Speeches, etc.

Margaret Thatcher

Press Conference for American Correspondents in London

Document type: Speeches, interviews, etc.
Venue: Hyde Park Hotel, London
Source: Thatcher Archive: COI transcript
Editorial comments: 1315-1500.
Importance ranking: Major
Word count: 5645
Themes: Civil liberties, Conservatism, Defence (general), Economic policy - theory and process, Employment, Monetary policy, Privatized & state industries, Taxation, Trade, European Union (general), Economic, monetary & political union, European Union Single Market, Foreign policy (Americas excluding USA), Foreign policy (Asia), Foreign policy (Central & Eastern Europe), Foreign policy (USSR & successor states), Foreign policy (Western Europe - non-EU), Labour Party & socialism, Law & order, Leadership, Race, immigration, nationality, Religion & morality, Society, Social security & welfare

Prime Minister

Mr Chairman, I will not go on and on and on here either. So I thought I would be comparatively brief in the opening because I know you like to ask a lot of questions and will need most of the time for that.

You really have said most of the things in general about the domestic economy by pointing out, yes, that Britain had been transformed, the economy and politics and so on, it really has. But it was transformed not merely through economic measures, it was transformed because we believed in a totally different system and way of governing the people.

Later on in your opening you indicated, Mr Chairman, that socialism was being what, reformed, refashioned, revised? Let me say this. There is no revision, refashioning or reform of socialism, that is possible, there is only rejection of it. [end p1]

Socialism is a central, command, control economy arrogating unto government many things which should really be the role of the citizen.

You will find my particular belief put out in the most beautiful form and expression in the world in the American Constitution and there it says quite clearly that it is the liberty of the individual, the enterprise, the talent, the ability of the individual, together with his sense of duty and community, which they had to bring to create the United States at all, which was the main thing and governments were created to serve those human rights, that freedom, that liberty of the individual, and the governments must submit to being re-elected from time to time.

But it was this enterprise, the human rights, the talents, the ability of the individual which was the prime thing and governments were there not to maximise their powers but to serve that liberty which means of course that you have to protect the weak against the strong because the thing which makes freedom work is a strong rule of law.

You will see it in that Constitution, you will see it also in the development of the United States where people as you know went, used their own individual talents with an enormous sense of community. Because let me make it quite clear that when you are expressing your individual talents and abilities you can only do so in relation to others. It is not the individual or the community, the individual expresses his enterprise, his talents, his ability in relation to a community and it is that expression, that leadership [end p2] which is seen at all levels of ability which builds the community.

Now that was where we started. Yes, we started from the soundest philosophical base that there is in the whole history of human beings, that the task of government is not to maximise its powers but to minimise them to leave the freedom of individuals to work.

And so, of course, what did that mean? It meant that we cut taxes. When we came in the top rate of tax on savings was 98 percent, now it is 40 percent. When we came in the top rate of tax was 83 percent, now it is 40 percent. But that was an example of taking away powers from the state and returning it as incentives to the individual.

We have in fact privatised some twenty companies. Of course we should. It is not the business of governments to run companies and run industry. Most politicians do not know how to do it and that was pathetically obvious in the performance of some of the nationalised industries and the tax-payer was paying a packet.

We got rid of many of the regulations, we got rid of many of the controls and in fact we said to industry: “We will create a framework of rules which enables competition to work because of course we will not have monopolies, it is our task to see that you get the freedom of competition.”

Now I stress that. That is a fundamental belief. That is what our policies stem from and that is why they have never changed and that is why Thatcherism is a lot older than me, a lot older than me and why, as you will see, other people have taken [end p3] to socialism, which is a command economy, that nationalisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, worked out by Lenin and Marx and Engele, in which people must subordinate themselves to the system.

And so you have no proper rule of law in a communist-socialist state and they are now trying to have to fashion one because as you talk to them the thought that a citizen might be able to take the state before independent courts is totally new to them.

So do not think that you can in fact revise socialism. The essence of socialism is central command and control and the individual subjugated towards that with much less freedom of the individual and starting from a totally different approach.

You have seen what it has done for Britain. On the economic side at the moment we have a problem of inflation at 7.2 percent. That for us is too high. It was in fact a figure which Labour cheered when it got down as low as that for some six months and then it went up again.

But it is too high and we have in fact clearly found the economy growing much faster than we thought which has given us the inflation problem and also has given us the current balance of trade problem, which you know about very well.

