16 November 2006
Tony Blair answered questions from the public about the Queen’s Speech.
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Anne McElvoy:
Hello and welcome to Question the Prime Minister where you, the public, get to put your questions to the Prime Minister in the wake of The Queen’s speech. I am Ann McElvoy
Will Hutton:
And I am Will Hutton.
Anne McElvoy:
And we have been sifting through the questions that you have sent in via the Number 10 website and picked out some of the best.
Will Hutton:
Importantly they are not random. What we have tried to do is to organise them by the weight of the emails that you have sent in and organise them by priority and importance.
Anne McElvoy:
Well Prime Minister there has obviously been a lot of reaction to The Queen’s speech and questions arising from it, so I am going to start with one of my own. Many questions on Iraq and you spoke yesterday of finishing the job in Iraq, but in the US the administration is now being forced to admit grave mistakes in the mishandling of the situation after the war in Iraq. When are you going to be similarly candid in admitting our role in those mistakes, and what do you consider finishing the job when the head of the British Army says that we are now part of the problem in Iraq?
Prime Minister:
Well I don’t think he was saying that we are part of the problem, looking at the British presence in Iraq as a whole. What he was saying is that if there are areas in which the Iraqis are capable of handling their security, and we are still trying to handle it for them, then that causes resentment locally which is actually something I have said myself. But our strategy has got to be to build up the Iraqi capability for their armed forces and as that capability increases then our role diminishes. And we are doing an operation in Basra at the moment where we are going through bit by bit of the city, putting the Iraqi forces properly in control, making sure that the city is returned to the charge of the proper authorities and that is about half way through, it is working well. If it works well for the other half then obviously again we are able then to reduce the need for our presence on the streets of Basra.
Now as for the mistakes, I have to say my own view of this is very clear. You can debate forever and a day whether for example on the disbandment of the army or debaathification you could have proceeded more slowly and we could have a large debate about that, but the principal reason there is a problem in Iraq today is that people are deliberately giving us a problem. You have got al Qaeda teaming up with Sunni extremists, you have got Iranian backed Shia militia and the problem that we have, which is the problem of terrorism trying to displace democracy, is not a problem that is arising by accident, it is a strategy, it is a deliberate strategy, it is the same strategy as the Taleban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. And so in this situation our challenge is to make sure that rather than being defeated by these extreme elements we empower the Iraqis to build up their own capability to take them on. Now one of the things that isn’t much noticed about what is happening in Iraq today is actually bit by bit in the provinces across Iraq the Iraqis are increasingly taking on responsibility for their own security and that is what needs to happen.
Anne McElvoy:
But there is terrific violence in Iraq, did you under-estimate that when you went to war?
Prime Minister:
Well I don’t think we under-estimated the fact that after 30 - 40 years of Saddam it was going to be a very big job, but yes I do think, as I have said before, that we under-estimated the degree to which you were going to get outside elements that were going to come in and try and foment trouble.
Will Hutton:
I just want to build on that and just go a fraction wider into the whole way that you are dealing with this from a political point of view at home as well as abroad. A number of emails have come in very concerned about the politics of terrorism, the politics of fear, a concern that actually if Britain and the west want to win this argument then we have to practise what we preach. For example there is Phil Rogers saying The Queen’s speech says that the government will put victims at the heart of the criminal justice system, wouldn’t you be better to put justice at the heart of the criminal justice system, a sense that you are tilting the balance.
Here is another from Moira Grant. "I teach A level politics, my students are bright kids, the political leaders of tomorrow, ask repeatedly why your government is sacrificing civil liberties which define our liberal democracy and is clambering on the defeatist authoritarian band wagon. These students are Thatcher’s children but even they have moved on. Don’t lose them."
Prime Minister:
I think these are perfectly legitimate concerns incidentally, but here is the problem from my point of view. I don’t think that you can tackle low level antisocial behaviour through the normal process of the courts, that is why we have introduced new antisocial behaviour measures which give summary powers to the police and local government to tackle it. Where they are being used they are making a difference. You go a few miles up the road from here to Kings Cross you see a place transformed from where it was a few years ago by the use of these measures. So when we talk about liberty, there was a tremendous transgression of the liberties of ordinary decent folk living in that area when you had drug dealers and prostitutes and pimps and all the bad elements running their local community or running parts of the street in their local community. So I am trying to change the law in order to change with the times and you know if you take terrorism today, look here is the problem. We are having, as the Head of MI5 said the other day, to go after not just a few but hundreds of people who potentially could be terrorist suspects. If we simply had the old laws we would be unable to chase them up and deal with them in the way that we need to. Those most recently arrested for example over the events in the summer that people will remember, and obviously I don’t want to say anything about that case, but we used the new laws in order to do that. So the difficulty that you have today is you have these new threats, organised crime for example operates in a far more viscous transnational sophisticated way than ever before. If you don’t change the law to keep up with the way that organised crime, antisocial behaviour, terrorism is changing then your danger is in the name of liberty and in the name of justice you do an injustice to the victim, to the people or the potential victim.
