UPDATE: Interview with Conservative candidate...

Interview with Geoffrey Cox, general election 2010 Conservative candidate for Torridge and West Devon.

IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW:

"At this election the points of difference with the Lib Dems, while important and salient, are not overall as important as the values we have shared and do share"/ no quick fix on MP trust problem, says candidate/ Cameron has taken Tories "out of sterile corner"/ "Five years ago the Conservative Party would have found it difficult to talk unselfconsciously about social justice, as we now do, about new ways of reaching out to the disadvantaged and the deprived"/ affordable housing policy/ farming/ "I have no inherited wealth. I haven't got a penny of private money. My father was a serving soldier. He never had a penny more than what the Army paid him. Every penny I have earned in my life I have had to work very hard for"

Question: How close will this election be in Torridge and what are the key differences between you and the Lib Dems?

“This is a constituency that has to be worked for and fought for and is all the greater prize for that. I tend not to give predictions about elections. I prefer to take nothing for granted. The differences this time between the Conservatives and the Lib Dems are on some pretty clear issues.

There are differences on the question of Europe which is still an important issue for many. The Lib Dem opposed a referendum lock which would require every further treaty and any new treaty and any substantial transfer of power to be approved by the people of this country; I believe that policy is an important guarantee, particularly in the current climate of distrust of politicians, to people who feel too many powers have been ceded to the EU.

There are quite a number of issues upon which we differ. We as a party believe we should remove the NI increases for the higher paid because they are taxes on jobs, and we believe we need to boost enterprise and business by encouraging them to take people on rather than letting in a further tax on jobs.

We have a very strong view that regional government is not the way forward but the Lib Dems are still strong supporters of regional tiers of political governance. We do believe there should be a D-Day revolution in the way in which rural areas and market towns are governed, so that power is devolved right down to local communities.

We have a radical platform which will empower our rural communities and market towns in a way we have never seen before. I think those points of difference are some of a number. There are bound to be differences of emphasis and there are a considerable number of policies upon which we broadly agree. I think, for example, we were agreed on things like identity card, where I made my maiden speech.

We are committed to scrapping ID cards. The preservation and resistence to this Government's encroachment on individual freedom is something we share and I strongly share a belief in individual freedom.

At this election the points of difference with the Lib Dems, while important and salient, are not overall as important as the values we have shared and do share. The critical difference between a Conservative candidate and a Lib Dem candidate is that it's only a Conservative candidate who is going to form part of a Government and this area is crying out for the first time in 13 years of of an influence of Government and to have its MPs as members of a Government will open a window of opportunity for the whole of North Devon and Torridge.

Question: You will be making all those arguments as the public perception of MPs is at an all-time low, with expenses scandal. Many electors will say MPs are a bunch of crooks. What will you do as an MP to help improve that perception?

I have done and will continue to work as hard as I can to earn the trust of local people of all shades of political opinion. My critical and solemn duty is to represent every individual in this constituency, regardless of their political opinion.

I have worked as hard as I can do to that. I'm not saying I can please every individual. My cardinal priority over the past five years has been to defend this constituency from the neglect, indifference and sometimes downright hostility of the Labour government. There is no quick fix to win people's trust; it has to be won patiently, by hard work. The system is only as good as the people who run the system.

I believe we ought to out back in the hands of the people the feeling they are in control. Wherever you go, people feel disempowered. We have got to cut the cost of politics and cut the number of politicians. I believe it's right if an MP commits some impropriety then subject to safeguards there ought to be a right of recall. We need to have complete and absolute transparency and I hope I have always followed that; I declare everything on my website.

Question: That relates to issues of trust. Critics of David Cameron will say he is now like a highly-polished brand, and quite often what he seems to be offering can be boiled down to fairly empty rhetoric. Some people are saying he is almost like the Conservatives' Tony Blair and we'll all be doomed to disappointment. What do you say to that sort of view?

I think that's nuts. There is an atmosphere of distrust over every party leader and every politician. The entire system has this unhappy shadow.