Fortunately, that is not compounded by the way in which government runs its financial affairs because, as you know, we do not have a budget deficit, we have a budget surplus so thank goodness we have got our own affairs in a very conservative (with a small c), and Prudent (with a big P) way, otherwise we really should have a problem. [end p4]

Of course we will have to keep things tight now to get inflation down, obviously, and the interest rates, as you know, the familiar formula, have to stay as high as necessary for as long as necessary to keep downward pressure on inflation.

Can I just go on, quickly, to Europe? We are a committed member of Europe, let me make that quite clear. Half of this country's history has been carried out in relation to Europe, of course it has, and we are committed because we joined it to get a single market, a free Common Market throughout the whole system.

That, I am afraid, we did not get for a long time as the barriers stayed up. But because we approach the whole of Europe in the same way as we do at home, we do not wish it to be tied up with unnecessary regulations. The regulations you need are those to remove the barriers and constraints on trade and movement of capital.

And so we actually were ahead of most other countries in Europe in some of the barriers that we have removed. You know we are the most open financial market in the whole of Europe, the most open financial market. Germany has not got rid of some of the barriers which we have got rid of. We are ahead of most others, although Germany of course has free movement of capital, has certain other barriers, free movement of capital and abolition of the exchange control. [end p5]

Some of the other members of the Exchange Rate Mechanism still have foreign exchange control and they do not have free movement of capital and I think it will be a rather different Exchange Rate Mechanism when they have all, as they are supposed to do, abolished those-controls.

There are totally different customs across Europe with regard to mergers and monopolies because of the different habit and culture, of commerce. As you know, in Germany the banks own a good deal of industry. It is very much more difficult also to takeover a company in France. They are very, very different things.

But our approach to Europe is to remove the barriers so that we do have free competition, so that we can in fact get much freer trade and that the purpose of the regulations is to standardise certain products on safety, to standardise certain things for computers, and so on.

Now if you look and see what is coming out of the Commission, there really are a whole host of regulations, far more than ever is necessary and some which completely disregard the different history and culture of the different nations which make up Europe.

And so when we had an argument about the Social Charter last time, the speech which I made found “Hear, hear!” from many other people who, although they were saying the same thing, they voted differently. [end p6]

I took across our Social Charter and said: “Look, this is a very good Social Charter. I have already agreed the larger Europe Social Charter, the Council of Europe, some of you have not even ratified that. We have and we have our Social Charter. But of course in your social policy you have built up commitments in pensions and so on and you have built up an industry which you have to honour and you have built up an industry because you have different trade union laws and different proportions of people belonging to trade unions—France only 15 percent, we have about 50 percent—and you simply cannot impose an artificial system upon them.”

So we had no difficulty with the Social Charter because I had taken our own and told them just exactly what we do and some of them said: “Well, we could not possibly do as much as that.”

But that is the difference in approach. We want a free Europe. Yes we do want to get rid of subsidies, we have got rid of most of ours, there are still some to coal and some to British Rail. But some of them have much larger subsidies so you cannot get free competition.

Now then may I go quickly to the wider international scene just with regard to recent visits. We went to Japan. You have the same problem with Japan as we have, namely that Japan, in spite of everything, still has a colossal surplus on her trade. It is much more difficult to sell things in Japan than it is for Japan to sell things in Britain and the United States. [end p7]

They can come over here, they can plug into half a dozen retail distribution systems which go right across the country, they can see half a dozen buyers and therefore they can get a lot of goods sold into one of the most efficient distribution systems in the world.

If you go over there there is no efficient distribution system, it is very closed, it is very difficult. You also have of course a colossal savings ratio and therefore they are not buying to the same extent as you or I.

We also have a problem, similarly, though you do not on quite the same scale, with Germany. Germany actually has a bigger surplus on trade in proportion to her size and her population than Japan has. Germany has a surplus of trade with every single member of the European Community.

That is one reason why we wanted to try to get down some of the structural barriers and restraints on trade so that we can get it moving much more freely.

So in Japan, yes we did have to have a go and say: “Look, we really cannot go on taking this surplus on trade. There are things which you can do to free up your own markets in the same way as we have done and it is not fair that you should deal with your own market in a totally different way from those in which we deal with ours” . [end p8]

We are getting there slowly but I have been to Economic Summits for ten years now and been saying the same thing for ten years and at last we are beginning, we are beginning, to get a little of the way. But it is still quite hard going.

