20/03/2016 The Andrew Marr Show

Think again on benefits cuts, Iain Duncan Smith warns

the Prime Minister in what has been

the most spectacular Tory resignation since

Supporters of David Cameron are talking

Mr Duncan Smith, the former Work and Pensions Secretary,

joins me this morning to answer his government critics.

We'll also be talking to the author of an explosive book which reveals

The former Lib Dem minister, David Laws with his inside story

The newspapers are full of what's being seen as the outbreak of civil

And Matthew d'Ancona, columnist and close observer of

one of the undisputed grande dames of Hollywood,

Glenn Close, on her return to the London stage,

as a fading star, in the musical Sunset Boulevard.

the American singer and songwriter, Natalie Merchant -

formerly one of the Ten Thousand Maniacs.

So, a very busy show - first, to the news.

One of Iain Duncan Smith's close colleagues has launched a highly

personal attack on the former Work and Pensions Secretary,

and questioned his motives for resigning.

Mr Duncan Smith quit on Friday night, saying the government's plans

to cut disability benefits were "indefensible".

The Pensions Minister Ros Altmann said she believed

His departure was about the EU referendum.

Two days after Iain Duncan Smith's shock resignation, the fallout

Headlines describe how a deep rift at the heart of government

has been laid bare and there is fierce disagreement over

Mr Duncan Smith said he quit over the government's approach to welfare

reform, claiming benefit cuts were ideological, not economical.

But a colleague from within the Department

And in a damning statement said he was

difficult to work with and claimed he only quit to inflict damage

to those campaigning to stay in the EU.

I honestly don't think it is about the issue of reform,

I think it is about the issue of the EU and that he has been

looking for a reason to go and he has used this as the reason.

If you announce your resignation on a

point of principle after the point on which you say you are resigning

Iain Duncan Smith has made no secret of

the fact he is a staunch Eurosceptic who will vote to leave.

But allies insist his resignation was a principled stance,

driven by frustration over welfare reform.

The French authorities say that Salah Abdeslam,

the jihadist suspect captured in Brussels on Friday,

did play a key role in the deadly attacks in Paris last November.

He was arrested after a dramatic raid in the Belgian

He's since been charged with terrorism offences.

His lawyer said he would fight extradition to France.

An agreement reached between the European Union

and Turkey to try to tackle the migrant crisis has

Under the deal, migrants arriving in Greece from Turkey will be sent

back if they do not apply for asylum, or their claim is rejected.

For every Syrian refugee returned, the EU will resettle one directly

But officials have warned that the measures are unlikely to be

Television cameras are to be allowed into Crown Courts for the first

time, under a pilot scheme set to begin within weeks.

The footage will not be broadcast but the historic move could pave

the way for the first live coverage of Crown court cases.

It follows a trial in Supreme Court and Court of Appeal hearings.

Barack Obama is travelling to Cuba later today,

in one of the most historic visits of his presidency.

It has been almost 90 years since a serving US President visited

The trip comes 15 months after Mr Obama reversed more

than half a century of US policy on Cuba and started normalising

I'll be back with the headlines just before ten o'clock.

If you do not know what the main story is you need a another cup of

coffee. That is the Observer. Tory party at war. The take in the Sunday

Telegraph is not so different. A backlash. We love a backlash! And

the Mail on Sunday, the four letter word is not Iain. The Sunday Times,

IDS attack. And that is the Independent, a

gloomy front page, melancholy, and rightly so because it is the last

print copy of the Independent on Sunday. We

print copy of the Independent on the Sunday Times and a big spread.

print copy of the Independent on 2-page spread takes you through

these series of events. The more you read, the more baffling it gets. I

still do not understand why Iain Duncan Smith resigned. Here was an

issue that his department had put forward. It was an issue he had been

offered the chance to discuss. He had written letters to colleagues,

saying, very recently, saying it was a policy they should support. It

appears on the day he resigned, the policy was going to be kicked into

the long grass anyway so he got what he wanted. Why then did he resign?

What is your answer? My suspicion is a lot of things are going on. Brexit

has amplified every emotion involved but there is no doubt what he is

clearly trying to do is edge out the Chancellor and also to an extent

that has not been given emphasis, to edge out the Prime Minister. You see

this is directed against David Cameron. Do you think Boris is

behind this, a plot? I would be amazed. I do not think Boris stars

organised plots! That is not his style. To use a phrase as a

classicist, who is the beneficiary of this anti-Cameron and anti-George

Osborne rhetoric? Matthew d'Ancona, I put it to you in your book you

quoted George Osborne attacking Iain Duncan Smith's intellect and it is

behind a lot of this. I hope you are proud of yourself! I just report the

news. Steve Richards. The Observer newspaper headline, an illustration

of how multilayered this story is, Budget for -- for -- furore will

stop the Budget furore which we would be talking about it this

resignation had not happened, for lots of reasons. George Osborne's

future is in the headline. Iain Duncan Smith's departure and whether

it is to do with Brexit and there is a photograph of Iain Duncan Smith

watching the Budget. He stands at a distance, never on the front bench.