Anne McElvoy:
Can we just move on from there Prime Minister. Lots of emails on the balance of liberty and security from Franco Cavazza and others. No mention of 90 days maximum detention in The Queen’s speech yesterday, will you reintroduce a Bill for 90 days? And in the light of comments from Lord Carlile, your own independent scrutiniser of security legislation, he says he sees no evidential basis for such a move. Have you seen such an evidential reason for doing so, and why wouldn’t you settle for a lower figure?
Prime Minister:
Well we will bring back I think before Christmas proposals that will be based on an analysis now of what has gone on over the past few months and how we make sure that we have the most effective laws to deal with the terrorist threat we face. Now the issue to do with the number of days of detention will be part of that. We will look at that, depending on the evidence. I have supported the 90 days before and that was on the basis that particularly the police handling terrorism for us thought that that was what they needed, but we have got to look at it again. And I just want to make two points about this. The first is insofar as we can proceed by way of consensus on laws on terrorism the better because I think it kind of brings the country together. Now I suppose there will be always people who oppose any sort of tightening up of the law against terrorism, but I think if it is possible to reach a consensus we should. But secondly, it does have to be based on the evidence and it does have to be based on our analysis ultimately because we are the people responsible for taking the decision of the best way to protect our people.
Anne McElvoy:
You didn’t use the words 90 days in that reply, is that because you are thinking that you might actually bring forward a Bill for a lesser number of days as the maximum?
Prime Minister:
No it is just because I don’t want to get into a position where as it were I am trying to pre-condition this rather than actually wait for the proper objective analysis by the people who look after these things and deal with these things on behalf of the country. And you know I think we don’t want to get into a situation where this issue to do with 90 days is seen as a piece of politics, it has got to be seen as part of the protection of the country. So if the evidence is there we should do it, but it is important, and I think people want to see a strong evidential base for any terrorist laws that we bring forward.
Will Hutton:
Does this mean Prime Minister that you are unhappy about the quality of the evidence that the Metropolitan Police put forward in support of this in the first place?
Prime Minister:
Personally I am not but I think as a result of, you know you hear people continually say well you know we didn’t really get the evidence properly and so on. The evidence for me was clear and there, and incidentally when people say you know we have provided two sides of A4 and all the rest of it, well not as I remember it, it was a detailed document giving case examples, both actual and hypothetical. But on the other hand we have had further experience now over the last few months, haven’t we, so it is sensible to look at that, to look at recent experience and to say well what is the right way forward now. Now I am not saying we won’t bring back the 90 days, all I am saying is I think it is important that we try and proceed so far as possible by consensus and it is important also that we make sure that anything we propose we give as solid and evidential base as possible and try and take account of some of the criticisms that were made.
Anne McElvoy:
Personally you still favour 90 days?
Prime Minister:
Well I mean I favoured it then and I haven’t changed my mind. But in the end I think all the way through what you are trying to do is to balance the fact that as I say I am ultimately the person who has got to take responsibility for this, with the desire also to try and make sure that the country feels this is being done, as it should be, on the basis of what is right rather than on the basis of whatever politics there is in it.
Will Hutton:
Just this balance of liberty and proper reaction to what you describe as a new environment, although many would argue that Britain has had hazardous environments in the past during war, in fighting terrorism against the IRA, where previous governments have tried to preserve long standing balances in Britain between liberty and state power. But here is one on ID cards from Tobias Robbins and it reflects a number of emails. "The cost and danger to my privacy and to the security of my personal data which, having an entry on the national identity register would far outweigh any benefit" says Mr Robbins. "How does the Prime Minister justify preventing me from holding a passport in the future merely because I take reasonable precautions about protecting my information?"