Nevertheless, as happens when you have a big surplus on trade, you have to have a big outflow of capital, of course you do to balance it, and therefore we are in fact getting quite a lot of inward investment from Japan. They are coming to Britain more than to other members of the Community and I do not blame them, I would do the same thing because we are a much freer society, much freer from regulations and so they find in fact that they can operate very much better here.

We called in, we could not in our plane do Tokyo to Moscow in one hop on the way back because the …   . were very heavy so we came into Bratsk, which is in Siberia, to refuel. I am the first British Prime Minister to have got into Siberia and the first British Prime Minister to …

Of course Bernard InghamBernard was with me and we had the press with me. I will tell you something about Bratsk, they know how to deal in foreign currency. They were selling to the press vodka for dollars and sterling except they got the exchange rate wrong, they thought one pound equalled one dollar until they were in fact told that one pound was far more than one dollar. So we just taught them a little bit about that. [end p9]

Then we came over to Moscow and I found Mr Gorbachev in very good form—he had had a very good Nationalities Plenum, as you know—in very good form. And of course before I see Mr Gorbachev and after I am in touch with the George BushPresident and of course we were before and after because there are lots of negotiations going on which affect us all.

We had very good talks, as we always do. I never under-estimate the enormity of his problem. Do not forget he is dealing with people who have no idea of liberty or the responsibilities which it entails, who all their lives have done things only on instruction and who are frightened therefore of what would happen if they had to turn and Cope themselves.

It is much easier for people to come out of a country, to come to a free market economy and plug into that where you have all of the structures and it operates properly, than to try to go from a total command bureaucracy to try to build up a free economy where the transport does not work that well, where you have been used to getting permits for things. And what happens when you start to dismantle that bureaucracy and people do not know what to put in its place?

It is a very very big problem. Even joint ventures find when they go there that in a free market economy they order things, they arrive on time, and of course that is how you deal with your finance. When they get in the Soviet Union they do not necessarily arrive on time so your production schedules are interrupted. And of course in the Soviet system there is no such thing as a cost or a price, they do not really know what it is. [end p10]

Now they have a real problem because for years they have been paying people to produce things, not all of which would sell. The people have not been able to spend some of their money on goods because they were not there. So there is a lot of money, what they call … money, what we would call inflationary money, which the moment you do get goods would start to come out and purchase them and so they could face quite a problem of inflation.

It was the international dimension that we were discussing to the greatest extent. It was an extremely worthwhile visit, it is about the sixth time that I have had talks with Mr Gorbachev. I believe they are very very useful to us both.

It is in the interests of the West that this colossal, historic experiment in the Soviet Union of rolling back the frontiers of socialism continues and succeeds.

The immediate one that it is vital to succeed is Poland and that is why the countries of the West are constantly in touch with one another as to how we can help Poland succeed because that is the first government you have had go from communism to Solidarity, in this case, and it is absolutely vital that a country the size of Poland, much smaller, absolutely vital politically that it succeeds. So you will find that we can at least give them some help before the IMF programme gets in place but we cannot give the main help until that programme is in place because until it is in place things will not be run in a way which makes maximum use of extra credit. [end p11]

I said I was not going to be very long. I have been longer than I expected.

Can I just pay tribute to Bernard InghamBernard because he deals with your questions and also with a lot of other questions? He has been with us now, it was his tenth anniversary yesterday, with us at Number 10. He is absolutely invaluable. As I sometimes say, Cabinet Ministers get reshuffled but Bernard goes on forever. [end p12]

Question (New York Times

Prime Minister, you just said that you thought it was vital that Poland succeed in this evolution that it is undergoing. May I ask whether you think that the figure of about £200 million suggested last week by the EC for aid from the EC and its members plus another equivalent amount from the other twelve members of the OECD, coming up to about £500 million, is that enough or do you think it is not enough? How do you see yourself and the other leaders of the Free World joining together to help Poland make this transition?

Prime Minister

I do not see that you can calculate the sum in that way at all.