He has never sat on the front bench in Prime Minister's Questions. If it

was a Budget of a brilliant strategist, I doubt if resignation

would be provoked two days later. I wanted the degree is about Brexit.

In this sense that if George Osborne had been part of the Out campaign he

would not be targeted in this way today and because collective

responsibility on the front bench of the Cabinet and elsewhere has been

suspended, I think it changes the way politicians think and behave but

beyond that I think it is about the issue of the pressure relentlessly

from the Treasury to cut the welfare Budget and only one element, not

pensions and the rest of it, one element. I think it is about that.

One of Iain Duncan Smith's allies pointed out on Brexit he can speak

out, it would be strange to resign. Suggesting it is about the

disability cuts. That is the theme picked up in the Sun newspaper.

disability cuts. That is the theme Duncan Smith apparently talking how

George Osborne held a gun to his head. And every time there is a

spending round, they come to me with a loaded revolver say, give us a

couple of million quid. He said no other department gets this. The

foreign aid Budget is not touched, the EU Budget cannot be touched. The

message here is that for Iain Duncan Smith it was the final straw, he

reached the end of his tether and had had enough of George Osborne. I

have every sympathy. We call him OsBrown. We think he has carried on

Gordon Brown's legacy with bigger interest payments and deficit. He

has not reduced the deficit. You have the Mirror. Fascinating

cartoon. I suppose that some people it will not look very funny of Iain

Duncan Smith, knifing George Osborne in the back. I presume that is Chris

Grayling but it does not bear aim resemblance. I think it shows as the

headline says, blundering Osborne is out. In the way he has behaved has

shown he is not in touch with ordinary people and his budgets have

been devastating for many of the middle classes who traditionally

vote Tory. I think the Tory party is in crisis. One of the reasons that

Iain Duncan Smith criticised the Budget was precisely it appeals to

the middle classes. I think he was talking about the fact the cuts to

the disability benefits and welfare Budget were being used for tax cuts.

