Interview: Attitude in-depth with David Cameron

Over the next week, we’ll be publishing all our in-depth interviews with the major party leaders (first seen in our May issue, still available from Pocketmags.com/Attitude) available online. First up? PM David Cameron:Why should gay people vote for the Conservative party come May?

Well looking at the big picture, the big task facing the country has been turning round the economy, getting the deficit down, getting our country moving again, that’s the big thing – and that benefits everyone, straight or gay, black or white; the whole community. But I would say to the LGBT community that actually, this government really has delivered. Obviously equal marriage is something I’m very proud to have achieved, but there are also other things like wiping historic convictions for consensual acts and recognising foreign same-sex partnerships; making sure we punish hate crimes properly. I read the other day that Britain is the best country in the world to be LGBT and that makes me very proud.

The passing of equal marriage was an historic moment, but a majority of Tory MPs voted against it and you’ve faced a backlash from both backbenchers and the grassroots. Is there still a problem with attitudes to gay issues within the party?

Well I think the Conservative party has changed a lot. You can see Conservative associations are selecting openly gay men, openly lesbian women as candidates. There’s no doubt I took a personal lead on gay marriage – it’s an issue I’d come to the conclusion was the right thing to do – but you know, I lead a conservative party: We’re very cautious, we think before we act, and not everybody reached the same conclusion as quickly as me. But I think the Conservative party in this parliament have more broadly shown they’re a party that believes in equality.

But if you weren’t leading the Conservatives tomorrow, are there grounds for concern that the party could go backwards on gay issues?

Look, there’s no one saying, ‘Let’s reverse gay marriage.’ I think the Conservative party believes in marriage and this institution now includes everybody. I think as the years go by more and more people will see that it was very sensible, it wasn’t a threat to religious freedom or all the other points people made. Of course it was politically painful and difficult making this change, but it was absolutely the right thing to do. I’ve never doubted that and I’ve lost count of the gay weddings I’ve been invited to, a lot of them by complete strangers! When I was first standing for parliament there were virtually no out gay MPs – you certainly wouldn’t be an out gay candidate – but by the last election I’d forgotten the number because there were so many. There are a lot of openly gay members of parliament who are selected by the Conservative party, and this is one area where we’ve made big leaps and bounds. The Conservative party is rightly proud of that.

Obviously issues like homophobic bullying remain pressing concerns, and Nick Clegg has told us that the Tories have been scuppering progress on mandatory sex and relationship education over the last few years. Where do you stand on this?

No, that’s not right. Where we stand is that we say all schools should teach sex education, and when you teach sex education it must include relationship education. We’ve established a two-million pound fund to make sure that sex education includes the right modules on combating homophobic bullying. I think the point where some others take a difference is arguing that PSHE has to be a statutory, mandatory part of the curriculum, which doesn’t actually mean you’re going to teach sex education better or relationship education better, it’s just the classic, ‘let’s try to dot ‘i’s and cross ‘t’s and create a bureaucratic answer to the question.’ What I want is for every school to teach good sex and relationship education, and that’s what schools do. Of course parents still have the right to take their children out of sex education, but I think we can lay down the right guidelines and trust schools to deliver what needs to be done.

But don’t you think that needs a specific commitment to LGBT students? We’ve seen HIV rates double among gay 15 to 24-year-olds in the last decade, and these kids are clearly falling through the cracks – they’re not receiving this information from elsewhere.

All of them should. Sex and relationship education should include these things, because as I say, I think you can make sure that happens, through the two-million pound package we announced back in October 2014 for instance.
By having good modules available and making sure schools feel confident to teach them, I think that’s what matters.

Under the government’s austerity agenda, cuts to the third-sector, mental health services and outreach programmes are having a disproportionate effect on the LGBT community. Will these services continue to suffer under a future Tory government?