If you look at what David has done. In three short years he has moved the party from being viewed as an outpost on the political spectrum directly to the moderate centre, based on pragmatic Conservative policies, which is where in my view it should be. He has enabled Conservatives to open up a new frontier which is social justice. The party is now speaking about a compassionate Conservatism, which believes in the lifting up of those who have not had a fair deal. The Great Ignored.

There are many of that group in Torridge and the party is wanting to reach out a hand to those people and say: under the form of dilute socialism you have had for the last 13 years in which everything has been centrally controlled, in which means- tested benefits have been seen as the solution to everything, you have not increased your social mobility, you have not achieved any better gains in 1997.

There have been some patchy improvements. But if you look at the gap between rich and poor, the number of jobless in Torridge, and you compare them to the figures in 1997 you will see a deterioration not an improvement.

The Conservative party is saying letting us try new means, radical means, of empowering you to improve your situations by giving you power to do something about it.. That applies to welfare system as it applies to our rural communities.

David has changed the entire debate. He has moved us out of the sterile corner and opened up a whole range of possibilities; not just for the Conservative Party, but for the nation.

Question: We're hearing a lot of claims about "cutting waste", arguing for "more fairness" and "change". Are these claims not meaningless because you couldn't argue the opposite; you couldn't say "I want more waste"?

No, but what are the practical means now being proposed for those things? Fairness is a concept which can be adopted by any party although I have to tell you the Conservative Party five years ago would have found it quite difficult to be talking about a social justice and new ways of reaching out to the disadvantaged.

Question: Are not many of the claims being made by the parties during this campaign rather vacuous? Who in their right mind would argue for "more waste", "less fairness", or "false change"? Where is the meaningful policy?

Five years ago the Conservative Party would have found it difficult to talk unselfconsciously about social justice, as we now do, about new ways of reaching out to the disadvantaged and the deprived.

That is something that has changed the terms of debate.

But you have got to look at is there a practical programme? There is a radical and practical programme and that will mean a complete change in the allocation of funding formulae, a new emphasis on devolution of power, of localism, the concentration on the things which will preserve small communities such as ours.

I don't represent a large inner city; my focus is intensely upon the small communities I have been in, week in, week out, visiting and supporting, talking to people in a range of ways. The Conservative Party is offering a programme which will address those concerns.

Of course anybody can mouth platitudes but you have to ask yourself: is there a programme? There is a programme and it's radical and it's bold and even if part of it can be implemented we will see the benefits here in Torridge.

Question: We heard a lot of talk about "waste" and cutting back public services and there is this sort of auction going on for who can make the most breathtaking cuts. Isn't this something that always happens at elections? Parties always say they will cut waste and never do?

It hasn't happened under this Government.

That doesn't mean that an incoming Government must not try to ensure that every pound of public money that is spent, value is given for it. Merely because a Government has failed to achieve savings in the vast extent and super-structure of the public sector does not mean a new Government will not have to find those savings.

I agree that the coinage has been debased by the use of these expressions in some fairly cynical ways, in virtually every Labour budget for the last ten years, where it's only the small print you detect the truth, that these are weasel words. We must talk about waste; it's on people's minds.

They see it every day when they visit hospitals, when they go in to the offices of quangos, when they hear of the large salaries which are earned by a group of quango-crats who run these things, when they see unaccountable bodies that have mysterious functions which look like they could easily be shed, they ask their politicians: what are you doing?

They sense the public sector has grown bloated and it's inconceivable that the amount of money spent every year on the public sector, we cannot do better.

Question: Another area in which people think a lot of money has been wasted was in bailing out the banks. What would the Conservatives have done differently to the Government because at the time you didn't seem to be arguing for the radical changes which might have prevented that fiasco?

I don't think it was suggested the Conservative Party would not have sought to stabliise the banking system by standing under the banks. There are different ways of doing that.

