Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

General Election Press Conference

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Conservative Central Office, Smith Square, Westminster
Source: Conservative Party Archive: transcript
Editorial comments: 0930-1000. All but a couple of the questions are omitted in the transcript.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 4022
Themes: Parliament, Education, General Elections, Foreign policy (Americas excluding USA), Northern Ireland, Religion & morality

Prime Minister

—Now ladies and gentlemen, both Geoffrey Howe and Norman Tebbit will be doing statements this morning, so shall we deal with those first and then have questions on those statements and on the economy and on Labour and then we will open it up more widely.

Geoffrey Howe

—Voters have now got before them a clear choice of economic policies, with our policies prices are now rising more slowly than any time in the last fifteen years and the rate of inflation will fall still further. Our opponents policies would very quickly put inflation back into double figures and beyond. Nothing is more certain than that and nothing would do more damage to the prospects of lower unemployment. With our policies the strengthening growth of the British economy is helping the world recovery, that was the clear conclusion of the Williamsburg Conference which also agreed that ours is the only sure way to lower unemployment in the longer run. Our opponents policies, with their dream of boosting the economy by higher spending, would very quickly have to be put into reverse. Higher taxes, higher interest rates and crisis cuts in public spending would be inevitable, just as they were when Labour had to submit to the judgement of the IMF in 1976. We provided incentives for economic recovery by reducing the burden of income tax and by cutting the higher and the basic rates. We are well on the way to abolishing the tax on jobs, the National Insurance Surcharge, which our opponents introduced and then increased, once again ours is the only way to lower unemployment. This weekend we have seen yet another Labour attempt to scare voters with another so called leak. All the issues were clearly resolved [words missing] Peter Shore last September. Our fully costed plans for public spending were announced months ago in the public spending White Paper [end p1] and confirmed in our manifesto. And the real questions before our opponents was [words missing] concern not the imaginary proposals Labour attribute to us but the real pledges in Labour's published manifesto and even now Labour haven't begun to answer them coherently. A hundred promises for extra spending in Labour's manifesto which we can cost would increase public spending by at least £35 billion a year by 1988. Heaven only knows what the price tag would be if we knew the cost of the other seventy-seven promises. These pledges in Labour's manifesto are a sure recipe for higher interest rates, and higher inflation and financial crisis even worse than that which destroyed the last Labour Government even on the most clerical assumptions.

The Labour Chancellor is out to increase taxes, either on the income tax basic rate of 30 pence to 50 pence in the pound or alternatively by trebling valued added tax, 15%; to 45%; VAT. Either of those would be equivalent to £20 a week extra taxation in the daily taxes of every family in the country and the other opposition parties' promises call for extra spending of at least £20 billion a year by the end of the parliament and they are almost equally incredible. They take us in the same catastropic direction as well. Long before either opposition party's programme had been carried through, the economy would reach the point of collapse, inflation and unemployment would be moving our of control. There is no substitute for the responsible and realistic proposals which we vote [sic] before the country to carry through.

Prime Minister

—Thank you. Norman TebbitNorman.

Norman Tebbit

—Prime Minister. There will, gentlemen, if I may say so, be another one of my little hand-outs for you with some interesting gems of information on statistics, on things which one or two Labour spokesmen have said, and also, especially for you, the latest indicators, everyone of which is pointing upwards. [end p2]

Our strategy for jobs is very straightforward, it is basically that industry must regain its lost customers and win new customers. Our Government, industry and commerce workers, whether they are management workers, sales, administration or production staff workers, all have a role to play. Government can help to, and it can do so by reducing inflation to prevent our goods from being priced out of the market, you know what we have done there. Holding Government borrowing to help cut interest rates, and providing fair laws to govern industrial relations, by improving the performance of nationalised industries on which in many cases performance of private sector critically depends, cutting taxes on employers, especially the Lib/Lab tax on jobs, the National Insurance Surcharge, supporting innovation in new technologies, ending price and exchange controls, improving vocational training, supporting British exporters overseas, cutting excessive tax rates, helping small business, all that has been done and we will continue those policies. Industry is responding, prices are being held down, productivity is being pushed up, strikes are being pushed down, customers are being won, and the jobs will follow. Labour's plans would loose jobs by raising prices, leaving the European Community, as the Chancellor has pointed out, raising taxes, increasing Government borrowing, increasing interest rates, nationalising successful businesses, taking control of those that didn't do as they were told, wrecking our banking system by nationalising at least one, possibly more banks, driving foreign companies out of Britain by controls and discrimination, closing employment agencies, cutting jobs in defence, giving trade union leaders increased powers to call strikes and disrupt industry. Then of course the Alliance would follow Labour's recipes in general without [sic] a little more water. And they would seek conflict with both sides of industry by trying to impose a statutory incomes policy. The contrast is very clear indeed. There is one credible strategy and two incredible strategies which are on offer on polling day on Thursday. [end p3]

Prime Minister

—Questions on the Economy to the Chancellor or Mr Tebbit or both. Yes, in the back.

