Jo Swinson

Transcript: Any Questions?

PRESENTER: Jonathan Dimbleby

PANELLISTS: John Gummer

Jo Swinson

Simon Heffer

Lord Haskins

FROM: Shouldham, Norfolk

DIMBLEBY

Welcome to the village of Shouldham, which is on the edge of the Fens in Norfolk. It's said that the first ever game of football was played here and there's some evidence for that proposition. Certainly in 1321 Pope John 22nd granted a dispensation to a local Gilbertian monk, William de Spalding by name, for tackling a colleague so fiercely in the game that his adversary was accidentally stabbed by his own sheathed knife and died six days later.

We're at St Martin at Shouldham Church of England School, which describes itself as an eco-school and in fact last year it opened a new nursery, complete with duo-thermal heating, solar water heating and rainwater harvesting. All of which will doubtless delight John Gummer, the environment secretary in the last Conservative government and recently recalled to duty by David Cameron to come up with a convincing green policy as chair of his Quality of Life Policy Group.

Lord Haskins is a farmer, who used to chair the food conglomerate Northern Foods. He headed the government's rural recovery programme after the foot and mouth crisis in 2001 and Tony Blair's better regulation taskforce. Last summer, however, he was expelled from the Labour party for funding a Liberal Democrat candidate at the General Election who went on to take the seat from Labour. He's now, as you might imagine, an independent.

Jo Swinson has always wanted to be an MP, so much so that when she was 21 she stood against John Prescott in the 2001 election for the Liberal Democrats - she lost. Undaunted she stood again but in East Dumbartonshire at the last election and now at the age of 26 she's not only the youngest MP in the House but was recently appointed by Sir Menzies Campbell to be Shadow Scottish Secretary.

Simon Heffer is a columnist of pronounced opinions, among which is his belief that the Tories made a terrible mistake in electing David Cameron as their leader. As associate editor of the Daily Telegraph he has a crucial platform from which to voice his critique, though friends of David Cameron put it about that they would be profoundly distressed if Simon Heffer did approve of the party's new leader. He's the fourth member of our panel. [CLAPPING]

Our first question please.

FOSTER

Philip Foster. Would you feed chicken to your child?

DIMBLEBY I wonder who to go to first. John Gummer?

GUMMER Well I have to say that I don't have kids or children in the sense that they're all grown up and I leave it to them to decide what they want and they're very cheerfully eating chicken if they're offered it and I don't think there's any reason why anybody should be frightened of it. I do actually think that we have perhaps had too many pages on bird flu as a matter of fact. I think the facts are very clear - it is certainly true that there could be serious danger if there was a migration of this particular kind of flu, so that it was possible to pass it on to human beings in other than a very close relationship with a bird. I don't think that we ought - I don't think [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] ...

DIMBLEBY You're welcome to rephrase that if you seek to.

GUMMER But what I do think is this that this has provided the newspapers and the television with very, very long slots of pretty cheap news, of constantly asking experts. And I'd rather like to hear a bit less about it and a bit more about the facts.

DIMBLEBY Let me just come to our - there was a big - there was a sense of murmur of support there - let me come straight to the audience on this. Who feels alarmed by the prospect of bird flu becoming a threat to humans? Would you put your hands up - those who feel alarmed by that prospect? Who feels no alarm - put your hands up? Well in this audience here in East Anglia overwhelmingly there is no alarm whatsoever. Lord Haskins.

HASKINS Well I suppose I'd have to say that my grandfather died in 1918 of the flu which killed lots of people then and I was brought up always vividly of the stories of what happened then, so I think one has to take it seriously that there is a possibility of a mutation. Now having said that there's no evidence that it is happening yet. And having said that again there's nothing we can do about it at this stage. I mean people can work at it. I think that the press has taken this completely out of control. Simon Jenkins had a wonderful thing on the Today programme, with for the first time John Humphrys put in the back seat, and he said - the last three hours I've been listening to this and one bloody swan has died, so what's going to happen [LAUGHTER AND CLAPPING] ...

DIMBLEBY Jo Swinson.

SWINSON Yeah well in answer to Philip's question I actually had turkey for lunch today which is particularly appropriate perhaps since I was coming up to Norfolk. But I do agree with some of what's been said about the media hype on this because - and again I was listening to the Today programme and they said well you can sum up today's papers, it says "Bird flu - don't panic - turn to pages 1-9 for extensive coverage of the crisis". And I think the media really has a role here to be very responsible. Of course the information needs to get out but it's also important not to cause too much hype. And we can just look at other examples where there's been a lot of hype - the MMR story which ultimately was proven to be safe but a lot of people acted as a result of that to not vaccinate their children, which perhaps led to more problems than otherwise.

