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ON THE RECORD
RECORDED FROM TRANSMISSION BBC-1 DATE: 29.10.95
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JOHN HUMPHRYS: Good afternoon. Labour is now the party
of law and order - or so the polls tell us. They're determined that we should
all behave better. How far are they prepared to go to MAKE us? I'll be talking
to the Shadow Home Secretary, Jack Straw, after the news read by Moira Stuart.
NEWS
HUMPHRYS: Simon Buckby reporting there. Well
we'll deal with those questions Jack Straw, but first this personal
responsibility, the notion of personal responsibility - is that central to your
attack on..you're tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.
JACK STRAW MP: Yes it is. I mean if you take crime, of
course we accept and acknowledge and we're going to deal with the underlying
causes of crime which include social depravation, in many areas like the
Benwell (phon) estate in Newcastle. Long-term unemployment, under achievement
at school, often drug culture, perhaps very bad parenting as well and we have
programmes and I'll talk about these, to tackle those. But, you cannot get
away from the fact that society won't operate unless people are made - and it
has to be in a way made - to take responsibility for themselves. And indeed
part of the purpose of these other programmes, afterall the purpose of a
programme which Gordon Brown announced at the Party Conference, to provide
opportunity and training and jobs for the long-term unemployed, is precisely to
give those people, not only the right to work, but the responsibility which
goes with it and if I have a criticism of the way that the Left pitched its
agenda over the previous decades it is that in the end we appeared to be
talking about rights but never about duties and responsibilities. Now the
jurisprudence I learnt thirty years ago at university, rights and duties were
the reverse and the obverse of the same thing but in too much of the philosophy
that we've followed...we've tended to imply that rights are things that you
sort of pull down from supermarkets and I have to say the Right-wing of
politics has also implied that, these are consumer items, rather than
functioning aspects of a proper society in the community.
HUMPHRYS: And so you have to restore the sense of
personal responsibility, it's a hell of a job, can you do it?
STRAW: Yes it is a hell of a job and I'm very
conscious as are the rest of us that people don't like to see politicians
preaching, lecturing, that if we come to deal with these very sensitive but
very important issues of the family and parenting, the last thing people want
is to be...for it to appear that a politician like me is just telling people
what to do. On the other hand, politicians are in a very privileged position
because they can, in a sense, command public debate and we also have a
responsibility as I do representing a constituency like Blackburn, of drawing
on our experience and say: well what is going wrong in an area like this, even
though it's got a stronger sense of community than many other areas. What is
it that we need to do.
So, I think we have to talk about this
and we have to draw conclusions and I'm not here to, as it were to spell out a
manifesto. What I am saying is look, one of the things that's wrong with the
way that society operates today is people's lack of responsibility to
themselves and to others. We've got to change that if we are going to rebuild
community life.
HUMPHRYS: And you believe you can, you believe you
can change it.
STRAW: Yes, not over night but if you are
saying, what kind of society is it that we want, where do we want to get to. It
is a society, in my view the only basis on which a society can operate in which
people's first sense is their obligations and duties to others because if they
show those obligations and duties to others then they can enjoy life themselves
much better.
HUMPHRYS: Well in that case a lot of people are
going to be a bit surprised by what Clare Short said this morning. She talked
about, thinking about legalising cannabis, she's going to be portrayed as being
soft on drugs.
STRAW: Well Clare was asked, I didn't see the
programme, but on the much earlier version of this, on Breakfast with Frost, as
I understand it about an earlier day motion which she'd signed in 1984 where
she had called for I think a review of the law on drugs and said it
should...might be legalised. That was eleven years ago, when....
HUMPHRYS: ......this morning.