Question

(inaudible).

Geoffrey Howe

—Our plans have been published for the next three years, and our manifesto takes those proposals to the end of the parliament and there are no intentions that are not disclosed in the manifesto.

Question

(inaudible).

Therefore satisfied with the Economy.

Question

(inaudible).

Geoffrey Howe

—There are no broad plans for wider proposals, there are some things, that I think we would have introduced by amendment to the Finance Bill, with the possibility of going through Parliament that we might try to introduce, for example, improvement in the tax position of those engaged in the business of holiday lettings. There are things of that kind which we might try to seek the opportunity of introducing. But essentially it will be the rest of the Finance Bill as it was introduced.

Prime Minister

—Yes, Mr Cowell

Question

(inaudible).

Geoffrey Howe

—Our plans for public expenditure, and our intentions for taxes are contained in the documents already published. What I think everyone in this country has to take account of is the necessity for looking at the medium and long distance when planning its public expenditure plans and this is what so much appalls me, the way in which Peter Shore as the reputed Chancellor in the Labour Government is going around the place, quite reckessly promising the [end p4] most extravagant expansion of public spending. We have costed his programme at £35 billion extra from the costed promises.

Now, a very interesting sidelight on this are the occasions when Denis Healey, with residual recollections of his years as Chancellor, draws attention to the implications of high borrowing and manifestly expresses the kind of concern that is prompted by such twinges of conscience as remain within him. Now, if that is his reaction to the prospect of modest changes in public sector borrowing, why, in heaven's name, does he not take Peter Shore privately to one side and say, ‘Look, my dear boy, your plans are founded on economic myths and nonsense. Your plans will land you going to the IMF far more quickly than I had to do. You will have to backtrack on these plans within months, not years,’? And I find the disconnection between Peter Shore 's blithe repudiation of all principles of economic sense and the residual memory of Denis Healey and Joel Barnett … Joel Barnett spent his whole time struggling with incontinent colleagues in Cabinet urging him to press expenditure through the roof striving to keep Cabinet control. Who on earth would be the chief secretary in the Labour Government? Fortunately, the question is entirely hypothetical.

Question

(inaudible).

Geoffrey Howe

—the logic of the document is simply saying that if expenditure exceeds, or is likely to exceed, income beyond the limits of reasonable borrowing, that is an imprudent situation in which to arrive. Our plans, and our decisions taken since last autumn, now published in the White Paper and in the manifesto, take account of those rules of arithmetic and rules of prudent business management. The plans of our opponents disregard them entirely.

Question

(inaudible)

Geoffrey Howe

—Interest rates depend upon market conditions, and within that framework, Government can play its part in helping to keep them down. Our Government has been committed, and remains committed, to prudent policies of public borrowing, which will do the [end p5] best possible to keep interest rates down, and coming down rather than up. Our opponents' policies, and I come back to this time and time again, our opponents' policies, within a very short space of time, perhaps even by the mere fact of their accession to office, which Heaven forbid, would send interest rates and inflation soaring in the opposite direction.

Question

(inaudible).

Geoffrey Howe

—I make no prophecies about interest rates up or down at any time. Our policies are designed to ensure the pressure we have placed on inflation to keep that in a downward direction, and on interest rates to keep them in a downward direction, will be maintained. Those are our policies; that is our purpose. They are in direct contradiction to the plans, policies and intentions of our opponents.

Question

(inaudible).

Geoffrey Howe

—Well, let me remove any misunderstanding from your curious insight. PESC is as regular a routine in the Cabinet as Christmas and Easter and it is bound to take place under any responsible Government. If it does not, then that Government is not managing its affairs properly. We will continue to manage our affairs prudently and properly.

Question

(inaudible).

Geoffrey Howe

—The laws of arithmetic plainly involve relating the pattern of public expenditure to the likely growth state of the economy, and what Joel Barnett has to say in his book about the performance of the last Labour Government, was to say that they did precisely the opposite, as a result of their failure to plan prudently on prudent assumptions about the likely prospects of the economy. They ended up going to the IMF in 1976, and having at the time to impose sudden cuts, equivalent to about £10 billion in today's money. Our plans, and our manner of conducting them, are [end p6] designed to avoid that kind of crisis. Our plans offer the best prospects for sustainable, long-term economic recovery of this country and for the long-term prospects for unemployment.