Well what I’d say first of all is mental health services come under the NHS, and the NHS has not been cut. We made a specific commitment – it wasn’t a Liberal Democrat commitment, it wasn’t a Labour commitment – not to cut the NHS, and we drove that through the coalition agreement. What we’ve done in government is make sure mental health has parity with physical health, and make sure that we have waiting times for some of the vital mental health therapies which have been under-invested in in our country for many years – cognitive behaviour therapy, other talking therapies – which can make a big difference. As for third-sector organisations, I’m keen for them to be part of the NHS. It tends to be the other parties that say health charities have no role in delivering health services. That’s not my view. That’s a question you need to put to [Shadow Secretary of State for Health] Andy Burnham, not to me. My view is that these charities should be part of a thriving NHS
which is protected.

HIV/AIDS organisations have been concerned about the upheaval and confusion surrounding HIV prevention provision, and spending in this area has reduced – not just under this government but over the last decade – despite infection rates reaching record highs.

Well this is a worry. I think you’re right to highlight this point. Let me make a general point: Prevention spending was much higher 15 or 20 years ago when there was a need for those big public information campaigns, and so obviously you see a lower spend now. If you look at what we spend on HIV treatment and care, it’s getting on for three-quarters of a billion pounds a year. In terms of public health spending, it’s ring-fenced: It can’t be raided for the rest of the NHS. But I understand the need to make sure we are getting information through to the right people and that’s one of the reasons why Jeremy Hunt is bringing in a number of the AIDS charities for a meeting here at Number 10 in the coming weeks, because I want to listen to peoples’ views about what more we can do.

Ed Miliband has appointed Michael Cashman as an LGBT rights envoy in shadow, but the government recently said they wouldn’t be taking this particular step themselves. Why is that?

I keep it under review. I think we’ve got a very strong Foreign Office team. I want our engagement with other countries and the issue of gay rights to be raised by the ministers in proper meetings as part of our engagement, rather than to farm it off to another person. I think that might actually be a backwards step, because after all, what you want is for this to be a government approach, rather than trying to separate it out. So I’m not convinced that Labour’s answer is the right one. If their answer in government would be, ‘Well we don’t have to raise these issues through ministers, who are the ones with big budgets and influence, because Michael Cashman’s doing it,’ [then] I don’t think that’s convincing. But I keep looking at these issues. I’m all for seeing if there’s better ways of doing things.

How far does that pressure extend to our allies though? It’s been easy to criticise the likes of Russia for its anti-gay laws, but what about places like Saudi Arabia, which has an appalling human rights record?

We raise these issues with every country, and I personally remember raising it in the middle of the night in a meeting with Vladimir Putin, at about three in the morning at the G20 he was chairing. So we don’t hold back from raising… We recognise that some countries take a radically different approach, but we should tell them why we think we’ve got the right one.

With UKIP riding high in the polls and no clear electoral outcome, some worry that they or the Democratic Unionist Party – some of whom hold incredibly anti-gay views – might hold sway over a future Tory government. What’s your view about working with these people?

I wouldn’t trade my views on equality with anybody. I’m working for a Conservative majority government. I’ve got to win 23 more seats to achieve that, but believing that you treat people equally irrespective of the colour of their skin, their sex or sexual orientation, is just a very important part of my politics and who I am, so I wouldn’t trade that with anyone.

Which LGBT person do you admire?

Everyone says Alan Turing, and of course he was an amazing man and I’ve seen The Imitation Game and I thought it was brilliant, but I’m going to go with Clare Balding. I’m a big fan. I love her enthusiasm; her zest for life. It doesn’t matter what sport she’s talking about, she can make it interesting. She’s a wonderful human being.

What would you be doing if you weren’t in politics?

I find this difficult to answer, because public service was my vocation, so if I wasn’t doing that I’d be unsatisfied! So I’m not thinking about anything else at the moment, but when the British public have had enough of me – well, hopefully I’ll still be an MP – but I’m sure I’ll find something else.

What was the last piece of music you played?

[My wife] Samantha got me listening to a new thing called The War on Drugs. I can recommend it. They’re a band, you can find them on Spotify or iTunes – anyway, they’re good!

What do you do on a night off?

A night off would be a Saturday night in Oxford in my constituency. I’d be cooking something, there would probably be some box set action afterwards in front of a nice fire, sitting on the sofa and de-stressing.

Politics aside, which other party leader could you go for a drink with?

When I go down the local I don’t want to be with any other politician, let alone another political leader, so I’ll plead the fifth on that and go to the pub with Sam or a mate.