It's along post, but David Cameron answers questions from the readers of
the Telegraph:
Obviously, you were astonished by the detail of abuse of MPs’ expenses. But you would have been aware of the widespread practise of claiming allowances that were not justified. Why did you support this system until the Telegraph exposed it?
John Hodgeman,London
What I did at the beginning of 2008 was the right to know form which was a really big attempt to reform the system, particularly for the future. I would accept that the problem with the right to know form was it didn’t deal with the years 2004-08 but it absolutely dealt with the future. It meant that for the future Tory MPs started doing this a year ago way before the HoC, had to set out how many people they employed, whether any were family members, what they claimed under the different headings, broken down into relatively small numbers so everyonecould see what they were claiming for. One of the reasons for doing that was to effectively put a stop to claims that were within the rules but without common sense and at the same time we had a three line whip on an opposition motion. Something never done before on a HoC matter, to get rid of the John Lewis list and to ban furniture claims. So I don’t accept that I did nothing. I would say that I was the first out of the box on this but I do accept that what I was doing was addressing the future. The past,the FoI act was always going to take care of and we supported the FoI process but I thought the most important thing was to sort out the future. But I have been genuinely shocked by the stuff that people have claimed. I didn’t know it was legal and didn’t think it would cross people’s minds.
I’m ashamed by what’s happened.There are the things that are the sort of fastidiousness of ministers hiring accountants to fill in their tax returnsand getting the tax payer to pay for it. That never occurred to me that people would or could do that. But also, like others, the swimmingpools, the moats, the duck ponds.The lack of common sense and reasonableness has been shocking. Why didn’t we know more about this? I did over a year ago put in place something that would help sort it out for the future.
Which is most important to you: your country and its people or your party?
RobinGaskell, Hartford,Cheshire
Country comes before party everytime. I say to MPs when you get into parliament remember you must vote according to your conscience and then your view of the national interest and your view of your constituents interests and then your party.That is the way it should go. Country always comes first. One of my great Conservative heroes, Robert Peel, didn’t do a lot for the Conservative party but he did a lot for the country.
What are the moral principles that shape Conservative policies?
Roger Steare, Seveonoaks
That we have obligations to others. That we should look to working together with other people.We should try to be responsible in what we do for ourselves and ou rfamilies and our communities and our country and we should focus on those responsibilities rather than always thinking about the responsibility of the state. I think the most important word in Conservatism is responsibility. Yes, we’re a party of freedom and we believe in setting people free to make choices but at heart the strong society that we believe in is delivered by people acting responsibly. That’s why in a way this scandal is so damaging because how can we talk about the need for responsibility in the economy or in society when politicians have been so irresponsible.That’s why we have to get our own house in order.
In order to persuade young people to vote Conservative it’s essential to lose the image of the party being of the rich and privileged. Will you actively deter these types from standing in the next election in the seats that have become vacant and would you consider keeping such figures as Osborne in the background at least until after the election?
Jane O’Nions, Sevenoaks
The Conservative party is a party that believes in meritocracy and opportunity,that believes that talent should be rewarded. I appoint people according to their talent. If you take Osborne or Letwin they hold their positions in the cabinet because of their talent. A problem the party has had is we haven’t been open enough to all of the talent in all of the country.Yes, I have battered the selection process of candidates many times and changed the rules and introduced open primaries and things like that in order to bring in more talent. And one of the most important founding principles of the Conservative party is that we area one nation party, we do not believe in the two nations of the rich and the poor.As a one nation party we have to work harder to get people from every different background into the party. This should be anopportunity to do that.
The complacency of sitting MPs in safe seats was a major factor leading to the expenses scandal.The Conservative party has been using open primaries in some areas. Will you extend these to all constituencies in the future, including those with a sitting Tory MP, so that ordinary voters can choose who their MP will be everytime they vote Conservative?
Moshin Khan, Oxford
I want more open primaries. We’ve had them in many constituencies. We also had the largest open primary for the mayor of London candidate for which they chose Boris. I’m in favour of open primaries.There are very simple procedures for anyone who wants to run for selection in a sitting MP's seat. 10% or 200 have to ask for it, whichever is the smaller number. It’s up to associations if they want to do that. Primaries should become much more relevant in selections. I don’t say make it universal because I’m not sure that would be the right approach in every case but I’d like to see many more. It’s not just enough to open up the system, you’ve got to get more people into the system. You’ve got to make sure that people coming on to the candidates list are talented, varied, that there are women and ethnic minorities. It’s not enough just to open the door and say we’re meritocratic, come in. If all anyone sees are white middle aged male faces they don’t find it very attractive to come in. You have to work quite hard. Positive action rather than positive discrimination to get people to come in.
