Transcript of interview on The Politics Show

20/Sep/2009

Below is a transcript of my interview on BBC1's Politics Show earlier today.

Jon Sopel, presenter:  I’m joined now by the Schools Secretary Ed Balls – welcome to the Politics Show, thanks very much for being with us.  Let’s start with that point about universal benefits.  Why does someone like yourself and your wife, who’s also a Cabinet Minister, with a combined income, I guess, of around £300,000 near enough, need child benefit?

Ed Balls, Schools Secretary: I think it’s really important that the welfare state does do more for those who need it most and that’s why we do give more support to families and the greater disadvantaged or to elderly people on the lowest incomes.  But I also think in the 21st century, it is still right we have a universal welfare state which says that if you have a child, there’s extra needs and you should be part of the support which comes from the state.  If you have an elderly… relative who needs care or, or if you are a pensioner, we have the basic State Pension and it’s a really clunky [sounds like] but the phrase we’ve always used is progressive universalism – a universal welfare state but which is progressive.  It targets more help to those who need it most and I think that is, is as relevant in the 21st century as it’s ever been.

JS: No matter how tight money gets.

EB: Look, it’s really important that we are tough in the way in which we spend money and therefore, you know, over the last few years, we’d like to have just raised Child Benefit right up for everybody, but we couldn’t do that as far as we’d like, so we did raise Child Benefit, but then we did more through the Child Tax Credit.  The proposals that you see from the Conservative (sic) to say we should only have the tax credits for people on the lowest incomes or that you should only get a tax relief for marriage, if you are a one working family so that two earner couples are excluded, I think that is bad politics and bad economics as well.

JS: But then it means that pretty wealthy people are still getting Child Benefit which they can use, I don’t know, for whatever and they have no need for that money for the benefit of that child and that, a lot of people would see as money wasted at a time when everyone’s being asked to make cutbacks.

EB: But David Cameron is saying let’s bring down tax credits so that families on 30, £40,000 income don’t get that support.  Those people …

JS: Just deal with the universal point, that point.  The point that I’m making, sorry to interrupt.  The point that I’m making is an awful lot of… wealthy people who don’t need it are getting Child Benefit at a time when we’re seeing these massive figures of Government debt; that would be a way of bringing it down.

EB: But I think it’s really important to have a welfare state where we all have a stake, we’re all part of it.  If you have a baby, you get support, if you’re going into a maternity unit, you get proper care.  I don’t want to live in a kind of society where you have private care for some and state subsidise only for those on lowest incomes.  That’s why I actually think Child Benefit is part of a civilised society.  I think it’s great we have Sure Start Children’s Centres in every community and now we see the Conservative outriders and the Taxpayers Alliance and Reform and the Institute of Directors saying if you want to make cuts, abolish Child Benefit and abolish Sure Start Children’s Centres – I think that would be a massive retrograde step for our country.  Not only would it be unfair, but it would pull away the constituency [sounds like] which actually supports a modern 21st century welfare state.

JS: Well let me look at a universal benefit which affects your Government department and that is you’ve announced that there’s going to be free school meals for all and that’s going to cost something like a billion pounds – now why should there be free school meals for all when an awful lot of people are in the position where the parents can pay for their kids to have school meals.

EB: Well we haven’t said yet that we will do that.  What we said is that we’re going to trial it out in Newham and in… and in County Durham and see how it works.  But the fact is the reason why Child Benefit works is because everybody gets it and therefore the poorest too and they all get the Child Benefit and the support.  When it comes to that free primary school lunch, the great advantage is it ensures that every child gets a free healthy meal in the school day and we’re going to look to see does that improve their concentration, their exam results, their health and the fact is if you make it only targeted, it means that at the margin, there are families who lose out and often they’re families who really need the extra help.  [words unclear] good reasons for universalism in the welfare state.

JS: A very good argument for it, but did I just detect there a kind of, maybe… this isn’t going to happen any time very soon.

EB: Well look, as you said, it would cost a lot of money.  I found the money with Alan Johnson to pay for this in Newham in London and in County Durham to see if it works and we’ve said if it works and it really has the impact we want, we’d go further.  We haven’t made the commitment yet, but the Conservatives said they wouldn’t even do the pilots because come what may, they would not do free primary school lunches, which I guess tells you about the different approach to universalism in the welfare state that they have and we have.

JS: And you, in an article for the Sunday Times today, you seem to have identified £2 billion worth of savings from your own department.

EB: Well I’ve said we’re starting that process now.  We’re talking to the teachers’ leaders and the teachers unions to see what we can do to find the savings which we will need to make sure that in the next spending review, we can keep the 40,000 extra teachers, the 110,000 more teaching assistants, the after-school clubs, the school building programme, the one-to-one teaching.  We can only, I think, in tougher times, keep delivering at the frontline for families and for children in our schools if we find savings and I’m, you know, absolutely upfront and I’m levelling with the public, we’ll find the savings so that we can keep delivering at the frontline.

JS: So just identify… for us, in… in that spirit of being, kind of, very open, where do you think you may be able to save those sort of sums of money.

EB: Well, we’re looking at this in detail, have done for some months, as we go into this next spending review.  The fact is, you know, I’ve said I’d like to see real terms rises for schools, but we’re not going to see the 4 per cent plus real terms rises we’ve seen…

JS: Sure, sure, sure, I’m just… I’m just talking about specifics, I’m just…

EB: … and the issue is how can we find savings which then means we can deliver at the frontline.  We’ve looked at this.  At the moment, our procurement budget in schools about £7.8 billion – that’s not just buildings, that’s also insurance, it’s energy, those kind of services.  We think we could probably find about 10 per cent savings in that area over the next three years and that could, for example, be by schools together collectively purchasing energy.

