Murnaghan 9.02.14 Interview Nigel Farage UKIP & Ravi Singh, Khalsa Aid

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now it’s a common call, isn’t it, at times of need – don’t spend the money abroad, spend it here in the UK where it’s needed and you can certainly see what is needed here in the flooded Somerset Levels. Well last week UKIPs leader, Nigel Farage, made just that point really about our international aid budget saying, well let’s divert some of it to help with what’s going on here and in other places in the UK and that was echoed this morning to me by one of the local MPs, Conservative MPs for Somerset. Well I’m glad to say that Nigel Farage is on a visit to the Levels here today, the UKIP leader, a very good morning to you Mr Farage. Let’s start with that point then, you’re basically saying let’s not spend – and it’s a huge amount isn’t it, 0.7% of GDP, let’s not spend that money abroad, let’s spend it at home where it’s needed most?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well what is amazing is that all the government has done in this is promise an extra 100 million sterling but that money is to be spent on upgrading rivers and those sorts of things, not a penny has been offered to any of the farmers or any of the people who are suffering grievously. Now you can’t change the weather but what the government could do for a tiny sum of money, they can say to people you will suffer no financial loss as a result of this and what a relief that would be and a weight off people’s minds.

DM: But you’d like to see that come from the international aid budget, that’s where the pot is?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well it seems to me that the aid budget is about us giving charity overseas. When you’ve got an emergency in this country it’s time to say that charity begins at home. I mean, what are we doing giving £300 million a year to India who have got a space programme, aircraft carriers and they’ve even got planes on them. So there’s a very strong argument that we should spend the money here.

DM: But there are disasters and disasters, if you know what I mean, this is a disaster as we see it in the United Kingdom, it’s nothing like typhoons, like Typhoon Haiyan, is it where thousands of people died?

NIGEL FARAGE: That may well be true but wouldn’t it be a good gesture to see a British government saying we’re going to put our own struggling people first? Yes, this is the most extreme case but don’t forget that in Chertsey, there’s horrible flooding there, there are parts of Kent still under very, very big flood alert, let alone the storm damage that’s been done. We’ve got a railway to rebuild to Devon and Cornwall, we’ve got sea walls that need maintaining. Now this is going to need more than the really paltry sum of money the government has offered so far.

DM: Is this a fleshed out policy then? I mean, is this all the international aid budget gone, you’d stop it altogether or just a proportion of it and if so, how big a proportion?

NIGEL FARAGE: The international aid budget is £11 billion a year, all the government have offered so far is less than 1% of that in the form of £100 million. Do you know, if suddenly that was 5% or 6%, you’d be talking real money. DM: But is this the back of a beermat calculations, again is it another policy that’s not thought out or is it … how much of the international aid budget would UKIP like to see diverted to the UK?

NIGEL FARAGE: Of the 11 billion we spend in foreign aid, only two billion gets spent on genuine humanitarian projects and overall I would like to see the foreign aid budget cut back radically but short term, all we would need is a couple of weeks money from the foreign aid budget to solve all the financial problems that are going to be caused by this?

DM: But there’s an argument isn’t there as well that even if that money were diverted, and how much of it is still unclear from your point of view, even if that money were diverted to the UK, where it would be spent? The entirety of the British people have to have a say, if we are going to spend ten, twenty, a hundred million on flood defences around the country are they going to be asked would you rather have hospitals, would you rather have schools, do you think it should be spent in the Somerset Levels, do you think it should be spent elsewhere?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well of course, government faces these difficulties every single day. What doesn’t happen is we don’t get the worst level of rain since 1760 and thousands of people suffering terrible damage to their homes, this is a one off event and for a relatively small sum of money the government, the government can also make itself very popular by doing it. DM: Tell me what you’ve seen while you’ve been going round here, what your reception has been and what have you made that the reception that the likes of Lord Smith from the Environment Agency has been getting, we saw Owen Patterson the Environment Secretary getting a bit of a rough time, what’s your reception been like?