DIMBLEBY

It is of course the case that scientists and government officials and ministers have said or conceded that it is inevitable that it will mutate and that under those circumstances untold thousands, tens of thousands, maybe millions around the world will die. So it isn't something that you can just wish away is it?

SWINSON But I think the important point is we have had one swan and in those circumstances what we want to make sure is that it is contained as far as possible. Now from all of the information I've seen today there's very robust plans in place, there's a huge at risk zone covering what looks like half of Scotland where actually birds are hopefully being separated - being brought indoors where possible. These are the right steps to be taking, it's prudent to be doing that and of course the industry must be taking these steps. But to cause hysteria about it obviously would be very damaging to the poultry industry.

DIMBLEBY But doubtless - if I may before I bring in Simon go back to Lord Haskins - you had to pick up the pieces after foot and mouth, we have a situation in which people are being told - farmers - chicken farmers - being told if it's practicable they should house their stock. If it's practicable is an odd thing - either you should surely house the stock to secure them or you don't need to house them - there's no middle way is there?

HASKINS I thought I heard the chief scientist said that - I thought he was a bit caught off guard. What is if practical? On the other hand is it practicable to say that you have a secure area of 2,500 kilometres and if a swan flies out of that it isn't secure - I mean how do you stop the swans from not going outside the 2,500 kilometres? I think some of the problems the government is facing is dealing with this as if it was a foot and mouth disease problem and it isn't. Foot and mouth disease was our own problem, this is an international problem and it's a much wider - we can learn from the experience of other people in this. I don't think it's got anything like the immediate impact that foot and mouth had in terms of the disease on domesticated animals. Three farms, I think, have been damaged in Germany - that's all. I mean I'm surprised how little impact it has had on Europe since it arrived here three or four months ago.

DIMBLEBY Simon Heffer.

HEFFER Well I think as always in times of crisis we British will be saved by our sense of humour. I was very glad to see yesterday signs of road blocks in this part of Scotland where bird flu had arrived and I thought mallards trundling up to the road block and saying - Oh well chaps we can't get through here, better go back out to sea again. [LAUGHTER] I do have two children and I would happily feed them chicken, I'd even feed them chicken burgers actually. [LAUGHTER]

DIMBLEBY And nuggets?

HEFFER Certainly nuggets yes. The more nuggets the better. What really worries me about this is that there was a very bad response by the government before Lord Haskins became involved in 2001 to foot and mouth and we saw large parts of our rural industry - not just agriculture but also rural tourism - devastated by what - by how the foot and mouth crisis was mishandled. And I do fear that someone in DEFRA is going to make the same horlicks of this as they made of foot and mouth. Now it's not just obviously poultry farmers who are severely at risk but also in parts of the country like this where there are many farms who only exist because of commercial shooting in the winter and if that goes under then there'll be a lot of people going out of business and a lot of people going out of work. And I do hope that the lack of panic, which I'm proud to say my own newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, did counsel very strongly today on several pages, will be maintained and not just among the public who I think are very sensible on this but actually among the people who govern us.

DIMBLEBY John Gummer you want in.

GUMMER I just think we've got very curious double standards haven't we. I mean at the point at which 14 people in the world had died of bird flu 1.4 million people had died of malaria and we do, I think, have to think quite seriously about the fact that we're doing absolutely nothing it seems to deal with malaria, which we can deal with, but we can have 19 pages talking about how we can't deal with bird flu. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY Our next question please.

DAVIES

Helene Davies. Should David Cameron apologise for UKIP for his rude remarks?

DIMBLEBY Which included the terms "fruitcakes", "loonies" and "closet racists". Simon Heffer.

HEFFER Two years ago I went to Devon to do a speech at a Conservative Party dinner, given in aid of a man who's now a member of David Cameron's shadow cabinet. And it was shortly before the European elections in 2004 and as you would expect I made a speech strongly in support of my friend who'd asked me to speak for him but I also directed some remarks to the European constitution, which had then not died the happy death it's since had. And at the end of this meeting, there were about 150 people there, a number of them came up to me and said: Oh Mr Heffer we're so glad to hear what you said, of course we're all going to vote for our Conservative candidate at the General Election but don't worry we're all voting UKIP in the Euro elections. Now I think what Cameron hasn't understood is that there's an enormous crossover between not just voters but actually his own activists and the UK Independence Party. Now I know a number of people who are in the UK Independence Party and they are neither fruitcakes, nor loonies, nor racists - closet or otherwise. And I think it was a very intemperate and unstatesmanlike insult for him to throw and it was something that didn't really become someone in his position. What I've found even more depressing in the last few days is having made this, I think, rather grave error of taste and judgement he has far from apologising for it sought to compound the offence by trying to justify the fact that he was right. Now the letter page of my own newspaper yesterday was led by five letters from people who'd always voted Conservative saying that they weren't going to do it again. And I think he has made a terrible error for the sake of the Conservative Party. When Michael Howard called UKIP cranks and gadfires just before the 2004 election UKIPs vote immediately went up by about 4%. So I think if he's got any sense of self-preservation, never mind any sense of sincerity and good sense he would apologise. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY John Gummer.

