Breakfast with Frost

On 25 January 2004, Sir David Frost interviewed the Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy MP.

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

Charles Kennedy MP

DAVID FROST: And now it's my pleasure to introduce Charles Kennedy, who is right here now - the third of our leaders that we've been talking to over the past three weeks. Good morning Charles.

CHARLES KENNEDY: A very good morning to you David.

DAVID FROST: Lots of the papers are saying that Michael Howard's success in taking the Conservatives to 40% is bad news particularly for the Liberal Democrats because they will slip back to 15% and it will be two party government again with you, as you've said on occasions, having to draw attention to yourselves and so on, but it's getting that attention that is the difficult thing.

Is it that sort of a crisis where you've got to really think of a new, come up with a new plan?

CHARLES KENNEDY: No, I mean there's no fundamental revision going on within our ranks whatsoever. We are sticking to the plot, to the strategy, which is to carry on building up the Liberal Democrats.

I think it's fair to say that the Conservatives have got a bit of a spring in their step but the prism of focus, the attention, as seen from Westminster, doesn't actually bear much resemblance to what's happening in the real world outside, where our support remains steady and consistent, in or around 20%, which is what it's been for the last year and a half or so; we're continuing to win council by-elections when real votes are cast by real people; and I think that on the big issues of the day - what you've been talking to Charles Clarke about, the Hutton inquiry coming up, the whole position vis-à-vis Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, the Liberal Democrats have got very distinct positions which resonate with people. So, no grounds for pessimism, but equally no grounds for complacency.

DAVID FROST: Very well put, yes. I've never heard any politician actually say "we are in favour, of course, of greater complacency" - they never admit that, like nobody ever says "the trouble with me is I just don't have a sense of humour" - that's something else they don't say.

CHARLES KENNEDY: Right.

DAVID FROST: Just, you mentioned the two subjects there -

CHARLES KENNEDY: I think that's one of the few criticisms that's not made of me, actually, as a matter of fact.

DAVID FROST: No, I think absolutely not. On tuition fees, you're going to vote against, obviously -

CHARLES KENNEDY: Absolutely so.

DAVID FROST: - and on Hutton, you expect what to happen?

CHARLES KENNEDY: Well -

DAVID FROST: Do you agree, incidentally, with what our paper reviewers were saying earlier on, they said basically the government will prevail on tuition fees and Michael White wasn't so sure what would happen with Hutton.

CHARLES KENNEDY: It's very difficult to know the arithmetic on tuition fees. There is obviously this quite significant - very significant - Labour rebellion, and I think that most people actually agree with our position, the Liberal Democrat position, which is that if you believe in education, education, education, then it should be funded out of general taxation. That is socially fair and it's also in the long term interests of the country.

So we will be voting accordingly and I hope this bill is defeated because I think that the scandalous level of debt that so many students find themselves now in is really working against their direct interests but against the long term interests of all of us, who depend on a well educated society.

DAVID FROST: But you would have a form of graduate tax, wouldn't you?

CHARLES KENNEDY: Oh yes, we've been - look what we've done as government ministers in Scotland - we have a scheme there where you don't have tuition fees, and you certainly don't have top up fees, that has been rejected by both the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party in government in Scotland. Now where there's a will there's a way, and what we say is -

DAVID FROST: But there's still - your payment comes through a sort of graduate tax in Scotland, doesn't it? I mean it's not as if it's free in Scotland.

CHARLES KENNEDY: Well what happens is that you only contribute once you are earning, once your level of earnings reaches a certain stage. Now that is perfectly fair and acceptable. What we've got under Tony Blair -

DAVID FROST: But that sounds like the Labour plan.

CHARLES KENNEDY: No, well it's not, certainly not like the Labour Party. What Tony Blair is proposing is that under his scheme, if passed, a graduate student coming out, earning £15,000 a year will have a combined top marginal tax rate of 42%. Now that is more than the Prime Minister himself pays in terms of his top marginal rate of tax - and therefore isn't it surely fair that people earning in excess of £100,000 a year for every pound above that £100,000 the top marginal rate goes from 40 pence to 50 pence.