The way chosen by the Labour Party was simply to pump large quantities, by which I mean billions of pounds of public money, straight into banks by the purchase of their shares. The Conservative Party suggested at the time there might be in some cases an alternative approach which would have been standing as guarantor and picking up the tab only if the bank failed.

It may not have been necessary to part with so much public money, so many billions, straight away.

Question: Some economists are warning any moves to cut public spending and drop taxes would lead us into another recession - what are your views on that?

I think we're up to 60 business leaders employing around a million people - I think as many of those have said that is an extraordinary claim to make. This suggestion that £6 billion will be taken out of the economy is simply voodoo economics.

You're not taking money out of the economy simply because you're not taxing people. What is being suggested is that because you're not taking £6 billion in tax you are taking out of the economy.

If I leave in your hand the £250 in NI you would be better off with I think you will find ways of putting that into the economy. You'll spend it spending it supporting some local business in North Devon. Gordon Brown seems to believe the only way you can put money into the economy is by squirting large doses of it through the Government, which is the fundamental problem with everything he has ever done.

He is a man who believes the state is the only way to achieve anything. Secondly it's simply nonsense. Labour have identified specific savings of £11 billion they can make in the near future.

All we are saying is: let's save that money now. Let's use that not to have your grossly-damaging tax on jobs that will mean that people are being shed in tens of thousands across the country.

Question: A question in relation to that, then: do you believe the state has a role in cutting poverty and inequality?

Yes, I do. I think a Conservative will always ask about what the state does and why is the state doing it? Is it doing it well and could it done better by individuals or combinations of individuals, working on their own inititaive. If believe in considerable and wide ranges of areas the answer is the state probably isn't doing it very well and it could be done better, by voluntary groups, by charities.

I have no doubt there are functions the state must continue with and must stand under, the vision of the Cnservtives is it's time to set free the voluntary sector to take a greater role to reaching out the hand to those who are disadvantaged and deprived.

That means giving them Government support and allowing them to take active role in the revival of our society.

Question: Affordable housing is a huge, and often hidden, crisis in your constituency. How would you and your party help local families get decent homes to buy or rent?

We will pass new legislation, an Affordable Homes Act, which would enable every village and every market town to set up with Government support and help a community property trust.

That CPT will be able to give its own planning permission for affordable houses. For the first time a parish council will not have to come to me in desperation saying Torridge Council will not give us permission for these six affordable homes because they say it's not in the right place.

A village will be able to say: we need these homes; we've proved it; we're going to give our own permission for it. That is a very radical policy. Of course there will be safeguards. There will be a local needs survey, will have to demonstrate clear public support in the parish.

There will be a limit on numbers, which will work out at about 12 a year. It will be subject to scrutiny in the sense the district council will have a safeguard role. The local community will recieve Homes and Community Agency finance. The other we are going to do is scrap central housing targets.

Torridge is faced with having to accept 10,000 houses; everywhere I go people express concern about that. Everybody says: we can't take these houses, our infrastructure is not there. We've got to give back to local communities the power to plan the number of houses it wants. We will give incentives to allow local communities to keep business rates.

Question: This is largely a rural constituency. Can you give electors a summary of your views on how the farming community has fared under the Labour Government?

This is a subject very close to my heart. I have had over the years to speak, help, offer comfort to farmers in complete distress. I've had farming people come to me in tears about some of the ways in which this Government has treated them.

There is no doubt that everywhere you look that has regarded farming, and livestock farming, as an expendable priority. It's at the bottom of the pile.

The Conservative Government will put it back of the top of the pile. We will re-introduce a ministry which will have "agriculture" in its title; a symbolic step but one which will mean something to every farmer in Britain. Domestic food production is a critical priority in any national Government.

Our food security, particularly as we see the effect of global warming, will become acutely important. It's only now in the last six months that Hilary Benn has published a paper on food security.

Why? They suddenly realise the world is being effected by food shortages and the price of imports are rising and set to go on rising. The answer is to increase domestic food production.

