Conservative leadership defended

On 19 October 2003, Sir David Frost interviewed the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin MP

Please note "BBC Breakfast with Frost" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin MP

DAVID FROST: Well it doesn't seem to be getting any easier for the beleaguered Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith who has dismissed his colleagues as cowards in the shadows has now stopped the sniping and today's papers might have made for very comfortable reading around the Duncan Smith breakfast table this morning.

Well one man who's stood by his leader, and come out with some controversial new policy initiatives is the Shadow Home Secretary, Oliver Letwin. He joins me now, live from Somerset. Good morning Oliver.

OLIVER LETWIN: Good morning, actually it's Dorset.

DAVID FROST: Is it, oh they told me, well in that case let's be quite clear about that. It's Dorset, and those people who allege it's anywhere else must be found and dealt with.

OLIVER LETWIN: That's right.

DAVID FROST: Very good. Now, we have a situation with the papers today, you will have seen the headlines here, plot to ditch IDS by time of Queen's speech. We saw that one earlier on. And all through the papers news of turmoil in the Tory party. It can't go on can it?

OLIVER LETWIN: And I don't think it will. I think what will happen is that a little while from now when Sir Philip Moore clears Iain, all this will drop away. I mean it makes of course a tremendous story so it keeps running for the time being. But it will go away.

And I think what will come out under it is the policy agenda that we put forward in Blackpool, and the surprising thing is that this last Tory Conference which was marred by all this stuff about leadership, and obviously was very frustrating for those of us that were working with Iain to get the policy agenda across. Nevertheless actually, for reasons

I don't yet quite understand, it seems to have been the first time that people did get to hear about the policy agenda, the effort to get the public services out.

DAVID FROST: Yes, but just a minute there Oliver. The Betsygate is just an additional problem for the Tory party, it won't be solved if that goes away and he's found to be completely above board because all these things were being said before and if we take Sir Patrick Cormack, he says that Iain should go for a confidence vote, seize the initiative, because things can't go on like this. He says it would be completely dishonest to say he has the united support of a united party in parliament.

OLIVER LETWIN: Well, no leader ever has 100% support from everyone all the time. The Prime Minister has not only a contender in Mr. Brown as we understand, but a hugely divided party but the fact is that what matter is whether the party as a whole is willing to move forward under the leader. And I think once all this stuff goes away we will be seen to be willing to move forward.

I mean, it's very difficult to lead the Conservative party if it doesn't want to be led. But I think there's a huge enthusiasm out there in the country amongst active Conservatives, to get on with this agenda because it is the most radical thing we've put forward for the last decade. It's the first time that we've been able to say we have a real alternative to New Labour. We've understood what they're up to.

We can see that they're trying to run the public services from on top through bureaucratic control. And we're seeing that the money is being wasted. And we're offering a real alternative which is turning the public services round, making them face the customers, let the customers have some power.

Trust the people, and then we might actually get a fair deal for people because we might make this huge amount of money that's going into health and education and policing and so on, absolutely right, actually work, actually produce hospitals that people can get into quickly, and good schools and actually have police on the streets.

These are the things which matter to people and we've now got an agenda which says give patients a passport, let them choose the hospital of their choice. Give parents a schools passport so they can choose the school of their choice. Let's give democracy to people so they can get the police back on the streets. There are ...

DAVID FROST: Yes I mean I understand why you move on as quickly as you can from the current mess because I would do the same in your position. But the truth of the matter is the thing that matters to people more than any of the things you've just said, I hear it on all sides, people say how can we trust the Conservatives to run the country when they're making such a total fist of running themselves, something they ought to able to do but they're all rowing, etc. etc. How can we trust the Conservatives to run the country when they can't run themselves?

OLIVER LETWIN: Well, we have to do better than we've done in the past few weeks, I don't deny that. But actually we're not all bad those of us in the Shadow Cabinet who've been working with Iain and are supporting Iain, have brought forward this policy agenda really believe in it. And you know, I think 18 months from now or whenever it is, when there is a general election, people will really ask themselves the serious question.

