric Pickles
:45:44. > :45:53.is saying to other council leaders that he will leave them with the
:45:53. > :46:03.problem. Sadly Sheffield is attacking the poor. Many people are
:46:03. > :46:05.
:46:05. > :46:12.being -- are talking about being hit by a double whammy. �150
:46:12. > :46:15.million has been put into a fund to help those that need it most. There
:46:15. > :46:21.are 2 million families in this country on waiting lists for
:46:21. > :46:28.housing. There is a real problem. In 1987 there were one million
:46:28. > :46:33.people on housing lists. There are now 2 million people. We also saw a
:46:33. > :46:37.reduction in social housing under Labour. It is a real problem. We
:46:37. > :46:42.have got one million spare bedrooms in the system. It seems a good way
:46:42. > :46:45.of freeing that up for people that need it. You are refusing to
:46:45. > :46:52.support the cap and welfare payments. Some people may ask whose
:46:52. > :46:59.side you're on. Many of the welfare reforms we have supported. We have
:46:59. > :47:05.not supported all them. We have supported some of them. It will not
:47:05. > :47:14.be available to foster carers for example. It will not be available
:47:14. > :47:20.for couples. That is not true. is not available for foster carers.
:47:20. > :47:30.It is also not available to couples who for health reasons cannot sleep
:47:30. > :47:32.
:47:32. > :47:36.in the same beds. All the way down the system where people say they
:47:36. > :47:39.want to downsize, of the council cannot move them, they still lose
:47:39. > :47:47.the money. Chesterfield Borough Council are saying that one-third
:47:47. > :47:55.of people affected will fall into arrears. This is a Labour trick of
:47:55. > :48:02.scaremongering. The government have given �155 million for those
:48:02. > :48:06.special cases. I have spoken again this week to my local council.
:48:06. > :48:12.There is no reason why people with special circumstances cannot stay
:48:12. > :48:22.in the homes they are in. We are going to move on now. We have the
:48:22. > :48:23.
:48:23. > :48:29.round-up. The former boss of Lincolnshire
:48:29. > :48:33.hospital trust broker contractual gagging order. Last July the Sunday
:48:33. > :48:38.politics revealed how he had been stopped by blowing the whistle on
:48:38. > :48:45.high patient better rates. A you have emergency care or you have
:48:45. > :48:49.care that can wait. We chose as a board that emergency care should
:48:49. > :48:55.take priority. Now the Health Secretary says he should not have
:48:55. > :48:59.been silenced. He is making serious allegations. We need to understand
:49:00. > :49:04.whether he is right and if so what needs to change. The horsemeat
:49:04. > :49:11.scandal will not go away. This week as that took contaminated beef
:49:11. > :49:16.product of the shelves. At Question Time Wakefield MP said the
:49:16. > :49:24.government is not doing enough. Ministers have been asleep on the
:49:24. > :49:28.job. This week, Craig Whittaker, your
:49:28. > :49:34.constituency became centre stage in the horsemeat scandal when asked
:49:34. > :49:39.what a house was raided. What do you make of that claim that you
:49:39. > :49:43.ministers have been asleep on the job? It is ridiculous. It is
:49:43. > :49:52.typical of what Labour is very good at doing - complaining about
:49:52. > :50:01.nothing. We are talking about ministers, not horsemeat. We have
:50:01. > :50:06.seen the results of 2,500 tests which actually says that one % was
:50:06. > :50:09.infected by horsemeat. This is scaremongering over health issues.