DAVID FROST: Yes, I just wanted to make the point -

CHARLES KENNEDY: ... student's don't have to go down the Charles Clarke, Tony Blair, way -

DAVID FROST: But graduate students in Scotland do end up with a graduate tax bill, albeit, to give a more pretentious wording and so on, I mean they still have to pay a bill in Scotland, they don't get it for nothing.

CHARLES KENNEDY: Yes, but just look at the figures, and people are voting with their feet. The level of application for Scottish universities is going up disproportionately well compared with England and that can only be because of the mounting debt burden that students know they've going to have to face. Now we think that's wrong. You also asked me about Hutton, which is the other issue, obviously, of the week coming up.

I suspect that Lord Hutton - and obviously it's conjecture at this stage, none of us have seen his report, we haven't been privy to it - I suspect that he will have legitimate criticisms to make of the government and the way in which they went about the decisions associated with Dr Kelly's death. I think he will probably be quite critical of the BBC. But what Lord Hutton, depending on how he interprets his remit, will not be able to do is to get into the fundamental issue, and the fundamental issue is: were we sold a pup?

Was this country taken into that war in Iraq on a dodgy basis. And the more that we see the absence of weapons of mass destruction, the more we see both the Prime Minister and the President of the United States qualify what it is that they think the Iraq Survey Group may or may not uncover. I think the more that the legitimate questions that we were asking, the Conservatives did not ask at the time, come into focus.

DAVID FROST: But at the same time as you said, you think, you said on several occasions, you think Tony Blair, you don't doubt his sincerity, so that you would say that he made a gigantic error rather than deliberating selling you a pup - to continue the doggie theme we've had this morning - not selling a pup but mistaken - mistaken judgement, that's what you're accusing him of, isn't it?

CHARLES KENNEDY: Yes, I question the Prime Minister's judgement on the issue. And I think that if you could replay history, over the past 12 or 15 months, I do not think that the House of Commons would have voted on the basis that it did at the time for this particular conflict in Iraq without the sanction of the United Nations. I think that Dr Blix and the weapons inspectors of that period should have been given more time.

DAVID FROST: At the same time there's no doubt that Iraq is a better place for Saddam Hussein having been ousted.

CHARLES KENNEDY: We're all pleased to see the back of Saddam Hussein, who is the most baleful presence in the world's stage and he terrified and acted in a tyrannical way over his own people - yes, absolutely.

But, it's still a very, very dangerous place and when you look at the whole process of the Middle East conflict and the difficulties there, we're not hearing very much, so far, in the course of this presidential campaign about what's happened to the road map, for example. We need to get back to those fundamentals and unfortunately I fear that the position in Iraq deeply dangerous and deeply worrying as it remains, is a barrier to making the kind of progress that we want to see.

DAVID FROST: Yes, although they would claim - President Bush and Tony Blair - that it has helped the reactions of Libya, Iran and North Korea, That they have seen, got the message and they seem to be cooperating more than they were. That's what they'd say.

CHARLES KENNEDY: They would argue that, and in so far as rogue states - if I can use that term - begin to take the measure of global opinion, that is a good thing. But I don't think that you can draw cause and effect from the, the adventurism that we undertook in Iraq with the Americans, into reading a better world order as a result.

DAVID FROST: You've had a crisis of your own this week - the Jenny Tonge affair - and you came to the decision that in fact she should be removed from her shadow cabinet post.

CHARLES KENNEDY: Yes.

DAVID FROST: For what she said about Palestine. The, for instance, the Express, for instance, they say that you should have gone further.

They say "Charles Kennedy is distancing the party from her comments, he should go further and expel her - there is no excuse for her disgraceful support for Palestinian suicide bombers." Do you think you should have gone further?

CHARLES KENNEDY: No. Obviously I do not and I notice I'm being criticised from one end of the political spectrum, saying that I'm being a liberal -

DAVID FROST: Yes. Well that's what I was then going to go on to.