Top of the list locally is bovine TB. The Conservative Government will tackle with a range of measures and one of those is going to be a limited, humane, and targeted cull of wildlife, by which I include badgers. It's unavoidable as one possible instrument.

Secondly, we need fairer competition. We need a supermarket ombudsman who will have teeth to stop some of the anti-competitive practices the supermarkets currently engage in.

Thirdly, we need radical reform of the Rural Payments Agency. It has been a disgrace the RPA has treated local farming people.

We need to have a policy of honest labelling so that regardless of what the EU does we have a policy which shows if something was genuinely grown in Britain, not just packaged in Britain, as it is now. We would introduce such legislation and such a policy.

Finally will be the renegotiations for the CAP next year. It is vital we get in early. Early meetings set the parameters of the debate.

Question: Can I ask for your views on Iraq and Afghanistan?

I wasn't in parliament when the Iraq war started. I made a speech in parliament recently in relation to the inquiry; I believe we should have a full inquiry and a public inquiry and an inquiry on which the witnesses were cross-examined by professionals.

I think the current inquiry, while well-meaning, and elucidating in many ways, nevertheless has not been the type of public inquiry we needed into Iraq.

I think this war presents us with some very real issues of conscience. It's a deeply disturbing prospect that a Government and prime minister and came to parliament and told what now appears to be, at the very least and on the most charitable construction, were exagerrations and distortions of the facts, I think that is something that has undermined the confidence of the British public in its parliament, possibly even more than the expenses scandal, because although people don't reflect on it these days, because time has past, the belief that a prime minister on so solemn a decision as whether or not to send young men and women into a battle, could have been done on evidence that had been trumped up is I think a very grave issue for our democracy and our parliament.

I have to say that on what we know now I think it highly unlikely I would have voted for the war in Iraq. It's with great diffidence one can say this because one wasn't in parliament at the time but I think at the time it was almost certainly unlawful and I think the evidence for it was not there.

Having said that was that if you were going to war was to make sure you had planned for the aftermath, to ensure Iraq would emerge as swiftly as possible; no such planning was done. The cupboard was bare. They didn't do any. They went to war without any thought about how they would reconstruct that country. The single redeeming factor is the self sacrifice and extraordinary heroism of those who served in the armed forces. There have been some blemishes, but very few.

Afghanistan is a very different kettle of fish. There was evidence which justified action in Afghanistan. Where the Government went wrong was the extraordinary statement by John Reid, secretary of state for defence, when he announced the first troops to go into Afghanistan and he said he hoped not a shot would be fired. I think the Government grotesquely underestimated the size of the challenge. I think they thought they were going there in some sort of short-term peace-keeping operation. What they have stumbled into is a war.

And they were wholly unprepared for a war. Anybody with the remotest historical understanding could have told them that if you went into Afghanistan you were not going to face a walk in the park, a shot not being fired. We went in with too few helicopters, with inadequate personnel equipment. We have got hundreds of families around here whose sons and daughters are out in Afghanistan now and they are still telling me their boys have to buy their own equipment to make up the standards.

Question: UKIP say the Conservatives are completely out of touch with what voters think about the EU; they say: withdraw now. Are they wrong and are you a Eurosceptic?

Yes I am a Eurosceptic. I strongly believe the proper place for democratic accountability lies in the national parliament of this country and if you cede too many powers, and I believe we have ceded too many powers, to a supra-national institution such as the EU, and its commission, you have a democrat deficit which gradually erodes the confidence and trust of the people.

UKIP is to me a one-trick pony. What is implausible about UKIP is to blame everything on the EU, to reduce everything to the question of in our out of Europe, and to suggest that every fault resides in the EU; that is not correct and not plausible. I do partially share the analysis that we need to get back to a situation where the national parliaments are clearly and obviously the critical source of democratic accountability and that means possessing the supreme and sovreign power. I believe we must renegotiate back to this country a number of important powers from the EU. Secondly I do not believe we should surrender the pound.

