6 June 2006
Tony Blair answered questions from the public in a new forum launched on the Downing Street website.
Parts of this transcript may have been edited
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Interviewers:
I am Sarah Sands from the Daily Mail; and I am Michael White from the Guardian. Good Afternoon Prime Minister, on behalf of us both.
We have had 500/600 questions come in via e-mail since this event went up on the Downing Street website. You will not be surprised to know that some of them are hostile. One chap wants you to jump off a bridge immediately, others are more friendly, but most of them are curious about aspects of government policy, want to know more, want you to justify things, as you would expect. It is a good crop and we are going to ask a couple of questions of our own and go through the crop.
Sarah Sands:
So if I can just start, and this is a question reflected in a portion of the e-mails. It is really whether the game is up, that your Cabinet Ministers, as we know, are sort of fighting like ferrets over jobs that may not even be vacant, there is an impression that people are more interested in perks, in freebies than the work, and from the outside it looks a little bit like anarchy. So what I would like to know is firstly whether you regret not going earlier when the going was good; secondly, a lot of the people who have e-mailed want to know is can you now set a departure date; and thirdly, what you will be doing afterwards?
Prime Minister:
Well I think, on departures, I have said enough and I don’t want to say any more because it just gets in the way of what actually I think most people really do expect me to do, which is to get my sleeves rolled up and get on with the job. And whatever it looks like from the outside is different from the inside. I mean I have spent today, this morning with a whole group of people from the National Health Service and the private sector, looking at the possibility of collaboration there; and then with a major set of public service reformers from all over the public services, whether it is police, or health, education, local social services, working out how you improve public services. And I know this sounds like the sort of normal whinge from the politicians, but honestly when you are on the inside you are getting on with the job, and this stuff that comes in, which is often very, very lively and eats up a lot of news coverage, you have just got to ignore, because otherwise you don’t get on with the job.
And I think the interesting thing about the government is, and it has been a rather tough time obviously in the last few months, but if you look at the policy direction, whether it is pensions, or it is National Health Service reform, or it is the schools policy, or it is energy, we are actually getting on with the job, and that is I think what people expect.
Sarah Sands:
Let us enquire about your own reputation, you must think about that, and the timing of your departure is very much linked to that.
Prime Minister:
You know the thing is you get to the stage where you come to a very clear view that your job for as long as you do it is to do your very best for the country, try and take the long term decisions for the future, try and make sure those are the right decisions, and the rest of the judgments made at a later time, and whatever you know comes in and out every day does not necessarily affect that. And if you take a long view, you know why bother trying to sort out the pensions framework for the future? Answer - because if you are actually interested and passionate about true politics, which is not a lot of the stuff that comes in and out of the media, but is actually about ideas and policy, then you have got an obligation to work out the best framework for the future for the country.
Michael White:
And yet the picture of calm at the centre you have painted, a week ago, almost, John Prescott gave up Dorneywood, at your suggestion we are told, but said he was staying as Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy Leader. And yet since then we have had the appearance - perhaps it is all our fault - that a number of your colleagues are sort of jockeying for the prospect of that vacancy when it occurs.
Prime Minister:
Well you know the funny thing is when I actually read what they said, and sort of hearing it all, but you actually read what they say and most of them are desperately trying to avoid getting drawn into those types of questions. Because it is just the way that the world of politics and its interaction with the media work today, which is one of the reasons for doing this, because it is a different. people will be able to access the whole of this interview, but the biggest problem you have in politics today is having a dialogue with the public. Because your dialogue is constantly mediated through the things that the public will see, for example on the news every evening or in headlines in the newspaper, and the disjunction now between what we actually spend our day doing and what is out there as the things that most people must think preoccupy us is just enormous.
Michael White:
Then should we assume, unmediated, that you and John Prescott will step down together when the time comes, whenever that is?
