Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 3 September, 2006 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Boulton:          Before we come onto to domestic matters you are of course an expert on defence, a former soldier yourself.  Clearly a tragedy over the weekend, are you concerned that British forces and the government really know what we are doing now in Afghanistan?

 

Duncan-Smith:           I am in support of what we are trying to do in Afghanistan but I raise the time they put the troops out there first.  I said that there was a problem over the concept of the mission, that this was going to be more of a war fighting mission than it was going to be over a simple protection of people doing their government business in the southern provinces.  The government has now I think moved across into that issuing them with even stronger terms and rules of engagement.   Concerns are two fold; first of all an equipment issue, I think the forces have being under funded and under equipped for some time now yet they are doing far more than they have ever done so the government needs to square up to their responsibilities -

 

Boulton:          - And would you include Nimrod in that?

 

Duncan-Smith:           Yes, well I think the whole Nimrod fiasco – because I think the Nimrod they are using as I understand it is the old Nimrod, there has been a fiasco in upgrading the nimrod package completely including the aircraft which has cost literally tons of money so that’s an issue.  But there is also the issue of the troops and their equipment on the ground and I think these have to be addressed.  We are in a sort of terrorist war in southern Afghanistan, our troops are doing brilliantly and there have been many successes out there which are not often reported.  The tragedies and honestly my thoughts and heart goes out to those families who today will know that their loved ones are not coming back -

 

Boulton:          - Do we have enough men there?

 

Duncan-Smith:           I am not the expert on that but what I will say is if the military want more and want more equipment and they want batter equipment frankly there should be nothing standing in the way of that.  Even if it meant going and purchasing equipment direct from the United States for this issue is so big there is nothing bigger now than the fight against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan on which the whole stability of the Afghan region and on our drive against drugs and everything else including international terrorism rests.  So, if we are going to do it don’t do it unless you are going to do it properly.

 

Boulton:          Moving on to domestic matters.  Next week your body is publishing a report on family break down, we are also going to get a speech from Tony Blair on social exclusion and he has already trialled some of that with what people are calling foetus ASBOs.  Where is the common ground?  Is there common ground between you and the government on the problem?

 

Duncan-Smith:           If there is common ground at all I think the common ground now is the recognition that something is going very badly wrong out there.  Not just in our cities by the way but in our towns and the outer edges of our towns across Britain.  What we’re seeing and we are going to produce a huge report I think at the end of the year which will look at what I call the state of Britain, the state of the nation and what we are seeing now is whole communities in inner cities being hollowed out and collapsing.  The absence of any sort of family structure, structure generally, no sense of responsibility, young men now literally drifting around in sort of herds having no tie-in at all, no need to earn any money, officially not paying any taxes, not being productive or responsible in society.  That’s going on and it is getting worse.  At the same time figures are now showing that the gap between the wealthier part of Britain and the poor part has grown, social mobility has almost completely stopped for the first time since the second world war so if there is common ground it is that there is a major problem which is eating away at the fabric of our society.

 

Boulton:          Is there common ground that you need intervention and if necessary intervention with sanctions, in other words going in as early as Tony Blair said this week with a teenage mother who is pregnant saying you will behave in a certain way or there will be consequences?

 

Duncan-Smith:           The problem with Tony Blair and the government is that they seem to do things almost exclusively for tomorrow’s headlines.  My concern is that on the one hand Tony Blair talks about intervention and government intervention and we are going to dictate to these single parents but on the other hand the whole of the government structure is connived at the process of breakdown of family community.  An official form today doesn’t even contain the concept of marital status anymore, that’s gone.  The whole idea of the way in which children are brought up is to do with structure.  We have got this report coming out this week that will show categorically that family and family structure is dependent on the stability of marriage in the community, the government has completely abandoned that in a politically correct stance that says it doesn’t matter.  It does.  If you are going to punish people for the way they bring up children which appears to be what the government is trying to do, you have also got to be ahead of the game and say we have now got to start rebuilding the whole idea that strong families at the heart of which lies a very strong marriage are all part of it.  Reports on mental health collapse at the moment are worse than ever, drug taking, collapsing into abuse of alcohol – all of this is going on.

 

Boulton:          Would you agree that this is a question of social exclusion?  It is a minority of people who are, a small minority coming up in all these indicators of everything from poverty to criminality and all the rest and if we are to have a healthy society those people need to be targeted and if necessary compelled?