GUMMER Well my UKIP opponent had to resign as the candidate because of his connections which were discovered with the British National Party. There is no doubt that quite a number of people in that party do have views which most of us would find very unacceptable. Well I'm not disagreeing with that fact but I'm merely making that statement. I went to have a joint meeting with the UKIP candidate - not the one who resigned naturally - at a school in which the UKIP candidate was so unpleasant that the school master had to say that he was not prepared for him to continue. So there is a problem frankly which is true. But I would perhaps myself go back to my own view about politics generally which is that I find it much better to talk about the views of people. I think UKIP is wrong, I think its approach to Europe is entirely wrong, I think it's out of date, I don't think it helps the future of Britain - I think Britain's future lies in leadership and change in Europe, rather than pretending that they are a long way away and we don't want to have anything to do with it. That is my view about it but I think you have to use the arguments about the case and not an argument about people.

DIMBLEBY You mean not have punch and judy politics in this area?

GUMMER I believe that you should argue the case. I think UKIP is wrong, I will go on arguing that case and I will do it very strongly, strongly enough to get a bit of a boo from some people in the audience but I will argue the case on the basis of the argument, which is that UKIP is out of date and we need a different kind of policy from theirs.

DIMBLEBY To answer precisely the question put to you - should David Cameron apologise?

GUMMER Well I think myself that we ought to move on. [AUDIENCE NOISE]

DIMBLEBY You are asked - you heard ...

GUMMER I will say - I will not - because I'm not in the business of personalities. If I were in the circumstance and I had said that, which would be unlikely, I would have apologised.

DIMBLEBY Question answered. Jo Swinson, should he apologise?

SWINSON Well politics can be quite a tough business and people say things and sometimes they say insulting things about you. I suspect that frankly UKIP are probably big enough to take it but I don't think it actually does David Cameron to be acting in such a way. You would expect better behaviour in the playground of this school. It is not - resulting the name calling is not something you would do in business, you wouldn't do it in the voluntary sector and I think it undermines your argument to do it in politics. And I actually think that this is the kind of behaviour that very often turns people off. You look at Prime Minister's Question Time and you see the yaboo frenzy of people shouting at each other and I don't think it presents a very good image of politics at all. And actually I think that all of us involved in politics have actually got a responsibility to try and act in a way that restores people's faith in the political system.

DIMBLEBY Chris Haskins. [CLAPPING]

HASKINS I found Cameron's remarks rather surprising because he usually talks a sort of bland Blairism and suddenly he makes this statement. He obviously did it in a considered way, he didn't do it because he lost his temper or whatever and I think it reflects the fact that apart from anything else UKIP have given me some abuse over the years, so I'm not entirely sympathetic with their pained feelings about the way they're being maltreated. But the question - the interesting question is why did Cameron do it? And he did it because the Conservative Party still has a big problem with Europe and Cameron wishes it would go away. And I think the electorate would wish the Conservative Party would give up on it because as long as they continue to tear each other apart on this issue they are not, in my view, electable because they become irrelevant. The issue of Europe is now irrelevant to most people in this country. Cameron realises that, he's trying to somehow get it off the agenda and his best way to do it is to try to lance this boil which has been going on within the Conservative Party for nearly 20 years.

DIMBLEBY Helene Davies, you put the question, what's your own view?

DAVIES Well I think that he finds - I think he's afraid that we're going to be a threat in the next election.

DIMBLEBY When you say we?

DAVIES UKIP, I'm a member...

DIMBLEBY Are you a fruitcake?

DAVIES No, definitely not.

DIMBLEBY Are you a loony?

DAVIES No.

DIMBLEBY And are you a closet racist?

DAVIES Definitely not. My - in fact when I stood in the General Election for South Cambridgeshire my - my election agent was the only black face in the room at the count, she comes from Jamaica. So it was rather - it would be rather difficult for people to say that I was a racist.

DIMBLEBY Do you feel kind of deeply offended or do you think this is the rough and tumble knockabout stuff that you don't particularly like but that's the name of the game?

DAVIES I'm not deeply offended, I'm - I feel that Cameron has shot himself in the foot, I think he's made a very intemperate and very immature remark. And I think really that all political parties do attract a certain type of person who will shout abuse and in a very unconsidered way, all the parties will attract those sort of people. But as far as I'm concerned when you sink - when you are a party leader and you sink to abuse you have lost the argument.