Prime Minister:
Well as I said, if I get into all of those questions you just get into a great, you know rigmarole that goes round, and round, and round, and then before you know where you are you are not talking about the issues, you are talking about …
Michael White:
Right, let’s talk about an issue. A number of our callers, people who have e-mailed in, are concerned about home affairs policy and about the troubles at the Home Office, which everyone knows about. Coincidentally this morning, a couple of hours ago, I had better get her name right, Lyn Homer, the woman who runs the Immigration and Nationality Directorate inside the Home Office where much of the recent trouble has been, said about the foreign prisoners affair, and I quote, I have checked this quote: "I felt I let him down" - in terms of not alerting him to the scale of the problem is what she means, she is talking about Charles Clarke of course. John Reid has since taken over, he has read the riot act and said the department is dysfunctional, I don’t know whether you agree with that dramatic way of treating civil servants, but it leads one to wonder, should you have let Charles Clarke go, because you know we are told you wept about it. Now should you have let him go?
Prime Minister:
I wouldn’t believe everything that was written about that.
Michael White:
So you didn’t?
Prime Minister:
Well I didn’t actually, but does it matter or does it not matter.
Michael White:
OK, unmediated, it is a fascinating detail if you did.
Prime Minister:
Yes, you know but there are a lot of fascinating details, they tend to be somewhat, how can we put it, made up. No, I think that, we were discussing this with all the public service workers today, the most difficult thing is to get a sense of balance. If what you read about the Home Office over the past few months was all that the Home Office had done over the past few years, you would literally think they had messed the entire thing up. And actually, for example, if you look at asylum - which is a big concern for people - over the past few years they have transformed the asylum system. It used to be one in which it took us months and months, 18 months sometimes to do an average decision, we only removed 1 in 5 of the unfounded asylum claims, and we were proportionately, probably the top, asylum nation in Europe.
None of those things is true any more. Now does that mean that the Immigration Department is now working you know as it should? No, because there are a whole series of different and other challenges. And Lyn Homer, whom you mentioned there, who we have brought in from the outside, is actually doing a fantastic job, but it is a hugely difficult job as well. I mean I was doing a video conference with President Bush this morning, and the interesting thing is the number one issue in America today is migration, immigration. If you look at France or Italy for example, a major issue today - immigration. Why is that? Because you have got globalisation which is pushing waves of people, you know crossing frontiers across the world, most of those people we want in our countries because they are students, visitors, tourists, people who come to work for good reason. As globalisation takes effect, then what happens is the challenges of the system become immense.
Now the difficulty for us is how do you explain that you have made progress on A, B and C, but yes, because of the changing pattern of things you have now got X, Y and Z to contend with, and those challenges remain. And even in the comments that John was supposed to have made about the Home Office, what he actually said was look, of course Home Office officials are accountable, I am accountable, everyone is accountable, but in the end we are actually doing our best to tackle an extremely difficult situation.
Michael White:
Did he ever do it - Mr Reid?
Prime Minister:
No, again I think if you read what he actually said, he was asked - should heads roll - which is the type of question you get asked. And he said well of course you know if people are accountable they are accountable. In other words he didn’t sort of go out of his way to condemn all the Home Office officials. And I think, as I was saying this morning, that the issue of whether it is politicians to blame or officials to blame, I mean obviously you get situations that come about where there are mistakes made, and you have got to own up to those, and there was a mistake over the foreign prisoners, there is no doubt about that at all. But some of the most difficult issues are just about challenge and change, and whether it is in schools, or in health, or in law and order, the fact is the world is changing incredibly rapidly and therefore what government has to do, and how it has to respond to that, is a world different from what we could do even when we came to power 8 or 9 years ago.
Sarah Sands:
If I can move on then. A question that does come up a bit is the standards of behaviour amongst politicians, and John Prescott in particular. And one e-mail I have here from Justin McKeating from Brighton, that says:
"Dear Prime Minister, there have been several allegations of sexual harassment made against the Deputy Prime Minister, notably from the wife of a Labour MP, who alleges that in 1978 Mr Prescott pushed me quite forcefully against the wall and put his hand up my skirt. Were these allegations to be made against a teacher, a social worker, a doctor or anyone else, do you think they should be treated as a private matter - as you regard the Deputy Prime Minister’s conduct - or do you think that person should face disciplinary proceedings?"