NIGEL FARAGE: I think there was a feeling from people that politicians and bureaucrats turn up for the photo op and then disappear and I’ve made it absolutely clear from first thing this morning that I’m here to meet people and I’m here to learn. I’ve been looking at flood plain maps and building proposals and I will leave here knowing a lot more about the situation. What really gets me is that last March and April there were local politicians going on television, including UKIP ones, saying that unless we change the management of these rivers there was going to be a problem this winter and I feel that the Environment Agency have failed completely. They seem to want to follow European directives to the letter of the law and really they should be putting the interests of farmers and householders before that of beetles and voles.

DM: But should they be putting town before country?

NIGEL FARAGE: Well that of course, again we don’t know exactly strategically what’s happened here but there does appear to be very large amounts of money spent for example on Exeter which is just down the road where their defences have been shored up and here they’ve stopped dredging so these again are very difficult decisions and we are going to have to have a public inquiry after all this to find out how we’re managing the rivers in this country because clearly we’re not getting it right.

DM: But we had an inquiry, didn’t we, after 2007? We had a report about the floods then and nothing seems to have changed.

NIGEL FARAGE: This is different. The public inquiry I’m calling for is to look overall at this country as to how we’re managing sea defences, how we’re managing our rivers and to what extent we’re doing it ourselves or following European laws. I don't know the answer to that but somewhere in the mix we’ve got to find the answer.

DM: Do you think there’s much more of this kind of weather to come, these kind of weather events? We’re not of course just talking about the Somerset Levels at the moment, we’re talking about these storms which just seem to be consistently battering the south and south-west.

NIGEL FARAGE: Well we’ve just been through three very cold winters where nobody thought it would ever happen again. This winter we’ve barely had a frost and a perpetual series of low pressure systems coming in off the Atlantic. There are all sorts of theories as to why we’ve got this weather. The Met Office this morning are telling us it’s because it’s climate change.

DM: Do you go along with that?

NIGEL FARAGE: This is the same Met Office that talked about a barbecue summer a couple of years ago and …

DM: Well that’s a bit different.

NIGEL FARAGE: Even if this is being caused by climate change, given that the Indians and Chinese are building four new coal fired power stations every single week, frankly there isn’t much we can do about it. What we’ve got to do is manage the situation that we’ve got.

DM: But you don’t think it’s caused by climate change in the first place, do you just think it is an unusual variation in weather patterns?

NIGEL FARAGE: I think it’s weather, yes, it’s been happening since the dawn of time.

DM: Okay, we’ll go along with that. Listen, I want to bring in now Ravi Singh who is standing behind you now. You may know Ravi, he is from Khalsa Aid, good to see you Ravi, thank you very much for coming along. Now tell us about the work your charity has been doing? We have seen you and others working there down on the river bank there making that path an awful lot safer that people have got to use. Why have you come here?

RAVI SINGH: Can I first say I have been here since yesterday morning with our team when we heard a report about a young boy dying in Chertsey and we must keep these tragedies in mind and pray for the family and we are deeply saddened, we didn’t expect any deaths but this is very, very sad. What has happened, on Friday morning I called almost everyone, with my wife, we called every organisation from councils to everything, saying we want to help – negative response. There was no co-ordination, no centre point for somebody like us to say okay, ring this person. As soon as we landed yesterday, thanks to the landlord of the pub, Jim, we got stuck in. Straight away we were helping people move furniture, clear basements, had lunches about two o’clock, went all the way down the river here, walked about two miles down the road, we commissioned a truck of sand, sixteen tons, bagged it and then another truck. We finished bagging with the local community, not just ourselves, we’re not bigging ourselves up but we did it with the community. We bagged up over a thousand sand bags, thirty to forty tons of sand, we’re all aching. Then the boys from our team, a group of Sikhs, big strapping lads, we want to do something – I said get down here and we put wood chippings down. Six of them arrived this morning and they’ve been digging deep, more and more’s coming, they’re loading up the wheel barrows and getting stuck in. It’s quite a shock when you turn up yourself, what you see on TV is different and I’ve seen Sky coverage which has been fantastic and that’s what really got us here as well.

