David Willetts: People want to feel governments have a purpose

By Matthew Barrett
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Earlier today, the Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts, appeared on BBC Radio 4's Beyond Westminster programme. 

The Minister tried to explain that the government should have a purpose to it. He said:

"People also want to feel that we understand their values and that what governments are doing have a purpose that goes even beyond economics."

On the point about economics, the Minister explained that the Conservative Party became too economically-focused for part of its time in Opposition:

"In fact one of the problems for our party was a time we became simply the economics party and the challenge that David tried to rise to at the party conference this week was even when economic times are as tough as they are, to remind people that there’s more to this government, more that we’re trying to do."

The Minister also gave his opinion of the Prime Minister's speech at Party conference:

"He actually had to show [that] at the end of this we can emerge in better shape and I thought he absolutely got the tone right. Not empty optimism, recognising the scale of the challenge but saying, you know, we can emerge from this and we will and the Coalition has a plan and working together with a different political party between us we think Britain in 2015 will be in better shape than we are now."

Finally, Willetts reflected upon the "theme through a lot of the debates we had at our party conference", namely "this anxiety that people have that life for their kids may not be as good as it was for them and there is a growing fear. What kind of opportunities can we provide for them?" He continued: "Some of the most controversial decisions we’ve been involved in recently, some of the arguments about planning and housing, for example, the ultimate justification for what we’re doing, although it’s controversial is, look, we’ve got to give the younger generation a chance."