Prime Minister:
I think the simple answer, Sarah, is if someone has done something wrong they should face disciplinary proceedings. But I am not going to accuse someone of doing something wrong on the basis of, well I don’t know actually, I haven’t heard about this thing, but presumably a report in the paper. And I think, how can I put this, I think the problem that we have is that of course politicians should be accountable for their behaviour, and actually if you look back over the years politicians are regularly held to account. But I think the most important thing is that if we do something wrong, fair enough, but I think like everybody else we shouldn’t be assumed to have done certain things just because people make allegations about us. And I try to, when allegations are made of particular behaviour, I try and investigate it and there are Ministers that have left government as a result of doing things that are either wrong or contrary to the interests of the government. But I think sometimes you can get into a situation where you are expected just to follow every single story that is written about someone, and my experience is that when something happens and someone does something wrong, there may be truth in the original allegation, but then virtually anything can be then added in the mix to say that they have done half a dozen other things that when you actually investigate them turn out not quite to be right, but….
Sarah Sands:
And how do you feel about John Prescott’s defence that it is because he is a human shield for you that he is indulged and that he is allowed to stay on when perhaps other people wouldn’t?
Prime Minister:
Is that what he said?
Michael White:
He used the word shield in an interview with the Guardian last week. "I am the shield taking the battering", and he meant you …
Prime Minister:
Yes, well it is, I think the difficult thing for anyone in his position is that you do get a certain amount of hammering, but I suppose I would have to say I get a certain amount myself. I mean in the end the part that he has played in changing the Labour Party, I think people will look back on and say is as substantial as anyone else’s, funnily enough, including mine.
Michael White:
Right, substantial as yours. Right, we have got a huge pile of questions here which we have been through quickly, so I am going to change tack. On behalf of Julian Moseley, writing here from London E8:
"Dear Mr Blair, my daughter is at Exeter University in her first year. While the lecturers - some of whom are on strike of course - may have a compelling case, and employees and government may be unwilling to settle at the required levels, it seems bizarre that the only people who are going to suffer are the students. This dispute will eventually be settled, but other people will move on with their lives, but what will happen to the students, it will affect their entire futures. Can’t you intervene, Mr Blair, in this grossly unfair disaster, intervene now?"
Prime Minister:
I am reluctant to try and negotiate this myself because I don’t think that the precedents for that are very good. I hope they can find a solution.
Michael White:
But is it right that lecturers and in a position of responsibility, authority figures in our society, should take the sort of action which affects, if not so much the first year students, although worrying for them, it is the people taking their finals isn’t it?
Prime Minister:
No, I am really sorry they have taken industrial action.
Michael White:
Is that enough in your position?
Prime Minister:
Well I think the best thing is for us to encourage the two sides to negotiate a settlement. I hope they will, I think it is possible that they will and they should do so as quickly as possible for the sake of the students, but I don’t think it is a situation that should ever have been allowed to get to industrial action.
Sarah Sands:
Could I ask about Iraq, there is obviously a huge amount of correspondence about that, and particularly about, well three lines: one is whether we had any real interest in being there, national interest in being there; and secondly when the troops can come out. And this is one e-mail, it is a particularly pointed one, that says, it is from Debbie Connor, and the question is:
"How do you feel about sending someone else’s son to war when you would protect your own sons from going?"
Prime Minister:
Well it is a very, very heavy responsibility to take military action. And what has happened in the past few years, because Saddam Hussein was removed in, what, May 2003, but for the last three years we have been fighting a battle against terrorists and insurgents in Iraq who are trying to disrupt what is a democratic process there. And the only thing I would say to people is that the reason it has been really tough and difficult is because they are determined, those who are engaging in the terrorism, and the insurgency, and the banditry, and the indiscriminate killing of civilians, their determination is to stop the democratic process working. Now the reason for that is the same reason they are trying to stop it in Afghanistan, it is the same reason why you have got this global terrorism everywhere, and in my view defeating it in Iraq is an important part of defeating it everywhere. And whatever else has happened in Iraq, you have got a democratic process, I mean I met the leaders of all the main groups there, they have been elected by the people of the country in its first ever full democratic election, you have got Sunnis, Kurds, Shia all working together, and surely our job should be to support them in their struggle for democracy, because if they succeed then this global terrorism is dealt a worldwide blow. And they know that, that is why they are there trying to stop us.