STRAW: No I know there wasn't, there was far
less of a drugs problem. The position of the party is very clear, we've
obviously thought about this, we don't have closed minds on it but we've come
to a very clear conclusion against the legalisation of cannabis. And one of
the things that persuaded me for example, that we shouldn't even contemplate a
Royal Commission, was the experience of some of my colleagues who went to the
Netherlands to look at what was going on there. Now people said in the
Netherlands they de-criminalised drugs, in many ways made it lawful to have
cannabis and the anticipation was that this would then put a ring fence around
cannabis compared to the more dangerous soft drugs and hard drugs. Well all
the experience is it hasn't done that, it's made the Netherlands, particularly
Amsterdam the centre of a very serious criminal trade in drugs. I think it's
drawn a lot of young people down the road, first to alcohol and tobacco then to
cannabis, then to these more dangerous soft drugs and then to hard drugs. And
so in a sense it's showed us a future that doesn't work, so that's why we take
the position that we do.
HUMPHRYS: So Clare Short was wrong.
STRAW: I don't agree with Clare, it's not the
position of the party, she's a good friend of mine but it's not the view that
the party has adopted. And let me say, certainly this year at Party Conference
there were no propositions at all that I can recall calling for the
legalisation of drugs and I don't think there were last year either.
HUMPHRYS: She said you'd be cowards not to
consider, not to look at this question again.
STRAW: Well I always think about the issue. I
mean it is a continuing issue, when I go around youth clubs people often say to
me "Mr Straw why doesn't the Labour Party come out in favour of the
legalisation of drugs" Of course it's something that I think about but I've
come very firmly to the conclusion, as has the party, against the legalisation
of cannabis because I think it would make matters worse rather than better. My
colleague George Howarth who's one of my deputies, who's been dealing with this
issue has given very extensive support to Tony Newton, the Leader of the
Common's programme to tackle drugs. We want to see an All Party approach to
this, it shouldn't be an issue of party politics and the position is as I've
said it.
HUMPHRYS: Have you ever tried it, ever smoked it?
STRAW: No I haven't because when I was at
university, interestingly enough, it was before it got going, it missed me.
HUMPHRYS: So the status quo, that's what we're
talking about, the status quo, absolutely no possibility of even re-opening the
issue?
STRAW: We're not contending to reopen the issue
and I think I made the position clear John, about five times.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Personal responsibility. Let's
have a look at that. It has broken down, you believe, you want to restore it,
you said so yourself, you believe you can restore it, parents are keen to this
are they not.
STRAW: Yes they are because what we know is
that the young men, and it's principally young men and an increasing proportion
of young women. Young men who form the bulk of the people who commit crimes,
typically come from families which have not a proper structure to them, where
the parenting is often chaotic. It's not, by the way, and this is where Anna
Coote was quite wrong in her implications, it's not a matter of saying that
these parents don't care about their children. All my experience, dealing with
social issues over thirty years, I've actually never meet a parent who doesn't
care about their child.
I've met plently of parents however who
are totally at sea about parenting and as a result of that, they are very
inconsistent in their approach. And a lot of the parents who let their kids
out on the streets until ten or eleven o'clock at night, even though they're
aged only nine or ten, who are complicit in their truancy, who go down to the
police station when their kids have obviously caused crimes and complain the
police have acted unreasonably when it's their children who have been
unreasonable.
Those parents themselves are often in
turn very hard on their kids and what happens is the kids are faced with
inconsistencies. One moment soft, the other moment hard, they don't know where
they are and what I'm concerned about and many of my colleagues are, is in a
sense breaking this cycle of bad parenting.
Now we won't break it by doing nothing
about it. We have to have some intervention and that's the difference between
my approach, Tony Blair's approach, David Blunkett's approach and certainly the
approach of Anna Coote which in my view is essentially a handering approach to
say we've got to deal with the underlying economic causes without recognising
that even if we do deal with the underlying economic causes of crime, provide
people with jobs and opportunities, we've got to do more as well to try and
change the behaviour of parents.
HUMPHRYS: Parenting classes then?
STRAW: Yes. That's one other thing. Now, by
the way, some of these are taking place.
HUMPHRYS: But made compulsory.
STRAW: In..
HUMPHRYS: In certain places, where the children
are behaving in an especially irresponsible way.
STRAW: Yes. One of the things we're looking at
is a proposal for what are variously being called parental responsibility
orders, or parental training orders. Now, this was something that the Home
Affairs Select Committee looked at when they went to America in 1992 and 1993.