Question

(inaudible)

Geoffrey Howe

—I suppose that theoretically any Chancellor is so free, but any Chancellor operates within the policies of his Government to which we are committed. Our policies are designed to secure sensible and effective control of public spending, of the kind we have achieved in the year just finished, and the prospect of lower rather than higher taxes. You come back to that simple point about policy. The Conservative Governments cut taxes; Labour Governments invent taxes, and increase them.

Prime Minister

—Any other questions? Let's widen it; we don't preclude questions about the economy.

Question

(inaudible)

Prime Minister

—that is not a matter for me, who the electorate puts on the Opposition benches. I am concerned about who they put on the Government benches and enough of them to have sufficient authority, both at home and overseas.

Question

(inaudible)

Prime Minister

—I think it is a pity if one cannot regard the remarks of a Kenny Everettcomedian as being exactly what they are: humorous, and that is all, and really, if we are down to asking and cross-examining about remarks of a comedian, I think it is ridiculous.

Question

(inaudible).

Cecil Parkinson

—I honestly believe it was, I was making a … I was answering a point when the interviewer was saying that the Prime Minister had said that there will always be a Labour Party, and I was making the point that, if you travel about the country as I do, [end p7] you know that that is true. Is there anybody here who thinks that anybody other than the Labour candidate is going to win in the Rhondda? Or in huge areas of the NorthEast, where they are absolutely entrenched? (Laughter) Where they are absolutely entrenched? And I am prepared to admit that we are not going to win the Rhondda, by the way, and the point I was making was the very simple one that there is a Labour heartland and that there will be a solid body of seats and I threw in this line, that even if you dropped an atom bomb on that area and a tiny minority survived, they would still overwhelmingly vote Labour, and I don't think it was a remotely offensive remark in the context in which I made it.

Question

(inaudible)

Cecil Parkinson

—That advertisement was written by a black man, and may I just tell you something else, because there was an impression given in that rather interesting assembly which I was questioned by on Thursday night; the impression given that a huge offence had been taken among the ethnic minority. Yesterday, I met the leaders of the Sikh community, who are travelling the country, advising the members of the Sikh community to vote Conservative, because they believe that this Party—our Party—is the Party which offers the best prospects for the country, and, as the leaders put it to me, the prospects for our people are exactly the same as the prospects for all the other people of this country; if this country succeeds, so do we, and we believe that under your Government the country has its best prospects, so 380,000 Sikhs are being advised by their leaders to support us, which doesn't suggest that that advertisement caused great offence.

Question

(inaudible).

Prime Minister

I have said that they should be able to do so on exactly the same lines, on exactly the same grounds, as there are already Church schools of one denomination or another. Those grounds are well known, and you consider each application in relation to those grounds, not according to the denomination which it represents, but according to the grounds laid down by statute. One of the grounds is, of course, that there are not already sufficient places in total in the area, but if there are, then you do not normally go and add to the school places for a denomination school. All the religious denominations [end p8] are familiar with the circumstances.

Question

(inaudible)

Prime Minister

—I am not going to remake a Cabinet here before the polling day has started. If you were here when Mr Whitelaw was here answering questions, you heard him say that should there be a vote in that direction in Parliament, he would implement that in legislation or put the Bill of required legislation before Parliament. You heard him say that, here.

Question

(inaudible)

Prime Minister

Whether we have a small majority, a medium majority or a large majority, the policies are those laid down in the manifesto. The size of the majority cannot alter the policies upon which we are elected.

Question

(inaudible)

Prime Minister

No, I am saying that we have laid out the broad direction of our general policies in the manifesto and made certain specific promises. You have the broad economic policies laid down in the manifesto, which will carry on with reducing inflation, keeping interest rates down, helping small businesses, helping innovation with the Training Schemes: those continue. There are certain specific promises: the Trade Union legislation, and I expect we shall have a [word missing] poll alternate years, as we look at each aspect, consult about it, and then bring it into legislation: the rating legislation, the local authority legislation, and there already seem to be a stack of bills which we were ready to bring in next year, in any event, and all of the modernisation legislation which one has to do. That does not change according to whether there is a large majority or a medium majority … (inaudible question) … because I think it just gives you extra authority and it indicates extra unity in the country, and therefore is very, very helpful indeed, both at home and overseas. [end p9]

Question

(inaudible)

Prime Minister

—Oh, it just gives you enormous extra authority. Chancellor Kohl has very considerable authority. He had a very decisive election. I beg your pardon? (Question) I had a very good, I had a reasonable majority and I was hoping, and they were expecting that I would have a very, very good one in the future. I do not count, I might say, on anything, myself. The only poll I am interested in is the poll on polling day, and I can't say, “Not one single vote has been cast,” because they have—the postal votes—but we don't know their result.

