Question: Labour has a patriotism envoy to lead the debate over our national identity. Do you support this initiative?

John Redwood: I think it's a cynical ploy by a government that has done so much damage to the idea of British identity. This is the government which leads people to believe that if they are sensibly patriotic then they are behaving in an unreasonable way. This government has tried to associate sensible patriotism with very unpleasant emotions with which it has nothing in common. To me, good patriotism is love of your own country, belief that its systems and its causes are generally right, belief in the system of reconciling our differences. It has nothing to do with running down other people's countries. I'm a tolerant person; the fact that I love Britain doesn't mean that I dislike other countries in the world. They are equally lovely, I hope, to the people who live there and like them and believe in them.

I have no truck with aggressive nationalism. I think at times Labour has implied that many of us genuine patriots are aggressive nationalists which we are not. So now they've come up with this stupid idea of a junior minister running around saying he's patriotic really.

Question: So you think it's a gimmick?

John Redwood: It's a typical gimmick. This government waits until it gets into trouble with the focus groups and opinion polls, waits until there's a media story about how they got something wrong, and then it launches a media based initiative. It never tackles the underlying problem. The underlying problem of Labour and patriotism is that they don't believe in this country, they are running down its institutions in the name of modernisation. They are doing a lot of damage to the democratic way of governing that this country has enjoyed for many decades.

Question: Can you be patriotic and still support greater economic and political integration in the EU?

John Redwood: Some say it's possible that you can redefine your patriotism to say that there are errors and faults in our current democratic system and we would like to merge more of our institutions with those on the continent. I don't think the advocates of more European integration have actually thought through how they would do that. Indeed I think they've put the cart before the horse. If I wanted to live in the United States of Europe of a more integrated Europe, I would start off by creating a much more powerful European parliament than we have at the moment. Then you would select the government of Europe from amongst the European Parliamentarians. People in this country who want more integration haven't been advocating that more radical course. They then end up with a very big conundrum. They've transferred much more power to Brussels than people like me want, but they offer no way of making that democratically accountable.

Question: From your perspective where is Britain's place in Europe ?

John Redwood: Europe is my continent not my country. I'm proud of my country, I'm proud of my continent; a lot of European history, culture and achievement is important. There have also been some very disfiguring conflicts, wars and barbarisms - which obviously one cannot be proud of! I want Britain to be a force for the good, in Europe as I think it has on the whole been for the last 1,000 years, when it has intervened on the continent, it has usually intervened in favour of self-determination, freedom and democracy, rather than in favour of baser values and motives. For the last 500 years Britain has never interfered in the continent to grab more territory to herself; she's interfered to stop other people trying to grab more territory that didn't belong to them. I want Britain to carry on being a leading country in Europe, but not governed by or submerged in a United States of Europe.

Question: And would you like Britain to have a closer relationship with the USA ?

John Redwood: Yes I would. I think we have traditionally had in the post-war period strong links with USA. We were one of the founding fathers with the USA of many of the post-war institutions; the UN, we're a leading security council member with the veto; the World Bank, the IMF, the other institutions to help the poorer countries or countries that get into economic difficulties. We have developed a very strong defence alliance through NATO with the USA. I want that to continue and to be developed.

I believe in the age of the Internet where we have a global market emerging very rapidly in most goods and services. The English language is a formidable strength. The USA is the current technical and economic powerhouse and leader of the world and even if she has a small recession, she will still be the technological leader of the world. I think we need to strengthen our trading links and our cultural links with the US.

Question: Looking to devolution. Labour says that devolution strengthens the union they argue that British people voted for it in a general election and a specific referenda. So why are the people wrong?

John Redwood: Well people didn't vote for it in the way that that analysis suggests. It's quite true that the Scottish people voted by a clear majority for a Scottish parliament. It's also true, just as Conservatives predicted at the time, that its going to be a long time before that settles down. If you go to Scotland today, as I do quite often, people will tell you that they're not happy with the current arrangements. It makes some of them want to go further, they want more power to rest in the Scottish Parliament. And others are getting nervous about the degree of power that already rests there because it isn't delivering for Scotland the things that Scottish people vote for or wanted.

If you go to Wales, you may recall that only a quarter of the Welsh people voted for the Assembly, three-quarters either voted against or stayed at home and it was a big disappointment to Mr Blair. So there was no great passion in Wales for this kind of devolution. There wasn't either real anger in Wales that they got a very second class form of devolution compared with Scotland - they got an Assembly without a great deal of power. My worry about devolution has always been that if you create mini nationalisms, they will serve to break up the Kingdom. You need to regard your priority as being to United Kingdom, Crown and Parliament if you want to keep the country together.