DM: Nigel Farage, what do you make of this?

NIGEL FARAGE: Absolutely fantastic. It’s funny isn’t it, when there are disasters overseas and I accept that the Philippines is worse than what’s happening here, but when there are disasters overseas the British are very quick to send money and to send people and it feels to the people living here that we have a serious problem here and no one does anything and no one cares and I think what you guys have done is a fantastic gesture.

DM: I just wanted to ask you, Ravi, what do you think of Mr Farage’s point that some of the money that Britain spends? We are a mighty powerful G8 economy, isn’t it right that we spend quite a lot of our money overseas to help others less fortunate? You have been in those situations haven’t you?

RAVI SINGH: Yes, we’ve been at the front end of it and I think there is a case to have reduced, if they have nuclear programmes, foreign aid but as a humanitarian I don't think we should cut anything. But why is Europe so silent? Why is the European Union banging on saying we’ll give you …

DM: Don’t get this man started!

RAVI SINGH: No, but also the other thing I’ve found from locals here, I’m not a politician, I’m not here to please you or whatever, I’m here to dig deep and I think people are trying to score points over this. We don’t need to blame any governments, any officials, what we’re saying is get stuck in – look at us, we’re filthy – for a couple of days and then give your opinion how you feel. It’s not always about money, people always seem to blame money but if you walk in to that house to help someone clear their furniture, they’ve got young kids, it’s that hope somebody brings when they take a step over their door saying we’re here for you.

DM: But it’s heartening, isn’t it, Mr Farage, to see people of all races and all religions who are British just digging in?

NIGEL FARAGE: Absolutely brilliant. This gesture will stick in people’s minds for a very long time.

DM: And that European Union point, they’ve got these funds, we know about the special funds they have, would you be happy to see those accessed? It’s some of the UK’s own money I suppose, recycled?

NIGEL FARAGE: That would be a good thing. It’ll take months and because we’re British we are incredibly unpopular over there at the moment but look, let’s not rely on Europe to sort this out, let’s sort this out ourselves. You’re quite right, people need physical help here but also just for a tiny sum of money the government can say to people they’ll suffer no further.

RAVI SINGH: But then again, like we’re talking about money again, I’m sorry to interrupt but when we were coming here we were told by some people, you don’t need to come here, people are insured but the insurance companies are not going to turn up to give you that moral support. The public are, the community is and in 15 years of doing that sort of work I’ve never seen such a resilient community in getting themselves together. Also one last point very quickly, I think it’s very important that people think that dredging the river is one answer and they’re not happy with the politicians, then dredge Parliament, get the politicians out that you don’t want and put the people you want in.

NIGEL FARAGE: Very good, very good.

DM: Are you a UKIP member? Someone here wants to recruit you!

NIGEL FARAGE: I do, absolutely!

RAVI SINGH: It’s very easy to blame all the time, let’s just do something ourselves. If people want to come here and link up with somebody, don’t turn up but just show your moral support, that’s all it is.

DM: Just one last question for you Mr Farage about Mark Harper the Immigration Minister who has resigned after it seems unwittingly employing someone who didn’t have the right to be here. Has he done the right thing and is it a mistake that could have happened to anyone? It could have happened to a UKIP member who had a cleaner or a plumber or …?

NIGEL FARAGE: Given that he was behind those poster trucks that were going around London last summer saying if you are here illegally we’re after you and we’re going to get rid of you, he had absolutely no choice but to go. I don’t for one moment think he did it deliberately, of course he didn’t but what it does show – he is not the first person in government to have found themselves employing somebody who’s here as an illegal immigrant and what it does is highlight the scale of the problem.

DM: Have you said to UKIP members have you had a careful look at who’s minding your children and who’s cleaning your house?

NIGEL FARAGE: I don’t need to have a careful look at all the UKIP members because you guys do that for us all the time.

DM: Okay, listen guys, nice to see you. Thank you very much indeed, Nigel Farage, Ravi Singh, it’s been very good to have you here and we’ll let you, Ravi, get back and do all your good work there on the river bank.