Transcript Charles Kennedy's meeting with Rochdale Pensioners.

Speech delivered on Wed 9th Mar 2005

The Transcript of Charles Kennedy's Responses from the Rochdale Town Hall Senior Citizens Forum on 4th March

(Norman - Norman Smith, Charles - Charles Kennedy, Paul - Paul Rowen)

Norman : So without any further ado, Charles Kennedy.

Charles : Norman, thank you very much indeed. What a polite way as chairman he gives a broad hint, keep it brief! He takes after his brother I can tell you.

Cyril, Paul, it's very nice to join you all again, and it is something of a flying visit because we're on our way to Harrogate for our weekend spring conference, which will probably be the launch pad obviously for us of the General Election campaign itself. But this is a constituency; you know how much work Paul and all our colleagues in the party are doing locally and we've got very high hopes, but no sense of complacency that we can regain this seat at the General Election into the fold.

What I'll just say by way of a very, very brief introduction indeed is that one of the things we'll be talking about a lot this weekend at the conference, and then right through the campaign, is the need for justice for pensioners in our country.

It is quite scandalous that as the fourth wealthiest country in the world that we are not doing better by those of pensionable age in out society and specifically what we're arguing at this election - as we have been through the Parliament - is that if you look at all the indicators they do show that the oldest Pensioners happen to be the poorest pensioners. And, of course, in terms of longevity women are living longer than men and therefore that means there is an awful lot of women in their older age in particular in poverty, although this both is true for men and women.

That is why we're proposing two things in particular:

1. If you want to really help people over the age of 75 - people who need to be helped now (for obvious reasons) - that's where the emphasis to begin with should be and we're talking about a £100 a week on the basic pension for everyone aged 75 and over.

2. The second thing is we know also that women lose out; and it's a scandal I think that they do when pensioners are concerned because they have to take time out from their own earning career, either to have or raise a family, or perhaps to look after elderly relatives or both. And the national insurance contributions don't keep up and then when they get to retirement age themselves their claims are not being treated equally.

And yet they've made that huge contribution to society looking after both a new generation coming into the world and growing up, and an older generation in their later years - Complete discrimination in this day and age and that's why we say that your automatic entitlement to a pension should be based on your years of residency in the county and not on your record of National Insurance contributions.

And if you did that for the first time ever in this country you would have absolute equality in terms of the treatment of pensions entitlement for men and women alike, and I think that a lot of people will think that smacks of social justice and fairness and it's long overdue.

But we've got loads of over things that we're talking about as a party as well and I think I would be best to leave it to you to raise the issues with Paul and myself and the others. But thank you very much, thank you for your patience.

Well I'm half way between London and home, but I notice, smiling to myself today, the weather in the Highlands of Scotland is bright sunshine and beautiful. It seems that the further down the country you get and when you get to the soft south-east they're getting it rough with snow (what is what held us up). So we've been travelling north today and that's the direction I like to go!

Thank you very much.

Question 1 : Further details on the Liberal Democrat proposal to ensure free personal care for all the elderly and how this will work in reality regarding funding. Will it affect people who receive a private superannuation pension in addition to the state pension?

Charles : Okay, when you're here at a meeting like this when you've come in half way through and the issue has been already dealt with, I always miss a heartbeat in that I will always give the same answer as my colleague did. But I don't think there is much doubt about that!

The first thing is I answer this as a Scot where we've got Liberal Democrats in government in one part of the UK. In Scotland we've achieved and delivered this policy. It's heartening; and we've calculated it for the rest of the country on exactly the same basis as a Royal Commission under Professor Sutherland. That's who recommended this, so Labour has been willing to accept it in Scotland because of our presence in the government.

Tony Blair won't yet accept it in Westminster. I think the bigger the presence in the next House of Commons the bigger the chance it will happen.

How will we fund it? Well, what we're saying to people at this election quite straight, and it's an honest choice in front of them, if you take the top one per cent of income earners - that's people earning over one hundred thousand pounds a year - we say that their top rate of tax for every pound above one hundred thousand goes from 40p for each pond above it to 50p.

Now that's still less then the top rate of tax was for most of the time when Mrs Thatcher was Prime Minister, so we need to keep this in perspective. But for that one percent that pay that little bit more, one hundred per cent of people, including the 99% who are not in that top bracket, everybody benefits through this particular policy amongst others.