DIMBLEBY Thank you very much. [CLAPPING] If you have - if you have thoughts about that or any of the other issues that we're discussing Any Answers may be for you after the Saturday edition of Any Questions. The number to ring 08700 100 444 and the e-mail address any.answers@bbc.co.uk. Could we please have our next question?

PETERS

Hi Rosalind Peters. My question is: regarding recent events in which the Labour Party loans and peerages seem to have been linked does the panel think this diminishes the honour of receiving a peerage?

DIMBLEBY This is the loans for peerages allegations and alleged scandal. Has this diminished the honour of receiving a peerage? Lord Haskins. [LAUGHTER]

HASKINS Well I don't think it's helped. I think that the House of Lords has always been a slightly eccentric place, I'm sure people have been buying their way into the House of Lords over time for the last two or three hundred years. Not perhaps with the sort of crude vulgar techniques that are used at the present time, in the old days it was done with great discretion but now we live in a transparent society and we see what we get. And frankly we should all be quite horrified if these charges are right that people are able to buy their way into the House of Lords and you still have to have the evidence on that, the men in blue are looking at it at the present time and maybe they'll come up with something. I think it's a terrible reflection on the hypocrisy of all the political parties in this country who on the one hand tell us that we have to be respectful towards each other, we have to obey the law and all that sort of stuff, on the other hand create a set of accounts which frankly if they were in business they'd all be in jail because of the quality of the accounts that's gone on. This isn't just about - it isn't just about the Labour Party, it's about all the parties. The difference is of course the Labour Party's in power, the Labour Party is in the - has got the capacity to hand out the baubles where the opposition parties don't. But we need a clean up on this and the only clean up on the thing is not to have the states paying for political parties, that is crazy, it is not to put caps on donations because the crooks will get round them - they'll give the money to their brothers and sisters and all that sort of stuff or go to raffles or whatever. It is to be very transparent about to say that actually supporting political parties are a good thing, if people want to do it fine. If the RSPB can voluntarily collect money to look after the birds, then politicians should be able to collect money to look after their causes.

DIMBLEBY You, if I'm right, you gave donations to the Labour Party, do you now feel that the fact that you gave donations and then got a peerage has in some way, because of all this, tainted your own peerage?

HASKINS Well I'm not too worried about the tainting - I'm too old to be worried about tainting, I might have tainted it by getting kicked out of the Labour Party by giving money to the Lib Dems but I don't think [indistinct words] buying anything under the Lib Dems I did that.

DIMBLEBY Perhaps he wasn't. Jo Swinson.

SWINSON No he got a very good MP elected in Inverness I'd have to say. I do think that the whole peerage system has been discredited by this but actually I think this brings us back to the initial argument that the whole system of honorary peerages I think is discredited anyway. We have other ways of honouring people - we give OBEs, CBEs, MBEs, invitations to garden parties with the Queen or whatever, there's other ways to say to people you've done well we would like to recognise that. But to be appointing people to the legislature as an honour is I think taking it too far. This has brought the issue of House of Lords reform back onto the agenda. Blair has completely ignored this issue and I'm delighted that he's now having to face it because it's just not right in the 21st Century that we've still got an unelected House that is something that is archaic and reminiscent of centuries past deciding our laws. We need to be reforming the House of Lords and at least this will give us the catalyst to do it.

DIMBLEBY Thank you. John Gummer. [CLAPPING]

GUMMER Well I think one of the awful things about it is the fallout. If you take Sir Gulam Noon, who is a remarkable man, who has transformed the area in Southall that he provides employment for. He has been a great leader for moderate Muslim thought. He is a supporter of the Labour Party. I'm sorry he's a supporter of the Labour Party but he is a distinguished man, he ought to be in the House of Lords and would contribute very considerably to that. He believed that he was doing the right thing and he filled in the form and said yes, I have made a loan to the Labour Party. I'm afraid he was told that that was not necessary and it was taken off the form. Now here is a man who has been besmirched instead of honoured and he is a man who although I disagree with him politically has been caught up in this system and I believe has been very seriously damaged entirely wrongly. And I want to take the opportunity of saying this is a chap we ought to have in the House of Lords and I'd like David Cameron to put him forward, amongst others, as a Labour peer because I think this is the saddest part of this is that decent people, who are supporting political parties and why shouldn't they, that's absolutely right, but it ought to be entirely transparent.

DIMBLEBY Can you just explain - you said his name was taken off the form, that he'd given a loan ...

GUMMER Well as I understand it you have to fill in a form which says - which is to say what you have done and he filled in a form saying that he had given them a certain amount of money and that he'd leant them a certain amount of money.

DIMBLEBY This is the for the House of Lords scrutineers.