You have expressed a wish to see ‘ordinary people’ offering themselves for selection to stand for election as MPs.How do you define ‘ordinary people’ and what qualities do you see as essential in MPs if we are to renew the political life of the country?
Anne Pitt-Payne, Aylesbury, Bucks
I think there are some core essentials that anyone wanting to be an MP has to have which is a belief in public service, a belief in the power of politics to bring real change. If you don’t believe in those things there’s not much point in doing it. What I hope you will get and I don’t like using the phrase ‘ordinarypeople’ but what I hope we will get is people from different backgrounds and experiences to bring into the Commons greater variety. There aren’t enough people in the Commons with a small business background.There’s a shortage of people who really understand agriculture and farming.There aren’t enough people on the Conservative side who have worked in some of the key public services. I’d like to see people who’ve been successful head teachers. There are a variety of experiences you want to bring to bear to parliament but the core has got to be a belief in public service and that politics can change things.
People are so disillusioned with politics that it’s difficult at a local level to interest people in participating but this is where real party strength comes from. What can be done to make party membership more relevant to ordinary people?
Dorothy Roberts, Wellington,Telford
It’s a very good question. How do you make party membership relevant? Well, being very clear what powers the party members have.They elect the leader, they play a big role in electing local candidates, they can have a say on policy, they can be involved in campaigns. I think the party has a lot to learn from other membership organisations that are more successful than us. The National Trust, RSPCA, there are many organisations that are better at looking after their members than we are.I think we have to learn from that.The other thing is to strengthen local government. If we devolve power from Westminster to local government I think you’ll get more people of more quality who want to get involved in local government and that will bring people into the party in that way.
What steps will you take in order to restore the country’s confidence not only in its parliament but also in the capabilities of individual members of that Parliament even though they may recently have been found guilty of excessive greed?
Richard Fontes, Wrexham
It’s not going to be easy because this has been a big shock to the political system..You can’t just wave a magic wand and think everything’s going to be fine. We’re going to have to rebuild that confidence brick by brick. One other frustrations people have with parliament and their MPs is that ‘we send you to parliament, the whips get control, you all just vote the same way, the bell goes, everyone troops through the voting lobbies’. Where’s the individuality? Where’s the conscience voting? Where’s the free voting, the argument, debate,discussion? Where’s the detailed scrutiny of legislation. We need to give parliament more independence from the executive, give MPs the opportunity for greater independence, make sure there’s a different career path to just being a minister and climbing the greasy pole.That’s being a legislator, a scrutineer, someone who brings the government to account.That’s why you’ve got to get the select committees out of the hands of the whips and elect the chairman and the members of the committees so people can start seeing individual legislators as people with power and influence and a role rather than seeing parliament as some giant sausage machine that just churns out legislation that hasn’t been scrutinised properly.
How could we ensure that in the future those that we elect actually have a sound, a genuine, understanding of what serving the community means?
Margaret Scott, Stevenage
If you look at parliament at the moment of the three things it’s meant to do it does one well and two pretty badly. The one it does well is individual MPs are effective at standing up for their local area. What it does badly is scrutinise legislation badly and call the government to account fairly badly.So we need to focus on those two other roles. I also think we will build confidence in parliament by making it smaller and less expensive. 650 MPs is too many and part of the process of rebuilding trust is to show everyone else that in parliament we do what we’re asking everyone else to do which is do more for less.
Many MPs in seeking to explain their expense claims have stated that as a salary increase could not be justified to the public they should inflate their expenses accordingly. Would Mr Cameron agree that these actions were effectively a conspiracy to defraud the Public and that anyone party to this conspiracy should face the full force of theLaw?
Jeffrey Burnman, Stevenage
You’ve got to separate two things.Was there a conspiracy by all parties to hold back the pay but increase the allowances? Yes, there was.There’s no doubt. You can go back to the 70s and 80s. It shouldn’t have happened but it did. Point two is if people have actually broken the law in claiming expenses, like mortgage payment for mortgages that don’t exist, should they be subject to the full force of the law. Yes, of course they should. I’ve said it’s not for me to call in the police but the police know what the law is and if they feel it’s been broken they should be able to look at that without fear or favour.
