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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION: BBC ONE DATE:
13.05.01
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon and welcome to
On The Record. It's a different programme during the election campaign
- we'll have a series of debates covering the big issues that will determine
the outcome of the election on June 7th. Today Jack Straw, Ann Widdecombe
and Simon Hughes will be answering questions from our invited audience
about crime, law and order, asylum seekers and so on. That's after the
news read by FIONA BRUCE.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Thanks Fiona.
HUMPHRYS: So, the first of our live
election debates. The same format every week for the next four weeks.
This week our audience - as politically balanced as we can make it - will
be putting their questions about crime, asylum, drugs, police numbers
and all the rest of it to: the Home Secretary Jack Straw, to his Conservative
Shadow Ann Widdecombe and to the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman
Simon Hughes.
We're going to start with
a subject that worries all of us. The polls show it is one of the most
important issues and it is, of course, crime. Labour promised to be tough
on crime and the causes of crime and the statistics do show that the number
of crimes overall has been falling. But the number of violent crimes reported
to the police is going up. So our first question on that from Valerie
Wilks who used to work herself for the Police Federation and is now retired.
Mrs Wilks, your question.
VALERIE WILKS: All parties keep talking
about increasing numbers of police on the beat but none of you ever provide
them, which party is really going to do something to increase the police
numbers?
HUMPHRYS: Home Secretary - increase
police numbers.
JACK STRAW MP: We are is the answer to
that and that is very clear. What's happened to police numbers is that
they started to fall in 1993 for the reasons that we made very clear at
the last election, namely that we had to stick to the Conservative spending
plans in the first two years because of the state of the economy. They
carried on falling. We are now turning those numbers round, they are within
about twelve hundred of where they were in 1997 and under us they will
rise first of all back to the levels they were at in 1997, just over a
hundred and twenty-seven thousand, then to record levels which is about
a hundred and twenty-eight thousand and then to about a hundred and thirty
thousand, well over three thousand more than they are today. Now your questions
Mrs Wilks was, which party is likely to do better on that. If you read
the Conservative Manifesto, as I am sure you will have done, what you will
see in that Manifesto is all that it says is a claim that the Conservatives
will bring numbers back to where they were in 1997. Well, in many areas
of the country, they are already back to that level. They are back to
that level in Wales, in Scotland, in the North East of England, in the
West Midlands, in the East Midlands, in the South West, in Thames Valley
and in Kent and they will be back to that level later this year.
The reason that Ann Widdecombe
could not get a pledge from Michael Portillo to match our promise to increase
them first to record levels and then to a hundred and thirty thousand is
because of the other part of the Conservatives' pledges which is that to
meet their tax cuts, they are going to have to keep down public spending
and to cut public spending. It's a good example of the choice before the
electorate. You can't have something for nothing. Under us there will
be record police numbers and then three thousand more than under they are
now. Under the Conservatives there will literally be fewer police officers
than under us.
HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe is that
true?
ANN WIDDECOMBE MP: Well, if you believe that, I
think you will believe anything at all. If we want first of all just to
address the question of how many, we left behind sixteen thousand more
police officers than we inherited, even during the period towards the end
of our time when numbers started to fall we still increased year on year
the number of constables and between '96 and '97 the numbers actually had
started to rise again. If you want to address it in dry statistics, we've
got a very good record of recruiting police. If you look at what they do,
they came in promising more police, there was a three year fall, we actually
had not only three thousand fewer regular officers than we left behind,
but what is always forgotten in this debate, the Special Constabulary has
actually fallen by a third. So there are less of a reserve which the regulars
can rely on.
Jack stood up at his Party
Conference and he said five thousand more police, that stood the test of
forty-eight hours when the Police Federation said actually that won't match
the numbers leaving. That's the statistical reality but I want to broaden
it beyond that and I want to say this: yes we can get the numbers up to
at least, not to and full stop, but to at least those that we left behind.
That in itself is not the whole answer and I can't believe that any policeman
would say that it was because it isn't only police numbers it's what they
do with their time.
HUMPHRYS: Can I just stop you for
a second Ann Widdecombe because we are going to talk about that.
WIDDECOMBE: You didn't stop him.
HUMPHRYS: We are going to be talking
about what they are going to do with their time in a moment, that's all.
WIDDECOMBE: You promised that we're going
to talk about what they are going to do with their time.
HUMPHRYS: I promise you we're going
to talk about that.
WIDDECOMBE: Okay.
HUMPHRYS: Simon Hughes.
SIMON HUGHES MP: Well firstly, the Police Federation
is very clear about its views and although you are retired you will be
aware that last year when all of us went to address them in Brighton and
this year when we are going to see them in Blackpool, they are making the
message very clear to us, there is not nearly enough support for the police,
not nearly enough money for the police and we expect they're saying to
us: you politicians to do much better. Direct answer to your question:
when our Manifesto comes out this week, you will see a costed commitment
that produces a figure that is two thousand full-time officers more than
the Labour Party commitment and an additional two thousand part-time officers
because we believe there is a place for part-time police officers. Possibly
people who are just coming up to retirement. But, and this is the real
important issue, I accept that that's a starting point. We accept it's
a starting point and it isn't a coincidence that today's papers are very
clear that if you look at London as compared to Paris or New York, if you
look at England as compared to comparable countries, we are way behind
in comparable numbers and we are way behind in ratio of police to crime.
And all the people who ever talk to me about it say we want a significant
increase. So the other thing I've been saying and Jack as Home Secretary
knows I've been saying it for a year and trying to persuade him for a year
is that there ought to be, John, a standing conference on policing with
police representatives, all ranks, public representatives and politicians
which every year gives advice to the government of the day to say, this
is what we think the minimum level should be, nationally and locally and
I think we'd then see a significant increase above any of the figures,
though we happen to be proposing more than the other two.
HUMPHRYS: You mention the Police
Federation there. I notice than none of you offered what the Police Federation
are this very morning saying that they want, must have if they are going
to do their job properly, that is one hundred and forty thousand police.
Without making a great long speech about it, can I ask each of you very
quickly what will be the number of police that we have by 2003. Jack Straw.
STRAW: At least a hundred and twenty-eight
thousand..
HUMPHRYS: So not as much as the
Police Federation want?
STRAW: It can't be as many as the
Police Federation want but of course we'd like that number. But the question
for Ann Widdecombe is this..
HUMPHRYS: No, let Ann Widdecombe
answer her own question, you tell me how many police you want.
STRAW: I've got her Manifesto in
front of me and all her Manifesto..
HUMPHRYS: ..I'd rather her deal
with that, you tell me how many police you want...