There are three policies and this is one of them.

So it can be achieved financially, it can be done socially because it has been done in one part of the United Kingdom, and on the final point it should not for as far as I'm aware, although I will double check the details on the very specific point there on the superannuation.

Question 2 : I wrote to our current MP six months ago and haven't got a reply. Are you supporting the manifesto of the National pensioners convention?

Charles : Yep, we have met actually with the leadership. They know of our policies; they approve of our policies; and we're certainly moving in exactly the same direction as they are.

And can I just say one thing that if this gentleman in a few weeks time is your MP you won't need to wait six months for a reply to anything I can promise you.

Question 3 : Do you think it's time the government reduce the National framework of prescription charges, especially for people suffering asthma and chronic lung disease sufferers who have to pay for every single item. And it's just not young people who contract asthma, seventy year olds are being newly diagnosed and they have to pay for every single item and asthma and chronic lung disease is a killer. It can cause death and the government up to now has no intention of including any part of it in their framework. Have you any comments?

Paul : Can I just say Charles that Jean is a nurse. She's been single handedly, I think, leading a campaign to make politicians aware that there are some drugs you can get if you have certain illnesses. If you're an asthma sufferer you pay for everything, which again is part of our fairness and justice, it's not fair!

Charles : In terms of what is available and not available in terms of prescription and so on, that is something we've always said you have to review.

You have to review not just in terms of social fairness, but actually in terms of medical progress, as every year goes by there'll be another drug on the market that can perhaps cope with or make better a situation that a year earlier might not have been the case. So by definition you can't stick to the same list of drugs that are eligible because medical technology moves on and you've got to reflect that in your policy, so that's something that we are in favour and it will be in our manifesto.

Question 4 : Could you not have assisted in disposing of this Government the other day because this is the worse Government this country has ever had, worse than the Tories at any time, but if the Liberal Democrats had an opportunity the other day to assist in bringing the Government down - why didn't you?

Charles : Right, well, first of all the vote on Monday of this week it wouldn't have in fact have brought down the Government. It would have been a lovely thought! It wouldn't have achieved that for various internal House of Commons constitutional reasons.

Had any of us, both ourselves, the Conservatives and the media, had been a bit wise after the event realised how close the vote would have turned out, then, of course, you could have given a black eye to the Government. All that would have happened thereafter was a vote on whether the Government had announced they where already withdrawing.

It was a ludicrous Parliamentary occasion to say the least. I've never seen anything like it in over twenty years to be honest!

So what's happened subsequently is that the measures against terrorism are now in the House of Lords, but the Government are doing or putting forward what they said in the house of commons they would do but which they didn't introduce to the House of commons, so we weren't actually voting on the proposal?

We will vote on what in fact the Government will be putting forward next week and I can assure you next week - which is the big vote - there will be a three line whip on the Liberal Democrats and barring people who are seriously medically unwell (or whatever themselves) - I mean you know absently understood cast iron reasons - we will have a full scale turnout for that. That's the key vote.

The benefit of hindsight I have to say in Parliament is a great thing. Had we all known what was going to happen, recent history would have been different, but actual history would not have been different because the government have already pledged to move in which way they have.

Question 5 : To do with the EU record on fair trade and I would like to hear your views on that, and in particular what you and your Parliamentary colleagues are going to do?

Charles : Well, if you look at the whole history of the Liberal party going back over a century it's always been a party of free trade, international liberalisation of trading relations. But, of course, in today's context free trade has got to be fair trade.

And there's no doubt whatsoever that the balance is not right.

Now Britain is in a very important position here. First of all we have the chairmanship of the G8 internationally, which is the key economic forum for trying to move this agenda forward.

Secondly, we have got the presidency of the European Union coming up at the beginning of June, so we'll be occupying both those key international chairmanships at the same time. It so happens that the Commissioner for Europe in these matters himself happens to be British, Peter Mandelsson.

So there's no excuse for our country not being able to have real influence on the agenda.

How do we achieve it? Well, I think how we achieve it is by demonstrating to a lot of the countries that are feeling locked out of fair trade at the moment that we're on their side.

Now inevitably in any issue like this the biggest hurdle you've got to over come is the United States of America. However, and this is what's so tragic about the present international situation, for all that we surrendered issues to the United States of America, we haven't apparently bought the influence with the Bush administration that we were told would be the case, so this issue is going to be a key one.