Sarah Sands:
And have we made things better, or worse, do you think for the Iraqi people?
Prime Minister:
Well you know it is a fascinating thing, because one of the things I think sometimes happens is that we disenfranchise the majority of Iraqis. Not a single one of the politicians I spoke to in Baghdad, and they are all directly elected by their different groups, including the Sunnis who at first at any rate were very, very hostile to the political process. Not one of them said they wanted the days of Saddam back.
Michael White:
But what the coalition has failed to do is keep the peace on the streets, it has failed to create the necessary security in which this democratic process, which you rightly want to encourage, can flourish with any confidence. And even translators, people who work for the occupation forces and the foreign media, are now being targeted and killed. Now that is not your responsibility, but nonetheless you, and President Bush, and the coalition went in. People sometimes say to me: That Tony Blair, he is a liar, he lied about the WMD. And I say: No, I don’t think he did, I think he believes what he tells us all on the television, but he and Mr Bush were perhaps guilty of considerable naivety about the ease with which they thought they could bring about change in a society which had been under a dictatorship for 34 years. So, a bit naïve, a bit over-optimistic about what you could …
Prime Minister:
Just on the point about the WMD, I mean one of the things that people can now do, because it was all published as part of one of the several reports into Iraq, is people can go and read the intelligence I got, you know they can actually read the Joint Intelligence Committee Reports, so in a sense people can make their own judgment as to whether …
Michael White:
But it is all hedged with caveats, intelligence reports, it always is. You won’t ever put out any dossiers again, will you?
Prime Minister:
Actually, as I have said before, we would have been far better just publishing the actual intelligence reports, because I think people would have said, well, fair enough. But anyway people can read those, and it is quite important to say that, because occasionally if people are really interested they can go and read what I received and then they can make up their mind as to what they would have thought if they had read the same thing.
On the point about naivety, I think that what has happened in Iraq is that, and I think it happened from the assassination of the UN staff in August 2003 onwards, is that this terrorism, which I have a particular view on, I think it is an ideology, it is a global movement and it is not a set of disparate, disaffected people, it is an actual movement with a clear set of ideas and a clear set of aims. And what happened from that time onwards is that they moved into Iraq, joined up with various forces who were anti-democratic in Iraq, and their purpose is to destroy democracy. Now the charge if you like against us is, but you haven’t succeeded in defeating them. Well the only way of defeating them is to build a democratic process and then build the capability of the Iraqis themselves. And all I would say about that is there is another picture of Iraq today which you can also see, which is that …
Michael White:
But we can’t see it because it is very dangerous for the foreign media to get out and about in the key provinces, there was an American correspondent and a British one nearly killed the other day.
Prime Minister:
Sure, but actually of the 18 provinces it is in 4 provinces, admittedly the four most important where the majority of violence is.
Michael White:
Including Basra where things were calmer and are now worse?
Prime Minister:
Yes, but again it is interesting to ask why is that happening? Because people get the impression here from a lot of what is in our media, that all the people in Basra want the British troops to go home. They don’t. Not a single politician again that I spoke to, including those with links with the Shia down south, wanted the British, or American, or the troops of the 25 other countries that are there, out precipitately. Now all of them want us out at some time.
Sarah Sands:
… patrols in the way that they used to be able to, two years ago. There is definitely a change of mood in Basra …
Prime Minister:
Well there is a change of tactics and those people who want to stop a non-sectarian solution to Iraq. Look, what has happened is you have got two extremes here, and again this is important to explain. Up in the centre of Baghdad you have got those people who are extremists connected with Sunnis who basically thought that they were going to be excluded from the political process, right? Actually what is happening is that the Sunnis are now coming into the political process, there is still fighting from the various extremists going on, but in a sense that part of the insurgency, or the terrorism, has somewhat changed its nature. It is now increasingly driven by groups of people who want to have a sectarian fight, and isn’t related to the majority community amongst the Sunni.
