Cameron: Question time 'It's giving people a nudge rather than the full smack'

Quangos: Q In the quango culture there's duplication, bureaucracy, red tape within the public services and local government. What would you do? What would be your immediate steps to remedy the situation?

A Quangos have grown hugely. I think too often though politicians make the sort of simplistic statement of we're going to have a bonfire of quangos – we're just going to find all the quangos and we're going to get rid of all this bureaucracy and get rid of all the quangos. It is more complicated than that.

We have to understand why quangos have grown and what they were originally for and I think what we have to do is recognise there are basically two circumstances in which there is a reason for having a quango.

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The first is, if there is a highly technical function that should be performed outside government, for instance, inspecting nuclear power stations or something like that. The second reason is if there is a sort of fairness function, for instance, handing out broadcasting licences. By and large, over and above that, we really ought to be saying what's this quango for?

And if it's actually about making policy, it should be brought back into the Government where it is accountable, where politicians are responsible for it.

John Richmond, from Ripon

Regional Development Agencies

Barry Dodd, chairman of GSM Group

Q In this region, our Regional Development Agency has actually done quite well for us, and we're getting mixed messages about what is going to happen post-election. Could you bring us up to date on your thinking on RDAs?

A Very simple. Two stages here. The first stage is there are some things that Regional Development Agencies were given to do which we think was completely wrong. So the housing powers and the planning powers and the great John Prescott regional state, we think were wrong.

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We think those powers should be immediately taken away from Regional Development Agencies and given back to local authorities. The second stage is to ask each area, do you want to keep your Regional Development Agency or would you like these economic powers to be driven down into local enterprise partnerships? In Yorkshire, if local authorities want to keep Yorkshire Forward with its economic role, then they should be allowed to do that. Let's not treat every part of the country the same way.

The Euro

Etta Cohen, from the networking group for businesswomen Forward Ladies

Q Does the economic crisis in Greece show that the European single currency project is doomed to fail, and that we should never get involved?

A I absolutely believe we should not join the European single currency. I can guarantee that if I become Prime Minister and for as long as I am Prime Minister, Britain will not join the euro. I believe if you have a single currency across Europe you need a single interest rate across Europe – but there are times when you need flexibility.

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I don't think it's doomed to failure but I think there's a real problem at the heart of it. It's difficult when you have a single currency without having a single economic policy – without having big fiscal transfers between countries that are doing badly like Greece and countries doing well like Germany. We don't have that situation in Europe and I don't want us to have that situation in Europe.

Transport

Chris Glen, of the Federation of Small Businesses

QWill your government maintain spending on transport and ensure regional priorities do not get delayed or shelved?

A No government can guarantee all future transport spending – there are going to have to be reductions in spending programmes.

What we can say is we're going to take away the Government's crazy idea that you only get extra money with congestion charging. We're going to allow people to spend it if they've got good schemes to improve transport and cut carbon. We're going to take off some of the restrictions on spending and also examine some of the things like the Leeds super-tram that the Government has canned.

Pensioners

Blodwen Brewster, from Featherstone

Q What is your party going to do for pensioners?

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A People who have worked hard, saved and done the right things deserve dignity and security in old age – and they're not getting that right now.

I think it's time to link the state pension back with earnings, rather than prices, so as people's earnings go up pensioners share the benefits. We have shown how we're going to pay for that. It's not popular – from 2016 we should be asking people to retire a year later. That's much faster than what the Government has proposed.

The second issue is one of residential elderly care. Every year 45,000 people have to sell their homes to pay for care. We will have a partnership scheme whereby anyone turning 65, if they put 8,000 aside into a pot then they can be certain they won't have to pay for residential care. I think that's better than this "death tax" proposal.

Energy

John Draper, from Malton

QIs it fair for my neighbour to pay less for their gas and electricity than me because they are good on the internet?

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A Well on one level, a competitive energy market where you're able to shop around is one way of helping to drive down costs. And normally someone else's desire to shop around actually helps you because the very fact that they are prepared to change their supplier means that the other suppliers have to be competitive, and so those of us who are less active do benefit.

One of the things we've studied is how to help people reduce sensibly their energy use to get their own bills down. What does work is if you put on people's electricity bills what the typical neighbour is spending and people can see that it's less than what they're spending, they start asking questions about, well, how can I be more energy-efficient. In economic terms, it's giving people a nudge rather than the full governmental smack.

Health

Tony Veverka, of Ultralase

Q Does more onerous inspection of independent healthcare have proven benefits ?

A We need to change the whole approach. At the moment we are endlessly measuring processes – have you waited more than four hours, has this box been ticked? – rather than outcomes. What I want to know is, if I get cancer, do I survive as long as if I lived in France? If I have a stroke, what will my quality of life be like?

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Stafford (hospital) was the ultimate case – people were being pushed into a side-room out of A&E because they had been waiting longer than four hours, they weren't being treated properly and in some cases they were dying. We were meeting targets but we were killing people.

Tony Goodall, of Tony Goodall Consultancy

Q Is minimum pricing for alcoholic drinks something you would consider?

A No, because it doesn't work. But we would consider something else quite radical, which is to ban the low-cost selling (of alcohol) by supermarkets and stores. If you look at what's actually happening in our town centres – where we have a lot of drink-related violence – a lot of police will say it's "pre-loading" before people go out. They've been able to buy high-strength beers and ciders at below-cost prices and it is time to say no to that.

But as for minimum pricing, it would actually push up the price for people who were having a perfectly responsible pint of beer in a pub – and that's not something I want to do.