I'm a great devolutionist in that I want to devolve as much power as possible to people, families, business, communities, local councils because that's where I think power is better exercised. They don't want government having as much power as it does have. I'm much more suspicious of intermediary bodies within the unitary state particularly if they're not elected as is the case with English devolved government

Question: So would you like to see a Conservative government in the future reverse devolution, abolish the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly?

John Redwood: No we're not going to do that, we have accepted the verdict of the Scottish people. I've just described to you that I don't think that their verdict has moved from being in favour of the Parliament to being against it. I think that they are very suspicious and critical of it but they haven't changed their mind over wanting to abolish it so we're not going to suggest that. And we're not suggesting the abolition of the Welsh Assembly because I think it needs longer to settle down and see whether they can make anything of it - it was a bit of an insult to Wales, I don't think it's a huge issue at the moment in Welsh politics. It's had its teething problems as you might expect - we have more important things to do.

We certainly wish to get rid of a lot of paraphernalia of regional government in England outside London where it is unelected, expensive and totally unnecessary. My electors in Wokingham either want decisions made locally by the council, or they want them made nationally by the national government. They don't want to have this intermediary body getting in the way, costing them money, and often preventing the dialogue between the local council and the national government that is needed to sort out issues like education and social services.

Question: Labour argue that the Conservatives policy of English votes for English MPs in the Westminster Parliament is divisive and could actually be a threat to the Union. How do you respond to that?

John Redwood: Well I think that's a bit rich! These are the people who decided to damage the Union by giving different governing arrangements to Scotland, and then to Wales and then to Northern Ireland. Each of those devolved assemblies is very different in terms of its powers and one of them is different in terms of method of election from the other two. We're trying to balance it up a bit. Now I don't think the right answer is to give England the same expensive paraphernalia that Wales and Scotland has and I don't think there's a great demand for it in England. So I think the right solution is to say 'you're already paying for an English as well as a United Kingdom government, you're paying all of these MP's and all these ministers who spend a lot of their time just doing English issues. They can carry on doing them but wouldn't it be fairer if it was just the English MP's who made the decisions for England that are currently made for Scotland by the Scottish parliament?'

Question: Do you think that devolution in Scotland and Wales has stoked up any forms of English nationalism?

John Redwood: I think there's a bit more English nationalism than there was, and that was an inevitable consequence of highlighting the things that divide Scotland, Wales and England, rather than highlighting the things that unite us which has been the practice of previous governments. It hasn't made me more English nationalist, I am British and I happen to be born English but that doesn't define my political attitudes, and I don't want to champion English political causes because they are English. I want to make sure that my electors are looked after and that we have fair policies for the Union as a whole.

Yes, there is more English nationalism and it is a direct response of English voters and some English politicians seeing that Scotland gets more money for example, and ask why do they get more money and a different political structure ? If they want to make more of their own decisions shouldn't they pay more of their own bills?

Question: Well I suppose the Scots and Welsh can say 'a bit of English grumbling won't go amiss because we had to put up with the previous system for long enough'?

John Redwood: Well, yes. And then you create more divisions in the Kingdom, I think you're proving my point. If you want to highlight the things that divide us then the divisions will get worse.

Question: But Labour would say, one way of perhaps alleviating this would be to have a greater form of English devolution in terms of regional government or city mayors - something you don't think the Conservatives should go towards?

John Redwood: Certainly not regional government because I don't believe that there are natural regions in England and I don't think it's a big enough country to warrant another layer of people taking money from the taxpayer to pay their salaries. We're got enough politicians and bureaucrats already, too many. We at the Conservative party would like to cut the number of politicians and the bureaucrats to go with them, because we don't think it's a very good way of spending people's money. Its possible that stronger forms of local government would create the kind of local devolution I want, and we would have to consider that. We did actually support the idea of a London mayoralty, and we will have to see whether that works out or not. It has its down side as well as we've already seen. And unless the London mayoralty can actually solve the problem of the tube, then I think that people will conclude that that wasn't a very sensible experiment either so we will have to see how that develops.

Question: But a possibility could be city mayors down the line - it would be an idea that you wouldn't oppose?

John Redwood: Its not one I'm campaigning for and its not one my party is making a big thing of at the moment, but we're not fanatically against it, we will see how the London one works out.

Question: You run the Conservative Parliamentary Campaigns Unit that aims to highlight the gap between Labour's promises and delivery. In a recent ePolitix interview, Margaret Beckett criticised Conservative efforts to try and show this gap between Labour promises and delivery as a deliberate attempt to encourage the public to be cynical and apathetic about politics ?