I would like to move to the Mail on Sunday with a fascinating double

page spread of Nick Wood, close to Iain Duncan Smith giving the IDS

point of view and Ian Beryl having a go at him, Ian Beryl being close to

David Cameron. -- Birrell. The point that comes out of this piece is that

Duncan Smith has been involved in cuts involving the disabled for six

years and let's not forget was responsible for the work capability

assessments that were so disastrously bungled by the private

contractors who ran the tests. One has to be careful before suddenly

seeing Iain Duncan Smith as a kind of hero of disabled rights, who has

decided that he will not put up with this after six years. Except he has

resigned over the issue. It is gloriously counterintuitive with

Iain, who Birrell regards himself as part of the modern rising section,

arguing against Iain Duncan Smith, even though Iain Duncan Smith has

resigned in protest against the cuts and arguing that the Osborne agenda

has shown we are not all in this together. It is quite hard. Matthew

believes that the Osborne- Cameron project is on the centre ground but

I think phrases like the centre and modernising are not helpful because

they lead us down blind alleyways. Who is the moderniser in this case

when Iain Duncan Smith was often in alliance during the coalition with

Nick Clegg against George Osborne's welfare cuts. On the hard right but

he is resigning. This piece seems to be agreeing with Iain Duncan Smith

but says it is really about Brexit. I suspect that to be true but in

Iain Duncan Smith's letter he says he has nothing against the package

of reforms. What he did not like was their presence in the Budget, which

makes you feel that this is more of a turf war than principle. I think

it is ideological. I genuinely think and whether he went about it in the

right way is arguable, but I think Iain Duncan Smith sees cutting

welfare and encouraging people into work as a good thing. The point is

George Osborne has seen the welfare Budget not as something to help

people to a better life, but more of a cash cow. The cash cow phrase

repeats itself in the papers. Suzanne, the David Laws story. This

on another day would be the story we would be talking about because there

is the notion that this ?9 billion extra for the NHS we spoke about in

the election and I interviewed George Osborne about it, that figure

was a fraud. We wondered where the ?9 billion

figure had come from during the election, and it now transpires

according to the Mail on Sunday, the chief of NHS England says there was

a ?16 billion budget black hole but he was gently persuaded to actually

get that back to ?8 billion, but it is interesting, it was always NHS

figures, Simon Stephens said that was his figure, but maybe that was

not the case, and maybe in fact this was a political move. On another day

this would have been a very big story, not just relegated to page

eight. The lesson of this story, every single figure that dominates

these pre-election tax and spend debates should be ignored. You have

spent your entire life on this so far, interrogating people, two years

before an election, about ?8 billion, ?28 billion for this, but

they are all mythical figures that bear no relation to what will

happen. I take your point. Very quickly. The last independent on

Sunday, many good things in this, and an interview with David Cameron

which I think has been slightly underplayed, this is fascinating.

David Cameron starts talking about how close this Brexit campaign could

come and how dependent it will be as ever on turnout and the degree to

which people get out to vote. It is a significant moment because there

is no pretence that this will be an easy one-sided campaign. Evidently

it isn't. This is the Prime Minister saying. "My fear is the turnout, I

will let other people make the choice whether we stay or not, but

it will be close, no doubt about it" . He is going to say it is very

close, interesting. They are very worried about it. And now to the

Independent on Sunday, it never cut through to the mainstream, but is

adorned by some of the finest writers we have. Very sorry to see

it go, it is always sad when a newspaper goes. Yes, it's a stylish

front page, as well. They were always one for the stylish covers

and that is a rather beautiful and elegant front cover. The me, the

standout one is the Hutton report, the white page and the word,

whitewash, that was brilliant -- for me. How would you feel? Former

editor. I feel very disappointed. I love many of its writers, many

people that I will have to read online, and that is not the same, I

want a coffee beside a paper, but on that note, that is it for now,

thanks for joining us. Political memoirs tend to be

written fast these days - and that's certainly

the case with David Laws, the former Lib Dem minister whose

inside story of the Coalition years is being serialised,

as we've just heard, He worked at the Treasury

with George Osborne, and later as an Education Minister,

and was a confidant of Nick Clegg. This book is heavily based on Nick

Clegg's notes at the time? No, it is based on my recollections from

government diaries and records that I kept. You knew many of these

people pretty well, what is I kept. You knew many of these

take on what is going on at the I kept. You knew many of these

moment, is this a coup against David Cameron?

moment, is this a coup against David you about what is happening in

moment, is this a coup against David government at the moment, but I can

tell you what happened when we were in coalition, and there are a couple

of points I would make. No secret that Iain Duncan Smith and George

Osborne are not close politically and they will never go on holiday

together, but more seriously there was a running sore throughout the

coalition over welfare policy, George Osborne it is fair to say,

regarded the welfare budget as a cash cow to be squeezed in order to

help deliver deficit reduction. Iain Duncan Smith had a different view,

he was not left wing over welfare and welfare cuts, but he saw much

more the purpose of the welfare reform, to help people into

employment, and he was often opposed to cuts that the Treasury were

proposing, and he had the help in coalition that often the Treasury

proposals were vetoed by Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, but when

the Coalition Government was over, his position and his ability to see

of those cuts was much of juiced. You don't see him as a hard right

figure? -- much reduced. He is no lefty, and many of the cuts

proposals he was willing to sign up to, those that we delivered, and he

understood the need to make reductions to the welfare budget,

but he was concerned about some of the proposals that came from the

Treasury, many of the ones that we vetoed as Liberal Democrats, and his

purpose of going to welfare was this moral purpose of wanting to help

people back into employment, that is what he was there for. George

Osborne, as the Chancellor, he wanted the cash and he also wanted

the political dividing line between Labour standing up for welfare and

the Tory party cutting it, and so they came at the welfare issue from

a different perspective and it was no secret that they were not allies

on many of the issues. You say you cannot talk about the events of the

last few weeks, but you say that David Cameron was petrified of Boris

Johnson and thought he was only after his job, how real are those

tensions? Now they are huge, and I hate to intrude into this civil war

which is now dominating British politics. Go on... Intrude away. It

was quite clear in 2012 and 2013, the Tories were very low in the

polls and the economy was flat-lining, and David Cameron and

George Osborne spend a lot of time worrying about Boris Johnson, who

clearly has great hopes of becoming Prime Minister, but we don't know

what he would do if he ever became Prime Minister, but we know he's

very ambitious for the job. They spent time worrying about Matt.

