MT
This is a step about enlarging the choice and freedom to people by extending personal ownership very much wider. Even although it's already doing well, we'll extend it very much wider. And when it comes to other policies, for example like education and housing, yes—by giving more choice in education, more say to parents and more choice for those people who live in rented houses on council estates, and I hope more choice for people to be able to have a rented flat or house if that is what they wish to do. So it is, yes, more choice to ordinary citizens and spreading ownership even more widely.
Peter Murphy, IRN
What do you regard as the centrepiece of this manifesto?
MT
I think there, it's very difficult to say one centrepiece and there's the fundamental that our policies have produced economic growth and a higher standard of living then ever before. It's only because of those policies that we've been able to do far better on the social services than any previous government. We then have had a deliberate policy of ever wider ownership among our people so that two out of three houses are owner-occupied. So we've got eight and a half people million people owning shares, so that savings are keeping their value. And that will continue. We shall continue to spread that wider. Then we come to wider choice for people who perhaps cannot have wider ownership but they should have both wider ownership and wider choice. And then of course we are the only party that is offering a sure, sound defence policy, and a sure defence policy is the best peace policy. I'm afraid that took quite a time but you can't just say one thing only.
Peter Murphy, IRN
Can I turn to the issue of unemployment. Now you say that a million new jobs have been created in Britain since the last election. Can you give any pledge about new jobs? Can you give a pledge like the other parties about cutting the dole queues?
MT
It's very interesting. No party in power ever gives pledges about unemployment because they know it is not realistic and not honest to do so.
If you do go that way it can only mean one thing, what you're going to do is tax people highly, put more burdens on industry in order to pile people back into overmanning, pile people back into a higher bureaucracy both locally and nationally. They say that would reduce unemployment. For a short time it might. In the end it would land you in very great difficulty because you'd be taking money away from industry that would invest—they'd lose the investment—you'd be taking money from taxpayers who would have spent it on goods and services and therefore those jobs which [end p1] would have produced, they would have been lost. And that's why no government in power ever gives a guarantee of actually reducing unemployment.
Peter Murphy, IRN
So what hope can you hold out to the unemployed as the dole queues … .
MT
[interrupts] Precisely this, that when you're asking me in 1983 I knew we had the policies that were the best policies for getting economic growth, for producing genuine jobs and policies for training which we are bringing about. But I didn't then stand up and say, vote for me I will guarantee that there'll be a million more jobs by the time we come to the next election. No, we got the policies right. They did in fact produce a million more jobs but we couldn't know precisely how that would go because you couldn't … you couldn't foretell the precise movement of world trade. What I'm saying is realistic and honest.
Peter Murphy, IRN
You want more people to own shares, more people to own their homes, more people to build up their savings and in the past four years you've managed to do that for predominantly the better-off, the middle classes. What can you offer those people who live below the average wage?
MT
But look, it isn't predominantly for the middle classes. One million people in council flats and houses have had the chance to buy their homes. They would never had had it under socialism. Socialism likes to control people not give them choice or freedom of opportunity. There are 52 million building society accounts, 52 million. Look at the figures. There are many people with children under five who have building society, 52 million building society accounts. This has become a common feature of the life of everyone. There are eight and a half million people now who have shares and in our denationalization or privatization, whatever you wish to call it, we've always given preference to people to work in a business.
Your question is based on a totally false premise. Our whole life is in extending choice to an ever wider range of people.