Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 8 October, 2006 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Boulton:          This whole question of the prisons filling up, more prisoners than there are prison places - it looks like a massive mess up, doesn’t it?

 

Goldsmith:      I think first of all what is important is that we will do what is necessary to protect the public particularly from dangerous, violent, persistent offenders.  The number of prison places has increased substantially since 1997 and I think by nineteen thousand, there will be five hundred more in place by next year and there has already been an announcement that a further eight thousand prison places will be built.

 

Boulton:          But in the time being what do judges and the prison system do?  If there aren’t the places there surely the pressure must be on judges not to give custodial sentences or indeed to release people earlier on parole?

 

Goldsmith:      Well, it is really a problem for us and a problem for the Home Secretary to manage the situation in the meantime and there are ways of dealing with that and no doubt John Reid will announce what measures he will take when the moment arises.  As far as judges are concerned -

 

Boulton:          - We are there now really aren’t we?

 

Goldsmith:      John will announce what measures he thinks it is necessary to take because he will have the direct information from the prison service but in the meantime I think what we would ask judges to do is to continue to exercise their discretion to sentence appropriately to the crime.

 

Boulton:          So, still send people to prison although there is nowhere to keep them?

 

Goldsmith:      People who are dangerous, who are sexual, who are violent offenders must be sent to prison.

 

Boulton:          What about the report today in one of the papers that John Reid is saying, ‘well I am quite prepared to put people in open prisons even if they run away’, I mean, that’s not protecting the public is it?

 

Goldsmith:      I am sure there is no question of putting people in open prisons who are dangerous offenders, people will not be moved to open prisons without there being a proper risk assessment -

 

Boulton:          - Well we do know, we know from the whole row over foreign prisoners that people do abscond from open prisons don’t we?

 

Goldsmith:      I understand that the level of absconds, of people who have absconded from prison, is the lowest it has been for many years so people will be risk assessed before they are moved to open prisons.

 

Boulton:          Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips in the Observer, is saying he thinks that at the present moment not enough use is being made of non-custodial sentences, community sentences.  Do you agree with that?

 

Goldsmith:      Well he has obviously got a point about community penalties not being seen by many people as being tough, and they can be tough.  We have got to make sure that they are enforced.  At the end of the day it is for judges and magistrates to decide what sentence to pass, they have got the power to impose community penalties in appropriate cases and it is for them to decide whether they should do that.  I think the message he is giving and very much the public is, don’t think that community punishment is just a slap on the wrist, it can actually be a tough -

 

Boulton:          - Would you like to see more use of community punishment?

 

Goldsmith:      In appropriate cases community punishment ought to be used, not for dangerous, not for violent, not for persistent offenders.

 

Boulton:          So, it’s a very, very difficult situation in the prisons at the moment?

 

Goldsmith:      I think it is a difficult situation in the prisons at the moment, you are right.

 

Boulton:          So, why is the government watering down the independence of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons? 

 

Goldsmith:      Well, I don’t think that’s right.  What’s proposed is that -

 

Boulton:          - That’s what Lord Herd, former Tory Home secretary, -

 

Goldsmith:      - There are lots of views on this I know but what is being proposed is that there should be a single inspectorate, at the moment we have got I think five which deals with criminal justice, with the police, with prisons, with the Crown Prosecution Service – bring them in to one but there will be a special duty to look at the custody of prisoners.

 

Boulton:          But it does look a little bit as if people like Ramsbottom and before him Judge Tumin have been thorns in the side of the government and their kind of status is being downgraded.

 

Goldsmith:      I think what they have been doing and quite rightly is warning us when things are happening in prisons which ought not to be happening and I don’t think there is any question that we would want that to continue to happen.

 

Boulton:          But they are not going to have the same profile and people could be a little suspicious, given this government’s record on intervening and spin, that they are trying to gag them.

Goldsmith:      I don’t believe they are trying to gag them at all but there is going to be a debate in the House of Lords for a number of different proposals that are being put forward.  What I think is essential -

 

Boulton:          - But your proposal is to downgrade the position?

 

Goldsmith:      No, the proposal is to bring the inspectorate’s together into a single inspectorate with a particular duty placed on the inspectorate to look at the conditions in which people are held in custody.

 

Boulton:          What does it tell us about ten years of new Labour, as you say, that we have got record prison population, record building of new prison places, it doesn’t really point to new Labour creating a happier and healthier society does it?

Goldsmith:      I think in many ways that’s exactly what has happened.  Actually the chances of being a victim of crime are the lowest they have been for twenty five years and many crimes are down.  We have suffered obviously from a number of things like terrorism which is of course one of the major items on everybody’s agenda, we try to make sure we deal with things that actually affect people in their everyday lives like anti-social behaviour.  I think that is improving the quality life for people up and down the country.