There's a long tradition in British politics, when things get very

tough, BT people go away -- worrying about that. Boris Johnson is skiing

at the moment. Very handy. What about the NHS budget, you said Simon

Stephens had said to George Osborne and David Cameron that he needed ?16

billion a year for the NHS to survive in its current state. It is

clear there were huge pressures on the NHS budget, and our main focus

was getting more money for the NHS in the last year of the coalition

2015 and Simon Stephens, the chief executive of the NHS, went off to do

his own piece of work, looking at how much the NHS needed over the

next five years in this Parliament, basically. He came up with a figure

of ?30 billion which was about right and he reckoned half of that could

be made in efficiency savings and that he needed the other ?15 billion

from the Treasury. The problem is, when he took that figure to the

Conservatives at number ten, they said, there is no way the Chancellor

and the Prime Minister will sign up to that figure and you have got to

get the figure down if you want to be taken seriously. You have got to

increase the efficiency savings, he did that, reducing the demand to ?8

billion, but as a consequence we have the NHS needing to make in this

Parliament three times the rate of efficiency savings that it has made

in the last 20-30 years and I do not think they can deliver that, and

those assumptions have got to be reviewed. Otherwise the NHS will

gradually decline in terms of its standards over the Parliament. What

you are saying, to be clear, Simon Stephens was strong armed by the

government to cut by half is estimate of what the NHS really

needed and that therefore this ?8 billion figure which we were talking

about at the time, I remember interviewing George Osborne about

this, but this is actually a fantasy figure which was plucked from the

air? I am saying that. Simon did a good job for the NHS, changing the

terms of the debate, getting the political parties to commit to the

extra ?8 billion, but he had to make compromises and as a consequence, it

was put into the public domain that the sense was that ?8 billion was

what the NHS needed, but actually it needs more than that. We were being

told that this was the figure from the NHS and they are going to give

them all at once, how'd you characterise that? -- all it wants.

This was not a government document, but when the NHS had said that was

the figure they wanted, the inclination was Bobby parties to

sign up to that and no more, but our own spokesman Norman Lamb had

concerns about this and he wrote to the other parties in January 2015

and he suggested that we now need a proper independent review of NHS

finances in the future, not prejudiced by government pressure on

the head of the NHS, so we understand what the real efficiency

savings can be. Simon Stephens is one of the most respected public

figures outside of government, in the country, respected by all

political parties, you are saying that he caved and gave in, that is a

serious thing to say. He allowed himself to be bullied. He put on the

agenda the need to increase the NHS budget when at the time or the

political parties were only signing up to protection of the budget --

all. Sometimes people make compromises in order to move things

on, and I'm not criticising Simon, I think he was lent on. One of the

things I can do through this book is expose this so we can have a proper

debate about what the NHS budget should be in the next few years. One

final thought, George Osborne has been much criticised, he offered you

a generous deal, he said, let's have a coupon election and let's stand as

the coalition and we will make Conservatives stand down in key

Liberal Democrats seats and we will not take you on in our marginal

seats, if that had happened you might have 50 MPs and still be in

government. That must go down as one of the biggest political

misjudgements in the 20th century. It looks attractive from a

historical perspective, the Conservatives were worried about

getting re-elected at that point, and the problem with saying yes to

an offer like that, that would have turned the Liberal Democrats into an

annex of the Conservatives mansion, and I think it would have had a bad

impact. David Laws, thanks for joining us. Spring seems to be here,

but it is very cold indeed. Matt Taylor is in the weather studio.

The weather looks very mixed, very springlike, in fact, we had the

spring equinox, and this was a great start in Tynemouth. There is a fly

in the ointment, showers running down the eastern coastal strip

during this morning and into the afternoon, but either side, Ryan

Slowik -- dry and sunny. There is more sunshine in England and Wales

compare with yesterday, sunniest in Scotland and Northern Ireland, highs

of around 14 degrees. Tonight temperatures will be affected by the

cloud, but they will be some frost around tomorrow morning. Thicker

cloud in the North of England, some spots of rain, that will push south.

It will be brightening up in northern England and not bad across

eastern Scotland. The westerly wind will bring more cloud and a few

showers around. That will lift temperatures, and that is a sign for

the rest of the week, expect much more changeable weather in the run

up to Easter. Do not roll out sunny days. Typical spring weather.

in her Hollywood career - Fatal Attraction, Dangerous

Liaisons, and of course a very camp and funny Cruella de Vil.

But it's as a faded silver screen star that she's back

The musical is based on the classic film about fame,

# With one look I can break your heart.

It's a huge luxury to be able to revisit a part as iconic

as Norma Desmond, with 20 years of life under my belt.