 

Duncan-Smith:           What we believe is both that the small voluntary sectors involved in these communities know better how to do this, not government who goes blundering around creating problems, and the second aspect of this is structure.  I keep coming back to it now and that is because it is vital.  The government has simply failed to understand the natural structure that brings up kids, that adjusts communities, that builds natural communities that help each other – that has broken down dramatically.  The key thing here of what we have to try and do is to find ways to rebuild that and to work with the natural instincts of people so that people recognise the way -

 

Boulton:          - David Cameron for example has said that there would be favourable taxation for people who are married.

 

Duncan-Smith:           He has said that early on and we are going develop the whole process of how do you encourage people who are marginally decision making as to how they live their lives, how do you encourage them and reward responsible life as opposed to irresponsible life.

 

Boulton:          In a contradictory way we are also hearing from George Osborne that he wants to move towards much heavier environmental taxes, indirect taxes.  Now, everything we know from economics says that indirect taxes will make the poor poorer.

 

Duncan-Smith:           I am not going to debate right now what the range of policy options are open to David Cameron and George Osborne.  What I am simply saying is that we will present to David - 

 

Boulton:          - But you will have a tax proposal within that presumably because that is important if you are dealing with poverty?

 

Duncan-Smith:           We will cover the whole range of how do you rebuild the structure in our communities -

 

Boulton:          - And Gordon Brown’s point of course is that credits are aimed precisely at the people who have the money.

 

Duncan-Smith:           Well, here’s the problem.  Under Gordon Brown in the last nine years actually this whole tax credit system has begun to penalise the worst off in society.  The tax burden now has fallen disproportionately on the worst off and worse than that also now they are beginning to penalise them in the benefit structure so they have got the double whammy of finding their tax marginally going up and their benefits actually penalising families that work and are structured.  One of the bits that will come out in next weeks report shows categorically that the most powerful way of delivering a stable family and stable kids is this process of building marriage as part of that structure.  The government abandoned that completely and actually punished and penalised people for making that choice.

 

Boulton:          Would you go for the tax cuts aimed particularly at the lower income level rather than the credit and targeting system?

 

Duncan-Smith:           My view is that the biggest problem at the moment lies amongst the bottom twenty percent of society.  Our focus as a party I think should be on the small bits of society which makes us good Conservatives.  If we believe in the environment we are natural environmentalists because we like to protect our communities, we must also believe in helping to rebuild our structures, our inner cities, our communities, of which people are the critical part of that.  If I give you one figure which is absolutely stark; if you want to break the crime wave which is going on you need to look ahead ten years -

 

Boulton:          - That’s what Tony Blair is doing talking about this years children who need intervention for the -

 

Duncan-Smith:           - Yes but listen to the figures though on this.  The typical prisoner is twenty seven years old, a man, it is not a female problem this.  He is sixty to seventy percent drug addicted, seventy percent alcohol abuser, thirty to forty percent from broken homes and thirty percent from no home at all, mental health problems of a massive degree.  If you want to know who are going to commit the crimes tomorrow we can point them out to you almost immediately, the question is what do you do about it and with Tony Blair intervening in this concept of ASBOs I think is the wrong move.  What you have got to do is as Camilla Batmanghelidj will tell you is you have to start that longer process of rebuilding the natural structures that give people community, discipline, cohesion and help them with their healthcare.  As we know strong families deliver kids that are gong to be healthier, more productive, more likely to do well and at the heart of that stability the government has got to own up and put it’s hand up and say we now need to find ways of stabilising that process of marriage.

 

Boulton:          As we were saying at the beginning you know what it is like being a leader at bay -

 

Duncan-Smith:           - Just a little bit!

 

Boulton:          Do you have any sympathy for Tony Blair now?

 

Duncan-Smith:           I always have sympathy for anybody that finds that the Westminster agenda is ultimately the key agenda that seems to dominate what they are doing.  I don’t have a mass amount of sympathy for the leader of the Labour government who has perhaps in some senses has sown the wind enough to reap the whirlwind now of their problems.  The reality for him is that they have a government here which keeps talking about renewal but has created so much breakdown in society so for the Prime Minister and his legacy I think the domestic legacy has been close to a disaster.

 

Boulton:          Would your advice be go or fight on?

 

Duncan-Smith:           Do you know what?  I don’t really mind much because as far as I am concerned I want the Conservative Party to rebuild itself and whilst the Labour party is tearing itself apart it gives us a wonderful opportunity for us to demonstrate that actually we care more about the country so rather than argue with each other at last maybe my party is beginning to say actually as we head towards power let’s make sure we have got a reason to be in power.  And that is the whole critical reason about rebuilding society, rebuilding communities and giving people greater responsibility and charge over their lives unlike Mr. Blair who wants to put the government in charge of our unborn babies.