IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:
- A vote for the Lib Dems will help create hung parliament and therefore give North Devon influence
- Candidate defends his record as an MP
- Claim that Tories would throw public sector workers “on scrapheap”
- Pledge to “break up the banks”
- Views on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
- On his Tory opponent: “The truth is the very bottom of the food chain in Westminster are Government back-benchers; they are the most powerless political creature.”
Question: Is a vote for you not a wasted vote, because your party has no great chance of forming a Government?
A vote for a Lib Dem MP is certainly not a wasted vote. You are electing an MP for this area and I’ve shown over 18 years I can get things done for this area.
The Lib Dems have the best chance we’ve had in 18 years of breaking through the middle of the British political system. There’s clearly a very high possibility of a hung parliament in which we will exercise a lot of influence.
And, bluntly, if that were to happen, even if you buy into the theories of peddling national influence, having an MP in the party with the balance is a great deal more powerful than having somebody who is voting fodder for the Government.
Question: Many people are predicting a hung parliament this time. If there were no overall majority do you think you would prefer to share power with Labour or the Conservatives?
If there is a hung parliament there are a huge variety of permutations that might take.
The answer to the question lies in the hands of the voters.
We will work with whatever arithmetic the election produces.
I don’t think you should assume we would be jumping into bed with either of them.
The Lib Dems would use our leverage to vote each issue as it comes.
Question: You have been North Devon’s MP for 18 years. Some first-time voters were in nappies when you were first elected. Some people are saying it’s time for a change, a fresh start. How would you respond to that?
I think people want a change in Government not a change in MP. I think during the years I have been an MP I’ve built up a track record of picking up on local issues and making a differences for the community as a whole as well as picking up individual cases.
Question: If you look back on those 18 years what can you point to locally and say I’ve achieved that for my constituents?
I think most conspicuously, winning back in the early period the designation in North Devon for economic grant aid from the British government and later from the EU, which over a period of years helped fuel an economic boom in North Devon.
When I was first elected we had comparatively high unemployment. Now we have comparatively low unemployment despite the fact it’s gone up recently. That’s because we brought back grant aid. I take enormous pride and satisfaction in that.
In consort with DCC we managed to bring the Barnstaple bypass which has made a profound difference and I think gradually we have brought money in to improve school buildings and public services locally.
There’s an awful lot more to be done in the future.
I’m fearful about what would happen if we had a Conservative government or Conservative MP who was committed to cutting public services.
Question: Would you give the Labour government credit for the economic resurgence that North Devon has enjoyed?
I think we have enjoyed economic good years until two or three years ago and the Labour government deserves some credit for that. They also deserve some of the blame for the situation we are in now, but that is more down to international issues.
Question: If you are elected. When people go to make their vote, what can you say you can do to improve their lives? Can you give any concrete examples?
I think Lib Dem are determined the pain in the tough years ahead should not be felt by those at the bottom and must be shouldered by those at the top and that’s in stark difference to the Conservative approach. North Devon is an area with very low incomes and if people don’t want to be carrying the burden of the downturn here they don’t want to see a Conservative government.
On a more localised level we will continue to try to bring money in for local schools, local health services.
My fear is that a Conservative government will end up making lots of public sector workers — policemen, teachers, nurses — redundant and on the scrap heap.
Question: Your Conservative rival has been saying that local people will have more of a voice in the corridors of power if they elect him because the Conservatives are more likely to form a Government than the Lib Dems. What do you make of that argument?
It’s a false argument. The truth is the very bottom of the food chain in Westminster are Government back-benchers; they are the most powerless political creature; they have no ability to protest or speak out; they are required to do the Government’s bidding. The area is far better served by an independent voice from a third party who needn’t be afraid to rock the boat, kick up rough as the occasion demands. We have had a Conservative MP under a Conservative government before and it didn’t do us a lot of good. We had a Liberal MP in the 1970s and secured a new hospital and the North Devon link road as a result. People just need to study the history
The only person weaker and more powerless than a Government back-bencher is a new Government back-bencher, who doesn’t even have a network of friends and influence.
Question: The Lib Dems are promising to “break up” the banks to prevent casino capitalism which sparked the recession. How would you do that?
We would make the high street banks who take ordinary deposits separate from the banks who speculate with money on the sort of international money markets. We would keep the state guarantee behind the high street banks so people knew their deposits were safe. We wouldn’t put that guarantee behind the casino banking. We wouldn’t try to stop that activity but we would make it clear they were doing it at their own risk.
Neither of the other parties is prepared to do that. They talk about tougher regulation which runs the risk of driving them away.
Question: The Lib Dems policies is that soaring house prices are one of the causes of the recession and as you know affordable housing is a major problem in this constituency. What can be done to help local people own or rent affordable homes?
We need a far greater supply of social and affordable housing. The council locally has in principle a commitment to build more affordable housing but that has been difficult to turn into practice because of a lack of funding.
Getting big grant aid in now from HCA is the only way to do it. We have long-term commitment to making more money available from the HCA and North Devon does not need vast thousands of market houses.