Prime Minister:
Well here again you go to the nub of the issue which is what does liberty entail in today’s world? And the reason I think it is important that we do identity cards is first of all we are going to have to move to biometric passports, you know 80% of the population has a passport, 70% of the cost of the identity card is the biometric passport. We are going to be obliged to do that, along with all the other European countries in the years to come. What secure identity gives people, it doesn’t merely give the state the ability for example to check who is here lawfully in this country or not, or give us a greater ability to do that, it also allows the individual greater security of their own identity since identity abuse and identity fraud is a major aspect today. And when people talk about the information government is going to hold, the basic information, I mean the biometrics will be your finger print and your iris scan, but the information is the same information as you have on the passport. This idea that the government is going to be taking people’s individual private confidential information is just not true. And when you look at what is happening in the rest of the world, I had an analysis given to me the other day and I hope we can share this with people in the next few weeks which showed that virtually every major country around the world is taking advantage of the new biometric technology to not merely update their passports, but where they have already got identity systems to change those in line with them.
Will Hutton:
But what concerns Tobias Robbins and other e-mailers like Keith Wit, is who will have access to data held, under what circumstances, what steps really to keep the data safe?
Prime Minister:
Obviously all the normal protections will apply, but the important thing about this data is that the data that you have in your passport isn’t fantastically confidential to people, and the key for this thing is not actually the data about you, it is the fact that you have the biometric data of your fingerprint and your iris scan, that is the data that matters and that data is peculiar to you.
Will Hutton:
But who has access to it and how will citizens know that it is absolutely ring fenced and that only appropriate people will have access to it?
Prime Minister:
Because in the laws that we have put through on this, there are only certain people that are allowed access to it and that access, as I say, it is your actual biological data. And I think the confusion that people have here is they kind of think well you know the taxman can go in and get this information also, there is no information other than the same information you get in your passport, the key thing is the biometrics that are there and the reason for that is that this new technology, the biometric technology, and this is why the whole argument has changed, gives you a far better and more secure way of identifying people. And people will have to do this for passports in any event. You will find a situation where over the years to come, in America for example you won’t be able to go unless you have got a biometric visa.
Anne McElvoy:
I think we should move on Prime Minister to the environment, a huge number of emails on this. One very good one here from Sandra Grafton which is representative. "While I applaud plans to cut CO2 emissions, why is the government shirking addressing the problem of increased cheap flights? Please reassure me that a popular decision will be made to tackle this and that the government - and we know how much you like being unpopular - will the government restrict Ministers from taking unnecessary flights?"
Prime Minister:
We actually do try to do the latter. In fact, I don’t know, I will have to check on the figures for this, but I think for Ministerial travel it is actually down, not up, over the past ten years. But look Ministers have to travel like everyone else has to travel for work. My own judgment about this is that there is a role for green taxes but let’s be very clear about this otherwise we end up having a completely unrealistic argument. We are 2% of the world’s emissions. Now we are part of the European trading system, we want an international framework and agreement that imposes obligations on everybody including and in particular America, China and India, these are the big emitters now and in the future. It is important we take measures here in Britain to give leadership in this debate but there is absolutely no point in us stopping people taking cheap flights in Britain if everywhere else they are taking cheap flights.
Will Hutton:
Would you include and press for the inclusion of European airlines in the European carbon trading emissions system which would make them have to pay for the carbon and raise fares on cheap flights?
Prime Minister:
What we have said so far on this is that we believe in the next round of this that aviation should be included. Exactly how and on what basis you price it is an open question, but it is a big debate in Europe, there are many different voices.
Will Hutton:
Is the British government going to push for the inclusion of airlines in the carbon trading system?
Prime Minister:
We already are doing that when the system develops in the years to come, what we haven’t yet worked out is exactly how you would do this and what the right mechanisms are. But aviation emissions are obviously going to be a major part of emissions going forward, all I am saying is this will always be a balance between the measures that you take here to give leadership and not, to put it quite bluntly, clobbering your own people when you are not part of a wider system in which everyone else is participating. But what is the good news on this? The good news on this is that I think the international climate, I was going to say, international climate on this has changed. I think people now understand this is a major issue, I think the Stern report, I have been amazed at the number of world leaders that have raised this specifically with me and said this is obviously a major and important piece of work. And the key thing is this process we began last year when Britain had the Presidency of the G8 where we put the countries and we added to that the five others, that is India, Brazil, China, South Africa and Mexico, and if we can get agreement in that framework that is a big, big step forward.
Will Hutton:
What about roads and transport, there are a number of questions just staying on transport, a number of people concerned about the introducing of road pricing, congestion charging. Here is Alan Walsh: "What measures will the government adopt to ensure that our roads don’t become the preserve of the well off?"
