Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Interview for Daily Star

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: No.10 Downing Street
Source: Thatcher Archive: COI transcript
Journalist: Brian Hitchen, Daily Star
Editorial comments:

The interview began at 0915 and must have lasted around an hour.

Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 7087
Themes: Media, Parliament, Leadership, Autobiographical comments, Foreign policy (Asia), Race, immigration, nationality, NHS reforms 1987-90, Health policy, Private health care, Monetary policy, Trade, Pay, Housing, Industry, Strikes & other union action, Economic policy - theory and process, Education, Employment, Science & technology, Environment, Law & order, Trade union law reform, Conservatism

Interviewer

It has been a very very rough autumn, how are you feeling?

Prime Minister

I am really rather glad that most of it is over. We have come through it, not only has it been rather difficult but it has been an exceptionally busy one with everything happening in Eastern Europe, that has been the focus of everything, and therefore we have had to have several European meetings as well because one could not just do nothing about it.

And of course we had to cope as well with television in the House for the first time and you know you are perfectly all right and you can carry on perfectly normally, but sometimes when you know a television camera is on you you absolutely freeze, it is very very difficult to be. [end p1]

Interviewer

Even after all these years?

Prime Minister

Even after all these years. But I find now that I have forgotten that there are television cameras there so you just carry on as normal. But it is an extra strain.

Interviewer

I am sure it is. You are going to stay on, Prime Minister, are you not?

Prime Minister

I most earnestly hope so, it does not entirely depend upon me.

Interviewer

I most earnestly hope so too. Thank you for your Christmas card to me. Can you tell me what you put on the card that you presumably sent to Mr. Gorbachev?

Prime Minister

I think just “Denis and Margaret Thatcher”. [end p2]

Interviewer

Not a message of anything else?

Prime Minister

No, I do not think so, I might have put “With Warm Regards” or something like that because we have a whole Sunday when we do our Christmas cards.

Interviewer

How many do you send?

Prime Minister

About two thousand.

Interviewer

Your hands must be coming off by the time you finish.

Prime Minister

I might have added that but I cannot quite remember.

Interviewer

Prime Minister, many of us understand why there is no room in Britain for them and that they are indeed illegal immigrants … [end p3]

Prime Minister

Incidentally, we do always sign our own Christmas cards, Denis and I sit down together and it is always “Denis and Margaret Thatcher” or “Denis and Margaret” or “Margaret and Denis” according to how well we know the people. But we do make a point of sitting down, they are not printed.

Some of the ones we get from Head of Government or State are printed.

Interviewer

Yes, just stamped and things?

Prime Minister

Yes, but we sign ours and that does mean that we look at each one as we go to see whether it is “Denis and Margaret Thatcher” or “Denis and Margaret” and I always hope they do not get muddled up after that, that is the trouble.

You might have put “With Affectionate Greetings” on and the ones are muddled and get into the wrong envelope, so you have to be just a little bit careful.

Interviewer

Who puts them in the envelopes then?

Prime Minister

We have usually a secretary, but they tend to go straight in the envelope. [end p4]

Interviewer

That is the difficult part.

Prime Minister

Yes, because the envelope is with them but having put “Affectionate Regards” you have to get it in the right envelope.

Interviewer

Yes or you would be sending affectionate regards to everybody.

How did you personally feel, particularly with regard to the children, when you had to give the order to return the boat people to Vietnam?

Prime Minister

They are living in such awful conditions in Hong Kong, in awful conditions. The tax-payer here has spent quite a lot of money, I think it is of the order now of something like £17 million trying to put them in reasonable conditions. But you see they come more and more, they come about three thousand a week and you cannot cope so the conditions they are in are pretty awful.

But none of the ones who are refugees are going back. The ones who are genuine refugees do not go back. The rest we just could not go on taking.

I do not know whether you heard, there was someone on the radio this morning, I have got his name, who has been in Vietnam, he is a journalist - Mr. Nick Malone on Radio 4 this morning - he [end p5] has been there, he has seen them, the ones that have already gone back voluntarily, he has seen them and they have been resettled in the villages and they are being well treated and they go back with some money.