GUMMER And the Labour Party took off the fact that he had loaned money. And I think it's a very great sadness that a decent person, who's done so much for race relations in this country should find himself caught up in this rather unhappy situation. And I hope we can put it right and there are others like it and it shouldn't be like that. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBDY Simon Heffer.

HEFFER Well John Gummer makes a very good point and I think by the same token someone like Lord Haskins, who was a very successful businessman with great talent and great merit would have entered the House of Lords at any time in the last hundred years. What I find depressing though is not so much that this current scandal has devalued having a peerage but that Blair himself has devalued the peerage since 1997 by the calibre of some of the people to whom he's awarded peerages in trying to pack the House of Lords. What's also very depressing is that in trying to pack the House of Lords by making dozens and dozens of Labour peers he still can't routinely win votes there because once Labour peers get to the House of Lords and see some of the absurd and mickey mouse measures that Blair is trying to put through there they immediately revert out of type and vote against them.

DIMBLEBY Can you explain - can you explain, it's only speculation because as we know there are all sorts of inquiries going on - why it should be the case that - to go back to what John Gummer said - that someone who would in some cases, not necessarily in this case, people offered a donation were then told they didn't want a donation but it should be a loan then the loan is apparently taken off the ...

HEFFER Well they were asked for a loan because it didn't have to be declared in the way that a donation does.

DIMBLEBY But why was that a problem for - if it was the case that that was the reason - why should that be a problem?

HEFFER Well I think sadly by the time Sir Gulam Noon's peerage came under question from the scrutiny committee it had become clear that - and let's name no names for reasons of the laws of libel - it had become clear that there had been agents acting on behalf of the Prime Minister who had come to what it seems was a business arrangement with people about giving them peerages. Now that is specifically ruled out by the 1925 Honours Prevention of Abuses Act, which is one of the measures that the police are now investigating this whole procedure under. So it's become very murky. I actually hope that if there has been any scent of an offence here that a case will be brought - not for any partisan reason - I think if they could discover that the Conservatives have done it there should be a prosecution there. It is a very dirty system. I don't want to move to an elected House of Lords because I think the House of Lords should work perfectly well as it is but you have to be able to trust the Prime Minister of the day to exercise patronage in an objective, sensible and mature way and I think that's what hasn't been happening.

DIMBLEBY Chris Haskins. [CLAPPING]

HASKINS I agree entirely with what John Gummer said about Galum Noon. I think there is two things about this - actually to do with business people. First of all business people are rather naïve, not like politicians who are crude, subtle, vicious - not all the innocent world we business people live in. I was brought up in a political world, so I knew what was coming, poor old Galum didn't know what he was letting himself in for. But the serious matter is that there's going to be a real dry up of money going into political parties as a result of this. What big donor's going to give to a political party going forward at the present time? So the party - parties have got to seriously work out for themselves how they're going to raise honest money for themselves for the first time and that's going to be healthy.

DIMBLEBY Thank you. Our next question please.

SUPAMANON

Depak Supamanon. Should the reputation of the apostle Judas now be rehabilitated?

DIMBLEBY This is after the discovery of a manuscript allegedly - nearly 2,000 years old found in Egypt which suggests that there was this "gospel of Judas" that suggests that he was actually honouring a divine mission by ensuring that Jesus was taken. John Gummer is he a hero of the crucifixion as it were?

GUMMER Well first of all it's actually a document which was written 300 years afterwards, so it's rather like me writing a - an eye witness account of the death of William of Orange and I don't think you would take that perhaps quite as seriously as if it were written at the time. So that's the first thing, it's very much later than the gospels themselves. And secondly we don't know who wrote it and we don't know in what circumstances it was written. So it's rather like saying that if suddenly somebody found a historic novel - historical novel written by Jane Lane that it was taken as a truthful statement of what actually happened. So I don't think in fact it should make any difference whatsoever to our views of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But of course it makes a good story and it is interesting, isn't it, how people who dismiss religion as a serious thing spend a great deal of time writing up about religion in the way in which one has seen in the newspapers recently - the holy grail and the Dan Brown books and the rest of it. It shows that somewhere there there is something that is so important and so valuable that even those who scoff at it can't let it go.

DIMBLEBY Simon Heffer. [CLAPPING] You take an interest in matters ecclesiastical.