CHARLES KENNEDY: Yes.

DAVID FROST: Call yourself a Liberal, Mr Kennedy. Charles Kennedy should be ashamed of himself. He should discipline her but should ... a terrible mistake, so we have three policies there, and you took the middle one.

CHARLES KENNEDY: I took the correct decision. And the correct decision was quite simply that if you're in an elected position, a position of responsibility, then even to convey the perception that somehow there is an ethical defence to be made of somebody who wants to be a suicide bomber is simply not acceptable and there can be no formal role for somebody who has given voice to such a view on behalf of a national political party - and I think that would be true of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party as well.

DAVID FROST: They would take the same decision.

CHARLES KENNEDY: I would think that they probably would and they would be right to. And I've noticed over the course of the weekend that politicians from other parties have gone on record as saying that they felt I took the right decision and that's certainly my view.

DAVID FROST: And looking ahead, how do you see the immediate future - well let me make on specific immediate future point - how do you think British politics will be at the end of this week.

CHARLES KENNEDY: A week is a long time in politics, as the man once said.

DAVID FROST: Who said that?

CHARLES KENNEDY: Mr Wilson.

DAVID FROST: Good Mr Wilson, yes.

CHARLES KENNEDY: I think that at the end of this week what we will have seen is a further erosion in terms of public credibility and trust, both for the Prime Minister and the government. But equally I think that the veneer of plausibility that has attached itself over recent weeks to Michael Howard and the leadership of the Conservative Party will also be shown to be rather threadbare.

Because at the end of the day, on the great defining issue of this past year in politics, the Conservatives were the principle cheerleaders for a war which is looking extremely dubious to justify, and that's where the voice of the Liberal Democrats needs to be heard.

DAVID FROST: And if, and if there is a situation in which they lose on tuition fees and there is a confidence vote, how would you behave as a party in that confidence vote? Would you vote against?

CHARLES KENNEDY: Well we certainly don't feel confidence in the government because we fundamentally disagree with their foreign policy, the principle tenet of their foreign policy at the moment, and we are at odds with them over their domestic issues - their domestic policies, not least top up fees. So there's no question as to what an opposition party would do in those circumstances - we will vote against the government.

DAVID FROST: Do you mean an opposition party would do that anyway, but in this case you've got some good reasons.

CHARLES KENNEDY: I think we've got fundamental reasons, and I think that what people are looking for from politics in this country at the moment is a more constructive approach, a more coherent approach than we're getting from the government, and they actually want to see their principles and priorities reflected in terms of public policy and we're the party that is arguing openly and honestly for that approach.

DAVID FROST: And do you in fact support the government target of 50 per cent, or do you share the - in higher education - or do you share the doubts about that of Michael Howard?

CHARLES KENNEDY: I think it's an arbitrary figure - 50% why not 40%, why not 60%. I think that trying to run public policy on an issue like education - it would be equally true of crime and policing, it would be equally true of transport, it would be equally true of health - picking an arbitrary figure and then somehow centrally setting this, and trying to get everybody locally to adjust to it, doesn't actually work, and this government is over-obsessed with central control and that's something we need to get away from.

DAVID FROST: We'll take a break there and go over to news control.

[NEWS]

DAVID FROST: Of course the universities say that they're going to need over the next few years an extra ten billion. If it wasn't coming from in fact top up fees, in part or whatever, how would you find a figure like that.

CHARLES KENNEDY: Well what we've argued is that the top rate of income taxpayers in this country, people in excess of £100,000 a year income, for every pound above that 100,000 pounds the top marginal rate of tax should go from 40p to 50p -

DAVID FROST: But that would raise -

CHARLES KENNEDY: And that would - that would raise more, more than what the government's own proposals will put into the universities, and it will raise it year on year. So you can get halfway immediately. Halfway, starting this year, if you went through our proposals rather than what Tony Blair's scheme -

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