Anna Soubry
The Prime Minister began her visit to Nottingham by opening an electronics factory. Two hundred and fifty new jobs have been created at Pressac Holdings to provide telecommunications equipment. Mrs Thatcher was given some gifts to take back to Downing Street, including a telephone extension for husband Denis. She said it would be very useful in Number 10. After lunch, Mrs Thatcher opened Nottingham's new Conservative Party headquarters. This afternoon she visited Central's East Midland studios. It was a chance, for once, to go behind the scenes. After operating a unique remote control system to set the lights, it was time to get a cameraman's view rather than a politician's. Eventually the cameras were turned and I spoke to the Prime Minister. [end p1]
Anna Soubry
Are you looking forward to the weekend? Because it could be said you've had a rough ride this week. Do you think you've quelled the backbench rebellion over the Poll Tax or the Community Charge?
MT
I think we've satisfied them by giving just a little bit extra, a little extra relief. I think we've satisfied them about the few things they were really worried about, and that was right.
Anna Soubry
What about the House of Lords though? Do you think you're going to get it through there?
MT
Oh yes, I do, because the principle of the Community Charge is absolutely right. You know, local authority services are personal services in the main part, and they really should be paid personally and not on property. The actual Community Charge only meets one quarter of local government expenditure, only one quarter. Another quarter comes from business and the other half comes from the taxpayer on a progressive rate. So it's about right, and it's much fairer and extends to far many more people.
Anna Soubry
The pay rise to the nurses has been universally welcomed. Will it now be extended to the ancillary workers? Say to a porter on what, £84 a week?
MT
No, not necessarily, because they in fact negotiated quite separately. The nurses' is a very particular one. This is not a straight 15 or 16 per cent. They have a completely different structure of pay, and it's meant to give them more pay if they get more qualifications. We were finding, for example, that we weren't getting enough nurses going into intensive care, not enough into the care of children, not enough into maternity work. They have to have extra qualifications for those, but they weren't being paid enough. So what we're really doing is paying more for those things, because we want highly paid nurses to stay treating the patient, not to have to go off into administration.
Anna Soubry
But does that mean that there will be more money available for the NHS, as some of the papers are saying that there's been a sort of a turnaround?
MT
But there has been a great deal more money available over the years, a great deal more than ever before, way over and above inflation. We've been able to do that in any case, because industry's been more prosperous. And if you don't get prosperous industry, you can't give more to the services. This year, instead of paying £1100 million more—that was the increase we were going to give this year—we're going to give … the taxpayer is going to give, it'll be rather more than that. It'll be something [end p2] like £1900 million more. That's an awful lot. Nearly two billion. It's a very great deal.
Anna Soubry
Everybody seems to accept the facts when it comes to the National Health Service: the levels that you've been talking about, the money that's being spent. But there seems to be this gap between the facts and people's perceptions. So when non-partisan surgeons and doctors say that there's a crisis in the NHS and public opinion polls say that the public also believe that, how are you going to fill this gap between what people are saying and these facts?
MT
I think if you ask people who've been in the National Health Service, who've had operations done, who've had an emergency operation, who've been in a disaster, who've been in an accident, they will have only praise for the National Health Service. When we have something terrible, like the Kings Cross fire for example, all the emergency services operated superbly. When we had the terrible Bradford fire, the emergency services operated superbly. When you have a terrible accident pile up, they operate superbly. Why do you take all that for granted? When people go in to have operations, they can't speak highly enough of the nurses or the doctors. And what we find is, if you ask people who've been in, you'll find that eight out of ten of them were very satisfied. Ask a young mother who's had her first or second baby. She'll be delighted both with the care before and during and usually after. And so people who've been in are very satisfied. Of course, if you're waiting for an operation and are in pain, there's nothing about statistics that can satisfy you. You want your operation and you want it immediately. And that's why twice recently we've given special extra sums deliberately to get waiting lists down. Not just generally to go into the main corpus of the National Health Service, but to say, “Look, we've given one year £25 million and this year £30 million to do a hundred thousand operations,” and that's quite a good way of helping these people.
Anna Soubry
To change the subject completely, we're in a television studio. I've got to ask you about television. How much television do you watch?
MT
Not a great deal by sitting down to watch it. Um, I watch the news quite a lot, and I watch when there's something, some great debate on, or some great occasion, or some terrible disaster. One must watch to see what's happening. I tend to watch at the weekends a little bit more. Saturday night is not the best television. Er, there's a great deal of sport on, which is fascinating, and my husband always wants to watch the golf on Saturday night and sometimes the snooker and sometimes the Match of the Day. But, apart from that, sometimes on Saturday evening there's quite a lot of violent, quite a lot of violence or horror films, but perhaps I watched an unrepresentative night.
Anna Soubry
Do you ever watch Spitting Image? [end p3]
MT
No, I, once I turned on Spitting Image and I didn't see one of myself, but I saw some of people whom I know very well and obviously I didn't like them, so I thought, “Now, look, my dear, you'd better not watch this,” and I didn't.