STRAW: ....commits her to is increasing
the numbers to a hundred and twenty-seven thousand.
HUMPHRYS: One hundred and twenty-seven
thousand is the answer. Ann Widdecombe.
WIDDECOMBE: It is at least the numbers
we left behind which is one hundred and twenty-seven thousand but if only
you'd just let me have a couple more sentences just now, what I was trying
to say is this. You can actually get more police hours, which are the equivalent
of policemen if on top of the rises in raw numbers, they deploy their time
in such a way that they are actually out fighting crime which is what they
joined up to do, which is want the public want them to do and what Jack
Straw is not allowing them to do.
HUMPHRYS: The only reason I stopped
you is that that is going to be our very next question. So that's why you
can wade in on it then. Simon Hughes, how many police?
HUGHES: Straight comparable figures,
the Tories have a hundred and twenty-seven thousand as their figure...
WIDDECOMBE: Minimal, minimum.
HUGHES: Right, minimum. The Labour
party have a hundred and twenty-eight and we have a hundred and thirty..
STRAW: A hundred and thirty thousand
is where it will reach by 2003, we have got the money for that, so a three
thousand difference between us and the Conservatives.
HUMPHRYS: Sorry, just be clear.
We will have one hundred and thirty thousand police under - if we get a
Labour government by 2003.
STRAW: 2003/4 financial year.
WIDDECOMBE: There is not a three thousand
difference.
STRAW: Well there is between a
hundred and thirty thousand and a hundred and twenty-seven thousand Ann.
WIDDECOMBE: There is not a three thousand
difference between what we are intending to do for this reason that we
have said honestly and honesty is what matters here not just great promises
that we know we can get back to the numbers we left behind because we were
maintaining those numbers only a short while ago.
HUMPHRYS: Alright.
WIDDECOMBE: No, let me finish.
HUMPHRYS: Go on.
WIDDECOMBE: But, but we have never said
we will stop there and if it really is true that Labour have put in the
money which could result in those numbers of police..
STRAW: ..but we have Ann.
WIDDECOMBE: ..then we are not cutting any
expenditure from the Home Office budget. So if it really is possible to
achieve that, then it can be achieved. But what I am telling you is the
honest answer, we know damn well we can do what we have already done and
that is what we'll do.
HUMPHRYS: I will stop you there.
Simon Hughes, I'll come back to you in a moment. But..
HUGHES: Let me make a very short
point.
HUMPHRYS: If it's a sentence.
HUGHES: It's a sentence, a hundred
and thirty thousand is the starting point but everybody knows that you
can't get more public services unless you are honest enough about saying
you have to raise more money for them and that's a big difference between
us and the other parties.
HUMPHRYS: Okay, thank you. Another
question and this will get to the area you wanted to talk about anyway
Ann Widdecombe. From Tony Harper, who is a manager in a catering company.
TONY HARPER: Yes I would like to ask -
my experience of the police is that they are incompetent, inefficient and
slow to respond to crime. Which party is going to do the most to improve
the way the police operate?
HUMPHRYS: Alright, Simon Hughes,
and you can end this one Ann Widdecombe.
WIDDECOMBE: Oh, right, thank you.
HUMPHRYS: Simon Hughes?
SIMON HUGHES: The answer is, I think the
police vary in their policy and efficiency, and in all the independent
audits I don't think there's a difference between us here, show that different
forces do better and less well on different targets. The reality is you
have to keep on making sure the police have that external assessment.
Money doesn't produce more police don't automatically produce necessarily
a better performance, but there no evidence that fewer police produce
a better performance, and it's clear that if you want the main issue tackled
you will have to have more police. And can I just deal very quickly with
two issues. The real figure that we should be looking at is what is crime,
what is the level of crime, and how much of it is cleared up, and the figures
again confirmed - I asked a question of Jack and his colleagues the other
day - three quarters of crimes are not cleared up in this country. Three
quarters of crimes, about three million crimes a year. Now, you have
to have more police it seems to me to be able to deter them, you have to
have more police to be able to detect them, and then the job is about being
efficient and about being managerially competent, and that's an issue which
is in a detailed set of negotiations, and I hope that all of us, all of
us who have representatives on police authorities are clear that you then
have to work with the police to make sure that they put the hours but deliver
the goods as a result.......
HUMPHRYS: But you can't actually
guarantee under the Liberal Democrats that you would have a better clear
up rate can you?
HUGHES: Nobody can guarantee it,
but the more police you have all the evidence is you deter more crime because......
HUMPHRYS: So more police is the
key to it again?
HUGHES: It's the beginning of it,
it's not the end of it, it's the beginning of it and to be honest the more
pressure you take off the individual police officers then the less you
have them just having the blue light responding, you're right, and the
more you have them out there on the street deterring the crime and nicking
the people, because if you don't think you're going to be caught, and three
out of four crimes are not dealt with, you're going to go on committing
them.
HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw, that's an
outrageous figure that, that clear up rate isn't it, and it's falling.
STRAW: Well, it's falling because
of changes in the way that the numbers are counted. Before, what the police
were doing was sending detectives into prisons to get people to confess
to a very large number of crimes. We've stopped that and made...
HUMPHRYS: So they were bogus figures
then?
STRAW: They were bogus figures.
We've made them much more reliable. Let me answer Mr Harper's point.
I don't accept your generalisation - that the police are either inefficient
or incompetent, Mr Harper. I accept you may have had a personal experience
and in a very large organisation of course individuals' experiences may
change. What has happened over the recent years is that the police have
become more efficient and I may say more competent, and that is shown by
the fact that although police numbers during our period have dropped a
little, now going back up, crime has also fallen. As John was saying it's
fallen depending on which sets of figures.. The British Crime Survey is
the best study of that because it measures crime overall. Overall crime
has fallen by ten per cent, and violent crime overall has fallen by four
per cent.
HUMPHRYS: But it was of course
falling before you came into power....
ANN WIDDECOMBE: By fifteen per cent in the previous.....
STRAW: It doubled under the Conservatives
John.
WIDDECOMBE: By fifteen per cent in the
previous...
STRAW: Hang on a second. It doubled
under the Conservatives between 1979 and 1997. It certainly started
to fall by the British Crime Survey in the last two years, but I think
it's fair enough for administrations to be measured by what happened overall
rather than in just the last two years. Now, where however I agree with
one implication of your question, also I agree with Ann, is that we ought
to be doing a lot more to make the police more efficient. I think they
are efficient, they are dedicated and professional, but there's loads more
that you can do, so one of the things we've done for example is cut bureaucracy,
we've reduced the number of forms by a third that the police have to fill
in, we've reduced the number of targets which were running at about sixty-two
under Ann Widdecombe when she was at the Home Office down to thirty, we've
put a lot of extra money into civilian back-up for the police, and those
numbers are already at record levels. We're putting a lot of money into
workable IT systems.