It was on Radio 4 this morning, Mr. Nick Malone, and our Ambassador was there to greet them, to receive them, and we are watching to see. Because it is not the first, they are the first people to go back who did not openly consent, quite a number have gone back who have been volunteers to go back because they realise there is not very much of a future.

You see we still have to find international places for the 13,000 who are refugees.

Interviewer

The real refugees?

Prime Minister

Yes, the real refugees who would be persecuted if they went back. These are people who just wanted to find a better way of life. But you see they go on coming and coming and coming and as you know Hong Kong is a tiny little island, 5.5 million people, and they just could not go on. So one does not like having to do it but we have to think of our obligations to the people of Hong Kong.

We went to an international conference and they agreed that so long as the refugees are screened out, others have to be returned. And those who are complaining - we have had 22,000 [end p6] Vietnamese here and the United States has had 50,000 - but it is not good people just complaining unless they are prepared to take them.

Now there was going to be a separate island in the Philippines for the refugees as a staging post and that was announced but it has not been allocated yet. And I understand that the Philippine Government says: “We are not going to have them in until we know it is only a staging post and they have got somewhere else to go.”

So unless we did this, the moment the winds and weather are in the right direction again, we shall get a lot more and Hong Kong is the most densely packed place in the world. So we had no option but we have done everything possible to see that they are not genuine refugees, have our Ambassador meet them, ask the United Nations to look at them and to send them back to their villages with a little bit of money to help them to resettle.

And it will, if all goes well, be a better life for them than in perpetual camps in Hong Kong.

Interviewer

Did it take you long to make your mind up on that?

Prime Minister

Yes. The last international meeting was I think in June. This is the first run we have done with people who did not volunteer to go back. There are still some more now who have [end p7] volunteered to return because it is no life for them in camps, no life for them at all. And they do not all get on very well with one another.

Interviewer

No, there is a lot of fighting. I saw a picture of a child who was actually chained up in there, he was on the end of a four foot chain because they were afraid that he would be taken.

Prime Minister

Isn't that dreadful? You see there are groups of them and they do not necessarily get on with one another.

Interviewer

And the Triads of course are within the camps as well who are leeching off them. How many do you see actually coming here?

Prime Minister

We have agreed I think it is two thousand and they are coming, but they are the genuine refugees. And I hope that they will learn our language because some of those who have come here before have not all assimilated very well, they have not learned the language and it has been really rather difficult. So one does not like it but it is not as if they are in very good conditions. [end p8]

Interviewer

Obviously you thought long and deep about it before doing it, with some agony about it I would have thought?

Prime Minister

Well, yes, it is because frankly one hopes that more of them will agree to go back, now they have seen the conditions that they come to.

Interviewer

And that is obviously going to be monitored so that nothing bad happens to them?

Prime Minister

Yes it is, but those who criticise us should agree to take more. But I know what their reason against taking more is, it is that the more they take the more will come. That is their reasoning, but that is ours too. You cannot just expect them. You see other countries push the boats away and will not take them. We have never done that and so now we are getting the blame for sending some of them back.

I may say that we send back nearly 30,000 a year of people who come over the Chinese border into Hong Kong and we just quickly send them back because, again, Hong Kong could not take them. [end p9]

Interviewer

And I should not think that the Vietnamese future, if they stayed in Hong Kong, would be very bright under the Chinese anyway because they traditionally hate each other.

Prime Minister

If they wanted to be under the Chinese they have got a border with the Chinese. What they are doing is some of them walking across that border, then being given boats and provisions to come down to Hong Kong. [end p10]

Interviewer

Can we turn to the National Health Service, Prime Minister, something I know you have spent an awful lot of time on?

Half the people in Britain seem to think that you are trying to wreck the National Health Service and the other half believe you want to privatise it. Just what are you trying to do?

Prime Minister

Neither is correct!