First, there were obvious things that we could do immediately—and we did. Poland was short of food. They got the message to us. We started at the EEC Summit in Madrid when I remember myself asking M. Delors if we had food that we could send because we had [end p13] food surpluses and it is ridiculous for us to have surpluses and then be short of food. He agreed to look into it and by the time we got to the Economic Summit, which was not very much later, we thought it should not be sent only by the European Community but also by the Summit Seven and it is in fact being coordinated by the European Community. I think about £75/80 million of food is going there. Not very much went during August because our surpluses are right down—we are having to buy on the open market.

There is also another problem: ports in Poland cannot take more than a certain amount at one time. This, again, is what you come up against in communism; the kind of infrastructure is not there always to take in the necessary help needed. That immediately should be relieving the food problem.

We ourselves—before then and along with other countries, each acting separately—had said that they will need their 1989 repayments rescheduled and in our case we rescheduled them so there would be a five-year period of grace and then payments start. I think we come up to the time when the 1990 ones need rescheduling and others similarly have rescheduled. But we cannot do a full rescheduling until you have got the IMF position in place.

We all of us I think, each in our own different ways, have said they, too, need more management training. I think we allocated £25 million over a period of five years. Other people are doing management training as well and we have sent industrialists across there with our Minister of Trade to see what we could as joint measures. [end p14]

Let me tell you about joint ventures. What I say is really about the Soviet Union but it is the same thing.

You think you are going to set up a joint venture and you think in your mind that you will run it just as you would a factory here and then you find you cannot because of the permits and the systems do not run, so it is not as easy to set up joint ventures as you thought and I learned it when I went to Poland and said to some of the farmers: “Look! I know that you would not have your land taken away from you to put all of you into collectives, so you in fact must have people who are quite used to taking their decisions, growing their own food on their own land and you must really be doing quite well because there is a shortage of food in Poland!” and they said to me: “You do not understand, Mrs. Thatcher! Here, you have to get a permit for everything. We cannot get the implements we need properly to farm our land, there are too few of them; we have to apply for a permit; if there are any, they go to members of the Communist Party!” and then it suddenly dawned on me that it is the whole network of intricate controls which will stop people from being able to make maximum use of their property, even when they were used to doing so from the olden days and so I say again: do not underestimate the difficulty of bringing about economic reform, particularly with the opposition of communist countries which has usually been used to saying: “Please keep subsidies on food and give us more pay!” and they are going to have to learn that it is pay always in relation to what you produce and can get to the market place. So it is a totally new structure. It is something that we have not faced on that scale ever. [end p15]

William …   . (Time Magazine)

Prime Minister, may I ask you to give your assessment, please, of Mr. Gorbachev 's chances of success, particularly in light of your most recent visit? Thank you very much!

Prime Minister

As I have indicated and as I indicated in reply to the Mr. Shishkovskyinterviewer on Soviet television, it is easier to bring about more political liberty for a politician than it is to bring about economic reform. The politicians themselves can change the rules and regulations about political liberty and change the structure. That they have done to great effect and much further than we ever expected; it has opened up their whole system and they have quite done brilliantly and there is a totally different atmosphere there—you can see this.

But in order to get the economic reform, it is just a different ball game altogether. First, because you are dealing with a bureaucracy; second, because there is no price mechanism, no cost mechanism, thirdly, because no-one knows how to do it; fourthly, because there are people who have a vested interest in bureaucracy; fifthly, because there are people who had to keep quiet under the previous rules in regard to not saying anything, so all of the criticisms come out. [end p16]

I had to say to the people: “Look! it is no good expecting economic reform in the same way as you got political reform. You got political through your politicians. Your politicians are crying out for economic reform but they cannot do it without the people making the effort to work harder and to do things differently. The economic reform can only be a partnership between government and people. Do not sit back and say ‘We are waiting for the benefit of economic reforms!’ Those cannot come without the efforts of the people. There is no such thing as effortless prosperity!” and, of course, they do not really know how to tackle it and that does depend on the leadership of a few people who have some ideas how to do it and that leadership is absolutely critical.

Mikhail GorbachevHe is, I think, by far the most dominant persononality and has shown his enormous qualities of leadership and I hope and believe he will get through.

Question

Prime Minister, with regard to joining the EMS, you have repeatedly said “When the time is ripe!” When is it likely to be ripe? [end p17]

Prime Minister

I did give a much more refined definition of that at the last Summit at Madrid.