HEFFER Merely architectural, I know very little about theology. But of course theology is a branch of history, in a sense, and like history it's subject to revisionism and this has long been the case. One of the finest polemical books of the 19th Century, written by a very eminent judge - Sir James Fitzjames Steven - had as its centrepiece a reasoned defence of Pontius Pilot. Now this wasn't because Sir James thought Pontius Pilot was a good chap, the jury was rather out on that, but he wanted to show it could be done. And I think that John Gummer makes a very good point when he says that it would be like him writing about William of Orange. This seems to me to be - almost have the status of a romantic novel. It's like Barbara Cartland sitting down in the fourth century and deciding to write something rather racy about what actually went on at the time of the crucifixion. So it seems to be that we would have to take this with a pinch of salt and I've no doubt there's some great novelist who may or may not soon be sued for plagiarism who may well put this in one of his next novels. One thing that did occur to me this week when this story appeared on our news list at the same time as the very unfortunate murder of the Sinn Fein double agent in Ireland was that however hard it is to rehabilitate Judas Iscariot, it would be much easier than rehabilitating certain members of the IRA.

DIMBLEBY Jo Swinson.

SWINSON Well I mean obviously the text being written long after the event means that it possibly is not as accurate as texts written at the time but it could well be that at the time Judas didn't have a very good team of spin doctors and so they had to do it later. It's obviously difficult for us to know the facts and historians will certainly argue over it and I actually think it's good and it's very topical because it's quite a good reminder that this is coming up to Easter time and that is the history that Easter's based on, it's not just about getting fat on chocolate eggs and this year it's certainly not about cuddling fluffy chickens.

DIMBLEBY Lord Haskins.

HASKINS My Quaker father-in-law always taught me to support underdogs and I've always worked on that basis, that's why I'm a lifelong supporter of Hull City. Therefore I've always had a soft spot for Judas, who I think's had a bad press for about 2,000 years. And if he's striking back at this moment then good luck to him. Apart from the fact that most of this Bible story is quite fanciful - it's a good story but it's quite fanciful and it works into an act of faith but whether it's accurate or not is another matter. And we can debate forever whether Judas ever existed, never mind what he did on the famous night.

DIMBLEBY There we are. If you've got thoughts about [CLAPPING] it's about thoughts you may have about that, which I suspect one or two listeners may have, the number is 08700 100 444 for Any Answers after the Saturday edition of Any Questions and that e-mail address again - any.answers@bbc.co.uk. Could we have our next.

CHILVERS

Martin Chilvers. Who has the right to bring up children?

DIMBLEBY This, I presume, relates to this rather complicated case of the two lesbian women, one of whom is called, in the court case, CG, who is the biological mother, the other was CW - they were partners, they split up, there were two children and custody was given to the non-biological parent because the biological parent had defied a court order that they should both have access. And the result is that the Court of Appeal has now determined that the non-biological parent should have custody of the two children. It's quite complicated but maybe raises some issues of substance. Jo Swinson.

SWINSON Well I think that first and foremost thing that has to be borne in mind in these cases is what is in the best interests of the child. And one of the things I always find quite distressing - whether it's - I mean obviously this case is a lesbian couple who's been bringing up a child but even in cases where it's marriage and a couple have been divorced and there's the custody battles going on, it's very often that you hear people talking about their rights as a parent and their rights to see their child for a certain amount of time a week. And of course you understand that any parent wants to have that, that they feel very strongly that that is absolutely vital for them. But at the end of the day it's actually not about the parents' rights, it's about the child's rights and it's about making sure that the best solution is there for them. Now we don't know all of the particulars of this case but if the judge in looking at all of the evidence concluded that for the child to remain with the biological mother would not actually be the best upbringing and that they would have better care and better attention having custody with the ex-partner then that is up to the judge to decide. And I think that that is the thing we just need to keep absolutely central in all of the discussions of this - is about the interests of the child and making sure they've got the best childhood possible.

DIMBLEBY John Gummer.

GUMMER I don't think we have rights in bringing up children. I think it's entirely the other way round and I think one just has to accept that. You take on a responsibility and it's amazing how you do it because you don't know quite what a responsibility it is when you start and then as the years go on you just realise that it's a responsibility which actually never ends. And anyone who's got grown up children know that from time to time, even then, there are real responsibilities. I am really rather fed up with the word right in this use, not in this particular case but in a lot of other cases. When you hear about people who appear to have children - glamorous people appear to have children as a fashion accessory almost, it's a totally wrong way of looking at the nature of this remarkable moment in which - which is the most important moment of all - that you actually share in a real sense in the creative process. And after all human beings are the only animals that know what they're doing, know that you're doing it and the baby will or one hopes arrives. It's a totally different thing and it's the heart of what being human is about. And to put that down to saying I've got my rights seems to me to destroy the fundamental nature of fatherhood or motherhood. Now - and that's more important it seems to me than the issue about whether lesbian couples should be able to bring up children or whether this one or the other one should be chosen. The fundamental thing is that it's not about rights, it's about obligations, it's about responsibilities and once we move away from that I think we make the most terrible of decisions.

DIMBLEBY Chris Haskins.