In Virginia - the State of Virginia - there's quite a big programme for
providing parental training orders, where the Court comes to the view that one
of the reasons why the children are offending is because of bad parenting.
And, we haven't reached a final view
about this but we may very well come forward with plans for parental training
orders. Now, again, to pick up the point we've raised of parental training
order as a punishment there are already arrangements written into the law, by
which the courts can fine parents after-on behalf of their children, can bind
over parents.
HUMPHRYS: Ah. That's slightly different though.
If they do specific things that are wrong.
STRAW: Well, it's-
HUMPHRYS: But, we're talking here about parenting
classes or parental responsibility orders - whatever you want to call them.
What I'm trying to get out of you is whether if the parent flatly refuses to go
along with that - even though it has been ordered - then, there ought to be
sanctions. Should they, perhaps, be fined, for instance?
STRAW: Well, that's something we're gonna have
to look at. I'm very-
HUMPHRYS: But, you'd consider that?
STRAW: Well, we would consider it but I've got
to be very careful about this. I mean, there's not a lot of point in forcing a
parent to go to a parental training class if they're totally unwilling to do
it.
HUMPHRYS: But, equally, it would be meaningless
if-if you said: well, we think this is a good idea but we won't do anything
about it-
STRAW: Well, of course, but it may be, it may
be that if a parent refused to go to a parental training class that would be
used as evidence by Social Services where they were weighing in the balance,
whether the child should be taken into care because it's - I mean - These -
we're talking about extreme cases. In my experience, an awful lot of these
parents - they are young parents - they've often come from chaotic families
themselves want, are desperate for advice. They want it but they can't get it.
And, can I just make this point. I
mean, what they're anxious to do is alongside formal arrangements - say, for
parental responsibility or parental training orders - is to try and build up
networks. So, that parents - particularly younger parents - can feel that they
can take advice from other parents. And, one of the real curiousities about
our culture, at the moment, is - as a colleague of mine - Malcolm Wicks - said:
There is far more advice on what to do about your motor car available in the
public print in the newspapers and libraries than there is to do with bringing
up children. I want to see that changed.
HUMPHRYS: Well, so you're supporting what Alun
Michael - your Deputy - said in that film report we had there, which was that
taking parents away from their children has to be the ultimate sanction, if the
parents refuse to do the kinds of things you think they ought to do.
STRAW: Well, it is the ultimate sanction, in
any case. And, it has to be that if a parent, plainly, cannot care or supervise
for their children, for whatever reason, then, they will have that child put
into care. That is the ultimate sanction, at the moment.
HUMPHRYS: ... specific reasons.
STRAW: Well, specific reasons. And, we're not
intending to change that. What I want to see, what Alun Michael wants to see -
...Halsey, Professor from Nuffield, wants to see is far fewer children going
into care. We'd want to tackle the underlying causes of bad parenting.
HUMPHRYS: And, the way you would tackle that is by
insisting, enforcing this idea that parents go to - bad parents, whose children
are straying - go to parental classes.
STRAW: Well, John, you're latching - quite
rightly as a forensic journalist - on to one very specific-
HUMPHRYS: Terribly important.
STRAW: Oh, it's very important-very specific
proposal, which is for parental responsibility orders.
HUMPHRYS: I do have others to recognise... point.
STRAW: I just want to make this point. Those
would arise where a child went-was taken to Court for delinquencies of some
kind or other and the Court came to the view, which often they should do that
one of the reasons behind the child's bad behaviour was inconsistent parents -
parenting. OK. But, we just don't want to see the idea of parenting, as it
were, being brought out of the closet, confined to a situation where the Court
or Children's Panels order it. What I'm anxious to see is a far bigger debate
on the issue of parenting. I mean, I've made the point about the extraordinary
contrast between the amount of advice there is about how to mend your motorcar
and how to drive and parenting. But, I, also, just make this point.
If you look in today's Sunday
newspapers, there is reams and reams of advice - from the highbrow to the
lowbrow in papers -
HUMPHRYS: Sure.