Why should the electorate have confidence in your ability to reform when you commend those who have brought the house into disrepute. I refer to your comments following the proposed resignation of the Wintertons thanking them for their ‘service, energy and commitment’.
Tom Moore, Newcastle
In the case of the Wintertons I’ve said what I’ve said in the past about their expense claims and I don’t go bac kon that but you also have to look at the fact that they were servants of the House of Commons. He was the select committee chairman of a very effective health committee. He was on the Speaker's panel. She played all sorts of roles on the front bench.They have provided a ot of public service in their parliamentary lives and I’m a great believer in the value of politeness. When people stand down from parliament after a long career when they have contributed things then it’s polite to say so
Why should members who have so blatantly departed from the terms of the Green Book be considered as anything less than benefit cheats yet allowed to continue in post, drawing theirallowances etc until the next election?
Jim Buckingham, Nuneaton,Warwickshire
People have actually broken the rules and the rules are pretty rubbish rules and the Green Book is a pretty rubbishy Green Book. But the people who have broken the rules should be subject to the full force of the system that’s already in place.The parliamentary commissioner for standards, the standards and privileges committee and as is the case with Derek Conway was excluded from the Commons and had his pay reduced. Anyone who breaks the rules there are already those sanctions in place. The difficult thing we’ve been grasping with is what do you do with people who behaved in a way that wasn’t right but who didn’t break the rules.As far as I can see I’m the only party leader who’s actually put in place a system to do something about that. Which is this scrutiny panel and when you see how much is going to be paid back by how many people I think you will see there’s been a very rigorous process to deal with a system that’s fundamentally broken.
You have in the past described yourself as the ‘heir to Blair’. How can voters be sure that you have not inherited Blair’s tendency to promise to empower the people while in opposition, only to ignore that promise once in power?
John Gordon, Datchworth Green,Hertfordshire
I would say you can judge by some of the actions I did in the case of theLondon mayoralty, open it up to all Londoners irrespective of their party. We have had a lot of open primaries where the party has given up power. If you look at the things I said in that speech this week, many of them I said in my leadership campaign in 2005 about greater independence for select and standing committees and parliament having more control of its timetable and all the rest of it and to me a part of being a Conservative is wanting to win power in order to give it away. That may sound odd but that is actually what I believe.
Would you please say what measures you would put in place to ensure that proposed laws are a) better drafted and b)properly debated before being enacted?
Julian Lea Jones, Bristol
The most important thing is to give the HoC more control over its timetable and to make sure that we don’t have these automatic guillotines for bills. Right now what happens is a new bill arrives, we immediately have a programme motion which means we set out the timetable for debate even before we’ve debated the bill and in some cases this means that whole clauses will actually never get debated on the floor of the House of Commons. It is really disgraceful so you have to give the House more control of its timetable, you have to have many fewer of these programme motions, far fewer guillotines and also I think when the bill goes into a standing committee you should by and large take the party whips off and then bring it back to the House. Of course if it’s been changed so it’s no longer what was in the manifesto then the government may want to change it back but they’d have to explain that openly. So, far better scrutiny, far more detailed scrutiny and making sure that committee stage really means something. Stop pretending that passing laws equals making progress. One of the problems with this government has been its whole programme on how macho it is at thrusting laws through parliament. If we’ve learnt anything from the last ten years it’s that 54 criminal justice bills don't make us a safer country.
Businesses are suffocating under red tape and the country has become a nanny state. What assurances can he give that instead of adding more laws he will actively start dismantling a lot of these ridiculous rules and regulations?
John Cristal, Crowborough, East Sussex
Absolutely.We should try and limit the laws that we do pass and look at things like regulatory budgets where you say to a department ‘your regulation costs £100M, next year it’s got to cost £90M, then £80M, then £70M'. So you start to hack away at regulations rather than trying to pass more. When you look at the amount of regulation that comes from Brussels a lot of this you’ve got to stop at source. I was at an agricultural show yesterday. The electronic tracking of sheep is going to cost the British farmers a vast amount of money. It’s going to improve our animal welfare by zero. It’s a complete waste of money. We’ve got the biggest flock of sheep in Europe but what has ourgovernment done to stop this coming? Nothing. They should have stopped it. So it means you’ve got to be prepared to say no and actually stamp on things at the moment at which they’re suggested.
As a former member of the Armed Forces, I’d like to ask Mr Cameron if he would endorse the provision of state-owned Parliamentary accommodation for MPs, instead of a second homeallowance? The nominal cost of this would be paid for out of their own salary as is the case with service accommodation in the Armed Force.