I feel totally different, I feel totally fresh.

Tell me about the Norma Desmond you will do now as compared with one

I think I've just felt deeper into who she is.

I think the character is more interesting,

You have been haunted by her since you played

It is one of the great roles written.

It is a brilliant story written by Billy

Once you've created a character like that, it is hard to find

To be able to flex my creative muscle again and go into all

different areas of this character, because it can take it.

She is the great diva played originally by Gloria

Swanson, who was only 50 when she played her,

as somebody at the end of her career.

Is she in some respects mentally ill?

I think she might have elements of bipolar.

I think she has definitely high, high highs and low, low lows.

Talking about characters on the edge, let's talk about Alex

You have said subsequently you wished you had not

played Alex quite that way, or you think that bunny boiler

thing, which is put on a lot of women in this country,

When I researched the part and I did a lot of research -

going to psychiatrists - no one ever suggested she might have

some sort of mental imbalance, disorder.

There have been doctors in the field who have used that performance,

they told me, as an extreme version of borderline

I think if I was presented with that character now,

I'd want to have a little bit more in the story about how

She is not an evil person, she is a fragile person

You have played a lot of tough, edgy women in your time.

Cruella de Vil, the character you play in the TV series Damages,

who is a very scary woman indeed, very angry.

Do you look at your agent and say, can

you bring me someone gentle, motherly and slightly herbivorous?

I think a lot of those characters are incredibly interesting.

As long as I get a bit of balance and parts that engage me that

We've talked about various people with big

hair and a lot of anger, which leads me to Donald Trump.

It has been said some Americans would want to leave

America if that happened, if he happened as president.

All I would say is that London is very

I think it is fascinating from a news standpoint.

Terribly frightening as far as our democracy is concerned.

I hope our country has the backbone to deal

Democracy is a very delicate way of governing.

Looking from the outside, as a non-American, it is puzzling,

because America is one of the few places where the economy is growing,

and yet the country is awash with anger, and from the outside

it is hard to see where the anger is coming from.

I think the anger, personally, came from the Bush

I think they fed that feeling into the kind of body

politic and now it is coming to a head.

I think it has been years of disruption and, you know,

I am not a fan, who had the first negative advertising on television.

And Sunset Boulevard is at the ENO's London home,

the Coliseum, from the 1st of April until the 7th of May.

Well, Iain Duncan Smith's resignation from the Cabinet

on Friday night was high drama indeed.

No one seems to have seen it coming, least of all the Prime Minister,

who said he was "puzzled and disappointed".

And he apparently said many other things.

So what was the background to Mr Duncan Smith's unexpected move?

We can find out now from the man himself.