HUMPHRYS: How come that clear
up rates are falling.
STRAW: Well can I just say, well,
the crucial thing, because clear up rates can vary hugely according to
whether you get individual prisoners to confess to crimes, the crucial
thing is getting more people through the courts, and that is where we have
been successful, and then properly punished. The Crown Prosecution Service
was grievously neglected under the previous administration. We're putting
their money up by a quarter this year to ensure there are more prosecutors
and therefore a greater possibility of cases....
HUMPHRYS: Now, Ann Widdecombe ...
STRAW: One last point - and then
we're toughening up the sentences that the courts give, particularly for....
HUMPHRYS: We will get to the sentencing
in a moment I promise you that too. Ann Widdecombe.
WIDDECOMBE: Well, I think I rarely heard
such waffle as we've just heard from Jack Straw, and I come back to your
point which I think is spot on, and I think that now there actually is
a fall of public confidence in the police through no fault of the police's
at all, because when they ask the police to come and do something and to
look at something very often it doesn't happen or it doesn't happen for
a long time. Now I don't blame the police, and you'll see that the Police
Federation themselves today have actually said that they are not performing,
are not able to do the job because they're too over-stretched. And when
you do have a situation....
STRAW: Crime is now lower than
it was under your administration.
WIDDECOMBE: I'm going to address that.
D'you know I didn't interrupt you, I mean I was tempted to. I didn't.
HUMPHRYS: There was the odd mutter
to be fair. But...
WIDDECOMBE: Yes there was, and that was
- the police aren't able to do the job that they and the public want to
do. Nobody joined the police and rushed home and said "Dad I've just joined
the police, and I'm going to fill in a best value form". Anyway, we've
got to get back to having the police out actually doing what they should
do. And therefore we've made specific proposals for reducing a highly
cumbersome exercise called Best Value for looking at the custody system
which can tie one officer down for anything up to five hours processing
one prisoner through custody. There are very specific responsible things
that we have outlined which will make a real difference to the presence
of police on the streets and to the their ability to respond to calls like
that, because believe you me, they want to. But can I just tackle the
falling crime, because Jack I know would never wish to be dishonest, but
he gave a false impression. And the impression he gave was this, was that
crime was rising until 1997 and suddenly it's fallen according to the British
Crime Survey. The facts are this. Crime did rise until 1992, it rose
across the western world. From 1992 until 1997 we produced and eighteen
per cent, a one-eight per cent fall in crime largely but not exclusively
as a result of much greater use of imprisonment. The British Crime Survey
before the one that Jack has just quoted actually showed a much higher
fall in crime. This government have presided over the first rises in crime
in six years, and those are facts according, not to my figures, or Central
Office figures, but his figures.
HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw, just deal
with that.
STRAW: Well....
WIDDECOMBE: Now tell the truth.
STRAW: Ann I always do as it happens.
Over all our record which is of a ten per cent fall in crime is the best
record of any incoming government for fifty years, and as I said crime
went up under the Conservatives. You measure it by the British Crime Survey
until 1995, it then started to fall. We have got a far, far better record
from the Conservatives in terms of reducing crime, getting more offenders
into court and then ensuring the they are punished....
HUMPHRYS: Right.
WIDDECOMBE: ....if you find anybody to
believe them....
HUMPHRYS: People will have to make
the best of those statistics that they can. Go on, you wanted one sentence.
HUGHES: The real concern, and I
hope we all share it is that violent crime which went up every year under
the Tories is now going up again, as you rightly said in your introduction,
and I think that's the level of crime, it's alcohol related, it's drugs
related, that's the crime we have to bring down. And that has to be the
police's priority
HUMPHRYS: Right, well let's now
deal with something else that's been raised, and that is sentencing. Linda
Storrack, who is an accountant, has a question about that. Linda Storrack?
LINDA STURROCK: Which party is going to
make sure that criminals get sentences they deserve and put a stop to so
many of them being released early?
HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe?
WIDDECOMBE: We are, it's as simple as that.
We promise that we will scrap Labour's special early release scheme under
which somebody who is sentenced to six months in prison, for example, can
be out in six weeks. I mean, that is even more than the arrangements under
normal early release, when they can be out half-way. They can actually
be out under six weeks and the result is that more than a thousand crimes
have been committed by those people, including horrendously two rapes and
people are becoming victims of those who should be in prison, but for this
government's special scheme. But I think the question goes a bit beyond
that. It was we who legislated for three strikes and you're out, to try
and make sentences appropriate for repeat offenders such as burglary and
hard drug dealing. It was we who introduced the automatic life sentence
for the second serious sexual or violent offence, so that we could try
and keep control over people even after their release because a life sentence
enables you to do that.
But there is one thing
that I do very strongly believe, which is that we now have a ridiculous
nonsense whereby that the sentence that the judge hands down in court,
bears no relation at all to the sentence that is eventually served. By
the time you've taken off release, possibly also special release, provided
by this government, and you've taken off remand, the actual time that the
prisoner ends up serving bears no relation to what has been handed down.
Now I want transparency, if a judge means three months rather than six
months, he should be able to say three months and we should all know that
is where we are. He should decide whether remand is taken off, he should
decide whether special early release is appropriate, he should actually
hand down the sentence that is going to be served.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Jack Straw...
HUGHES: May I ask Ann one question.
HUMPHRYS: ...well, go on, ask it,
if it is literally a question, but make it a short...
HUGHES: Ann, a question which I
think everybody would be interested know. Does your policy mean that you
will have sentences at the same length now, but with no reduction for early
release, or will the sentences be much shorter under the Tory proposals,
so that they mean what they get now...
WIDDECOMBE: ...yeah...
HUMPHRYS: ...just a sentence in
answer to that please...
WIDDECOMBE: ...no, I actually tried to
address that Simon when I said, if he gives six months and means three,
he should give three. So I actually tried to address that...
HUMPHRYS: ...right, so shorter
sentences...
WIDDECOMBE: ...well, if he decides, if
he is taking a shorter account, that's what he would get...
HUMPHRYS: ...it might end up being
a shorter sentence, but it would be a tran, your point is, it would be
transparency, Jack Straw, why not?
JACK STRAW: It's a good idea. This goes
back to the 1991
Act, for which Ann, Ann's colleagues were responsible and we are proposing
to do this anyway in a sentencing review. But it is just very important
people should understand why Ann is proposing; she's not proposing any
increase in the time any individual serves in prison...
