Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Damian Green, Work and Pensions Secretary, 23.04.17

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: The first few days of the campaign have seen Theresa May dogged by questions about taxes and pensions.  One man who I’m sure will provide clear and straightforward answers is the Work and Pensions Secretary, Damian Green, who joins us now from central London and I’m looking forward to those clear and straightforward answers, Mr Green.  Firstly, on reports that the Conservatives are planning to cap gas and electricity bills, I’m getting a sense of déjà vu here, it sounds an awful lot like the kind of thing Ed Miliband was saying at the last election.

DAMIAN GREEN: We do think that the energy market isn’t working properly and we do want to change the way it operates.  You’ll be seeing all the details in our manifesto.  The difference with the Ed Miliband plan is that Ed Miliband just said there will be a freeze imposed by the government and immediately after that, as you’ll remember, oil prices and therefore gas prices, fell around the world so people wouldn’t have had the advantage of the market changes.  What we’re going to propose is something different which is much more sensitive to movements in the market, Ofgem would be able to cap but in relation to what the market price is, so what we would get rid of is big energy companies exploiting their customers, that I think is what many people think rightly is unfair about the energy market and that’s what we will do.

SR: At the same time though, it sounds like it’s quite a small difference between a cap and a freeze, if you take into consideration that your colleague Michael Fallon described Ed Miliband’s policy as extremely dangerous at the time.

DAMIAN GREEN: Well it would have been, as I said, dangerous and also as it happens, the Ed Miliband proposal would have cost people money because the market price then unexpectedly fell.  Labour would have imposed a freeze and there would have been a freeze at a higher level than the market was giving.  We are proposing, as I say, a more flexible system which will be able to react to the market but which will mean that any energy company that starts trying to exploit its customers won’t be able to do so, using Ofgem, the regulator, to make sure that energy prices remain fair.

SR: Okay, so it’s pretty clear that you are planning to do something on energy bills, I wonder if you can be quite as forthcoming about whether or not you are going to keep the triple lock on pensions that guarantees that they’ll go up every year.  Are you going to keep that?  A yes or no answer will be fine.

DAMIAN GREEN: The answer I’m afraid is you’ll have to wait for the manifesto, for the details of all our policies.  You wouldn’t expect me, and your viewers wouldn’t expect me, to partially leak our manifesto now and I’m afraid I’m not going to do so but I’m quite happy for people to inspect our record on pensions and how we protected pensioners.  30 or 40 years ago, 40% of pensioners in this country lived in poverty, that number is now down to 14%.  It’s a huge achievement and of course there is always more to do but making sure we strike the right balance for all generations is clearly very important but the reduction in pensioner poverty is something of which I’m very proud.

SR: You say we wouldn’t expect you to spell out your manifesto, of course that’s true but at the same time the Conservatives have acted quickly to dampen down speculation in other areas such as Theresa May saying that the international aid pledge will stay for example, so should we conclude then that the triple lock on pensions is on the table?

DAMIAN GREEN: No, you should conclude, I am sorry to have to ask you to be patient, Sophy, but you will have to be patient until you have the manifesto.  What I can assure is that the manifesto will reflect Theresa May’s plan for Britain so in the four big areas where we want to be a global country, we want a stronger economy, we want a fairer society and we want to keep the United Kingdom united, that will run through all the policies in the manifesto but you will have to wait for the detailed policies I’m afraid.

SR: Okay, I’m going to resist asking the same question three times and hoping for an answer, how about taxes?  Will you keep the promise you made last time that national insurance, income tax and also VAT will not go up under a Conservative government or are they on the table this time?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well as I say, and I’ll keep saying it I’m afraid, if you ask me to give detailed answers about the manifesto I won’t do so.  But again, look at our record, the Conservative party believes in low taxes, is always a lower tax party than the alternative government, the Labour government and you’ve seen that, that we’ve taken four million people out of income tax altogether over the past few years, we’ve cut income tax for 31 million people so you can be absolutely guaranteed that taxes will always be lower under a Conservative government than they would be under a Jeremy Corbyn government.

SR: So let me get this straight then.  You are talking about a cap on energy bills, you’re protecting foreign aid, you’re not ruling out tax rises and you are also not ruling out getting rid of the triple lock on pensions, have you got mixed up here and got Labour’s manifesto in your hands rather than the Conservative’s?

DAMIAN GREEN: No, I’m not telling you what is in the Conservative manifesto because I’m afraid we want to release it at the right time but as I say, you can be guaranteed,  you don’t need to look into a crystal ball or find out what might be in the manifesto, you can look at our record. It’s a record of … even at a time of austerity, even when the public finances were under extreme pressure we’ve managed to find ways to cut taxes for hard working people, particularly at the lower end of the income spectrum.  We recognise that there are things like unfairness’s in society, one of which is in the energy market and we will deal with that.  That’s a very Conservative message, we are on the side of hard working families and we are particularly keen that people who do the right thing shouldn’t feel that life is unfair.

SR: Today we’re seeing another part of the Conservative campaign which is all about trying to paint Jeremy Corbyn as a risk to national security, your party chairman for example saying that we wouldn’t be safe under Jeremy Corbyn.  He of course was asked lots of questions about his views on security earlier this morning as well, is this scaremongering to try and paint the Labour leader as a risk to national security?  Is this really where the Conservative campaign is going?

DAMIAN GREEN: You just have to listen to what Jeremy Corbyn said.  What he said this morning was that he would dismantle Britain’s nuclear defences and he would fail to deal effectively with terrorism.  This man could be Prime Minister in seven weeks’ time, I can’t think of a better reason for sticking with the strong leadership of Theresa May than the fact that Jeremy Corbyn would dismantle this country’s defences.

SR: You are talking about the strong leadership of Theresa May, the other thing that’s ringing in our ears as this campaign goes on is stability, the Conservatives are the party of stability but just look at your record over the last few years.  We’ve had an EU referendum, the power sharing in Northern Ireland is on the brink of collapse, the Union has never looked more fragile, we’ve got the prospect of another Scottish referendum and we’ve got a general election – that doesn’t sound like stability does it?

DAMIAN GREEN: Well what this election will do is give the British people the chance to vote for stability and strong leadership, we now have this pause, this period inside the negotiations with the rest of the EU where we can have a general election, where I hope the British people will give Theresa May a strong mandate so that Britain can get the best possible result from these negotiations and indeed the many other problems you mention, of course those are the sorts of problems that all governments face and that you need strong and stable leadership to deal with.  You have a contrast at this election, the choice before the people at this election is either the strong and stable leadership that Theresa May provides or Jeremy Corbyn with a ragbag of other parties that don’t agree with him supporting him, making a coalition of …

SR: We’re going to have to leave it there, thank you very much.  That’s all we’ve got time for this week.