I take the view that I think almost everyone I know takes, that it is an immense weight off one's mind to know that if you should have an accident or be involved in a disaster or you should have a personal accident or a sudden heart attack or stroke or anything like that, an accident or an emergency, or you should suddenly get one of the terrible diseases which are incurable, then you get the best possible treatment and it is there and will continue to be there and you are taken to the hospital and the accident and emergency services are absolutely marvellous; and it [end p11] is just as much a relief to me to know that as it is to everyone so that you do not have to worry about paying a penny piece at the point of use for the very best possible treatment.

Over and above that, there are some of us, if we have small things to be done - I am not talking about big bypass operations, those are very expensive and you expect to go on the National Health - who can quite well afford to pay for those and not take up an extra bed or place and some of us do, we pay our full taxes but then for the smaller things that we need we can pay it ourselves. There are five million people now who have BUPA and they relieve the National Health Service of the smaller things.

But there is no question of privatising it - there never has been - and what we are steadily doing is that we believe very much that the big hospital you go to or the small one, they are much better able to make their own decisions and can respond and react quickly than if things have to be referred back to a management committee. So we are saying: “Look! If you wish to make your own decisions ......” - and do not forget the teaching hospitals used always to be self-governing and make their own decisions - “then you can do so!”

You have two budgets, one related to the population which you serve and the structure of that population. If it is an older population, you will have a higher amount because older people need more care and attention and then, in addition to that, if you are able to do more operations and do do more operations and get your lists down, you get paid according to the number that you will do. [end p12]

What happens at the moment is that the ones who are extremely active do not get the extra amount of money for a long time, which is not fair, so it really is seeing that the decisions are made quickly by having the people on the spot being able to make them. If they say, because obviously doctors do not like people being in pain, “All right, we will do an extra session of operations, we have got all of the equipment there!” or they will say, coming up to a holiday - some people do not want to go into hospital and have an operation near a holiday; others would say: “Look! I am only too pleased to do so to get rid of the pain!”, then they can do it. They have got the equipment and they will get the extra money paid according to how much they do.

It is going to be much fairer and much better but also, we do feel very strongly that there should be improvements in some of the services really on plain straight consideration grounds for the patients. Some patients will say: “If you call me, I can go in at any time!” and some hospitals keep a list of those, so that if someone cannot come they can fill the place quickly. Other people have to go in quite often as day patients and we will get this kind of complaint: “I have got to take a whole day off work to go for treatment or a dressing or something and I might get there at 8.30 in the morning and not be seen until three o'clock in the afternoon!”

Interviewer

Those are the horror stories that people … [end p13]

Prime Minister

Surely it is only a question of local management and concern that says: “Look! I will see you in the first half of the morning or the second half of the morning, or the first half of the afternoon!”

If there is a sudden emergency, a sudden road accident or something, and they have to come in, then everyone understands but we feel that under normal circumstances the best practice, which many hospitals do, should be the ordinary practice of consideration for ordinary people.

Let me put it this way:

People pay for the Health Service, they pay for education, they pay as a tax-payer. They do not pay at the point of use - they pay as tax-payers so that they can get service at any time of the day or night should they need it, but they do nevertheless pay and must be entitled to maximum consideration just as they would if they went to a private hospital. Choice must not only be in the private sector, it must also be in the public sector, and that is really what we are trying to do more and more.

It is the tax-payer who is paying more and more money for it, it is not the Government. At the moment, a family of four will pay about £35&slash;36 every week to the Health Service through their taxes and we feel that they need maximum choice. [end p14]

Certainly, there are some who would not want to go to another hospital but there are others who might say: “Well, my daughter lives in that area. If that doctor can do my hip operation or my cataract more quickly, I want to have that done as quickly as possible!” So we are trying to give them the maximum choice to get treatment quickly and to make certain that those hospitals who are very good managers and able to arrange things very well - the doctors, the nurses, the hospital porters, the managers all work together - should get extra budgets to enable them to do these things and should get it quickly. At the moment, to get a cross-border payment is quite difficult and that should not be so.