Prime Minister:
Well again I think this is an indication of where the tensions are in this because people will feel well if you are moving to greater taxation in respect of transport is it the poorer people that end up losing out? Now what we have tried to do, and I think this is true with the congestion charge as well, is probably tax more the more expensive and certainly the cars that consume more fuel. I think in time to come road pricing is where this debate will move to. I think once the technology is available I think, again not just here but round the world, people will try and combine the concept of protecting the environment with how you manage your transport.
Will Hutton:
But compensating the poorer for the use of roads, they won’t be able to pay these high tolls.
Prime Minister:
Well that is where I think you need to, you know in any system that you have got of road pricing or indeed of taxing vehicles now, we already have got a differentiated system that tends to tax the larger cars that consume more fuel than the smaller ones. And I think there are issues there to do with poverty, there are also issues to do with how you use the taxation system to incentivise green cars. You know for example one of the things we are looking at at the moment is things like biodiesel and so on, how you give greater incentives to people to use these types of more environmentally beneficial fuel.
Anne McElvoy:
I want to bring up something else Prime Minister and it is an email from David Stocker, it is about the religious hatred measures that the government has introduced and apparently wants to go further on. "For millions of atheists like myself all religions are based on nothing but fairy stories. Why should those who consciously choose to believe receive protection in law from criticism that challenges or denigrates their belief", and I think that relates to comments by Ministers in the wake of the BNP leader’s vindication in the courts that you could say that you hated a religion if you so choose?
Prime Minister:
I think that I actually, although I am not an atheist I have some sympathy with what he is saying in the sense that I think we have got to proceed with care here. Religious hatred is actually you are inciting something that is going to be harmful to the community. I think you have got to draw a very clear distinction between that and someone saying I don’t like religion, I disagree with people, and I dislike this particular religion even. I think you have got to be very careful of getting into a situation where you are actually stopping people expressing what are perfectly legitimate views about whether religion is a good way of life or not. I think there is a big difference though between that and inciting religious hatred which is an attempt, and obviously these are matters of judgment in each individual case, but which is an attempt for example to stir up hatred say against Muslims, or against Jews, or against Christians.
Anne McElvoy:
The Chancellor said he would like to see the law tightened up, it seems that you don’t quite share that view.
Prime Minister:
I don’t think he was saying that, I think he was saying look in the wake of a verdict such as this it is important then to go back and have a look at it again, make sure there aren’t loopholes that are being used. On the other hand I think this is an area where you should always proceed with care.
Will Hutton:
A big piece of legislation is going to be on pensions in the next parliament and that was obviously in The Queen’s speech. There are a number of emails on the principle of the compensation for those occupational pensions that went bust, there has been Ann King, Frank Bramley, Mike Biggs, Michael Marsden, Dave Allen. But one here from Kenneth Malloy which quite simply says, and they are all in the same spirit: "Why doesn’t the government put in place a proper compensation package as recommended by the Pensions Ombudsman and by the Parliamentary Administration Select Committee for the 125,000 people who have lost their pensions. You talk about it, there are warm words but action on the ground is not coming through."
Prime Minister:
Well we have put in place a scheme and we are paying out hundreds of millions of pounds under it. The trouble with the Ombudsman’s decision is that it is an enormous cost. We would have to be stepping in, and I can’t remember exactly what the figure is, but it is billions, and you know it is not my money, it is the government’s money and we have to take it from somewhere. And so we actually have introduced a scheme which is the first time any government has ever done this which I think will compensate people over a particular age as they near retirement. It is true and it is deeply unfortunate that there will be people left out of that scheme, but it is perfectly simple, it would be great to do it but the cost is phenomenal and you know you can’t simply ignore that consideration.
Will Hutton:
But what the emailers say is that actually although the headline cost is high the actual cost is up to a quarter of that, and even within the framework that is devised people are complaining, and in the spirit of this email exchange to No 10, we know these emails have been invited, and here is one, this man has waited for 6 years to learn what the settlement is going to be. At the moment he is 65 and doesn’t know, colleagues have retired without knowing, so that even within the framework of the policy people are ignorant about what their payout is likely to be.
