Listen Live on BBC Radio 4 (Started at 20:00) Eddie Mair chairs the debate from Tidworth, Wiltshire, with questions from the audience for the panel including: Chris Bryant MP, Minister for Europe; David Willetts MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills; Timothy Garton-Ash, Professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford; and Anne McElvoy, executive editor of the London Evening Standard. CHRIS BRYANT is Minister for Europe. Reacting to David Cameron’s decision not to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty this month, he said that the Tory leader’s “cast-iron guarantee is rusting pretty badly." He was appointed to his current position in October this year, replacing Baroness Kinnock who had been in the job for only 16 weeks. He was ordained as a priest in the Church of England and served as a curate for three years before resigning to stand for parliament. Described as “clever and hugely ambitious,” he was elected MP for Rhondda in 2001. In 2005, he became PPS to Lord Falconer as Lord Chancellor, becoming parliamentary aide to Harriet Harman in 2007. He was one of a number of “Labour loyalists” who wrote to Tony Blair in 2006 asking him to stand down in the interests of winning the next election. Educated at Mansfield College Oxford, he was a contemporary of William Hague and was briefly a member of the Conservative Association. He went on to join the BBC and became Head of International Affairs. He has written a number of books, among them John Smith: An Appreciation, Stafford Cripps: The First Modern Chancellor and Glenda Jackson: The Biography. He is a former chair of the Christian Socialist Movement. DAVID WILLETTS is Shadow Secretary of State for Universities and Skills with special responsibility for family policy. As the number of unemployed people aged 16 to 24 rose to its highest total on record last week, he said ”This is a damning indictment of the Government's failure to help young people during the recession.” He has previously served as the Shadow Secretary of State for Work & Pensions, Trade & Industry and Education. In 2007, he sparked a row within his party and infuriated traditionalists by insisting that a Tory government would not build any new grammar schools by arguing that academic selection simply entrenched unfair advantage. With an Oxford first in Philosophy, Politics & Economics under his belt, he was Nigel Lawson’s researcher in the Treasury. He has worked at the Number 10 Policy Unit, and served as Paymaster General in the last Conservative Government. He acquired the nickname ‘two brains’, which stems from his intense interest in policy debate. He is the author of numerous think tank papers and pamphlets on social policy. He has been the Conservative MP for Havant since 1992. ANNE McELVOY is a broadcaster, Executive Editor and political columnist at the London Evening Standard. She joined the Standard from the Independent on Sunday where she was associate editor. Before that she was deputy editor of The Spectator. After hackers leaked emails this week that they say suggest climatologists overstated the case for man-made global warming, she criticised the reaction of the “climate change apostles”. She singled out the “sloppy intellectual culture” which calls “the unconvinced ‘deniers’”, saying “If the scientists and their uncritical supporters can't see that they have only themselves to blame for increasing doubt and distrust, perhaps they're not so clever after all.” As a graduate trainee on The Times, she covered the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of Germany. For two years, she ran The Times bureau in Moscow. She has published The Man Without a Face - Memoirs of East German spymaster Markus Wolf and The Saddled Cow, a short history of East Germany. TIMOTHY GARTON ASH is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford and Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford. As a contemporary historian, his focus on post-1945 Europe has followed the overthrow of communism, the reunification of Germany and the relationship between the European Union and the rest of the continent. A senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, he studied modern history at Oxford and at universities in East and West Berlin. He is a fellow of the European Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts. He is also governor of the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, and a member of several editorial boards. His work has resulted in numerous honours and awards including the Somerset Maugham Award and the Order of Merit from both Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany. He is the author of nine books, including most recently Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade without a Name and We the People: The Revolution of 1989 as Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague, which was a personal account of the revolutions of 1989.27/11/2009
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Fri 27 Nov 2009
20:00
Sat 28 Nov 2009
13:10
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