JS: And what about headmasters, head teachers?

EB: We’ve… look, I’ve been very clear.  I want to keep the number of teachings… teachers and teaching assistants at the frontline, but what we’ve been doing over the last three years is getting schools to work together in soft or sometimes in actually hard federations where they’ve come together, what we’ve found first of all is that if they are together buying services like the caretaking or the food or the cleaning or the insurance, that can save them money and sometimes, in some cases in primary but also in secondary schools, by schools bringing their leadership teams together…

JS: … but fewer heads?

EB: You can… well, I think it’s really important to have a head in every school, that’s my view.  But under the head there’s deputies, there’s assistant head teachers and what we can do is we can pool leadership together and that can free up resource as well.  What… I’m not saying is I’m going to impose from the top down you must do this.  But if a third of schools did that, that would be getting us about a third of a billion pounds savings and it’s a way in which we can find savings which we can then release to the frontline so with more modest real terms rises, we can keep delivering for services for schools and not see any reduction in class sizes, very important.

JS: And a pay freeze?

EB: Well, we’ve had a pretty tough pay settlement this time round, three year pay deal.  We have an independent pay review body.  I’m not going to start saying I’m going to override them, but it is going to be tough on pay, but there is, look, a real difference here between the parties as well.  We had the Liberal Democrat leader yesterday saying he wanted savage cuts, then when I say we can find savings in education to release to the frontline, he calls it madness, which I think says, you know, almost everything you need to know about the Liberal Democrats.  As for the Conservatives, they are saying not discussing savings for the future, they want cuts now, this year.  I have said to Michael Gove eight times will you match the 650 million of efficiency savings I’m using for 55,000 more school and college places this September; every time he says he cannot make that guarantee because George Osborne won’t let him.  The Conservatives are in a fundamentally different place on spending, much bigger cuts, there would be fewer teachers, fewer teaching assistants, larger class sizes, fewer school buildings, a radically different approach.

JS: And George Osborne says that you have a tax bombshell, that you are going to be putting the taxes up of ordinary British families by something like £3,000 a year due to… kind of, the way you can read some of the Budget figures that weren’t spelt out at the time of the Budget.

EB: Well, I thought George Osborne was caught red-handed today trying to pull the wool over the electorate’s eyes.  There is nothing in those plans which says there’s hidden tax rises at all.  That would be against the law for the Treasury to publish those kind of budget projections and I think he’s been trounced this morning and exposed.  The only reason that would be happing is if George Osborne and David Cameron’s proposal not to have the support for the economy was happening, then there’d be a black hole in the budget or they’ve said they will not raise National Insurance, they would not have a top tax rate and instead, they would have an inheritance tax cut.  That is why they’ve got a black hole, much bigger spending cuts for the Conservatives.

JS: Just deal with the specific – there is no tax bombshell, there is… there isn’t going to be no tax rise of that nature.

EB: The Treasury and the IFS have both said George Osborne is completely wrong.  This is, you know, the first of what will be a series of ridiculous stunts from the Conservative… Party, it’s not becoming of a shadow Chancellor, let alone a Chancellor, to make things up in this way, not true at all.  But there are going to be tough decisions.  But look, if they are not going to do the top rate of tax or the National Insurance rise and instead have an inheritance tax cut, they’ve got £10 billion plus of black hole to find and that will be paid for in spending cuts in schools and hospitals.

JS: But… you talk about dishonesty.  You were trying to phrase the… frame the whole debate over public spending as between Tory cuts and Labour investment and now here you are, sitting on the sofa, on the armchair… a couple of months later and saying oh no, no, it is about cuts after all.

EB: I said a few months ago that I wanted to see us carrying on with real terms rises in our key public services, but we would have to be smarter and defter and we’ve got to find efficiency savings to make that really work at the frontline – that’s exactly what I’m saying.  There is a big difference between that, which is the right honest thing to do and saying because we won’t raise the tax which is the Conservatives position and because we want an inheritance tax cut which costs £1.7 billion we now find out, they will have a 10 billion black hole in their public finances which would mean much bigger cuts in public spending.

JS: So it is cuts versus cuts – it’s not investment versus cuts.

EB: No, because I think it’s really important because of what we’ve done with [sounds like] the economy, because of the difficult decisions we’ve made on tax, on National Insurance and the top rate of tax, I think we can keep money going in to keep public services at the frontline, but the Conservatives would not do that.

JS: I just… I just want a brief other subject – assisted suicide.  The Director of Public Prosecutions has said today more or less that he’s going to clarify when something will be legal, when something won’t be legal.  Doesn’t that effectively change the law and make assisted suicide legal?

EB: Look, I don’t envy him doing that job.  That is such a difficult balancing act to pull off and on the one hand, you see stories like the young rugby player who took his life or Mrs Purdy and you feel great sympathy and pain for them.  At the same time, I wouldn’t want to live in…the kind of society where elderly people were pressurised or felt they might be pressurised or should take their own life to make it easier for their families; in the end, personally, I would err on the side of being very, very cautious on this indeed – difficult line to tread.  The DPP is treading that line when he makes his announcement, but let’s not put our elderly people in the position where they feel they should do the right thing.  That would be the wrong thing to do.

JS: Ed Balls, grateful to you – thanks very much indeed.

EB: Cheers Jon.