WIDDECOMBE: ...nobody's getting out in
six weeks under us...
STRAW: ...she is not proposing
any increase...
WIDDECOMBE: ...we are, we are...
STRAW: ...she's not proposing any
increase in the time anybody served, serves in prison, what she's proposing
instead is that the length of time people are actually in prison, should
be made clearer at the time the judge issues the sentence and we agree
with that...
WIDDECOMBE: ...special early release...
STRAW: ...and may I also, Ann,
please...
WIDDECOMBE: ... will be longer...
STRAW: ...Ann, you upgraded me
for interrupting you...
WIDDECOMBE: ...I did...
STRAW: ...so I, okay, thank you
very much...
WIDDECOMBE: ...I just have to get the facts
straight...
HUMPHRYS: ...right, well we've
had a balance of interruption, so finish the point Jack Straw...
STRAW: ...I want to come on and
finish the point. The big problem about sentencing at the moment, is persistent
criminals who are committing lower level crimes, yes, we've introduced
the mandatory sentences for burglars, for drug dealers and for rapists
and people who commit serious crimes of violence and they are important
and good, but it's the chap who apparently is committing alleged petty
crimes, a bit of theft here, a bit of alleged minor violence there and
if you look at their records, they're in and out of court, they may get
a short prison sentence. Then the next time they go back, they get probation
or a fine and we think that is ridiculous and what we've got to have is
a change in the whole sentencing structure, so that if people carry on
being persistent offenders, but pitching their offending just below the
current level where they would normally go away for a long time, then the
totality of their offending, the degree to which they are really offending
the community and victims, should be taken into account and that persistence,
no matter how low-level, so called, the offences are, should mean that
they go away to prison for a long time. Yes, we'll give them a chance
at the beginning, with probation and intervention and all the rest of it,
but if they don't get the message, then they need to go away to prison
for a long time.
HUMPHRYS: Right, now before I come
to you on this one Simon Hughes, let me take another question which deals
with this area, and then I'll kick off with you, yes, from Matthew Peverell,
who is a Strategic Development Executive, and whose father I think worked
for the prison service.
MATTHEW PEVERELL: That's right. Shouldn't we be
concentrating more on rehabilitation of offenders, giving them skills and
training, to make sure that they don't re-offend when they come out?
HUMPHRYS: Simon Hughes?
SIMON HUGHES: Well, may I take both Matthew's
question and the question from the lady there. It all seems to me there
are three issues to do with how
you deal with people who offend. Firstly, you have to catch them. That's
the debate we had and you have to have a chance of being caught, otherwise
that allows people to go on offending, so we've got to improve that. At
the other end, you have to make sure and this is Matthew's point, that
when they come out, their chance of re-offending is much less and we have
terrible figures for re-offending. We over fifty per cent at the moment
re-offend within two years of coming out and the reality is that - and
prison governors will tell anybody this - that for many of them, if you
go in for six months or less, there's probably no rehabilitative work at
all and for many people and this is an unusual area where Ann and I will
agree, under the last government the amount of the week that's spent doing
productive things in prison, has actually gone down and that's hopeless.
People should be having training...
WIDDECOMBE: ...under this government, it's
gone down...
HUGHES: ...yes, that...
WIDDECOMBE: ...you said the last...
HUGHES: ...no, no, under this government,
in the last four years, it has gone down and that's hopeless because it
means that the chance of education and training and dealing with the drugs
problem, or the sex offenders problem is not dealt with. But the third
issue is then the sentence and how you deal with that and our view is you've
got to have effective policy and tough on crime and tough on the causes
of crime sounds good but it's no good if it's not effective and so just
a list of things because we've got to get round the whole agenda quickly.
Firstly, with the young people, you have to deal with then quickly, young
people, unless they're dealt with quickly...
HUMPHRYS: We're going to deal specifically
with young people in a minute, so...
HUGHES: ...so, you need to deal
with then quickly. Secondly, wherever possible, you have to make them
understand the consequence of their crime, they have to repay, it seems
to me to the community, they have to understand that somebody is hurt and
that's why we believe and we're unique among the parties, that the victim,
or if the victim can't come, their family, after the conviction, should
be able to appear before the judge personally and say what the effect of
the crime has been on them. I've been with victims in the gallery of the
Old Bailey, who have, the family of somebody who'd been killed, they had
no say in the system at all and they felt that the whole criminal justice
system bypassed them and lastly, there are some people who you do have
to give long sentences to, but the Lord Chief Justice, the Director General
of the Prison Service, the Inspector of Prisons, all make the point, that
beyond ten years, you actually get very little additional benefit, so apart...
HUMPHRYS: ...except that they're
locked up...
HUGHES: ...except for they're locked
up because all but twenty-five prisoners are going to come out again and
therefore what you have to do with those people, is you have to make sure
that just the few people who could be terrible sex offenders, or could
be terrible recidivist homicidal members of the community, in our view,
you keep them in until the court says it's safe to release them and they
would have an indeterminate sentence so that there could be that safety
for the public.
HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe, the emphasis
of what Simon Hughes is saying there is on rehabilitation, which is not
your emphasis, is it?
WIDDECOMBE: Well, I don't know why you
say that John, because you know, as well as I do, that I spent most of
my 1999 conference speech addressing just this issue - rehabilitation in
prisons and that I made certain statements about where we would want to
be, that couldn't be done in the first five minutes, but that we had to
work towards because I think that the great vice of our prison system is
idleness. And if you take somebody who's come from a chaotic background
and you shut them up in idleness for three years and then you open the
prison gates and you say, go and lead a law-abiding life, it's cloud-cuckoo-land.
And if you want to protect the public in the long term, as well as just
in the short term, which you do by having them locked up, then you've got
to have proper and purposeful prisons and that means, work, education and
offending behaviour courses.
Now it is a fact that
since we left office, the number of hours spent on offending behaviour,
on work and education, have actually gone down and what I want to see,
and I stress it can't be done in five minutes flat, but we can work towards
it, is to have a full working day in every prison because at the moment,
prison work means a couple of hours in the morning, a couple of hours in
the afternoon and lock up in between, which is pretty hopeless and the
benefits would be two-fold. One you would get
get prisoners used to an orderly working day, which an awful lot of them
are not used to. But the second is that if you have self financing prison
enterprises and believe me it can be done because other countries do it,
if you have self financing prison enterprises, you could pay the prisoner
more than the nine pounds pocket money that he pays at the moment and then
make deductions for victim reparation for the upkeep of families, which
at the moment falls almost entirely on the taxpayer, for savings upon his
release so that he can't plead a choice between criminality and the dole
and for something towards his own upkeep. Now if you have that, you would
have an imaginative purposeful prison system...