Interviewer

I remember you saying the last time that they did not actually know in some places how much an operation cost.

Prime Minister

They have no idea, some of them!

When we first started to get information, it was difficult to get precise numbers of people who were employed and they do not know how much the operations or the catering service cost some of them at all.

We have had a financial experiment in six hospitals, so really they are learning for the first time. [end p15]

It does not help to have very expensive equipment and operating theatres lying idle.

Interviewer

When they could be brought in from somewhere else.

Prime Minister

Also, sometimes it is not really very good management when you concentrate on building more hospitals and more beds if you find then you have not got the arrangements so that they can be used. It does not make sense to put in a lot more capital unless it can be used and patients can be treated in the beds, so we have got to get all this sorted out.

Interviewer

How do you get it all together, though? How do you actually ram this home to the various health authorities?

Prime Minister

We are now getting a lot of information in from different areas. For example, I heard on the radio that although last year we put an extra £1.8 billion - the previous year an extra £2 billion, next year an extra £2.6 billion - not million - that some areas were short of money, so I said: “Give me a whole list of the areas who have been able to manage perfectly well on their budgets, who have had the extra money and have been able to manage well on that and have not got too high waiting lists and so on!” I got a whole list [end p16] straight away. It so happened that day in the House I was not asked about it, but I had a whole list of them. Why is it that this hospital can manage and the other one cannot? We have got to find out those things.

Interviewer

I am sure you will.

Prime Minister

But it is a much better Health Service and do not forget there are many more operations now which people ask for and expect as a matter of course. Several multi-bypass heart operation used to be very rare. Cataracts are done now very much more quickly. Hip operations and renal kidney operations. Those are the four that are done far more frequently than they ever used to be.

Research goes on and they are finding out new things the whole time that they can do.

I am afraid that sometimes a new treatment means a new waiting list because it is easier actually to build buildings than it is to train doctors and nurses.

But it is really a great source of pride to me that every year that I have been Prime Minister there have been more doctors, more nurses and more patients treated. So it is improving and a lot more money is spent and it is now getting best value for that money. [end p17]

You get letters sometimes from doctors who will tell you the waste in the system and it is not easy, you know; there are over a million people employed in the Health Service, it is the biggest employer. In the end, you have to break it down into units so that it at least becomes a human unit. Some of them are marvellous, you know. When I go round hospitals, I get very few complaints and I go round a lot of hospitals. Complaints on the waiting list, yes.

There is no question of privatising it, only of making it better and more responsive to the needs of the patients.

Interviewer

And you have a golden list of super hospitals, a black list of the bad ones?

Prime Minister

We know the ones who are able to manage and manage well.

Interviewer

And they will get more money?

Prime Minister

If they are doing more work, they will get more money. [end p18]

Interviewer

On the subject of money, Prime Minister, a lot of people are feeling the pinch now with the high mortgage rates, young people who bought their homes. Have you any hope of encouragement for them for an early relief in interest rates, an early drop? What can you tell them?

Prime Minister

No. I cannot say there will be an early drop because you know it has been quite difficult because the fact was that when there was too much money about, that is to say we paid ourselves more than the goods we are producing - that is what it is all about - the difference goes into prices and the only way is either to bring up production ...... there are many things that we could produce here that we import, there really are. It is not all high technology that we import or investment, it is a lot of very ordinary things.

Interviewer

Like what, Prime Minister? What would you like to see?

Prime Minister

A lot of building things, for example. Chipboard, cladding, cement, bricks and a lot of textiles. We actually import more textiles than we export. [end p19]

If you look at the number of toiletries that you buy: cotton wool, pleated cotton wool. It is easier to use. I picked up some that I had got from the chemist the other day. One was made in France and one was made in Israel and I thought, but good Heavens, but we have enough people making cotton wool here! Can't they do this particular kind of thing?

Interviewer

Why is it, do you think, they do not?