 

Boulton:          How worries are you that you or Tony Blair could face international war crimes charges after leaving office?

 

Goldsmith:      I am not concerned about that at all because I am quite confident that there is no possibility of that.

 

Boulton:          No possibility at all?

 

Goldsmith:      No, no.

 

Boulton:          We have been told that some international legal experts have said their case could be made based on the fact that a pre-emptive war was entered into by Britain and the justification for that war turned out to be false.  That‘s a case isn’t it?

 

Goldsmith:      We did not enter into a pre-emptive war, absolutely not -

 

Boulton:          - Saddam Hussein wasn’t fighting us, was he?

 

Goldsmith:      No, no, no.  What we did was to follow the authority which had been given by the United Nations - 

 

Boulton:          - On W.M.D. which weren’t there.

 

Goldsmith:      - Which was on the basis of a failure by Saddam Hussein, we have been through this many times, a failure by Saddam Hussein to comply with repeated United Nations Security Council resolutions as to what he should do, which he consistently obeyed.  All the member states, fifteen in the Security Council, agreed that he had failed which is why they passed that resolution, resolution 1441 in November 2002.

 

Boulton:          So no possibility of a case being made?

 

Goldsmith:      I don’t think so at all.  And when it comes to the way that hostilities are conducted in Afghanistan, in Iraq, this country is extremely clear about it’s responsibilities, we have very good procedures to make sure that the rules are conflict are complied with.

 

Boulton:          What is the current British government and current British legal position on the use of torture?

 

Goldsmith:      Entirely against it.  Absolutely against it.

 

Boulton:          Does that include coercive interrogation?

 

Goldsmith:      Well, if you are asking me about Guantanamo for example we have real problems with that as everybody knows.

 

Boulton:          But I am also asking you about the recent legislation in the United States where George Bush has said we are against torture but coercive interrogation which apparently includes something called water boarding, making people think they are drowning, is legal in America.

 

Goldsmith:      We are absolutely against that, we disagree with the idea that it is for any nation to reinterpret for example what the Geneva Convention says, what’s called common article three and that’s part of this debate -

 

Boulton:          - Because in the Northern Ireland experience we know that people held in detention were for example deprived of sleep, made to stand up for long periods of time… that couldn’t happen now?

 

Goldsmith:      As far as we’re concerned absolutely not.  It certainly shouldn’t happen and if it did happen we would take action against those responsible.

 

Boulton:          What is the position on the use of British airports either for so called extraordinary rendition or indeed for shipments of American weapons to third parties, I mean, would we need to be explicitly notified in every case?  

 

Goldsmith:      Well I think there are two different issues there.  One is in relation to using British airports for extraordinary rendition; taking people to places where they will be subjected to torture or inhuman treatment.  We would not consent to that, we would certainly require anyone who wanted to use -  

 

Boulton:          - It has happened in the past.

 

Goldsmith:      Well, I don’t know the details of whether this has happened -

 

Boulton:          - Are you satisfied you know how many cases there have been?

 

Goldsmith:      I am satisfied that we have not, from what I have been told, that we have not knowingly allowed out airports to be used for that purpose.  Now, on the question of arms we have a different regime about arms for many countries which is that we have export regimes in relation to them and we need to change that if we were going to take the view that a particular country ought not to receive them.

 

Boulton:          Amongst others there has been a European parliamentary commission here seeking to talk to ministers, they talked to Geoff Hoon, now the chairwoman of that committee is saying she is not satisfied.

 

Goldsmith:      I don’t know about the detail but I think there is a very important point of principle here which is actually what’s called a war on terror isn’t just a war abut force it is a war about values and we have got to uphold the values which we stand for which are fairness, justice and rule of law.  That’s why it is not good politics as well as not being good in principle simply just to bear down and ignore those principles, we need to win that war on values too.

 

Boulton:          If we are about standing up and values wouldn’t it therefore be a good idea to take a leaf out of David Cameron’s book and rather than rely on a kind of compromise historic statement coming out of Europe to actually have a U.K. bill of rights so that everyone would know exactly what their rights were and the new supreme court could interpret it?

 

Goldsmith:      I think he is quite wrong about what he has said and I notice that he’s repeated again what he said before even though some of his own top colleagues described it as xenophobic legal nonsense.  There’s a different question about whether having now got effectively a bill of rights or the human rights act we ought to think about whether we should have a written constitution to deal with other aspects of that.  That I think is another debate and that’s not what he’s talking about -

 

Boulton:          - You sound as if you’re interested in that.

 

Goldsmith:      I think that is something that we seriously ought to consider, there are strong reasons in principle why we ought to consider doing that.