STRAW: - about sexual relations but, virtually,
none about what then can happen, which is how you relate to your children -
about parenting.
HUMPHRYS: And, you've got to have the advice, and
all the rest of it. But, voluntary measures are one thing, compulsion is quite
another and you-you're agreeing with me - as I understand it, anyway -
that-that exhortation, of itself, ain't gonna do the job.
STRAW: Well, what we have got to do is build up
a culture, a framework, here in which, first of all, acknowledges and accepts
that parenting is very important and it cannot just be learned on the job. In
what other skill do we simply learn on the job? And, I say this very much as a
parent, which I found a humbling experience and, I think, most parents do.
Parents don't want politicians telling them what to do. I think, many parents
and teachers would be grateful for there to be far more extensive public debate
about how you bring up children, what are the problems?
And, for sure, for a minority of cases,
you back that with positive intervention of the Law. But, that has to be
within a change of a climate, in which we say: yes, parenting is important.
And, if we're going to change the way in which some chaotic families operate -
and those which are on the margins of chaos, then, we've got to be far more
explicit about what needs to be done, in terms of parenting.
HUMPHRYS: And, firm.
STRAW: And firm - yes, of course!
HUMPHRYS: Now, let's look at another aspect of
parenting, then - sort of: kids who don't go to school, kids who play truant
all the time. In Newcastle, as we saw in that film, they've reintroduced the
idea of taking parents to Court, which is disappearing. I know that the laws
exist, the regulations exist all over the place but it tends not to happen, at
the moment, by and large. In Newcastle, they're saying: we're gonna damn well
do it. Are they right to do that? And, should that be-
STRAW: Yes, they are. And, Tony Blair in a
speech, which I think he made in April, made exactly that point. Not drawing
on the experience of Newcastle. In this case, drawing on the experience of
Labour Lewisham. We have to get across to parents that they have duties
themselves. Now, in my experience, too, if we get this across, it, actually,
gives the parents far more authority when they are dealing with their kids. It
is a challenge having teenage kids. All of us who have teenage kids, or have
had teenage kids, know this. They can be very argumentative. It's just one of
those things. But - and it's bad enough, as... Halsey, was saying for those of
us who are fortunate to share the responsibility of being a parent with a
spouse. I was brought up by a single mother, who had- brought up five of us.
I think that what she did was quite astonishing and, quite often, I think:
Good God, how would I have managed in her situation?
But, I don't see the use of the Law as
punitive. I see it, ultimately, as supportive of assisting parents in ensuring
in a sense that they do their duty by their children, and by the community.
HUMPHRYS: But, if they're not, then, again, we're
back to the question of sanctions, aren't we? Because, again, exhortation is
meaningless without some kind of enforcement.
STRAW: Yes.
HUMPHRYS: Should, perhaps, fines be increased. I
mean, I think, at the moment, I think, it's fifty pounds, which is pretty
derisory for parents who allow children to roam (phon).
STRAW: We need to look at the sanctions
available. I think, the experience of boroughs like Lewisham and Newcastle is
that where they take the parents to Court, on the whole, they, then, ensure
compliance with the Law. It's about a process of being taken to Court that is
the thing that really brings the parents up sharp, because going to Court is
not a particularly pleasant thing to happen.
HUMPHRYS: But, some people couldn't care less,
could they?
STRAW: Some. A minority.
HUMPHRYS: A minority.
STRAW: But, of course, I mean-of course, there
have to be sanctions. You have to say: Look here. Schooling is compulsory.
We made a decision in this country - in 1870 - a hundred and twenty-five years
ago - that we would not just leave to parents whether their children could go
to school. And, if it is compulsory, then, you can't shy away from things.
And, again, my argument would be: people like Anna Coote, is that they will, in
the end, but they are unwilling to acknowledge that there have to be means of
ensuring a better compliance with what the community wants and that the
greatest disservice you can do to any child - any child, whatever background -
is to deny them an education.
And, if they're not in school, they
cannot have an education.