We need maybe 2,000 social and affordable housing but we don’t need the 8,000 housing you would need to build if you were trying to raise those funds from the developers.
Question: Are you confident that simply by channelling money through the HCA you could achieve that?
There’s no better way of doing it at the moment. In the long-term if we allowed local authorities greater flexibility to borrow money against their capital they could fund some of this themselves.
Question: The Lib Dems want to scrap the Child Trust Fund. Why?
For every child you stick into a fund a modest sum of money which on their 18th birthday is theirs and its hard to resist the view that it will go on a lavish party or a first car or whatever. If you took the money and got extra funds into education in support of those from the most deprived backgrounds you have an immediate effect. It’s an incredibly wasteful way of locking up a lot of public money to no useful end.
Question: You want to restore the earnings link of pensions which will presumably cost a fortune just as the public finances are in a mess?
It won’t cost a fortune initially but it will cost more as time goes on. At the moment we have a strange system. If we brought the basic pension up to an acceptable level, yes it costs money, but to pay for it is through things like pension contributions from higher-rate taxpayers.
Question: Do you believe the Lib Dem for no nuclear or dirty coal can provide the country with the energy it will needs?
Yes. I don’t want to sound glib but it will require us to reduce significantly the amount of energy we use and we are way behind other countries in that.
We should harness renewable energy with more vigour than we do. Nowhere near enough progress has been made in tidal energy.
If we did all we could with the sea and progressed with one of the options for a Severn Barrage, if we got on with offshore wind which I’m pleased to see the Government getting behind and I’m worried the Conservatives would want to cancel all of that.
It’s ambitious and it’s not easy.
Question: The Lib Dems want elected police and health authorities. Would this not lead to the people who take up those roles spending all their time politicking and spinning rather than running the organisations?
Not if they were elected for a reasonable period of time. I think that all public services should be run by elected people. I think the idea of Government place-men running our services is completely unacceptable.
The services should be run by professionals and should be accountable to non-executive directors.
Question: Are you confident local income tax would generate enough revenue to provide excellent local services?
Local income tax is the fairest way to raise money for local services and the shortfall left should be made up by Government who should be targeting their equalising money onto the areas with the lowest incomes. North Devon is an example of this.
Question: The Lib Dems are saying they would provide an extra £2.5billion for schools. How?
Partly through the axing of the Child Trust Fund and by recalibrating some of the tax credit thresholds and some of the tax thresholds.
Question: It’s all costed then?
It’s all costed and the IFS goes through the manifestos and will deliver a public verdict.
Question: What is your view in Labour’s plan for a National Care Service?
In principle I haven’t got a problem with a NCS but it rather depends on what it looks like and how it’s going to be funded.
The proposals they were coming up with a year ago to have a NCS and to pay for it by axing disability benefit and incapacity benefit, and then through the pot of money raised paying for carers to come and do everything for people, just sounded like it was creating a vast unnecessary mountain of bureaucracy, whereas leaving people to use common sense and make ad hoc arrangements with family and friends and so on would work much better.
I do worry that the level of social care available in communities varies an awful lot across the country. I don’t think we do particularly well because Government funding formulae always have an in-built urban bias.
Question: There’s been a lot of talk of cutting waste and making efficiencies in Government departments and the NHS. Is that not all hot air? We hear these sort of promises before every election and it never happens. Governments are never able to cut that much waste, are they?
Margaret Thatcher came into power, pledged to get rid of waste, and ending up making no headway. And if she couldn’t do it I don’t know why anybody else thinks they can. There is waste in large bureaucracies and identifying it and getting rid of it is more difficult. I don’t think we can afford to say the NHS should just be immune from the quest for savings. There’s a risk of turning public sector workers out on to the dole when the economy is flat.
Question: Could you sum up your views on what is happening in Afghanistan?
The Lib Dems are very pleased and reassured to see both president Obama and Nato and Britain recognising far more explicitly that ultimately Afghanistan needs a political solution. The military effort can put pressure on but ultimately you have got to have a political settlement. We were getting anxious the whole thing seemed to be viewed with a military lens.
I don't think Britain and America as the key foreign participants in Afghanistan can try to broker this deal. I think the UN and some of the neighbouring countries around Afghanistan have a got a real vested interest in trying to start a peace process. There are large elements of the Taliban who would be ready to take part in that. The Taliban come in all different shapes and sizes and are motivated by totally different considerations and I think we made a mistake in just viewing them as one and just trying to obliterate them militarily which hasn't been a great success. What we've got to try and do is help Afghanistan through a transition to some sort of stable nationhood.
Question: You think it was right to go in?
Yes. I don't think we had any choice but to go in. 9/11 had been planned and orchestrated from Afghanistan and the Taliban had allowed Al Queda to set up its national HQ. I don't think we'd thought things through. I think we went rushing in without really having any idea of what we were going to do next. But going into Iraq set the whole thing back years , took money away, took manpower away, took focus away and we would be far further towards where we need to get to in Afghanistan now if Britain and America hadn't deflected off on the far-less justifiable incursion into Iraq, which wasted years in Afghanistan.