Before we go into detail of this argument, can I ask about your

general view of what has happened, do you think the disability cuts in

the context of tax cuts are simply immoral? I think what we have is a

proposal we put out as a consultation to look at a problem

that came about through court cases and judgments that made changes to

this and that consultation I always felt was part of a much wider

programme that we look at and consult further on big changes that

bring into line the present disability benefit Pip and social

care and health care. I wanted to look at it as a wider change to get

the money and support for those most in need. What happened next? My

concern was what happened to directly after the Christmas period

was that pressure began to grow because this pressure was about the

Budget and the problem over the revised figures for the Budget. What

concerned me was we came under pressure to put the consultation and

respond to it before the Budget. I had hoped we would do it after the

Budget so as not to get caught up with a Budget but make the point it

should be part of a process of looking at how better to aid those

in need. The pressure was to get out a definitive answer on the

consultation. There were arguments and debates about that. Downing

Street and the Treasury wanted the extensive changes and we argued that

no change first of all and then to ensure that if we do is wanted a

smaller level of change but most important to continue the dialogue

as not have a fixed point and think we would do absolutely. The

difference between before and after the Budget, you knew there would be

a figure attached to it. In this case ?1.4 billion of savings and you

did not want to be in that position? Not to get to details, I say that

the problem was the institution of the welfare cap which was lowered

after election arbitrarily and it meant everything we would doing put

us above the line. Tax credit changes put us above the line in

costs and it was meant to go above the line because of the changes. We

should not be debating that in the context of being above a welfare

cap, and arbitrate position, we should discuss it in terms of how we

could get the best aid to those who most need it and work from there as

to how the changes came and rushing it before the Budget, which is what

I felt we were under pressure to do, I felt it risked linking this to the

Budget which it was not part of an should not have been part of. That

in turn made it juxtaposed and at that stage I did not know about tax

reductions. Your critics in government save first it was your

scheme, the Pip was your idea and revising it was your idea. And you

defended it to the last minute, you sat in Cabinet on the Budget and did

not raise the problem. Shall I deal with this? Then you did not see the

Prime Minister and as late as Friday morning your department were

briefing as it were in favour of the changing resigned over. Let me go

right back to the election, after the election last year I took a

decision, these are decisions you take if you join government, you

have to balance whether you can make changes and do what you hope to do

and on balance you have to compromise but to those compromise

benefit or damage society? I have been passionate about social justice

and send set up the Centre for Social Justice to make sure there is

a conservative way to and deliver support to those in need. My problem

is that it did not start this last week or week before, the debates on

tax credits, the cutting away and eroding of universal credit and

allowances and the Tabor, which helps people move on up the hours.

It is long-running? It has been a long-running problem where I felt

detached and isolated in these debates. I am not able to convince

people that what we were losing that the narrative that the Conservative

Party was a one nation party caring about those who do not necessarily

vote for it. That is my problem. You went along with the cuts. In the key

Cabinet meeting you did not say anything. I thought last year about

resigning and that got into the papers, over the attack on universal

credit. Again I balanced it and said I will continue because we can make

these arguments. In the run-up, I got more and more depressed about

the idea we were running to an arbitrary Budget agenda that had a

welfare cap. I have heard people try to allege certain things about me.

This is quite important. I sat silently at eight o'clock of the

morning of the Budget because I realised the state of what was

happening with regards to the tax cuts and this juxtaposing. It was

juxtaposing that made me go away. I did not come in for the Budget, the

pictures are an old Budget. I was attending a funeral. It gave me time

to think and I fought hard. I tried to agree with Downing Street that

will be put out was a wider statement that stopped it being a

concrete proposal, that we would continue to consult, but with that,

the point of the statement I put out, to say we will continue

consulting. This is the letter you wrote after the Budget. I tried to

say it is not what it sounds like in the Budget. I said it was a wider

consultation and there are issues and wider consequences. What I

realised through Thursday and Friday, there was no way that what I

hoped for, to stop the processing get the wide debate. I felt I was

losing that. By Friday, I decided it was impossible. The ideas put about,

why do that when policy is... I was about to ask you. It is a peculiar

way to set policy against a media agenda when you start Friday morning

apparently saying you must go out and defend it and by Friday evening

you are drifting away from it and later on Friday you say we have

kicked it into the long grass. The money required from the Department

for Work and Pensions still sits in the red book and will bear down on

working age benefits and that is the problem I have. In my letter I was

clear about this which was the reason I resigned. I had come to

believe we had begun to lose our sense that if we want to do this, so

all people bear this and those who cannot bear least of the burden, we

are losing the message, and that was my concern. It was not about Friday

night or Wednesday, it was a sense from the last election we had begun

to abandon that position which I thought would narrow us and the

party I love and country I love would not benefit. I wanted us to

govern for all of the people all of the time. Do you think it is an

unfair or immoral situation because you are cutting taxes for the better

off at the same time as cutting benefits for disabled people?

Juxtaposed as it came through in the Budget it is deeply unfair and was

perceived to be unfair and that is damaging to the government, to the

party, it is damaging to the public. I am in politics, I am passionate,

whatever people who disagree with me about my policies, it has been said

earlier, I am passionate about trying to improve the quality of the

those in difficult circumstances. I want to do that and want my party to

do that but I felt I am losing my ability to influence that and that

is where the culmination of this came to by Friday. I consulted with

everybody and I felt I was not getting the message across. Among a

lot of disabled campaigners there will be hollow laughter because they

see you as the man who supported things like the benefits cap, the

bedroom tax, lots of things that have caused hardship to people at

the bottom of the heap? They see you as the bad guy and find it hard to

see you as the great reformer and champion. We have spent a lot trying

to even out proposals and policies, such as discretionary housing

payments, massively increased at my request from the Treasury so people

who had difficult problems, local authorities could give the more

money and support them. We exempted disability benefits. DS a row was a

row to do with the run-in I am talking about from the search for

savings and my concern is there are reforms that are important and good.

