Press Office

Aired: Sunday, 25 July, 2010 10:00
Sunday Live with Adam Boulton

Any quotes used must be attributed to Sky News, Sunday Live with Adam Boulton 

ADAM BOULTON:
Alan Johnson is the man many thought should lead the Labour Party but he chose not to stand against Gordon Brown and then after the election he ruled himself out of running for the leadership. He is currently the Shadow Home Secretary and he is with me now, welcome to you indeed. Looking at that Labour leadership contest, you would have walked it wouldn’t you?

ALAN JOHNSON:
I don't think so. It’s a great bunch there, I think it’s going on a bit too long, I’d have liked it to have finished in July rather than September but I think the five candidates would have wanted that more than anyone else but they’ve got to go on now through the hustings, but no, I took a decision ten years ago maybe but not now.

ADAM BOULTON:
They are young men in their 40s, a bit like our current Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, wouldn’t a greyer head have been a good idea?

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well some people said that about the Deputy Leadership and you’ll remember my very successful campaign for that!

ADAM BOULTON:
You nearly won.

ALAN JOHNSON:
Exactly, nearly won!

ADAM BOULTON:
You’re supporting David Miliband, how confident are you that he is going to get through?

ALAN JOHNSON:
I think he’ll win, yes. I do think so but there are five good candidates there and the absence of the kind of venom that we saw in 1979, the last time Labour lost an election, you remember those times very well, is marked. We had a hustings event in Hull this week and it was really good, over 250 members there engaged in a political debate so I think it is an essential part of our renewal and I think it has been handled very well. I think David will win it, I think he’s got all the stature, he’s got the character, he’s got the vision that we need not just for a leader of the Labour party but for someone who we want to be Prime Minister as well.

ADAM BOULTON:
What do you think separates him from the pack?

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well I think it is his experience, his exceptional talent, his ability to put very complex issues into very understandable language, he is a fully rounded human being and his experience as Foreign Secretary obviously marks him out as well. So out of a very good field I think David is the best.

ADAM BOULTON:
There’s talk about Ed Balls pulling out now he hasn’t got the union backing, do you see that?

ALAN JOHNSON:
I doubt that, I don't know where that talk’s come from but Ed’s got my union, the Communications Workers Union are backing him, I’m just so pleased that we have got people of the stature of the two Ed’s and David and Andy Burnham and Diane in there. It would have been terrible, I suppose in hindsight the mistake with Gordon was that it was just a coronation and we didn’t want a coronation and the fact that it’s not a coronation is because people of stature, like Ed Balls and Ed Miliband and Andy, are in there and it’s not …

ADAM BOULTON:
It took the Tories I think four leaders to get back in to Number Ten and you can use up your talent before you get back.

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well it took us five leaders between ’79 and ’97 to get back in to Number Ten, I think we can do it with one and that’s David Miliband and that’s why it is such an important election because in the old days we had never done more than one full term in government, now we’ve had experience of three full terms in government and we’re a different party as a result.

ADAM BOULTON:
What about yourself? You are Shadow Home Secretary now, will you be sticking around in the Shadow Cabinet?

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well I listen to what colleagues say, I want to think about this over the summer because there is a view that there’s so many good young talented people coming through that we ought to give them a chance. There’s a lot of women, not enough but there are more women on our side of the house than there is in any other political party and I think there is a real opportunity to give them a chance to come through and be in the Shadow Cabinet and pick up that very important experience so I’ll think about that and see what colleagues think.

ADAM BOULTON:
You just haven’t decided?

ALAN JOHNSON:
I haven’t decided one way or the other. 

ADAM BOULTON:
Okay, let’s talk about your responsibilities. There is a sense of quite a lot of what you did being unravelled, that basically the new coalition feels that … for example we’ve got the stories about speed cameras today, the feeling that that was the nanny state going too far and that we can afford to get rid of them.

ALAN JOHNSON:
I think this is a big, big mistake. CCTV cameras in general, we are waiting to hear what they are going to do but they say in the Clegg speech they are going to restrict CCTV. The DNA database which has been essential in catching rapists and murderers, 800 rapists and murderers last year caught specifically on DNA, they are going to restrict the police’s ability to use DNA and because they’re not treating the police service as a priority – amazingly in my view, we would have treated the police like nurses and teachers as a priority in these very difficult economic times.

ADAM BOULTON:
Well they say they are going to defend front line …

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well the report that came out from HMIC and Audit Commission in the week showed if you cut beyond 12%, and we would have cut just about precisely 12%, that was my deal with the Treasury, cut beyond that and you can’t avoid cutting into the front line.

ADAM BOULTON:
But on this point about speed cameras, I mean the sense that they weren’t really saving lives, that they were substitutes for manpower and in a lot of cases simply revenue raisers.

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well I don’t know where this sense comes from. Everyone who has analysed this has said that speed cameras have been an important part of the dramatic improvement on our roads. I mean the carnage on our roads every year, if it was in any other sphere, it would have …

ADAM BOULTON:
It has gone down quite substantially.