Question: There's resentment among some voters in North Devon about the role of the EU. UKIP did very well in the European elections last year. Do you view the EU and the EC as worthwhile and effective organisations and should we join the Euro?
I don't think we should join the Euro, I've never thought that we should. If there was an overwhelming case for doing so, I would look at it again but I just can't envisage that. We live in an increasing global village in the fight against crime, and terrorism, people trafficking, in the fight against climate change, there is a limit to what Britain can do on its own. International action is the only way to achieve things and make progress and that's what the EU is for. I believe we belong in the EU and we should be active and constructive participants in it. I understand misgivings about it; it's far from perfect. It's bureaucratic. It's undemocratic. But the answer is to work from within to reform it.
Question: The Lib Dem campaign as we've seen it so far seems to have some extent taken the Obama route of repeating a mantra of "change" and some commentators are saying that sounds like empty rhetoric and that change for its own sake doesn't have much merit.
We do need change. We need very drastic change. The way things have been done in this country for decades has been appalling. We have got a political system that is broken, some bits of it have been exposed as corrupt but there are other bits of it which are just as corrupt; the way big party funding goes on is appalling, the fact parliament has no power and Government just uses it as a poodle is appalling. The fact the voting system is so corrupt that Labour have had a majority over the past five years when less than one in four of adults in this country had voted for them. All of these things are appalling. The fact that local communities have no meaningful power over their own lives. All of these things desperately need change. We need to drag ourselves from the 19th century to the 21st century in one go. And when the Lib Dems are talking about change we have got much more radical ideas on these things than anybody else. The race against climate change is getting increasingly urgent. We have got to fundamentally change the way our industry operates and the way our houses and transport operate. If anybody seriously doubts the need for change on these things, I would worry on their behalf. The economy is still operated in a very inefficient and very unfair way. We're still a very unequal society; after 13 years of a Labour government, the gap between rich and poor has got greater not smaller. If there's any point to the Lib Dems and to there being a third force in British politics it's to try and bring about change.
Question: If there's a general mood among the public for change and there's a general election will they not direct that mood towards the Conservatives?
What is that the Conservatives are offering to change? To my mind the Conservatives simply offer more of the same; they are saying they can operate the same system Labour operate but we're invited to believe they can operate it more efficiently. This might be true and it might not be true; who's to say? They are not really offering anything fundamentally different; if they were, they wouldn't be the Conservatives. The whole point of the Conservatives is to keep things as they are, to conserve.
Question: The public perception of MPs as a whole is at an all-time low. What can you do to help improve the battered state of democracy in Britain?
I think highlight what's still wrong with it and the fact the MP expenses scandal has simply exposed how out-dated and how out-moded the political system is. It's caused shock around the world to discover the mother of parliaments was in quite such an unreal world as it was. We've got to clean up party funding and clean up the voting system and bring about real local empowerment. We've got to make the public understand that the MPs expenses scandal was just lifting the first lid and there's an awful lot more that needs doing.
Question: Are you happy with your own actions and measures you have taken over the course of the last parliament in respect of that?
In respect of expenses, yes. I've conducted myself in accordance with the systems that were in operation at the time. Now the rules are quite fundamentally different and if elected I will operate within the new system. I think people say the old rules were discredited and I understand that but one operated within the systems that are there. The Legg review gave me a clean bill of health and said I hadn't done anything wrong.
Question: What do you make of your opponents this time around? Looking like it might be the closest call since you were first elected in 1992?
I think because of the way the national tides are flowing the Tories are up from where they were five years ago and that means we have to fight a lot harder. I think I can still win but I recognise that the Conservatives are up and one can't take anything for granted.
Question: What do you think of your Conservative opponent's campaign so far and his promises and the way he is framing the argument very much as a local man and a local businessman who understands local needs?
He is a local man; there's no two ways about that but with an 18-year record as an MP and having lived here for over 20 years, people know me and know who I am. It would seem to me a more logical campaign to be running against a new-comer who had just moved in. I think it's fair to say that Philip's campaigning style is a bit idiosyncratic. The proof of the pudding will be in the count.
Question: It's a always billed as two-horse race. Is it?
We've got a big field this time. Eight or nine candidates and each and every one of them has every right to participate and have got points they want to make and it's all part of our democracy that they go out there and make them. But the reality is only two of us can win and people need to decide: do they want a Conservative MP here and a Conservative government which hasn't done us much good in the past and there's a real threat it could do us a lot of harm in the future. All that stands between North Devon and that fate is me and the Liberal Democrats.
Question: How will be able to judge if you have been a successful MP for North Devon?
I think the state of public services I would hope to have defended and I would have hoped to have brought about an improvement to. And I would hope people would see I've spent another five years defending local interests and helping the most disadvantaged in our community, who are the most vulnerable when the going gets rough.
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