HUMPHRYS: ...right. Thank you...
WIDDECOMBE: ...and that is, no, hang on...
HUMPHRYS: ...well make it quick...
WIDDECOMBE: ...you said it is not my priority,
that jolly well has always been my priority and you've heard me talking
about it for a couple of years John Humphrys.
HUMPHRYS: ...right, I have to move
you along because as you know, we have to balance the time that each of
you gets, more or less, very important, Jack Straw?
STRAW: Well, on the self-financing
prison enterprises, if it's possible I am very happy to introduce it.
I have asked Ann for her figures, I asked her for those figures six months
ago, all the calculations, because we couldn't see how you could produce
self-financing prison enterprises...
WIDDECOMBE: ...so why have you got some
already?
STRAW: ...and I'm still...
HUMPHRYS: ...you would quite like
to see self-financing prisons, prison enterprises, so in other words...
STRAW: ...if you could make. We've
got a few but it's trying to expand it. Let me come back to the central
issue, that this gentlemen Matthew raised. Yes I agree with both Ann and
Simon that prisoners should be kept from idleness and idleness is one of
the worst dangers in prison but there are other problems as well. What
you have to do is to ensure not only that you deal with the offending behaviour
in prison, that you give the prisoners education, you get their education
standards up and about ninety per cent of them have very very low levels
of education, basically can't properly read and write. You deal with their
drugs problems, it's not something we've dealt with up to now, but behind
about half of all crime, at all levels, as I see in my own constituency,
there lies problems with drug addiction and drug abuse, so you deal with
that. You also provide people with routes through to dealing with their
anger because that often lies behind it, as well as introducing them to
the world of work. Now we are doing all those things and I know people
get fed up with swapping statistics, but actually the latest figures show
that the proportion of time prisoners are spending on purposeful activity
is at the same level as it was under the previous government but we think
the quality is better. But what is also absolutely critical is that you
provide a through care between prison and the community, just emptying
people out at the gates, which is what happens under the 1991 sentencing
structure, is no good, and that's why we have reformed the probation service
and we will be proposing that for every prisoner, not just those are serving
more than twelve months, there is proper probation intervention and an
agreement with the prisoner about what they do when they come out, with
the punishment, they go back to prison if they break it, unless they go
straight. So it'll be stay straight, or go back, we'll give you support,
we'll give you assistance, we'll give you education, we'll give you a second
chance, but you make sure you take the chance, otherwise you'll be back
to prison.
HUMPHRYS: Right, let's look at
the causes of crime. Christine Allison is a housewife and she has a question.
CHRISTINE ALLISON: My question to the panel is:
why do so many young people commit crimes get away with just a caution.
Don't we need to make sure that young offenders get much tougher punishments.
HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe.
WIDDECOMBE: Yes, is the simple answer
to that. For this reason, that if between the ages of twelve to fifteen,
which is when a lot of the menace takes place, they learn that they can
get away with it because the courts haven't got sufficient remedies then
by the time they are sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, they are heading for
Her Majesty's Prisons and no messing and so I think it is crucial that
we have a much tougher approach at that lower age group particularly where
the courts haven't got the teeth that they have got for the sixteen pluses.
And so what we propose is this, we propose to expand the number of secure
training places from the hundred and twenty odd that there are at the moment
to a thousand across the country. We then propose to take twelve to fifteen
year olds into secure training when they offend but then something completely
new, we propose to give them flexible sentences of say, and this is just
a say, between six and twelve months, and set them targets in both education
and behaviour which if they reach they get out at the earliest point, if
they don't, they stay until they do or until they reach the final point.
So that right from the start, there is what there isn't now, which is
a shared incentive for the young people to actually try and comply with
the targets.
That's a sizeable stick
and the message goes back to their peer group you don't come back laughing
from the courts you can get taken away, that is a sizeable deterrent.
The carrot we will produce is this, that anybody who goes through that
and then stays out of trouble for two years, unless the crime has been
horrendous and in which case this probably wouldn't be appropriate anyway,
stays out of trouble for two years, we will wipe the slate completely clean
and they will enter their adult lives with a fresh sheet.
HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw.
STRAW: Elections are about choices
and I know that people sometimes are turned off by saying well what happened
before. But the simple fact of the matter is, that what we inherited by
way of a Youth Justice System was literally a shambles and what madam,
you were talking about, where people got repeat cautions, was going on,
we produced plans before the last election for reforming the Youth Justice
System and we were told that there weren't needed. Now I am pleased to
say that one of the things that we have done and which is really working,
are our reforms of the Youth Justice System. It is no longer possible for
there to be repeat cautions issued against a Young Offender. You have a
reprimand first for relatively minor offences, then a caution, then the
Young Offender has to go to court. We have introduced Youth Offending teams
across the country, we've given the courts much wider powers to intervene,
not only with the Young Offender but also with the parent, we've got Parenting
Orders, people are very sceptical about this, no it was big brother, it
was telling parents what to do. It's actually made a huge difference to
the offending by the youngsters to be able to say to the parent, we are
going to require you to have proper training and counselling and that is
working. We have also increased the number of secure places available for
youngsters, there is going to be five hundred more, we may get up to the
thousand that Ann has talked about, it takes a long time to do that. Now,
Ann's made some play just now about changes that she intends to make. We've
effectively got what she's talked about already....
WIDDECOMBE: ...you haven't..
STRAW: Excuse me Ann.
WIDDECOMBE: ...secure training places in
your time Jack.
STRAW: We've introduced, excuse
me Ann, we've introduced a number of secure training places, we've pushed
that programme ahead as fast as possible, provided one may say so, more
money for that than was there before. We've got the money there for another
five hundred places, all these things do take time and the interesting
thing about what Ann is talking about is that she is spraying out promises
about more spending at the same time as Michael Portillo is saying they
are going to cut spending, those two things don't add up. And we have also
introduced Detention Training Order which provides that flexibility. I
don't disagree with Ann about the need to ensure that they are proper incentives
to ensure that people get off crime. But that is what we are doing and
the early signs are that it's working.
WIDDECOMBE: You're in cloud-cuckoo-land.
You ask anybody out there if they think young people are behaving much
better.
HUMPHRYS: Simon Hughes.