Were you against what happened on ES a? My sense was we want more people

to be in the support group where they are protected and supported

with higher levels of money and not to be languishing in a section of

the benefit unable to go to work or to be fully supported. I have argued

for a White Paper to get rid of a binary system that says you are

either too sick to work or you can work. I want people if they can work

to work. Those with the changes I wanted to bring forward. Do you

think a fairer government would have taken some of the benefits from

richer pensioners, might not have done the triple lock, to avoid these

cuts? My concern, it is all about how we are perceived and how the

balance is right. It is important how people perceive

that balance to be, and then an application how that balance is

made. My concern is that this limited, narrow attack on working

age benefit means that we simply don't get the balance, we lose the

balance of the generations. We have a triple lock on pensions, which I

was proud to do six years ago, and with inflation running at sea row we

really need to look at things like this and ask, do we just keep saying

it is working age that bear the brunt -- with inflation running at

zero. We will have taken ?33 billion a year by 19/20, I think it is going

to far. The straw that broke your back? Mike Hesson my countrymen and

women leads me to believe that I am resigning because I want my

Government to think again about this and get back to a position that I

believe, about being one nation. This is not an attempt to attack the

Prime Minister or about Europe, nothing to do with that. If I wanted

to do that, I would have been clear. I have never, ever hid my views, I

am not doing that now. Did he call you hypocritical and something

worse? There were only two macro people engaged in this conversation,

I am always interested when people not in the conversation seemed to

know about what happened. It was robust, we had a long set of

conversations, I listened to him, I acted on what he asked me to do, to

think about things, but I simply could not stay. I am proud to serve

with the Prime Minister, proud of what we have achieved in the last

five or six years, but my sense is that I believe I am losing the

ability to influence events from inside, to change the direction to

become, as we should be, a one nation party to carry about even

those who do not votes four hours. In your letter you say, I am unable

to watch passively while certain policies are enacted in order to

meet the fiscal self-imposed restraints that you think are more

elliptical than for the good of the country. Are you saying you are

against the welfare cuts? In short, yes. My concern has grown partly

because when the welfare cup was brought in a tad more flexibility,

after the next election it was -- last election it was lowered, which

put us under enormous pressure. What about the general policy of ending

this parliament with a surplus, the overarching thing behind this all?

The Chancellor has to make his position clear about what he thinks

the economy should be doing. I am a big supporter of the fact that if

you don't eradicate the deficit, the people who suffer most are those on

the lowest incomes and we have raised taxation thresholds for those

on the lowest income, which I am supportive. We need to get the

deficits down but we need to make sure we widened the scope of where

we look to get the deficit down, not just narrow it down on working age

benefits. There is a reason for that. It just looks like we see

that, otherwise, as a pot of money, it does not matter because they do

not votes follows. That is my concern, they are people that I want

to get into work. We have done a lot to do that and to change their

lives. So you think the Chancellor is wrong on the welfare cap, he has

been protecting, as it were, better offer voters at the expense of the

more vulnerable? These are a series of body blows to the Chancellor. Can

I put it to you, you don't like him, he doesn't like you, this has

simmered for years and years, you heard people earlier say this is the

beginning of a coup against George Osborne David Cameron. This is not

personal. People may think it is, because when you resign it is

personal, it is not. I have no personal ambitions, Andrew,

absolutely no personal ambitions. If I never go back into Government

again, I will not cry about it. That is not my ambition. Let me be clear,

I came into this Government because I cared about Welfare Reform Bill. I

had spent eight years with the Centre for Social Justice, which I

set up, talking to charities and small community groups, trying to

figure out why certain communities were so badly off, how could we get

them back to work can solve their problems? Everything I have done has

been driven by desire to improve quality-of-life for the worse off.

You can debate my policies but that has always been my motivation.