HASKINS Well I mean I find myself all too often having to agree with John Gummer. I would widen it and say that for most of my life it has been quite right for large numbers of underprivileged people to claim more rights than they have in society, that's been quite right. And so underprivileged people should still be fighting for their rights. Ethnic minorities and all that. Once you've got those rights however you have responsibilities and those responsibilities aren't just for bringing up children, they're for your neighbours who are struggling and all that sort of thing and we've concentrated so much on rights now that we don't care about the other person. And we've lost a sort of social cohesion which is what a democratic society should be about, that because we've got these rights we should have the responsibility. I hope that the judge, when he made his decision - I don't know the rights and the wrongs of the decision - but he should have said which is the - one of those parents who's going to carry out those responsibilities better rather than which parent has the bigger right - it's a very difficult judgement for a judge to make and it's a pity it gets to court but that's how you have to deal with these issues.

DIMBLEBY What he did say, for those [indistinct words], was Lord Justice Thorpe who headed the three judges in the Appeal Court, he posed the question who is the natural parent and he answered: In the past judges have held that the biological parent is the natural parent - and he went on - but in the eyes of the child the natural parent may be a non-biological parent who by virtue of long settled care has become the child's psychological parent. Which has a way of making the kind of point that you were both making. Simon Heffer.

HEFFER Well the judge's point is a very good one because of course in centuries really before the last one when mortality rates were far higher many children when still very small didn't have a real parent left and before any organised social welfare in this country they would be farmed out either to rather ghastly orphanages, which Dickens made so notorious, or to aunts and uncles or extended family. Of course in the last century or so, when we've had an organised welfare system of some sort or another, it has become frequent for the state to make decisions about the welfare of children and if necessary to take them away from their natural parents or parents and to put them into the care of others. As John said, in not so many words, children aren't somebody's private property, childhood, by its very nature, is involuntary, children turn up through no will of their own or any wish of their own. And they do have I think very strong rights, therefore to expect to be looked after properly and cared for until they reach the age of majority. I don't know the details of this case and I don't wish to show the cloven hoof so late in the programme but I do feel a great concern about the notion of lesbian parenthood like this. I do feel that children need fathers. And I don't know whether this case would have been any different if there had been at some stage a father who was part of the family unit, involved in it, but I rather suspect it might have been.

DIMBLEBY When you say children need fathers there are many families where there is no father, for one reason or another, and when you say they need fathers a lot of those children - and there may be numbers of them listening to this programme will say I had a wonderful mother thank you very much.

HEFFER I'm sure they have. My own father died when I was 10 and that's why I know very well that children need fathers.

DIMBLEBY So it's your own sense, if you don't mind me intruding, of loss.

HEFFER No absolutely, children need to have fathers. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY We'll go on to our next question please.

ARCHIBOLD

Andrew Archibold. Does the panel consider wind turbines should be part or the fabric of royal life?

DIMBLEBY Chris Haskins.

HASKINS Yes, probably, it's a way of adding much needed income to farmers, it seems to be - the economics of it seem slightly dodgy a bit at this stage. It seems, however, environmentally to be a least harmful form of energy compared with others. And I know there are certain places - beauty spots - where they should not be but I see no reason - this school, for example, I'm told wants to put a fan on top of the building in the middle of a town and it's being objected to, I think that's slightly dotty - that sort of NIMBY stuff. That is setting a good example to children that we must go for renewable - alternative renewable energy. [AUDIENCE NOISE] Well I'm glad I'm not the only person - not just John Gummer who's getting into trouble on this issue. I still say that I don't care - too old.

DIMBLEBY John Gummer ...

GUMMER [TALKING OVER]

DIMBLEBY Aren't you, at the moment, you're the MP in this constituency and you had clearly from the voices of the audience, responses in the audience, divided opinion about for instance this issue?

GUMMER Well you have to be straight about it and that is there are some places where you shouldn't have them and I think there are many beauty spots. I get fed up with the way in which, for example, the government was attacked by Green Peace because it stopped some wind farms in a very particularly beautiful part of the Lake District, out in the open, and they said no that wasn't the right place and Green Peace said everywhere's the right place, I think that's quite wrong. But I have to say that I would be campaigning here for this school to have its wind turbine, I think it's the right answer, it sets an example to children. Frankly climate change is so serious that those who objected to it might remember that unless we do something very rapidly and continuously your children will not grow to old age in an atmosphere and in a climate which is possible to live in properly. So saying boo to a wind turbine in this school I think you ought to think again because you're saying something about their future which I believe to be intolerable. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY Given that general thought and in your role as coming up with a green policy for your party, in relation, for instance, to airports and flying and the rapid increase in the emissions of CO2 from the use of aeroplanes, would a responsible party say we have to curtail that and take what action we can to diminish the number of people who fly for the pleasure of flying?