HUGHES: Very good question, central
question and which every area of the country we live in, I guess people
are concerned about a lot of young people hanging around, intimidating
older people, being a threat on the streets. I don't know a single area
of Britain now, a single town, a single city where people don't say this
is a real issue and it's becoming something that doesn't appear to be dealt
with properly. So can I thank you for your question. I hope we will all
reject the quick simplistic solutions and we've had two, one from each
of my colleagues in the last two years, well to be fair not from Jack,
from the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister's answer was for a week or
two was march them to the cash point and make them pay. Well that clearly
wasn't very well thought through and then Ann had a policy that lasted
even less long which was nick all the people using cannabis for recreational
use and that went out the window by the same evening. So simplistic solutions
are no good. Just a list of things we have to do. It's not just about
sentencing, it's about education that works and Jack was right to say,
most of the kids who end up inside, end up inside with very poor reading
skills, very poor numeracy skills and very poor opportunities for work.
Secondly, we have to make
sure that youngsters have constructive alternatives. Schools have very
little swimming now, there's much less sport available. Kids don't go on
often to do energetic jobs at sixteen when they are using all their energy.
Unless you have a sixteen year old being energetic and using...they are
going to use it for anti-social activity. I am very keen that we do that.
I'll give you one little example John if I may.
HUMPHRYS: Make it short.
HUGHES: I was with a group of kids
the other day on the streets in my constituency in Bermondsey. Several
of them, before school leaving age weren't at school at all. I asked them
what they wanted to do, one wanted to go to work and I'm trying to get
him a work placement before he is sixteen and one wanted to be a boxer
and I got him a meeting the following week with a British Champion, he'd
just won the Championship, to see if he could be good and he's there and
he's going and training. Now, you have to be sensible about that. Of course
the persistent offenders have to be dealt with firmly, I've spent a weekend
in a borstal, unusually amongst politicians, and I have to tell you they
don't normally make you less likely to commit crime, they normally make
you much better equipped to commit crime and we need to keep them out of
there if we possibly can.
HUMPHRYS: Right, we will assume
it was professionally...
HUGHES: It was voluntary...
HUMPHRYS: Two weeks voluntary,
let's be clear about that. You mention drugs, obviously hard drugs, a serious
cause of crime. Robert Ireland has a question about drugs, he's a case
worker at a Citizens Advice Bureau. Mr Ireland.
ROBERT IRELAND: Why are we spending so
much money trying to stop people using soft drugs like cannabis. Shouldn't
we decriminalise cannabis and focus the money on fighting drugs like heroin
and crack cocaine which cause the real misery?
HUMPHRYS: Simon Hughes, you'd agree
with decriminalising cannabis, wouldn't you?
HUGHES: Bizarrely and as it happens,
I don't because people always say to me I do, but we think there's very
good argument and so what we've done, we've committed ourselves to arguing
that there should be a permanent advisory body, we call it Royal Commission,
it could be something else, to look at drugs, alcohol and solvents and
recommend what the law should be and whether it should change and the difference
between us and the other parties is that we don't say that the law is adequate
and doing well, for the reason the questioner gave. Soft drugs, recreational
drugs, the evidence is varying but have been the subject of a very important
report you've had recently...
HUMPHRYS: ...The Runciman Report...
HUGHES: ...the Runciman Report
by the Police Foundation, which recommended that there should be a change
in the law. We issued a knee-jerk reaction, we've asked our party policy
and conference to look at it, I'm sorry we haven't come to the conclusion
before the election, we will come to the conclusion in the year after the
election and it may be that we will change the policy, but we will do so
in a considered way because as you rightly say, the current law clearly
isn't working and we need to be dealing with the hard drugs and the middle
people who sell them and not dealing in my view nearly as much with those
who innocently use recreational drugs for their own use, don't sell, don't
work on the streets and it may be that the logic, and some of the police
say this, including police chiefs, is that we should either legalise or
decriminalise. But I'll give you a straight answer when we've had our
report back to our party in less than a year's time.
HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe, we know
you don't want to do either of those things, do you still want a hundred
pounds on the spot fine for possession of cannabis.
WIDDECOMBE: We said to you, I'm sorry,
I'm not rehearse things that we said eight months that we were not necessarily
going forward with. But eight months ago, we also did address, the answer
is, I don't want to decriminalise it, everybody knows that...
HUMPHRYS: ...no, no I know that,
but I asked you whether you wanted these hundred pound on the spot fines?
WIDDECOMBE: ...what I want, we want to
tackle soft drug possession and we have said that we are looking at different
ways of doing that in view of the reaction to what we initially proposed,
but ninety-eight per cent of that policy that I talked about at conference,
in which by the way, I didn't even mention the word cannabis, ninety-eight
per cent of that policy was actually about tackling supply and hard drugs
and I think you've hit the nail on the head and Simon almost en passant
at one point hit the nail on the head, when he talked about low levels
of supply, medium levels of supply. The sort of supply we all know about
but is very hard to get a grip on, for example, the house where people
visit all day long, you know what's going on, a car draws up at a kerbside,
people come out from doorways, you know what's going on. But the police
can't just say, we know what's going on. They have to mount a surveillance
operation, they have to get the sort of evidence that would stand up in
a court of law. And what I said at party conference was that we needed
to have, as they have successfully done in New York, we needed to have
a huge attack on that level of supply. Now I think successive governments
have been quite good at tackling large scale importing, not a hundred per
cent success of course not, otherwise it wouldn't be getting in, but they've
been quite good at tackling that and international co-operation. The failure,
hang on, is on that level of supply, and if we don't attack that, and try
and really get on top of that, and again, it's not an overnight business,
but unless we do that, then we're not going to succeed in combating the
drugs culture at all.
HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw, politicians
in power tend to run away from this question of cannabis possession, don't
they, because they're slightly scared of it. Even if the public has changed
its mind?
STRAW: No, I've never run away
from it John. My answer to the gentleman's question is that we should
be led by the science. There's an advisory council on the misuse of drugs
composed of scientists and doctors. It was on the basis of their evidence
about the long term effects of cannabis, particularly on those people with
a propensity to mental illness, that cannabis was put on the Schedule B
list, if the medical evidence changes, then the government is obviously
up to change it, but we shouldn't just change it capriciously, we should
bear in mind that although there are, there's quite a number of people
who do of course take cannabis and other so called soft drugs, it's many
many fewer than those who take another drug which is legalised, which is
cigarettes, and the effect overall at the moment of the criminalisation
of cannabis and these drugs is to keep consumption down. But can I just
pick up a point about Ann's conference announcement, I know that it was
eccentric and we call all smile about it, but there's quite an important
issue here, because what Ann proposed was that those who were taking soft
drugs found in possession of small quantities of soft drugs should get
a hundred pounds fixed penalty without any discretion at all, first offence,
and I think should go to prison for the second offence.
