Page 24 - Phonebox Magazine August 2011

An interview with Mark Lancaster – our local MP
By Florence Jensen
(Phonebox work experience student)
Mark Lancaster arrived on his motorbike dressed in leathers for an interview before he sped down to Westminster to continue his day as the MP for North Milton Keynes. He explained his objective of the new coin symbolising the 2012 Olympic games, his interest in Politics and ideas of how to engage people in Politics.
Question: Recently the news has been centred around the phone hacking scandal, what is your view on the relationship between Cameron and the News International?
Mark said: I think that in the long run the whole phone hacking scandal whilst outrageous and I doubt you will find a single person in the country who could justify what the News of the World has done, will be helpful because at the moment there is a necessary relationship between politicians and the media, politicians need the media to get their message out and the media need politicians in order to have stories to print. I think the particular relationship between the Prime Minister and members of the News International is not unique; it is not different to previous relationships. But I think hopefully we possibly need to tighten up the press conditions, so that there is a proper system there of check and balance, the News International have enormous rights when it comes to printing articles and having freedom of the press, but they also have responsibilities and at the end of the day you have to find the balance between rights and responsibilities to ensure that relationships are professional, but they are not compromised in any way by the press.
Question: What is your perspective on the
Coalition?
Mark said: Well going into the last general election I would have obviously preferred a Conservative government. I certainly didn’t want a Coalition government but I think its fair to say fifteen months on that I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how the Coalition broadly is sticking together. I think that now having a five year parliament is positive because it means that we can focus our mind on making long term decisions without having to worry about the election being round the corner, and in the long term I am pleasantly surprised at how effective the coalition has been in actively engaging national interest and making the decisions that we all recognise we have to have. And to be honest its going far better than I thought it would, but that’s not to say that after the next general election I wouldn’t prefer a Conservative government.
Question: Do you feel that the Coalition is
doing more harm to the Liberals?
Mark said: I think you probably have to ask them that but certainly judging from the local election results the Liberal Democrats have been hit particularly hard by voters who seem to be punishing them for perhaps saying one thing and doing something entirely different after the general election. But that’s not really for me as a Conservative Politician to comment on for all I know is that they are
determined to continue to fulfil the election policies and broadly when it comes to the reform of the NHS and the benefit system I am confident that they are achieving promises.
Question: What is your view on the rise in
University tuition fees?
Mark said: I think that in an ideal world you wouldn’t charge anybody to go to University but unfortunately in the current economic climate you have to make a choice and at the end of the day students will still only be paying a small fraction of the total cost to their education at University. I think the way that it has been set up means that the poorer students actually in many respects may be better off because not only will they be exempt from many charges but the way that the money can be paid back is a lot better than current arrangements. I do think its right to ask students to pay a small contribution to their education because ultimately they will have the opportunity to go potentially at least into much higher paid jobs. I think the alternative of having a graduate tax actually is going to be very difficult to administer and ultimately more expensive for students, so rather I’d prefer that we didn’t have to charge further education but because of the financial mess we find ourselves in we have no choice and ultimately if we are going to continue to have some of the best Universities in the world we have to find a way of paying for them.
Question: Do you think these will eventually
be lowered?
Mark said: I certainly hope that they will be when the perhaps the financial crisis and the deficit has been paid off but I don’t think any of these can be promised but in an ideal world, yes I would like to be back in the position we were in before the rises but in the same way I would like to see tax rises come down, but these are aspirations as we have to sort out the financial deficit and there is little we can do other than follow the path that we are on at the moment.
Question: The budget cuts did not affect international development; do you think that international development is an extremely important issue?
Mark said: Well of course I have an interest in international development because I am the Parliamentary Secretary to International Development, which is a very grand title! One of the questions you are always faced with in Politics is that there is only so much money and how do we divide up the pie. Ultimately we are spending 0.56% as a percentage of our budget on international development and that will rise to 0.70 in 2013 so 99.3% of money we spend in the UK is not spent on international development. So I think it is a relatively small amount of money, but with that said I think we have a very strong moral duty with Britain being one of the wealthiest countries in the world to help less fortunate than us such as the famine in Africa and we have initiatives such as Live Aid to help. But if we are to spend taxpayers’ money on international payment and international development then I think we have an absolute duty to ensure that every single penny we do spend is spent wisely and that for every 100 pence in the pound that we spend we get 100 pence of value. And that’s precisely why one of the first things that the Coalition government did do was to have a fundamental review and we limited the number of companies that were paying to China and Russia, and we are going to focus on countries where poverty is really extreme and also in fragile states, where it could potentially cause war, and invest money upstream to keep peace and prevent war and this may
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