I do feel there is an increasing case and under the end of a parliament under a Conservative government and under which there had been no progress on the issues I have discussed, and if a new treaty is proposed that would give economic governance to the EC, I believe the time might be arriving on our continued membership of the EU. That is not Conservative Party policy

Question: Many people will now point to climate change as the biggest threat facing humanity - do you agree with that view and what is your view on those who say climate change is a "conspiracy" or a "con"?

I don't believe it's a conspiracy or a con. I have listened to scientists on my job on the select committee explain the physics of global warming and it seems to me the physics are completely undeniable. There can be no doubt the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide exists.

The question is: is the production of carbon dioxide by man promoting a change in the climate that is visible now and will increase over the years. It does seem to me very hard to consider other than that; it is at least highly likely. The question is over what timescale and to what extent.

There may be other natural causes. Therein the lies the uncertainty. I've looked into this in some detail because it's a problem which troubles me; this is an enormous question. It's probably one of the two or three biggest questions that any national politician is going to have to resolve in his own mind and as a matter of national policy in the next few years. What is the right policy response?

My view is, because the science is sound, it would be folly for any politician not to take action in anticipation of would could be a very grave problem. I do support investment in renewable energy and I believe strongly the right renewable energy is something we need to go forward with. We need to look very urgently at nuclear power because that is a way of saving carbon emissions.

Question: You weren't involved in any of the shenanigans with expenses and that's accepted but there's been a lot of talk of a cultural gap between MPs and electors. By local standards you are a wealthy individual, your records you declare show £80,000 as a barrister. How can someone who is very wealthy empathise with say a shopworker from Bideford or a farm labourer from Holsworthy?

I have no inherited wealth. I haven't got a penny of private money. My father was a serving soldier. He never had a penny more than what the Army paid him. Every penny I have earned in my life I have had to work very hard for. I started with nothing but a good education and some ability and everything I have achieved since then has been based on hard work.

For the early years of my career I was fortunate enough to be at university, the first one in my family, and get a degree. My maternal grandfather was a steelworker and my father's father was a Tavistock bank manager in the 1920s. My father went into the Army at 17 and served 45 years in the Army.

When I started I had nothing and for some years, bringing up three children, when as a barrister you start your career you have no briefs. It was only because my wife and I were together we managed to make ends meet. Yes, I have done well. But I hope people will feel that to work hard and to achieve is a reason for respect rather than the opposite. On the way I have more than my fair share, bringing up a family, and sharing in the early years precisely the same financial anxieties as anybody here in Bideford today.

I know what it's like to be self-employed. If you're self-employed painter and decorator in Bideford you're waiting for the phone to ring and I know what that feels like. I do believe I share and understand the aspirations, the anxieties, and the hopes of people. But what my success has given me, such as it is, is a desire to help other people. My youngest child, for example, is on the autistic spectrum.

I have experienced genuine adversity and distress and unhappiness at the way things are. And I made up my mind to try to do something about it. It's left me with a desire to help other people achieve success. I'm also convinced the only way you can do that is through hard work.

I know what is being put about but it's I think frankly not worthy of a political campaign in this constituency. I'm certainly not going to knock other candidates in this election. We could all play that game.

Question: In your time as an MP what can you point to and say: I have achieved that for my constituents?

Innumerable ways in maybe hundreds of ways I believe I have done my best to and have secured for hundreds of individuals some help, some improvement in their lives, some feeling of confidence and hope in the future. I have testimonials of hundreds of people in this office who have said to me, and I'm deeply grateful and humbled by it, you have helped us in our lives.

If I never serve another day as MP, those letters, emails, cards, will provide for me a justification for the last five years of my life as an MP. It's been an enormous privilege and honour. An MP can't often conjure away problems but he can sometimes make a difference.

What an MP is opposition cannot do are the really big things; the funding of education, the funding of social care, the neglect and decay of the rural economy, the ignoring of the interests of coastal communities, the closure of post offices. We are losing our rural services.

An MP can raise strong protest but an MP of Government can expect to bring real change to the communities of Torridge and West Devon and that is why I'm standing again