GUMMER I don't think a responsible party can avoid looking at and finding a series of answers on this. I've got a group of people who are doing that very thing and the first thing we found was that most of the answers suggested don't work. In other words, for example, it said all you have to do is tax the aircraft fuel and then you discover that only 10% of the cost of the aircraft is the fuel and so you have to tax it so hugely over the whole of Europe, because otherwise people would pop off and take the fuel on somewhere else, that you can see that you wouldn't get everybody agree to do a 400% tax, so you've got to think of a different way of doing it...

DIMBLEBY What about airports - what about airport runways?

GUMMER That is exactly one of the things that we're looking at and we're looking at whether you might have to have a different system for providing slots. One of the things I'm particularly keen on is to have a proper transport system so that you can actually get between Manchester and London more effectively so that the aeroplane would cease to be a natural alternative. We ought to be doing that as far as Paris is concerned, we ought to be doing it with Brussels and with Amsterdam - there are a whole range of areas where we can find those things. There won't be - I have to tell you - there won't be a single answer but there will be a whole series of answers, it's the most difficult thing - I set it up as the first group because it's going to take the longest time to find an answer. And the one thing that ...

DIMBLEBY You can't go into - I presume you're not intending to suggest to your leader before he goes into the next election it's very complicated and the answers are very difficult and therefore we can kick it into future touch?

GUMMER No, no....

DIMBLEBY You're not going to say that?

GUMMER No certainly not, that is absolutely not what I want to do nor what David Cameron would allow me to do. But I'll just say this one thing about it. The worse thing about it is that we've discovered that we know far too little about the effect of aeroplanes on the upper atmosphere because it may be that it is very much more serious to burn high up than it is to burn low down. But we don't know. So one of the things I've got to try to do is to find somewhere where we can actually find the science upon which to base the answers.

DIMBLEBY Jo Swinson.

SWINSON Well I don't know whether Simon Heffer's going to perhaps break the consensus but I find myself very much in agreement with much of what John Gummer and Chris Haskins have already said. I do think we need to be careful about where we site wind turbines but I also think we have to become aware that these are going to have become part of the landscape, just like at one point pylons became part of the landscape, television aerials became part of the landscape and I think frankly wind turbines are much more productive and essential than that. And we should be encouraging home owners to micro-generate their own electricity. I mean the scale of the environmental threat to this planet is so huge. I remember in the late '80s there was all the scientific debate about is global warming happening or not and now every single scientist that comes out on this is saying well not only that, it's happening at a much faster pace than we ever thought. We do need to change our behaviour, it's not always going to be easy but I think this is going to be a part of the solution.

DIMBLEBY Simon Heffer.

HEFFER I'm not against them per se but I can see that there are tremendous planning issues wherever they go. I'm actually in favour of nuclear power, I wish we would commission some more nuclear power stations. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY I can squeeze in - I can just squeeze in one more.

PRITCHARD

Geoff Pritchard. What is each member of the panel doing to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

DIMBLEBY And you only - because in the time - just one thing that you are doing, if you are doing it, that you regard as making your lifestyle more sustainable - one thing that would demonstrate that. I'll start off with Chris Haskins again.

HASKINS Well I walk about 25 miles a week with my three dogs doing no harm to anybody and get a great pleasure and sustaining the dogs and myself in a way that I wouldn't if I sat around eating hamburgers.

DIMBLEBY Jo Swinson.

SWINSON Well I personally am a great fan of recycling and I'm always encouraging my local council to recycle more. I do, however, feel incredibly guilty about the carbon emissions from my lifestyle being an MP in Scotland and flying down to London. And so I intend to continue pressing the rail companies to make it short enough a journey to make sure that I could actually travel by train.

DIMBLEBY John Gummer.

GUMMER Well we all try as a family and as a business to offset all the carbon emissions that we make. We work out what they are and we try to offset them, we try to do as little as we can but we offset them by buying the opportunity to grow trees and the like - it's not perfect but it's the beginning and it does remind everybody that there's a cost to the environment of every time you drive anywhere.

DIMBLEBY Simon Heffer.

HEFFER Well as a journalist there are two obvious things that I can and do do to sustain my lifestyle. The first is the enormous pile of newspapers I read everyday, when I finish with them they go into a recycling sack. And the second thing, obviously, is that bottles go into the bottle recycling bin. [CLAPPING]

DIMBLEBY And that - that brings us to the end of this week's programme. Next week, among others, Tony Benn on the panel and Rod Liddle, the associate editor of the Spectator, and in the chair, although today when I mentioned it on air he didn't seem to know it but I think he is Eddie Mair. So join him with them in Pembury Village Hall in Kent. From here in St Martin at Shouldham's school, goodbye. [CLAPPING]