HUMPHRYS: And once you've got them to school
you've got to keep them there. What about this idea of sort of ID cards that
they have to carry if they - I don't know ask to go to the dentist or something
- and they're out on the street and a policeman sees them, ought the policeman
be able to say "Where's your card" or whatever you call it - "your pass out"?
STRAW: I've talked to the police and they don't
by the way have any powers at the moment.
HUMPHRYS: No at the moment they don't.
STRAW: It's not a question of just having more
powers. They don't have any powers.
HUMPHRYS: Would you give them powers?
STRAW: It's something I want to talk to the
police and local authorities and teachers' organisations about very carefully.
HUMPHRYS: In Newcastle they think it's a very good
idea.
STRAW: Yes, the Police Superintendent's
Association told me informally, that they are concerned about the current
situation, but they are also concerned about being given explicit powers. I'm
not sure that simply giving them as it were "big brother" powers is the answer.
HUMPHRYS: But you'll look at it?
STRAW: It's something we're going to look at.
We've got to be very careful about it. On the issue of ID cards I think it's a
matter for schools. I certainly - I'm just trying to think - five or six weeks
ago I went to a small town in Norfolk called Dereham, where they'vehad a lot of
problems from hooliganism, or what appears to be hooliganism on the streets.
With the help of the local village constable - town constable - they got a
youth club established for these young people and also started to provide them
voluntarily with ID cards and that was now working. Now that's avery different
issue by the way from providing national ID cards, but it has a role.
HUMPHRYS: Okay. Well let's assume them that
they're at school, they're staying at school. It then becomes a question of
what they do at school. You want to instill this sense of responsibility,
individual responsibility. What about including in the national curriculum
some sort of moral instruction. What do you think about that?
STRAW: Well, it's there at the moment.
HUMPHRYS: Well, it's not in the curriculum. I
mean it can be if they choose it to be, but it's not...
STRAW: It is there. It's there in terms of
religious instruction.
HUMPHRYS: But that's different. Religious
instruction and moral instruction.....
STRAW: Hang on, it should not be different - I
mean what on earth is the point of ...
HUMPHRYS: The difference is between teaching
children the difference between right and wrong. You can teach them about
sixty kinds of different religion and that's one thing. You can teach them the
difference between right and wrong, but that is a kind of moral instruction.
Let's deal with that if we may, this question of teaching children the
difference between right and wrong.
STRAW: We may need to differ about this John,
but I see no purpose at all in religious education and worship unless it is
teaching the difference between right and wrong.
HUMPHRYS: Okay, so let's accept that as the
definition.
STRAW: We have no plans whatever to change what
was in the 1988 Education Act. I see a whole purpose ...
HUMPHRYS: But it's not in the national curriculum
that.
STRAW: Religious education is a formal part of
the national curriculum.
HUMPHRYS: Only for those schools that choose it -
the sort of twenty per cent choice they've got isn't there - that's...
STRAW: No, I mean in practice, there is - I can
go into very long and boring detail into the arrangements. I'm afraid to say
I'm one of the few world experts on this, but for the overwhelming majority of
schools they have to teach mainly Christian religious education and all schools
have to provide some education, and look, what teachers are doing, I mean I
want to defend teachers here, because I think we dump too much on ....
HUMPHRYS: I'm not attacking teachers so you don't
need to defend them.
STRAW: If you go in - I'm very familiar with
secondary schools as well as primary schools - I've been into hundreds
literally. If you sit in a classroom, if you watch the playground, go through
a concourse, what are the teachers doing as they say to the kids, "Don't do
that, do do that". They're teaching them the difference between right and
wrong and that has to be part of the whole culture of a school. A school has
failed if it hasn't done that and it shouldn't be, as it were, an add-on to the
curriculum. The schools that are successful academically are the schools which
are orderly, of that there is no doubt at all, the two are related, and the
schools which are orderly are those which sensibly instill a difference in
children between right and wrong and get the kids to understand their
responsibilities to other people.
HUMPHRYS: And what I'm asking you is whether you
would want to enforce this - again you see I keep coming back to the question
of enforcement rather than merely advisement or whatever because that's key to
it isn't it in the long run? And what I'm asking you is whether you would say
to schools in future, whether a Labour Government would say to the schools: you
must teach this - I don't know, whatever you want to call it, but a sense of
right and wrong. That must be incorporated in some lessons, it has to be, we
insist on that.