Prime Minister:
Right, that is a perfectly fair point but we have only just introduced the legislation and set the scheme up and we have actually now made it more generous than it was going to be. We will be paying out quite a lot of money, I can’t remember the exact amount but it is hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds. And he is right also in saying that these figures seem enormous but then they are spread over a significant period of time. However the trouble is even taking account of that, if we were literally to compensate up to 80 or 100% for all of those 125,000 people it is an awful lot of money. I can certainly find out for those people that have emailed in and get back to them on what is likely to happen and how quickly, I just don’t know the details offhand. But part of the delay has been that it took us a long time to get this agreed, a long time to get it off the ground and it will take some time to get the money out to people.
Anne McElvoy:
This is your last Queen’s Speech. An email from Oliver Camwell: "What has been your greatest disappointment in your time in office?"
Prime Minister:
You know I say it is a bit of a dangerous thing to talk about really.
Anne McElvoy:
Oh go on.
Prime Minister:
No, I sometimes say, it is like when people say what is your greatest mistake and I say that is for me to know and you to find out. But I think the only thing I have ever expressed frustration, to put it like this, I think the most difficult thing is the pace of change. You know the world changes very rapidly around us, you take decisions in government and then to actually drive that thing all the way down to the ground takes a long time and that can be frustrating.
Anne McElvoy:
Well thank you Prime Minister, that is all the time we have for the public questions. But just a quick follow up from each of us. Yesterday you spoke of a heavyweight and a big clunky fist who was going to succeed you as Prime Minister and knock out the opposition and win the next election. Did you mean Gordon Brown?
Prime Minister:
I thought you were going to get to that at some time during this interview and I have decided to say nothing more about it.
Anne McElvoy:
But is he the clunkiest fist around on the Labour benches?
Prime Minister:
Because … will say anything Anne, as you know.
Anne McElvoy:
But you said it yesterday, we didn’t bring it up, you did.
Prime Minister:
Yup, and people will always interpret these things but I think I have said all I want to say on it for the moment.
Will Hutton:
I have been struck going through these emails, there is an email here from a coroner, some of these are quite obscure but nonetheless they are important. Paul Mathews, Coroner for the City of London, just making the point that there has been some consultation but there is no mention of, there is even a draft Coroners Bill but there is no mention of it in The Queen’s speech. And other emails are about bus services where people are really concerned about the quality of bus services outside London, and again lots of consultation and talk but absolutely no manifestation of action. And then of course there was that exchange we had on the pension compensation. And there is a sense that the government wants to say it listens, there are extensive consultation procedures and there is a certain amount of frustration that has been ventilated in these emails about exactly no change, and in some sense you know we are going through this exercise but actually that will be no change either after it. What is your response to that?
Prime Minister:
I think my response is to say that you will always have things that you have still got to do and some things are more difficult to do than others, but if you take for example the pensions legislation that we are going to do, that is a huge thing that is going to happen, that is the long term future of pensions. If you look at the changes that are happening in the school system at the moment, it is a huge thing. You know climate change, this will be a different and new approach actually setting out in legislation what we are going to do. You know the Coroners Bill is something that we will return to in the course of the year but again there are issues to do with how we actually manage the reform process there, which is difficult.
Will Hutton:
But it matters to the people surprisingly.
Prime Minister:
Of course, absolutely, and bus travel certainly does matter and we will be publishing proposals on that in the months to come because the real complaints people have is that outside of London there is not sufficient regulation now.
Will Hutton:
A disaster. You know one or two emails here from a man in the north east of England giving in some detail his local bus services, and he is saying Prime Minister do something.
Prime Minister:
But I think people on that, I am not sure about the issue to do with coroners, and again I can get back to people on that, but on bus travel I think people will find that there are proposals done on that over the time to come. But you know one of the things that you learn about the job is that it is never done.
Will Hutton:
But it is expectations really Prime Minister. You said expectations are a degree of responsiveness, but then you find that actually because of the complexity of government or because there is not enough time in the legislative agenda or for whatever reason you can’t do it, you then get a disaffection about the political process and there it is in these emails.
Prime Minister:
Well sometimes you do and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you listen and you consult and you come forward with proposals and then you move forward on that basis, and as I say pensions is an example. I mean I have done a 180 degree turn on relinking the basic state pension with earnings, I said 10 years ago we weren’t going to do that, but we listened to people, we commissioned an independent report, we are now going to implement it.
Will Hutton:
Well we are out of time. On behalf of both of us thank you for taking part, and most of all I would like to thank the public who sent in over 500 emails that Anne and I have religiously gone through and we have tried to reflect the burden of your emails in your questions to the Prime Minister. So thank you.
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