Prime Minister

Bottled water, we import now. All right, we expect to import French and German wine although we are doing more here. A fantastic amount of kitchen equipment. This is not high-tech stuff, it is not enormous highly-skilled stuff, that is imported and I just hope that some of those who can make it here will go through the lists - they are published every month - and see if we can make more things here.

Interviewer

What do you mean, they are published every month? [end p20]

Prime Minister

The Department of Trade and Industry. When we get the balance of trade figures every month, they will publish the kind of goods, classification of goods that have come in.

And, of course, cameras. We do not make cameras, we do not make many typewriters here.

Interviewer

We do not even make televisions, I don't think!

Prime Minister

We do now. Japan comes in here now and makes them.

But we have run several exhibitions called “Better Made In Britain” and what we have done then is get ranges of things that are imported and we have got the manufacturers in then and said: “Come round and see! Can you make that here?” and then, those who order a lot of components; something like cars or radios, they import quite a number of components and we export quite a lot of components.

People like Marks and Spencers have gone to manufacturers and said: “Look! You can make this! Will you try and if you make it up to standard, then we will buy from you!”

What we are trying to do is get manufacturers who import components which go into things - they might be switches, all kind of specialist components - will those of you who need these components to put in your finished goods, like these things, see if you can go and order them from someone who makes them in Britain and then we get the jobs, our balance of trade figures would be better. [end p21]

Interviewer

And then the mortgage rates will come down, in a little while?

Prime Minister

It gives us a chance to earn more. But at the moment the critical thing is pay. All right, extra pay if it is more than matched by extra productivity but otherwise it goes on to price and the only way we can squeeze the price out is to stop people from borrowing, because, in addition to what they are earning, they are borrowing, and then we have to squeeze it and it is the most heartbreaking thing is that it hits worst of all the people who have recently bought houses because they bought them at high prices.

On the other hand, I tell you what has also been going on. People who have nearly paid off their mortgage but wanting naturally to do up, you know, have cupboards in the bedrooms and a new kitchen, have been taking out a mortgage on their house and they get that money borrowed on a mortgage still at a lower interest rate than you can get on overdraft at the bank or on credit cards. They have been doing that and that has been coming on to the market and using that to buy goods and a lot of those. The kitchen stuff, a lot of it is imported and that really has swollen the borrowing so again, that is another reason why we have had to keep up the interest rate. [end p22]

The older folk save and they still do. The same people are saving but there is more borrowing and so it looks as if the net saving is down and so, by keeping up the interest rate, it pays the people who save.

I had in here people who said to me: “We are saving up to buy a house on a deposit and as a matter of fact our deposit is going up very well because of the high interest rate on what we put in the building society!”

Interviewer

And house prices coming down.

Prime Minister

That is right. So it hits people very differently.

It has been my ambition that every person should be a capitalist and the first stage is your house and so it hurts me that there are high interest rates.

The first stage is your house; the second stage is you do want some savings. You never know what is going to happen in life. You want some savings and also to get shares. We have got nine million people with shares now and it has been one of my great ambitions that as more wealth is created, so the ownership of property is spread ever more widely. [end p23]

I cannot bear it when people talk about the two sides of industry or talk about the workers. I say we are all workers. We all earn our money and everyone's money is as good as everyone else's and my ambition is that we all earn and we all own something.

You see, a lot of the created new wealth has come from big machinery. I do not need to tell you that. Look at it in the newspaper industry! And those who work at big machines must not necessarily have all the addition of wealth just because they work at a big machine, so if you have a share in a newspaper then you have a share in the wealth that comes from the machine in dividends so everyone, in order to get the extra wealth from the machinery as well as from their own efforts, really wants some shares in industry and that is the way to do it. Away go all the artificial differences between people. They all have that little bit extra pride and persons who own their own home, have a little bit of independent money behind them, they are the persons who want to have a nice neighbourhood and will want their children to be brought up nicely and will be prepared to look at “Neighbourhood Watches” - “We do not want crime here!” - and bring their children up well. [end p24]

Interviewer

So the message is hang in, it will come out all right?