Question

(about Britain and Chile agreement and islands in channel).

Prime Minister

—No, of course not, but I would need to see … of course it's not true, nor have I seen any such statement. When you ask such a question, will you now get up and read out the precise statement.

Question and Laughter

Prime Minister

—I think you've said enough. But if you are making allegations, there are a number of allegations made here, and I therefore want to know, before there are any more, the precise allegation.

Question

(inaudible).

Prime Minister

—No, no of course not. What I am saying is that we have laid down the broad general lines in the manifesto and certain specific policies. Frequently things come up during the lifetime of a Government, and of course one deals with them. The broad general lines, the philosophy, the broad general policies and certain specific legislative measures are there. You will be familiar with the phrase “Other measures will be laid before you” . …   . according to the philosophy and the economic policy laid down in the manifesto, according to that policy. There are always a whole battery of Bills which every single Department has ready in the pigeon-holes, and usually the need to modernise legislation which is already well out [end p10] of date. But all of them would be within the scope of the present manifesto policies and philosophy. No, of course it is not a blank cheque, because I said within the scope of the policies laid down in the Manifesto. May one point out, that the 1970–74 Government did not know how the price of oil would go up in 1973, because it could not have forecast or foretold the Middle Eastern crisis, that had a colossal effect on all policies. May I point out that the world did not know the colossal second recession that would hit it, when the Iran Government fell, and there were changes there. Most of the things which hit economics are political, because they happen in the world and they have enormous effects on economic policies; I have just indicated two. We set out a general philosophy and strategy and the measures are within the scope of that philosophy and strategy.

Question

(about jokes)

Prime Minister

—I think you will find that I have made no mention of Mr Foot. I am answering for what politicians have said. I do not like personal attacks as you know, nor indeed, have I made them. But I really think when you get to questioning what comedians have said, then I really think you've reached the ridiculous.

Question

(inaudible).

Prime Minister

No, we do not fight in Northern Ireland Conservative seats, as you know. The Unionists fight, the Unionists fight, and of course, it is the Conservative and Unionist Party. And they still, I think, they still have rights to attend our conference. I am sure Mr Prior is dealing with Northern Ireland excellently, as he always does. We [sic] have not been a major issue in Great Britain.

Question

(inaudible).

Sir Geoffrey Howe

—I contemplate nothing outside the ordinary range of Government activity. We have not had a series of mini-Budgets or autumn Budgets as our predecessors did. We have managed our public spending and our Finance Bills in accordance with the normal proper practice, including reviewing public expenditure every year, as the Prime Minister has pointed out. I see no reason to expect any departure from the course we have followed during the last four years. [end p11]

Question

(inaudible)

Norman Tebbit

—Yes, the scheme is predominantly employer-based, so predominantly youngsters will be taught the skills which employers believe they will be needing in the future. Now, I think employers have got a reasonably good judgment about what skills they will need in their firms over the next few years; and it is upon them that we largely rely. In addition, of course, we have ourselves taken the initiative of setting up the High Techs, and we have taken the initiative of setting up the Pilot Schemes for the new technical and vocational education for 14–18 year olds. So I am quite satisfied we are pointing those skills in the right direction. By the way, gentlemen, do pick up the little pack that we offer you, because amongst the good news there, we've got a summary of—the BBC might want to cut out from this—of the ITN weekly job survey, which has found that since the campaign began, there have been more job gains than job losses. I am sure this will come as a grave blow to Mr Foot and his colleagues, but I am sure it will be regarded as good news by everyone else.

Question

(about House of Lords and second chamber)

Prime Minister

No, we believe fervently, as you know, there must be an effective second chamber. One of the problems is that, under our system of parliamentary supremacy, any Parliament can, in fact, overturn in theory, the legislation of any previous Parliament. Nevertheless, there are certain pieces of legislation which endure, because they have a significance beyond the normal pieces of legislation which have to be revised from time to time. We have no specific plans—there are discussions, as you know, from time to time on how you could entrench the House of Lords. What we are saying is that we believe that there must continue to be an effective second chamber. There will be proposals which various people put up on how to reform the House of Lords; the trouble is on getting agreement to any major proposals. There is agreement on the need for an effective second chamber. Thank you, we're five past ten.