STRAW: Well I'm sorry, I am not going to say to
teachers, "In this particular lesson you've got to teach the difference between
right and wrong". What I do say is that schools are failing if in every
lesson, in every assembly, in the way in which kids behave in the playground,
they're not being taught the difference between right and wrong, that is not
the underpinning ethic of the school, but I would just say this, that I think
there's a strong case for introducing into parental and social.....into
personal and social education which is a part of the curriculum in most
schools, an element of parenting education, so that is there. Interesting,
that if you look at the Youth Offenders Institutes where a lot of these young
criminals on Benwell (phon.) estate and all the other estates around end up,
eighty-five per cent often of the young lads in these Youth Offenders
Institutes are parents. They've come from chaotic homes themselves, they're
now in the best of these institutes getting parental education in those
institutes, but it would have been far better if they'd had it before.
HUMPHRYS: Right. Let's go back to parents now
then, because we've dealt with children at school, let's look at the parents at
home. Tony Blair, we heard him again in that film, talks about the
desirability of two parent families. You clearly feel that yourself, you've
talked about your own experiences. The question is how you encourage that.
What's happened in the last fifteen years or so is that the tax burden for
single parents has increased less than it has for two parents - it's badly
expressed but you know what I mean. Would you try to reverse that, would you
try to turn that round, to encourage the two parent family?
STRAW: Any minister or shadow minister who is
not either Chancellor of Shadow Chancellor has to say that tax matters are
matters for their...
HUMPHRYS: I fully understand that. You've already
said this is absolutely crucial for the individual.....
STRAW: Of course it's crucial, and I'm quite
sure that Gordon Brown in framing his budgets will take account of the social
effects of his taxation policies as well as the economic effects. I'll just
say this, I won't believe by the way, that the reason why we've had an
increasing number of fractured families is because of the tax situation. It may
at the margin make a difference, but I don't believe that's so. It's all
sorts of other reasons contribute to families breaking down, and I just want to
say this about two parent families as opposed to single parent families. I
think like many other people that it's better if you can bring children up in
two parent families, but I take my hat off to the hundreds of thousands of
people who have to bring their children up in single parent families. They
should not be the object of scorn by us, but of sympathy and support.
HUMPHRYS: You've been quite strong this morning in
how you've explained you would tackle this question of individual
responsibility. You talk about going to the courts and all sorts of other
things, quite authoritarian. You're going to have a job getting that through
your...to get that message through to your parliamentary colleagues aren't you?
STRAW: I don't believe that.
HUMPHRYS: You can see the results of the polls we
carried out there.
STRAW: I'm more sceptical about polls, even the
polls which show that we're thirty per cent ahead of the Tories.
HUMPHRYS: This is a different sort of poll. We're
not asking people how they're going to vote. We're asking a very small...a
hundred MPs what they feel about individual issues, and they made it very clear
what they think.
STRAW: I don't believe I'm in difficulty on
this issue or other issues, and let me say why. About six months ago I
published proposals which are in a document called "the Quiet Life" for dealing
with criminal anti-social neighbours. Now these are tough proposals, they take
a fresh approach to the issue of anti-social behaviour, they give the police
and local authorities a power to go to court to get problem solving orders.
They have been criticised by the Government, who thinks there is no need for
this and by some civil liberty groups but overwhelmingly there is support
amongst my parliamentary colleagues and amongst the Party as a whole and I
firmly believe that there will be support for these proposals too.
HUMPHRYS: So it isn't just talk, tough on the
causes of crime, you are prepared to be tough?
STRAW: We're prepared to be tough on the causes
of crime and tough on crime and bad behaviour too because what we want to see
is a change in the culture here where once again there are vibrant communities
and the only way you can get vibrant, operative communities in this country or
any country, is where people take responsibility for each other.
HUMPHRYS: Jack Straw, thank you very much.
STRAW: Thank you.
...oooOooo....
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