First, as I have indicated, we are way ahead of most European countries in practical terms of what we have done in freeing-up, so they have got to catch up with us. They have got to have free movement of capital, which means abolishing all their foreign exchange control. France has not yet done that; Italy has not yet done that; Spain has not yet done that; some of them are not even in the European Monetary System, let alone in the Exchange Rate Mechanism, but those are the newer ones. So they have got to free their systems up.

Secondly, we have got to get the freeing-up which is necessary for 1992 to operate. If you look, for example, at some of the financial rules in Germany they still have rules which are quite constraining on free movement of capital and that, of course, gives them a substitute which we do not have of having more control over its movement. So you have got to get all of the 1992, which is Stage 1 of Delors, actually operating and we must have a hundred directives still to do and, of course, they are some of the very difficult ones.

Thirdly, you have got to get rid of some of your subsidies because subsidies are a fetter on free movement and a distortion. [end p18]

When you have done all of those things—and we are far further down the road at getting rid of subsidies than almost all other countries, we are far further down the road of freeing things up and we are far further down the road of freeing-up the monetary system. So they have got to catch us up in that and that is when we will have a look at it, precisely then.

Dan … (CBS News)

It has been my impression that you share the US Government's view of Panama's General Noriega. Is that so and are you therefore disappointed that the rebellion failed?

Prime Minister

I am very practical about these things. Yes, I do share the view. There was an election there. The result was quite clear, Absolutely clear, and I said at the Inter-Parliamentary Union that Manuel Noriegahe really should stand down and let those who were properly elected, I think on something like two-to-one, take over.

But let me point this out: there are many other systems that we disapprove of and have disapproved of over many many years, but you were not able to do anything to bring them to an end. We disapproved of some of the systems in Eastern Europe for a very long time, including in Poland, but we were not able from the outside to bring them to an end. So that is the reason why one cannot in fact do anything about that from the outside. [end p19]

Dan …   . (CBS News)

I am sorry, Prime Minister. Am I therefore hearing no opinion of the rebellion yesterday?

Prime Minister

The rebellion yesterday is not a thing for me. It is an attempt to change by coup. What I want is a standing aside in order to implement the results of a properly held election, not one person by a coup to another.

Dan Fisher (Los Angeles Times)

Prime Minister, on the domestic front, if I may. After being in Brighton yesterday, I am kind of curious: how would you run a campaign against Margaret Thatcher?

Prime Minister

I would not. I would vote for her! (laughter)

Question

Prime Minister, I am sure you are aware that Sir Geoffrey Howe is about to make an important speech to the Bow Group. Are you concerned about a leadership bid and a possible division in the Conservative Party?

Prime Minister

No! They have been making speeches for years; I hope they will go on making them. [end p20]

Glen Frankel (Washington Post)

In a speech last week, you were quoted in the press as expressing some personal disappointment in that after putting together some of the changes that you were speaking about earlier over the past ten years, that there still a lot of social welfare problems, if you will, in Britain. Could you elaborate to us a little bit in what sense you are disappointed in behavioural patterns?

Prime Minister

It was not my personal disappointment. Had you been there, you would have known that that was not an accurate report at all.

It is a point I have made many times, that it is far easier to get your housing policy right, your education policy, your prosperity and so on. In other words, social workers years ago would have thought that by the time everyone had a good education, good health, reasonable housing, reasonable income, that many of your problems would have gone. That is not so.

What we are now dealing with is the problems of human nature. That does not surprise me because of the fundamental evil in human nature, the fundamental streak of violence. What we are now dealing with are things which are much difficult to deal with than those other things and things which cannot be dealt with by governments alone—they can only be dealt with really by cooperation with the whole community, and they are: [end p21]

Yes, your violence; the amount of violence and crime, particularly among young people. That is related to how far family life is influential among young people and to some extent by the education as well, but also in the end, each person is responsible for his own behaviour.

You have got the violence, you have got the drugs. Why do people take to drugs? It is not necessarily a thing of poverty, it can be a thing with people who have quite a lot of money; others, I am afraid, will steal to do it.

Terrorism is the third. We face that, as you know, in Northern Ireland, on the mainland, and in Europe sometimes.