:50:09. > :50:14.We should not be scaremongering. We should be getting to the bottom of
:50:14. > :50:19.what is going on and sorting out the mess and put right what is
:50:19. > :50:22.clearly a fraudulent act by a large number of people. How do we restore
:50:22. > :50:29.confidence in the meat industry? You need to have a competent
:50:29. > :50:35.ministry. We have not got that at the moment. We have now discovered,
:50:35. > :50:40.three weeks after this first broke, but we are still exporting horse
:50:40. > :50:46.meat for human consumption. We have got no sense that the ministerial
:50:46. > :50:51.team has a grasp on this. The performance in Parliament this week
:50:51. > :50:58.was amongst the worst I have seen. There is no sense that the
:50:59. > :51:04.government has got a grip on this. I want to briefly mention the NHS
:51:04. > :51:09.boss in Lincolnshire who broke his gagging order. At he spoke out
:51:09. > :51:13.against the target culture when he was in charge. Now the NHS, we are
:51:13. > :51:21.told, is tried to get the money back. Should he be forced to pay
:51:21. > :51:25.the money back? Why are people gagging him? He should never have
:51:25. > :51:30.been gagged in the first place. People should have known about it.
:51:30. > :51:35.And what are we doing paying a public servant �500,000? It is a
:51:35. > :51:44.scandal. Could there be more scrabbles out there? We need to get
:51:44. > :51:48.to the bottom of this. The issue is understandable. It is to do with
:51:48. > :51:58.circumstances in which he left the hospital in Lincolnshire. The issue
:51:58. > :52:05.was around whether he was willing to meet the targets. Labour targets.
:52:05. > :52:10.NHS targets introduced by up a Labour government. Targets were put
:52:10. > :52:13.in. By and large they were a good thing. They brought down the
:52:13. > :52:17.waiting list. They made sure that patients were treated more quickly.
:52:17. > :52:22.Some hospital managers got round those targets in the wrong way. In
:52:22. > :52:29.those cases disciplinary action should follow. We are asking how we
:52:29. > :52:34.should honour our former prime ministers. Two of Our Most recent
:52:34. > :52:38.leaders were born in this region. Some would like to see a statue of
:52:39. > :52:41.Harold Wilson at Westminster. But plans to bid up a statue of
:52:41. > :52:46.Margaret Thatcher in her home town of Grantham have not been met with
:52:46. > :52:54.universal approval. Visitors to Grantham and attracted
:52:54. > :52:59.to the statue of Sir Isaac Newton. But there is no statute of Margaret
:52:59. > :53:05.Thatcher. That is something many local Tories believe should be
:53:05. > :53:11.addressed. We had people from America, France, Germany and Japan.
:53:11. > :53:17.I would like them to follow a to this trail through the town,
:53:17. > :53:21.perhaps going pasture old school, ending up in the town centre, and
:53:21. > :53:28.hopefully they would be a statue to recognise her achievements. The us
:53:28. > :53:33.is the statue that is up for grabs. This statue was decapitated by a
:53:33. > :53:37.protester while on display. It is currently in storage. There were
:53:37. > :53:42.widespread reports the statue had been offered to grab the museum.
:53:42. > :53:48.Those reports were later quashed. The museum manager was suspended
:53:48. > :53:52.for making what was described as erroneous claims. One Labour
:53:52. > :53:56.councillor and believes the statue could be a target for vandals.
:53:56. > :54:00.is bound to cause strong feelings amongst those who were affected by
:54:00. > :54:06.her policies and who still harbour very strong resentments. We could
:54:06. > :54:12.not guarantee that the statue would not become a focal point for
:54:12. > :54:17.attacks. What do you make a people who say the statue could be
:54:17. > :54:22.vandalised? The you have got take that risk. If the statue was
:54:22. > :54:29.situated in a prominent place we have enough CCTV to look after it.