WIDDECOMBE: No I said to court actually.
STRAW: To court for the second
offence. Now that of course was abandoned by her colleagues within the
space of a few hours, the problem about that, and I am pleased that it
was, because it was eccentric, but the problem that it tells you about...
WIDDECOMBE: ...answer the question Jack...
STRAW: ...may I just finish, what
it tells you about...
WIDDECOMBE: ...how are you going to tackle
hard drugs, I've told them, you tell them...
STRAW: ...Ann may I just finish...
WIDDECOMBE: ...tell them...
STRAW: ...what it tells you about
is the lack of any collective decision making inside the Shadow Cabinet,
because....
WIDDECOMBE: ...answer his question about
hard drugs...
STRAW: ...please Ann. The rug
was pulled away from underneath her and she was left without any authority
for what she said. Today...
HUMPHRYS: ...I think she has a
point. You ought to answer, I think she has point, you ought to answer
the gentleman's question...
WIDDECOMBE; ...cashpoint card...you all
abandoned him pretty quickly, didn't you?
STRAW: ...just one second. Today,
she's giving pledges about the spending in the Home Office area, saying
that she's guaranteeing that spending will continue at our levels, even
though there's not a single dot or comma in the Conservative Manifesto,
nor from what Mr Michael Portillo said, giving that pledge...
WIDDECOMBE: ...yes he has...
STRAW: ...now let me come back
to your question...
HUMPHRYS: ...briefly if you will...
STRAW: ...let me come back to your
question. Of course we should differentiate between those drugs which
are so called soft drugs which do less harm, they still do harm, from those
which are hard drugs. I see as I am sure both Simon and Ann do in my constituency,
the effects of some drug dealers and drug addicts, and often to street
level they're the same people, the effect that those people have on the
whole of an area, the way they can cause all sorts of crimes of disorder,
and we're tackling those, and we're putting a lot of money into drug treatment
and rehabilitation...
HUMPHRYS: ...okay...
STRAW: ...and one last point.
One of the great things that we've done, I've done with Alan Milburn, is
to set up a joint drug treatment agency with the Department of Health.
HUMPHRYS: Right, okay, thank you
for telling us all that, Ann Widdecombe, a quick response to that, very
quick response to that.
WIDDECOMBE: Well the quick response to
that is of course he has told you nothing at all about how he is going
to tackle hard drugs. He wasted a lot of time making funny party political
points, I could have made a lot about the Prime Minister and cashpoints.
What actually matters is, what is he going to do to tackle the menace
of hard drugs supply...
HUMPHRYS: ...we are not going to,
we are not going to let him ...
WIDDECOMBE: ...what did we do, we introduced
three strikes and you're out...
HUMPHRYS: ...okay, we're not going
to let him deal...
WIDDECOMBE: ...we've got a record of tackling
it, he has none.
HUMPHRYS: ...we're not going to
let him answer that because we're going to move on to our next question,
from Nick Clark who is an Independent Financial Adviser and takes us into
another area, Mr Clark?
NICK CLARK: Thank you. Asylum is now a
genuine problem so my question is, which party is going to introduce tight
enough controls to dramatically reduce the number of people entering the
UK and claiming asylum?
HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw?
STRAW: I don't think any party
will introduce tighter controls which can dramatically reduce the numbers.
It is a problem, you're absolutely right and the problem is that we have..and
it's a problem across Europe as is shown from the figures, because we're
in the middle of the European League table by the power of population,
and we remain there as numbers have risen elsewhere in Europe. It's a
problem because there are people fleeing, genuinely fleeing persecution,
there are also people who are moving - want to move away from poverty for
reasons we understand but we can't accommodate them. We have to make an
assessment about their applications, we have to deal humanely and quickly
with those who've got a genuine case for asylum and then take fast action
in respect of those who have not.
HUMPHRYS: So why haven't you been
sending them back?
STRAW: That is what we've been
doing and we've trebled the number of applications that have been processed
to a hundred and thirty thousand, we have doubled the numbers of removals.
We want....
HUMPHRYS: Can I just give you one
fact there, because it's an area that we really must deal with obviously.
Seventy-seven thousand people were refused asylum last year according
to the figures. Only nine thousand were removed from this country.
STRAW: Well, only nine thousand
were removed forcibly from this country. Many more of those went back
of their own accord. Of course nobody knows, no-one across Europe can
tell you exactly how many and Ann Widdecome never could tell you how many
when she was in charge of immigration. The crucial thing here - this is
true, because no country in Europe can tell you exactly how many people
are there wholly illegally. The crucial thing here is that we deal swiftly
with this and also that we increase the number of people who are removed.
Now to do that you need more detention space. Ann will tell you airily
that's she's planning to lock up every single asylum seeker as they come
in and keep them locked up until they are ready to go back, aside from
the fact that would cost two billion pounds...
WIDDECOMBE:, No it wouldn't.
STRAW: ...break international conventions...cost
two billion pounds, break international convention and take many years
to deal with.
WIDDECOMBE: Nothing like that...
STRAW: When we have proposed one
additional detention centre having made a search of the country for the
site, in Orpington in Kent, what has happened? The local Conservatives,
the local Conservative Member of Parliament Damian Green have opposed that...
WIDDECOMBE: ...what about Oakington?
STRAW: ..refused us planning permission,
and Anne Widdecombe when asked about this in Parliament repeatedly has
sat on the fence.
WIDDECOMBE: Tell us about Oakington?
HUMPHRYS: Hang on.
STRAW: If you want to improve the
situation, it is a problem sir, I accept that, we have a moral obligation
to ensure that people are protected from persecution and then to deal with
it. If you want to deal with it then we have to spend more money which
we are, we have to put more staff in which we are, we have to find more
detention space.
HUMPHRYS: Right.
STRAW: And the one last thing I
say to you is this, is that because of other pledges the Conservatives
are making which is to cut overall government spending, the increase in
the number of immigration officers which happened under us, would be cut,
and there would probably be four thousand fewer immigration officers.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Ann Widdecombe.
WIDDECOMBE: Right. First of all just to
deal with that last point, because Jack keeps repeating it. We have set
out in a clear breakdown how we would find the eight billion savings that
we're talking about. None of those savings, absolutely none of them relate
to the Home Office, it is absolutely true Jack. We have set them out.
I can read them out.
HUMPHRYS: Okay, let's not do that.
You say that you have, he says you haven't, right let's deal with the
other question.