Prime Minister

That is right, hang in, it will be a good value, the Good Lord is not going to make any more land.

Interviewer

That is perfectly true.

Prime Minister, the ambulance dispute has been going on for eleven weeks. All the polls, as you know, show that the public are on the side of the ambulance people, they think they should get more money. Have you considered taking the Ambulance Service out of the National Health, thereby stopping that great rush of people from NUPE who would come in after them, and to make them part of the emergency services separately, with a new pay banding on this lot [end p25] so that emergency ambulance drivers got paid much more than the people who ferry people from hospitals to their front door and paramedics and what not?

Prime Minister

I think there are two hospital authorities that have already done that and your accident and emergency service, which simply must have on board highly skilled medical people, kept in the National Health Service and they have contracted out the others which is a kind of taxi service, a special taxi service. There are two that have already done that.

Interviewer

Do you recollect which those are?

Prime Minister

We will get that for you, they are both northern ones. But what we have been doing, you see the other people in the National Health Service whose pay is commensurate, on about the same level with this group, they settled way back last April and May for what has been offered to the ambulance people. And it is not necessarily fair on them if other people who did not settle in the end get more.

But they have been offered more. As you know for the London service you always have to offer more for the London service because London is more expensive. They are now offered about 11.8 per cent for the London service and that is over a period of eighteen months.

But, what people have not realised, is that we are trying to do just exactly what you have said - offer more to those skilled medical people who have to go out with the ambulances to the terrible things like Clapham Junction, Kings Cross, the air crashes and so on. And those are called paramedics and they have been offered an extra £500 but what we are getting is that some of the ambulance service do not want the paramedics to have the extra. We do because we need more of them. That is what has been offered: 11.8 per cent to the London Ambulance Services, extra, but the paramedics plus an extra £500 a year because we do believe that those who have the extra skills, they will not arsquouire the extra skills unless they get the extra pay.

Interviewer

Would that apply to the emergency ambulance drivers who are really like Grand Prix drivers going through the traffic, they are not just like taxi drivers are they?

Prime Minister

Whether the emergency ambulance drivers get more than the others, I do not know, I will to have look into that, but I think you are quite right, the emergency and accident, it is not only the emergency going to accidents, it is emergency if someone collapses in the street, someone collapses at home, it is the domestic [end p26] emergency, or if something happens at work, it is the domestic emergency as well.

Now that is a real accident and emergency service and is very much more highly specialised than the people who go and get in ordinary out-patients because quite a number of that is now being done through a taxi service. So those have to be looked at.

Interviewer

Do you think that it will be fixed by Christmas?

Prime Minister

Well, I would be so pleased because you see all of this is back-dated to April and some of them have got £1,100 or £1,200 there waiting to be back-dated.

But we are, let me stress, for those medical ones who go out with the emergency accidents, they are getting extra; and the London ambulance service, which is very very efficient but also if you live in that area, frankly, the cost of living is higher and for them I think it is 11.8 per cent.

We put in a whole advertisement in the papers but we have not got it across yet.

Interviewer

Are you likely to step into this one personally? [end p27]

Prime Minister

No, I think it is going to a Whitley Council Meeting again tomorrow.

Interviewer

But you will be making your recommendations clear?

Prime Minister

I think we must make the recommendations clear.

Interviewer

There are only a few days to go before the end of this decade. How would you like to see Britain in the 1990s?

Prime Minister

I think Britain has renewed her confidence in the 1980s and her reputation in the world. What we have to do in the 1990s is, first, we are catching up with France and Germany, one year I think we actually overtook France. But this year we have fallen back a bit because our wages are going up higher than our productivity.

I want to see us close the gap. We can, we can, we are getting far more investment in industry regularly and people must use that investment to the maximum extent and we help that by keeping the rates of tax down because people work harder they get more. [end p28]

So first we have to do that, catching up on enterprise and investment, and we shall, and we shall. And then people keep a bigger proportion of their earnings and they can do what they wish with it, of course they can. Some will save, some will give their children more overseas visits, helping them to learn more languages, giving them a better opportunity.