Stuart Seear, Newlyn, Cornwall
We’ve got to improve the Armed Forces' accommodation. I don’t think this idea of state-owned accommodation for MPs is a good one. The problem to me is this. A lot of MPs try to keep our family together as we move between the constituency and Westminster.The old fashioned idea that you leave your husband or wife at home while you’re up in parliament, I don’t think that’s a good way to keep family life together.
Would Mr Cameron be wiling to call a referendum on the UK remaining in the EU and if the majority was against would he withdraw our membership?
Richard Youens, Rushall Pewsey
I support our membership of the EU. I want us to change the EU so I don’t support an in/out referendum. I don’t think it’s right for Britain and I don’t think it’s what the country’s after. I think the country does though want a referendum on the EU constitution which they were promised by all their political parties and the best way to get it is to vote Conservative on 4th une and put the maximum pressure on Brown to keep to his promise.
Would it be possible to submit the,say, five major programmes in a manifesto for an online referendum to confirm if the goals have been achieved before the following general election? Failure of two or more would force a general election.Past goals might have included, say, an effective immigration control programme or referendum on the LisbonTreaty.
Jeremy Burton, Shurlock Row, Berks
Intriguing question. We live in a representative democracy where we elect a parliament and a government to govern, to make tough decisions, to get on with the business of government and then to ask at the end of a parliament ‘do you want us to continue or do you want to chuck us out’. think that should be the core of our system. Can we do more in terms of engaging people? Yes, do we want to have local initiatives so people in Sherlock Row want to vote on whether they want a leisure centre or a bypass? Yes, fine. But I’m not sure that that proposal as set out by your reader would work as well as your reader thinks.
Why should the public vote for anyone in the local or MEP elections next month if members of all three main parties are caught up in the expenses scandal?
Tim Hawkins, Doncaster
People should vote in the European elections for parties that they think represent their views inEurope.That is what these elections are really about. If you want the referendum then Conservatives are the biggest party promising a referendum, that’s a reason to vote Conservative. If you want MEPs in Brussels that are going to fight regulations that hit our farmers and fight regulations that hit businesses and that are going to stand up for Britain, that’s a reason to vote for a Conservative MEP. I know people are wanting to kick the major parties and vote for the minor parties but I would say: UKIP said lend us your vote five years ago and what have you had from UKIP. They voted to allow Spanish fishing vessels into British fishing waters. They’ve been a completely useless set of MEPs.
You have promised to ‘give serious thought’ to the possibility of fixed-term parliaments. Any sensible observer will recognise this as a slippery form of words, a traditional politician’s ploy. As a politician now professedly committed to transferring power to the powerless, will you give an open undertaking that, if you come to power, you will establish a Royal Commission on electoral and parliamentary reform and submit its proposals to a referendum?
Dr H P Hughes, Cambridge
No I don’t think that’s the right answer. Royal Commissions take minutes and last for years. I don’t think we’ve got that long to sort out our political system. The test should be for each proposal: does it pass power from the powerful to the powerless. In my view electoral reform, proportional representation, fails that test because you end up with a system that leads to more coalitions, more back room deals and you suddenly find the governments determined not by the voter but by the party leaders in smoke filled rooms. Oneof the beauties of our system is that you can kick a government out, you can get change through our general elections and I don’t want to change that. Fixed term parliaments, the arguments are getting stronger because we should be trying to reduce the power of the executive and increase the power of parliament. The only problem, and I want to be consistent here as I’ve been calling for an election ever since Brown took over because I didn’t think he had a mandate, is with changing a PM half way through a parliament when the previous one had said he’d serve a full term.
Why has the Conservative party failed to coherently articulate its vision for the future of the British Armed Forces when it remains clear that we are both losing in Afghanistan and singularly ill prepared to meet future threats?
Henry Jordan, Oxford
The problem is we need to have a proper national security-led strategic defence review and it is quite difficult in opposition to do that because you don’t have all the information at your fingertips. But I think it’s the right answer for making sure that we match our defence procurement and armed forces to the tasks we want to set them.
If you become PM, what will you do for children?
Edward Buckton (aged 9), Burnham on Sea
Make sure that our education system gets the basics right. We’ve got to teach reading and writing in a more traditional way. We’ve got to make sure we teach history properly. We’ve got to have proper discipline and order in our schools. Getting that right is the most important thing for the future of our country.