WIDDECOMBE: Now let's deal with the crucial
thing which is asylum. We did make a dramatic difference. When we introduced
the 1996 Act which Jack opposed, indeed which Simon opposed, when we introduced
the 1996 Act there was an immediate, not a long term, but an immediate
fall of forty per cent in asylum claims. That has been squandered and
we now have a hundred per cent increase in asylum claims. So it can be
done. Now what do we need to do. Jack has touched on it in a way, when
he says, it was forced out of him but he had to admit he can't say how
many have been removed. One of the reasons for that is we don't actually
know where they are. Now if you were to house all new applicants in secure
reception centres and process their claims you would do three things.
The first is you would know where people were that you were going to remove
and you would remove them. The second is you would sent out a huge deterrent
message, which is what we did with our '96 Act, which on this occasion
would say: if you come to Britain with a false claim you will be detained,
you will be dealt with and you will be returned. But it would enable us
to do something very important as well. To those to whom we're going to
say yes, to the chap who is actually fleeing persecution in his own country
we would be able to devise with him in that purpose-built or purpose set-up
centre, we would be able to devise with him a complete package for education,
linguistic support, where he should get...
HUMPHRYS: Right...
WIDDECOMBE: No, I want to finish this one,
because at the moment what Jack is doing is something pretty cruel, is
disperse at the whim of the Home Office to anywhere that they say.
STRAW: You supported the dispersal
policy
WIDDECOMBE: It is then rely on the uncertainty...
HUMPHRYS: He says you supported
it...
WIDDECOMBE: ... and it is the way, the
way it is... we said we would give a fair wind and it's been a disaster,
and it's been a disaster..... and so what we would prefer to do is what
I have set out to you, which is to get everybody into secure reception
centres, process claims, deal properly with those we're going to accept
because that system to which we were prepared to give a fair wind to has
failed.
HUMPHRYS: Alright, Simon Hughes?
SIMON HUGHES: It's a very important issue.
My view is that it's only a problem and I have to say this because the
last two government haven't dealt with those coming adequately. It's
not in the same league, but if you remember a few years ago we had queues
of people waiting for passports round the block and up and down the road
because there weren't enough people to process and the computers weren't
working and so on, and it became a crisis when it should never have happened.
It's the same department, the Home Office. So...
WIDDECOMBE: His Home Office.
HUGHES: It was this government's
Home Office, but the asylum seeker queue has been under both the Labour
and Tory governments, and we're not at all unique in Europe. Just two
figures - we're tenth in the League Table in terms of numbers of people
coming to our country compared to other European countries, Germany's had
five times as many over the past ten years, so let's not get it out of
perspective . Two years ago over fifty per cent of those asking to come
here were accepted. Last year between a quarter and half were accepted,
so there are people with some very good cases and I hope we always remember
that. How you deal with the others, the key is speedy processing of the
application, the key is a reception centre, not a lock 'em up centre, but
a reception centre where apart from those who've committed offences who
clearly you ought to make sure are dealt with as criminals and those you
suspect, you have all the facilities so you can deal with the language,
the health, the legal stuff quickly. But the other issue it seems to me
that's crucially important is that we've got to allow people that are the
moment are pretending to be asylum seekers some of them because they want
to come as economic migrants to put in a case to come here to work, and
we have no facility yet to do that. So if we had a route lawfully for
asylum seekers to put their case and dealt with them quickly and a route
lawfully for people to say we want to come and work in Britain, just as
many of our families have gone to work in South Africa, in Canada, Australia
and New Zealand and India and places, then I honestly believe it wouldn't
be a problem, it might be a challenge, but it's no different a challenge...
WIDDECOMBE: There is one ... one other....
HUMPHRYS: Sorry, no, I have to
stop you there, we've only a couple of minutes left.
WIDDECOMBE: We need to meet the planes
to make sure that people who get off have got the documentation with which
they entered those planes, otherwise they actually stay outside for hours
and say they've come ....
HUMPHRYS: Final question, we're
just about out of time. Ralph Anwar, who is unemployed, planning to study
law next year. Mr Anwar.
RALPH ANWAR: Thank you. Does the panel
agree that all this competitive talk with politicians using emotive language
like bogus about asylum seekers damages race relations in this country?
HUMPHRYS: Do you agree with that
Simon Hughes?
HUGHES: Worse than that and I do
agree with that, that particularly the Tory language in the last three
years has actually indirectly in my view, increased the number of racial
attacks and racial violence and increased the prevalence of racists attitudes.
I have seen fourteen year old Bangladeshi kids in my constituency nearly
killed in recent months and I have no doubt that it's at least in part
due to the language we've had from William Hague and William Hague's Tory
Party and I'm afraid that's a scandal and sad for the Tories.
HUMPHRYS: Ann Widdecombe?
WIDDECOMBE: I'm afraid that's a complete
nonsense. The term bogus has even been used by the Prime Minister, the
term floods has been used by the Attorney General. The fact is what we
are trying to do is to have a debate which distinguishes, as the foregoing
debate did, asylum seekers who have a claim, who should get a quick and
settled haven, who have not just a legal but a moral entitlement to our
hospitality and those who are simply trying to use the system as a means
of getting into the country for reasons wholly unconnected with persecution.
Now, I do not believe that we should be driven off that debate because
it's a serious one. In my home county in the last six months of the last
government we processed fifty claims. In the last six months it was ten
thousand claims.
HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw, final question.
STRAW: I agree with what the gentleman
says and I think we've got a good record on race relations. My argument
with the Conservatives on the asylum issue is that while we are trying
to deal with what is really a difficult problem, they are simply seeking
to exploit it with simplistic solutions which won't work. And I also say
you can't have something for nothing and what we've heard today is the
Conservative Party committed to allegedly, to increasing numbers of staff
whilst also committed to cutting public spending and the reality is that
under the Conservatives there would be three-thousand fewer police officers...
WIDDECOMBE: ...nonsense...
STRAW: ...and four-thousand fewer
asylum officers to deal with all those claims.
HUMPHRYS: ...there, I'm afraid
though I know Ann Widdecombe would like to come back in, we have to end
it...
WIDDECOMBE: ...I don't need to, their record
speaks for themselves...
HUMPHRYS: ...don't need to she
says, so there we are, just as well because you can't anyway. Jack Straw,
Ann Widdecombe and Simon Hughes, thank you all very much indeed.
And that's it for
this week. Our debate next week will be on the economy. We'll have Gordon
Brown, Michael Portillo and Matthew Taylor, in the meantime, if you're
on the internet, don't forget our web site, until then, enjoy the campaign,
good afternoon and thank you to everybody for being here.
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