ALAN JOHNSON:
It’s gone down dramatically, it has gone down now to below the levels, as I understand it, in the 1930s when there were far fewer cars on the road. Now you can’t just say – it is a kind of saloon bar view, these bloody speed cameras, let’s get rid of them – if they are connected to saving the lives of not just adults but children as well, children’s lives who are particularly vulnerable on our roads, then they are performing a useful function. As I understand it, it’s not part of any economies here because speed cameras actually produce money, that’s probably one of the problems …

ADAM BOULTON:
Oxfordshire are saying it is part of their overall budget reductions for road safety.

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well I’d like to see that because actually there’s the [inaudible] as well to come in to the system but the principle issue with CCTV, DNA and speed cameras is do they have an effect, do they reduce crime, do they reduce carnage on our roads? On crime we just had the statistics last week, no one, not even Cameron now, can argue that crime went down and went down substantially, went down by 50% between ’95, the last two years under Howard, the last two years of the Tories, and this year. You have to look at what has happened …

ADAM BOULTON:
Looking at western society, a lot of people say that is down to demographics, the fact that there are fewer young men basically.

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well you are right but the first point is, did it go down? The contention has been that it didn’t. If you read the Tory manifesto at the last election, they said violent crime has gone up. It hasn’t, it’s gone down by 55%. I am willing to have the debate about it went down in western society, as long as the starting point of that debate is that it went down.

ADAM BOULTON:
Does that mean that prison works in your view? You cited Michael Howard there.

ALAN JOHNSON:
It works to this degree, the argument has become Ken Clarke suggesting that prison has nothing to do with crime figures which is the old high Tory view incidentally, they just gave up on crime which is why it more than doubled between ’79 and ’97. We are being portrayed as if we are against restorative justice and against rehabilitation, we weren’t, we did an awful lot for education in prisons, we did an awful lot on rehabilitation. We introduced restorative justice for the first time. The argument is that for persistent and serious offenders, prison does work.

ADAM BOULTON:
What we’ve got reported today is that Crispin Blunt is advocating the idea that people could get sentences reduced if they went through a restorative justice process and confronted what they’d done and met their victims. You’d support that?

ALAN JOHNSON:
Well, whatever Crispin says, you have to have a time delay to wait for Number Ten to countermand it but we’ll wait and see what they say. We support restorative justice, it was a big part of our idea of …

ADAM BOULTON:
So that idea of cutting sentences in exchange for …

ALAN JOHNSON:
The idea of restorative justice is absolutely right. In the research there are people who say that the jury is still out on this, we think it is an important part of what you do but the retribution bit, the punishment bit is important and it has to come before the rehabilitation bit but the rehabilitation bit is crucial, the idea of social bonds that we put forward in the last election aimed at ensuring that you reduce the re-offending rate, all of this is crucial but what Ken Clarke is saying is sort of a virtue of necessity because he hasn’t got the money to put into prisons. He hasn’t got the money to put into rehabilitation either.

ADAM BOULTON:
No, but he is making the argument, you would accept that across Europe for example there have been reductions in crime in most comparable societies and yet they have a lower proportion of their population in prison. He is saying perhaps we could approach it in that way.

ALAN JOHNSON:
But when Ken Clarke was Home Secretary in 92/93 the prison numbers were at their lowest and crime was at its highest and I think you cannot take away the correlation between the two.

ADAM BOULTON:
But it is all about making the criminal justice system more accountable and that’s why for example they are proposing having police commissioners and that would appear to be something there is some public demand for.

ALAN JOHNSON:
No, that’s daft Adam, I don't think there is any public demand for this at all. The public demand is for the police to be accountable, for the public to know how long it is going to take for the police to respond to a non emergency. I mean emergencies they should know as well but generally people ring the police because there is something happening down the road and they are a bit suspicious of it and they want to know what the response times are going to be. They want to ensure that their neighbourhood beat teams have regular meetings, all of that is …

ADAM BOULTON:
You don’t think that having a police commissioner in charge of the police would make them accountable?

ALAN JOHNSON:
I don't think anyone believes that what the Tories are trying to do, you can’t find a copper, you can’t find people from the Tory party or Lib Dems who sit on police authorities, what they’re doing is wiping out police authorities and putting one single elected individual next to the Chief Constable. That’s either going to politicise the police or what they are there for, what’s their role, it is certainly going to lead to a situation where there is internal turmoil in the police service, internal restructuring in the police force at the same time as we are reducing numbers and curbing their powers.

ADAM BOULTON:
The police service could do with a bit of reform though couldn’t it?

ALAN JOHNSON:
But it is getting reform, yes, and those reforms that started from the Flanagan Review are coming in. Part of that was the policing pledge which the Tories have just abolished which was every police authority saying wherever you live in the country, whichever of the 42 police forces you live in, you have got a certain standard of service that you can rely on and if you are not getting that standard of service, you’ve got the right to retribution. The Tories have got rid of that. It is a very confused picture with the current government.

ADAM BOULTON:
Alan Johnson, thank you for joining us this Sunday Live.

ALAN JOHNSON:
Thanks Adam.