Without any question in my mind, my motive is that I am concerned that

this Government, which I want to succeed, is not able to do the kind

of things it should because it has become too focused narrowly getting

the deficit down without being able to say where it should fall other

than simply on those who I think car and less afford to have that fall on

them. The oppression is given bad things are run entirely by the

Treasury and by number ten, Jacob Rees Mogg has effectively said that

Cabinet Government needs to be re-established. Do you think there

is a functional problem? Some people have called them and ten deck

running the country, the rest of you squeezed out. -- some people have

called them Ant and Dec. We have talked about this benefit changing

literally by hour. I was not. The Friday, I did not know anything

until the media started ringing me and telling me. This is not a way to

do Government. I want the Chancellor and the Prime Minister to succeed. I

want them to succeed because Britain needs them to. We need to get the

deficit down and we need to get welfare reform going. But you are

saying they need to change direction and the way they run Government in

order to succeed? What is in my letter and what I am trying to say

today, don't doubt my motive. I am not about seeing the Prime Minister

depart, I genuinely am not. If there was a votes tomorrow, I would votes

for him. I want the team to succeed as a one nation team, as a team that

I came to join believing that social justice was right up heart of what

he did. We can debate how that is delivered, but we should not debate

that what we should be trying to do is not keep bearing down on the same

group of people, white matte and talk about sharing the burden of bit

more, making sure that the reform process can take pace without being

hamstrung to demands for short-term savings all the time when things

don't go right, according to the forecast. Do you think George

Osborne would make a good Prime Minister? Sorry, I missed that. Do

you think George Osborne would make a good Prime Minister? If he stood,

and was selected by the electorate, I would hope that he would. I think

the same for almost everybody else. I have no view about anybody to be

Prime Minister, the Prime Minister is there a moment. I have a high

regard for him. I think he has done a very good job but I believe they

are losing sight of the direction of travel but they should be in. To be

clear, all those people who say, in the end, there is a move against

Cameron and Osborne by Eurosceptic ministers who were using this

opportunity when the party seems a bit fragmented and in trouble to

mount something against him and Boris Johnson is there in the

background, you are saying that is piffle? It is nonsense, it is

nonsense and what I am about. Let me say one briefing, I served in the

Army because I care about my country and the people who live here, I came

into politics because I care about my country and the people who live

here. I do not have political ambition, I would not stand for

leader, I would not support somebody who stands for the reader at the

moment, I am supportive of the Prime Minister. I care for one thing and

one thing only. People who do not get the choices that my children get

left behind, I do not want that, I want them to get the opportunity.

Yes, we can debate some of the things that people did not like

because they are more about the deficit in Welfare Reform Bill, but

overarching Lee I am passionate about getting much reform done so

that society is reformed, so that we have more of those people who have

been left behind brought back into the sphere and the arena where we

play daily but they do not. That is what I am about. I have raced time

and again that we are beginning to lose that focus, I cannot do this

from inside, I believe I had to step out. It is painful to resign, I

don't want to, but I am resigning because I think it is the only way I

could do this. Right back to the beginning of our conversation, what

is happening at the moment is immoral? I think it is in danger of

drifting in a direction that divide society rather than United, I think

it is unfair. I am not in the business of morale at it, I leave

that to churchmen. But as far as I am concerned, risk as their -- I am

not in the business of morale at you. I resigned, I said I would

rather campaign to change that. I want the Prime Minister and the

Chancellor to continue to do that for the right reasons. Those are my

passionate cares. Iain Duncan Smith, thank you very much. Nothing quiet

about that. Now over to Naga for

the news headlines. In his first interview

since he dramatically resigned on Friday night, Iain Duncan Smith

has been explaining his reasons for deciding to leave

the government. The former Work and Pensions

Secretary said he had been increasingly concerned

about being asked to make cuts to benefits, because of

what he described as the arbitrary cap set by the Treasury

on welfare spending. He confirmed he had considered

resigning last year. This has been a long-running problem

where I felt semidetached, in a sense, isolated, more often, because

I am not able to convince people that what we were losing,

progressively, and this was my worry, was the narrative that the

Conservative Party was a one nation party caring about those who don't

even necessarily vote four, and who may never votes for us.

Mr Duncan Smith was speaking after his former colleague,

the Pensions Minister, launched a highly personal attack

Ros Altmann said he had been difficult to work with,

and had silenced and undermined her when she tried to influence policy.

She questioned whether unhappiness about welfare changes was his real

motivation for resigning. I honestly don't think this is about reform, I

think it is about the EU, and he has been looking for a reason to go, and

has used this as the reason. It is very odd timing if you announce your

resignation on a point of runcible after the point on which you said

you were resigning had already been conceded.

The next news on BBC One is at 1 o'clock.

First, let's have a look at what's coming up immediately

Join us live from Brighton at 10am Webby will all be in it together,

debating if Asus IT should be judged by its treatment of the fortunate.

-- if a society. As the time come to take climate change seriously? And

should more religions have a voice in Parliament. See you at 10am on

BBC One. Andrew Neil will be talking

to Labour's Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Owen Smith

on the Sunday Politics, We're taking a break

next Sunday for Easter. But we'll be back

on the 3rd of April. Until then, we leave you with one

of the most distinctive singer This is Natalie Merchant

and Where I Go. # Well, I go over to

the river to soothe my mind # To ponder over the

crazy days of my life # In the willow tree,

in the branches hanging # Well, I go to the river

to soothe my mind # To ponder over the

crazy days of my life # Watch the river flow,

ease my mind and soul # Watch the river flow

where the willow branches grow # By the cool rolling waters,

moving gracefully and slow # Just let the river

take them all away # All away.

APPLAUSE