These are the problems of human nature. They are much more difficult to deal with than the problems of setting up an education system, setting up a health system, even setting up a manufacturing system, which people do themselves. It is a question—in a way stressing the obvious—of saying to a number of social workers: “Look! Each person is responsible for his own behaviour!” This is not a question of social engineering. Yes, we can alleviate bad conditions. When you have done all of that, it is really getting at the person and giving them responsibility for their own behaviour and also having a strong rule of law. You remember what I said in my philosophy at the beginning: it is one of personal liberty. The only thing that makes personal liberty work is a strong rule of law, so of course freedom has to work with one for the freedom of another and that is why we have always been a very strong law-and-order party. [end p22]

What we face—and you sometimes face it as well—is that people can be intimidated out of giving evidence and therefore it is not easy to bring a criminal to justice.

What I am saying is that these are much deeper problems to tackle than some of the previous ones which we had tackled in the past but they are very present problems.

Question

Refugees have been very much on our minds. We watched the images from East Germany. Can you tell us now what your policy will be on the Hong Kong refugee situation?

Prime Minister

The people of Hong Kong are over five million.

The lease in Hong Kong comes to an end in 1997, that is, the treaty under which we got the lease of Hong Kong from the Chinese Government, terminates in 1997. We therefore negotiated and signed an agreement between China and the United Kingdom—which is registered at the United Nations, because we felt that unless we did something in advance things would change very suddenly—under which the way of life in Hong Kong shall continue in its present way for fifty years after we have left. Because we are still responsible for administration until 1997, we have a Liaison Committee between the Chinese and ourselves that will go on at any rate for three years after 1997. [end p23]

Obviously the people of Hong Kong's confidence in that agreement and their future was not …   . because of what happened in Tiananmen Square and it is really, I think, up to the Chinese Government to do everything they can to take the requisite action to restore that confidence.

We are looking at a scheme to have some people from Hong Kong, but it could not be anything like the total number. You can imagine 5 million or 3.5 million who have a particular claim—there is no question of that—but there will be some key people who it is important should stay in Hong Kong to keep the prosperity going and also to keep the security going and we are having a look to see how we can reassure those people by giving them a passport over here. If they have got that assurance, then the chances are that they will stay in Hong Kong, knowing that they have got their passport here. That is the way we are tackling it.

If things went really badly, we would obviously have to call upon all other nations in the world to help.

Dick Longworth (Chicago Tribune)

Prime Minister, things are moving fast in Central Europe to the point that Chancellor Kohl can say that reunification of Germany is now back on his political agenda. Would you agree that reunification is now on the Western and international agenda and, given the history of this century, how do you feel about the prospect of a reunited Germany? [end p24]

Prime Minister

I do not think it is immediately back on the agenda. You will have a look and see in the NATO concept what has always been said about it, but I thought that the Nationalities Plenum in the Soviet Union last week seemed to make it clear that from the Soviet Union's viewpoint there are many changes taking place, that the limits were within the outer boundary of the Warsaw Pact countries, which would mean that reunification was not immediately on the agenda. I shall be very interested to see what happens when Mr. Gorbachev goes to East Berlin this week.

Question

Prime Minister, you reiterated that interest rates have to stay as high as necessary as long as necessary to put downward pressure on inflation. I wanted to ask you more specifically how you feel about the pound's recent weakness and whether or not you think further weakness in the pound would necessitate higher interest rates?

Prime Minister

Mr. Chairman, anyone who is fool enough to fall for a provocative question like that should not be in my position! (laughter) [end p25]

Peter Bansand (CBS News)

I want to follow up on the Gorbachev question.

There is a school of thought in the United States that he is in serious trouble, that he may not last another year, that he may have just another year to prove himself before possibly hard-liners throw him out. The quandary seems to be that the more he opens up for reform, the more people want to turn away from the Soviet system.

I am wondering what you think is Mr. Gorbachev 's prospect of being overthrown or somehow pushed out in the next year and is there a danger that we could see a return of hard-liners in the Soviet Union?

Prime Minister

Where there are great uncertainties, there are always dangers, but Mr. Gorbachev is a very firm leader. He was very self-assured when I saw him and I think that he has a good chance, as I indicated before, of getting through.

Warren Gatler (Herald Tribune)

The Trident missile programme is the cornerstone of your defence policy and, as you know, the US Senate Appropriations Committee has decided to cut around two billion dollars from the missile programme development.

Can you comment whether you are concerned that this could delay the distribution and deployment of Trident to Britain to the Royal Navy? [end p26]

Prime Minister

Obviously, we keep closely in touch with the United States about the Trident programme. It is very important to us that it is completed and on time and more than that I cannot say. We keep in touch with the Defence and with President Bush.