:54:29. > :54:32.It would be safe. The big problem is transporting the statue from
:54:32. > :54:36.London to grab them. That would not be cheap. Then there is the
:54:36. > :54:41.question of whether taxpayers actually want a statue of the
:54:41. > :54:45.former prime minister. You have to admire the lady for being the first
:54:46. > :54:50.female prime minister. But she is not my favourite person. I don't
:54:51. > :54:57.think we should make too much of a fuss of her now. She was a strong
:54:57. > :55:02.woman prime minister. I would like to see a statue of her. It will
:55:02. > :55:05.attract a lot of unsavoury attention. A lot of people will
:55:06. > :55:10.blame her for the loss of manufacturing jobs and all that
:55:10. > :55:14.sort of thing. Meanwhile there are calls for a memorial dedicated to
:55:14. > :55:21.another former prime minister. This week marked 50 years since Harold
:55:21. > :55:27.Wilson became leader of the Labour Party. From now on the pound abroad
:55:27. > :55:33.is worth 14 % less in terms of other currencies. In 1999 Tony
:55:33. > :55:39.Blair revealed this statue of his predecessor. Now Huddersfield's MP
:55:39. > :55:46.is calling for a statue to be erected at Westminster. He was a
:55:46. > :55:50.successful Labour leader. He won a lot of elections. He was prime
:55:50. > :55:56.minister for eight years, during which she introduced a great deal
:55:56. > :56:01.of social change. -- he introduced. It has not clear whether Margaret
:56:01. > :56:04.Thatcher wants to see a statue of herself in Grantham. Her public
:56:05. > :56:10.appearances have become increasingly rare. But once again
:56:10. > :56:17.there is discussion over their legacy of the Iron Lady.
:56:17. > :56:23.Would you like to see a statue of Margaret Thatcher? They will have
:56:23. > :56:31.an easier task of getting a statue in Grantham and I would have of
:56:31. > :56:36.getting a statue of Bernard Ingham. There is a statue of Harold Wilson.
:56:36. > :56:40.That is magnificent. It is a fine example. Being next door to
:56:40. > :56:49.Huddersfield I feel quite proud that we have a statue of Harold
:56:49. > :56:54.Wilson. We are talking about Harold Wilson in a minute. We have had a
:56:54. > :56:59.financial crisis and a Labour government. A recession under a
:56:59. > :57:06.Coalition. Why does Margaret Thatcher still arouse strong views?
:57:06. > :57:15.She was such a strong figure. People in this region sought the
:57:15. > :57:20.mining industry disappear. All the destruction that occurred in our
:57:20. > :57:24.community to stop she is a divisive figure. Many right-wing Tories
:57:24. > :57:29.still do not particularly like going on about Margaret Thatcher
:57:29. > :57:35.yet she was the most successful leader you have had for many years.
:57:35. > :57:40.And she was Britain's first female prime minister. It is important.
:57:40. > :57:47.Are you a Thatcherite? I am not. How will history judge Harold
:57:47. > :57:51.Wilson? It will judge him as someone who was successful. It will
:57:51. > :58:01.judge him as a social reformer who made tremendous progress in terms
:58:01. > :58:09.of some of the social issues. Many people will also reflect that he
:58:09. > :58:14.kept us out of the Vietnam war. Harold Wilson once four elections
:58:14. > :58:23.for Labour. Is he still well regarded in the party? I think he
:58:23. > :58:28.is. There is some pride about him. At the same time the Labour Party
:58:28. > :58:35.have always taken a critical view of the Tories leaders and has been
:58:35. > :58:42.more generous to those who lost elections. You booed Tony Blair at
:58:42. > :58:48.conference. We did not. It is time to move on. Tony Blair was a winner.
:58:48. > :58:54.Harold Wilson was a winner. Interesting parallels. The Pope has
:58:54. > :59:04.resigned. That is what Harold Wilson did in 1976. He feared the
:59:04. > :59:05.
:59:06. > :59:09.onset of mental health problems. is always a lesson for a leader.
:59:09. > :59:13.Maybe some other leaders might reflect that they should take a
:59:13. > :59:21.step to go while people are still demanding more. We are not very
:59:21. > :59:30.good at this in this country. In America the name that places after
:59:30. > :59:40.leaders. We do not have that same respect. It is just politicians in
:59:40. > :59:42.
:59:42. > :59:47.general. We have at different outlook in this country. I am not
:59:47. > :59:51.sure either leader would do as well nowadays. Harold Wilson said one