And I am very very anxious, on top of that, that we should extend opportunity even more widely. How this is one reason why we are putting so much now into the education service. Many many parents say to me: “Look, this school is not getting the best out of my son or my daughter, I know he can do better than that, they are not getting the best out of him”. And this is why, for the first time, we are insisting that all children are taught certain subjects and that they are tested at the age of seven, eleven, and fourteen. And some people say to me: “Do you not think that seven is very young to be tested?” and I said: “Look, if a child is not reading at seven, the teacher and the parent ought to know about it and remedial steps should be taken there and then because if they are not most education after that assumes they can read”. So they must know and it ought to have been done automatically.

Interviewer

And parents, as you know Prime Minister, are fed up with their children leaving school ill-equipped. Many of them do not read or right properly. [end p29]

Prime Minister

Ill-equipped, do not read or they cannot express themselves, they cannot express an idea. So they have got to have all of that now on the curriculum and it is only just coming in and then they have got to be tested. We are failing in our duty to children if, after eleven years of compulsory education, they have not got a basic grasp of arithmetic, English, geography, history and science.

And they must not give these things up. We are ahead of every other country in the world in having got computers into every school. Children take to them, you know, it is practical. So every child should have that.

Then I think perhaps, more and more of our work is skilled because the unskilled is taken over by the automatic machines, so we have got to have young people trained - we have got the biggest youth training service - and they have got to be able to retrain so they have confidence and the training they have is relevant to the jobs of the future.

We are also putting more money into science because this is going to be the industry of the future. So it is, we will catch up our efficiency, our science is good and we will get more results from science, and we are getting the universities and industry working more closely together.

The public services must be better choice. The parents must have better choice of schools so we are getting a wider variety of schools. And the same thing if the parents and governors think they can do better with the tax-payers' budget and run it they will have to come up to standard. They too shall have it and that too is going well. [end p30]

So it is improvement in the public sector services to give better opportunity to every child.

Also we have just abolished the earnings rule for pensioners. I have a great belief that most people, when they retire, it comes very suddenly and when you retire, you not only lose your job and the whole daily structure of your life, but you lose contact with a lot of the people who you worked with and they were your friends.

And we were very anxious that more and more people should be able to work part-time. They have actually now got six million part-time jobs in this country and many employers are so very pleased to take on people who have retired early. They are very conscientious, they like part-time jobs, they are very reliable, it gives them extra income, it gives them extra money to buy something for their grandchildren and all the joy that gives.

So we are trying to get more industries getting more part-time jobs so that people can go on working part-time until they are much older. It keeps them younger, it keeps them interested. And actually industry is responding very well.

So it is more and more people, every man a capitalist because that gives them just that extra independence and security. I hope that more part-time jobs for elderly folk because I think that many of them like it and of course many of them now too are retiring all with a second pension so they are better off than they used to be, thank goodness. [end p31]

And this extending opportunity to young people. But they are becoming much more go-go, young people, they really are. Many are starting up in business on their own and becoming much more independent and doing well. It really is good.

And let me say this, they are very generous. I must also say part of my thesis, part of my belief for years, when you get people home owning you get a better local environment. Their children will be taught, you do not throw down coca cola tins or chocolate wrappings in the street, you put them in your pocket and take them home.

And everyone is becoming much more conscious of the environment and we need them all to beautify Britain, to keep the streets, the motorways clean. Yes, plant more trees and more shrubs, beautify it and keep it clean and beautiful so that we are proud when people come.