Do we want to go on with the policies that the government has been following? Well they've genuinely tried to make the public services better, they haven't tried just to raise taxes without getting anywhere.

Or do we want to have a group of people who really have a different idea about how the public services might actually work, and who might be able to avoid just going on raising taxes year by year and not producing anything for it.

I think that's what the next election will actually be about, and I hope we can keep people focused on that now, even with all these noises off, because it's what really counts. It's how the country is run, the direction in which it goes.

DAVID FROST: But as we know Oliver, they always say that in mid-term the opposition has to be ten points ahead in order to have a chance at the next election as people always go back towards the government. And now we've got this very unfair situation whereby, as we know, in order to have an equal number of seats with Labour, the Tories actually have to be six points ahead in order to be level on seats. So that's a need from today's 34-34 you've got to gain 16 points.

OLIVER LETWIN: Everyone always tells us that there's some hurdle we haven't crossed. Two years ago we were, I don't know. 20-odd points behind, I don't exactly remember the figure, about 20 points behind in the polls. Everyone said that was impossible. Iain's got us to the position where, depending on the poll you take, and you say 34-34 in one poll today. It was 38-33 in our favour a few days ago.

We're level pegging, with some polls ahead, some polls slightly behind but we're roughly speaking in the same position as the Labour government now that's not good enough but it's a massive improvement on two years ago, partly because the government has lost the trust of the people, partly because people do now see I think the glimmering of a genuine alternative or a different way of running public services to make them better. A prospect of lower rather than higher taxes. And over 18 months we've now got to make huge progress.

It's not the normal position where the government just managed to get into power and in mid-term it has troubles and then as you say, swings back. What's happened is the government's had an affect, a six-year honeymoon from the British people, but I think the honeymoon's run out.

And now we're in the question, do people want a divorce. And, you know, we are putting ourselves forward as a new possibility. And that's a really tremendously encouraging thing for those of us that sought to get a policy programme together, and not really been terribly successful at doing that over the last ten years, until the last two. And now we really have got something to give ...

DAVID FROST: Well, in that field of, Oliver, of policies and particularly your own policies. Of course the idea of having an island where asylum seekers could be processed up to a maximum of 20,000 accepted, has caught people's imagination. Some thought it was inventive, some thought it was absolutely barmy, and so on. But have you found your island yet, and is it going to be within the UK's territory, or is it going to be, as some people say, in Somalia, Afghanistan or St. Helena? Does it have to be within the UK or outside the UK?

OLIVER LETWIN: Oh it needs to be outside. And no of course I'm not going to go round the world and negotiate with foreign governments until unless we're in government, because you can't do that rationally, no foreign government's going to negotiate with you on that basis.

The Australians use Nauru and Papua New Guinea. It gives you an idea of the sort of places that could be used and I think what's important is to understand the point of the policy and why it isn't just me, but actually David Blunkett also has been toying with this. The difference between us is that I'm serious about it.

Because I don't believe that the changes he's made to the asylum system so far are going to get it under control. But the point that both David Blunkett and I have in mind, and I think almost everyone in this country actually sees it as a point, is that unless you deter people who are economic migrants from using the asylum system as a way round immigration control, you will never get the whole system back under control. You won't ever be able to solve the problem which is currently costing us about £1800 million a year of taxpayers' money.

Now I desperately want to get the immigration system back under control because I want public confidence in immigration and I very much want to save that money so I can spend it on the 40,000 extra police we're committed to. That means we have to provide a deterrent and that's what we're talking about - making the asylum application process something which people do if they are refugees but which isn't worthwhile for people who are seeking a way round the immigration rules. What happens at the moment is they arrive in Britain, they claim asylum if they are economic migrants who are apprehended as illegal immigrants.

And then they can get lost in this tremendously ill-organised system which is of course unfair on the refugees, the genuine refugees, and unfair on those who are going through the ordinary immigration process. And it's to no-ones benefit. So we have to create a system that's watertight and is humane and decent and properly organised and gets refugees quickly into this country and makes sure that no one uses that asylum system as a way round the immigration controls.

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