John Redwood: She was worried wasn't she.

Question: She went on to say these tactics are harmful to democratic politics. How would you respond to that?

John Redwood: Well I think Margaret's being rather silly. She well knows that the function of a lively Opposition in an open parliamentary democracy is to highlight the weaknesses and mistakes of government policy and government action, the weaknesses and mistakes of government ministers, and particularly where there is a big gap between what they promised and what they're achieving to show how big that gap is. Of course the opposition should go on and show how it would have more constructive ideas to make a difference. We're spoilt for choice with the range of targets that are presented. We have a tube system on strike, we have a railway system in chaos thanks to the regulatory mishandling of the Secretary of State, we have schools not able to recruit and retain teachers because of the pay rates they've chosen, we have hospitals with ever longer waiting lists, and waiting lists to get on the waiting lists. So the promises on better health, education and transport have all been broken! We have a government giving the country away to Brussels and then trying to claim its not doing so, not understanding how damaging that is to democracy. And we have a government in the process of so called modernising the House of Commons which means that the Opposition has less and less chance to make the points people want us to make. So of course we're going to campaign against them. I'm delighted Margaret's so worried about it!

Question: One area that Margaret Beckett is worried about is voter apathy. What do you think causes voter apathy?

John Redwood: Cynicism about politics and politicians clearly causes voter apathy. A lack of power by politicians to sort out real problems that people have identified and sometimes politicians have helped to identify causes voter apathy. Its no surprise that this government is generating a huge amount of voter apathy. I think the last Conservative government generated some voter apathy in the run up to 1997 as we saw amongst their own supporters because people weren't happy with the view on Europe in particular. We have now sorted that problem out. The Labour party has a much bigger problem than we had.

Question: So you're anticipating that Conservative voter apathy shouldn't be an issue at this coming election?

John Redwood: No, I think that quite a lot of the people that were apathetic Conservative voters who stayed at home in 1997 will now return because they see that we've sorted ourselves out and they don't like what they're getting from this government and they helped get it by default - by staying at home. Whereas I think on the Labour side, you now have potentially millions of people who are very dissatisfied who may wish to stay at home or some may wish to switch their allegiance. Its going to be a very interesting few weeks as the battle rages over those people and what they're going to do. The current position is that in actual elections Labour is only polling about 35%, so I don't know where the opinion polls get their 45-50%. Those poll ratings are not translated into votes the Labour party can call on and rely on in actual elections in the ballot box. When you talk to people, or read the letters, it is quite clear there are a lot of people who voted Labour in 1997, who feel very let down. Voter apathy has come about both because there are a whole lot of areas where promises were made and haven't been delivered like transport and schools and hospitals and because people are beginning to work out that so much power has now been transferred to devolved quangos, devolved assemblies, to Brussels, that there are limits to what elected politicians can do. Because people don't think that local councillors have very much power they don't turn out in local elections. I think that's a pity. I think councillors actually have more power than people realise. If the same perception grows about Westminster MP's then turnouts would fall in general elections as well.

Question: You said you would like to devolve power to people, in a different way to Labour, but wouldn't that have the same effect on voter apathy. You're taking power away from politicians so therefore the public wont really think its important to vote for politicians ?

John Redwood: I would still leave political powers in elected hands. Governments would still be deciding defence, and the budgets of the main national public services and would be making important decisions on economic policy for example.

Question: Which is what the Government still does ?

John Redwood: Well they try not to. And this is where the cynicism develops. As soon as you devolve responsibility for a lot of economic judgements to Quangos and Brussels which is what this government is in the process of doing then people understandably become more reluctant to take the whole business of Westminster seriously.

Question: Have you ruled out a return to Conservative Front Bench?

John Redwood: Well it's not for me to rule it in or out. If William wanted me to join then it would be a decision for him and he would invite me. But William said he would rather I did things on the backbenches, I'm enjoying myself now and I'm very happy to do that.

Question: But if he were to offer you a position, you wouldn't say no?

John Redwood: It's not an issue at the moment because William hasn't made any offers.

Question: But do you think that the Conservative Front Bench misses the likes of Ken Clarke - big hitters?

John Redwood: No. I think the Conservative Front Bench moves on. Ken had his day at the top, or very close to the top and won a lot of friends in the process. Now I think the agenda has moved on, I think Ken's interests have moved on, and as I recollect it, Ken didn't want to be in the Shadow Cabinet with William as a leader.