Interviewer

Super. You have given the police a great deal more money, they have been able to beef up their manpower. And yet more and more people feel that the streets of Britain are no longer safe. Women cannot walk down the streets at night without worrying who is following them; homes are burgled and it is so bad that the police now decide whether to bother following them up or not. And yet at the same time motorists feel that they are being more and more persecuted. Do you feel that the police could possibly get the balance a little more right and pursue criminals a little more [end p32] strongly and leave the motoring problems until they have got the streets right? There seem to be an awful lot of desk-bound people in Police Stations these days and not enough on the beat. There is, I think, and I am sure you know this because you keep a very close finger on the pulse of this country, there is really a crisis of confidence in whether they are able to protect us, as indeed they used to do?

Prime Minister

They are concentrating on trying to clear up the violent crimes because in a way they are worst of all. And as you have heard me say before, we are hard up against the problems of human nature. Some of these terrible violent crimes and turning to drugs are not young people without money, they are young people who have got plenty of money who have just got evil in them, no sense of thought for their fellow citizens at all.

And the police are concentrating on trying to clear up the violent crimes and I know full well that when you go in and find your house burgled and everything turned out, you feel as if all your personal life has been exposed to someone else and it is terrible.

We are having a look just exactly at the management of the resources because not only are there far more police and far more equipment, but we have also a lot more civilians employed by the police so that the jobs that can be done by civilians are done so, everyone wants more Bobbies on the beat. [end p33]

We are getting far more Neighbourhood Watches now and the areas - my area is one - where we have got the Neighbourhood Watch, do you know what we are finding, first the number of burglaries are going down because they all look around the street and say “Ah, I have not seen that person before” and duly report it; but also we are finding that neighbours are beginning to know one another who did not know one another before.

But we are having to look to see again whether the best use is made of resources, whether really good management can stretch them further. But I sometimes have been in and around Police Stations, the amount of manpower that you have to put on in following up the violent cases is colossal.

Again, science is coming to our aid, you now get what is called the DNA finger printing, that you can if you get hair or saliva you can …

Interviewer

… that is quite magnificent.

Prime Minister

It is going to help a very great deal.

Interviewer

Why are people, in this reasonably affluent society that we now have, why are they so awful to their children, are we sick, we do the most appalling things to our children? [end p34]

Prime Minister

Awful. Again, I have said so often, if you have got a child living next door and you have not seen the child, do not wait for a policeman to come or a social worker, you have got to take steps to find out. It is terrible the things that go on. And people have to be thoroughly exposed and know that if they do these things they will be exposed to the full gaze of publicity, the full contempt and hatred of their neighbours because this ought not to happen.

And now we have got the possibility of where there is a sentence which the Sir Patrick MayhewAttorney General considers too lenient, he can ask for it to go before the Courts again. I am for very heavy sentencing of these people who are violent to the innocents. It should be the greatest trust we have.

Interviewer

What would you consider has been your most memorable achievement during the last decade?

Prime Minister

You want a single one?

Interviewer

One that you would like to be remembered for, one that has given you the most pleasure, the one that you feel has been the most important for the good of Great Britain. [end p35]

Prime Minister

It is a combination really. I think one of the most important things we did to get things going was to take away power from the trade union bosses and hand it back to trade union members. And I will never forget the way in which that was repaid, because I have a fundamental belief that if you get power to ordinary people, the majority of ordinary people are decent, hard-working, conscientious and want to live in a country that is of good repute, honest and is a good country to live in.

And that is what really is the driving force behind everything I do. So people were under the intimidation of trade union bosses, so we took that away and people were able to vote.

Similarly, you give every person the right and the opportunity to own property. It is all of this, it is making each and every single person matter. And that was trade union reforms, spreading ownership more widely, giving parents more rights as to where to send their children to school and bigger choice. It is a whole list of things because to me most people are honourable and decent and the more we get the powers in their hands, the better.

And that in a way is what I have been doing and it is again passing power genuinely back to people, backed up by this ownership of capital. So it is a thing which actually works and it has repaid, it has not merely repaid government. But you put your hand on the most difficult thing, there are always people who are evil, there are people who are foolish and there are people who are downright evil and it is now mobilising all that is best in our country to overcome this evil. [end p36]

And that is far more difficult than building new hospitals and building new schools.