Now then what you have got down south is a different issue, which is some of the people connected with the extremes on the Shia side, who, as they have seen that the process is indeed inclusive, have started to fight in order that we don’t have a non-sectarian approach, in order that these are the people that want to tip the whole country into civil war. Now we want to stop that.
Michael White:
Now I know you can talk for hours and hours on this without drawing breath, and you have meetings to go to. We want to move on with a spread of our questions. I have got Ian Dowling, one from Ian Dowling in Twyford, Berkshire, who says:
"Why is this government procuring technology for the national identity register - part of the national identity scheme, which many experts in the field say are centralised context-linking databases and an incredibly stupid way of developing a system of managing questions of personal identity, ID"
And he adds:
"If Mr Blair talks about ID, and not the National Identity Register, he is avoiding the question."
So don’t do that.
And Geraint Bevan from Glasgow adds:
"If this sort of system, the national register, was being developed in Germany in the Thirties, would you have advised German Jews to cooperate with it?"
Prime Minister:
Well two separate questions. One is a technical question.
Michael White:
… technical and security.
Prime Minister:
Yes, yes. On the technical questions, look I am the last person to give a technical, as you know.
Michael White:
This is true.
Prime Minister:
To give a technical answer, but the fact is what you find in this situation, as in many others, is that you will find different experts with different views. We have tried to get the best view we can as to the right technology to set up …
Michael White:
The experts making the money, the potential contracts out of it, tend to be more bullish. I have heard this story many times, that tax credits, the Child Support Agency, various others, big NHS IT schemes are in trouble, they are big schemes, they say, they are too big. The outside experts, with nothing to gain or lose, tend to be much more sceptical about all these schemes, and you have got trouble at the moment with all of them.
Prime Minister:
Yes, but you know again I mean we could go through each of those, because again the facts are, for example …
Michael White:
It would be depressing to go through all of them.
Prime Minister:
Well you know if you look at the National Health Service IT issue, actually I was just studying it this afternoon, or this morning rather, because I thought I might get questions on it with the public service workers, actually there is a lot of it that is working perfectly well. But in any big IT change you are going to get problems that arise, and you could take something like the Passport Agency for example and how they managed to change their system and it worked a lot better.
Michael White:
… they got going, yes.
Prime Minister:
Right. But my only point is we take the best technical advice, we don’t just take it from the people contracting, we take the best technical advice possible and we do it according to the best way we can do it. But the idea of a national register is not unknown. I mean most countries have identity systems, and the whole point about the reason why I think it is important we go for identity cards and an identity database today is that identity fraud and abuse is a major, major problem. Now the civil liberties aspect of it, look it is a view, I don’t personally think it matters very much. Most people have some form of identity today, it is not …
Michael White:
It is the central database which worries people, isn’t it, Sarah?
Prime Minister:
You have got to have all sorts of controls on that, and we will have it. But these aren’t things, you know a system of national identity is not unknown in the world today, and the only thing I would say to people is don’t tell me I have got to try and tackle these problems of identifying illegal immigrants, people coming into our country for organised crime purposes, or people trafficking, fraud on the National Health Service, fraud on the benefits system, and then when the overwhelming evidence is the best way of giving yourself the best chance, not perfect, but the best chance of dealing with it is an identity system, but I can’t do it. Because otherwise identity abuse today is a major, major factor. It is bound to be in a globalised world, and the whole point about the technology, as I understand it, is because you have got biometric technology that was available for the first time, that is far more secure and far less easy to defraud.
Sarah Sands:
We talked about intelligence in relation to Iraq, both over-reliance on intelligence and quality of intelligence, and this is obviously a domestic issue as well. Here is an e-mail from Jason Moore, who says:
"We are constantly being told to rely on the intelligence information regarding security and terrorist threats in this country, yet such intelligence is proving to be wrong or mis-informed time and time again. What happened at Forest Gate, which is one mile from where I live?"
Prime Minister:
Well first of all we don’t yet know, and I think we should be very, very wary of drawing conclusions. But my view again is absolutely clear. I support the police 101%, and the Security Services. I think if they have a reasonable piece of intelligence that they think that they have got to investigate and take action on, they should. And you can only imagine, if they failed to take action and something terrible happened, what outcry there would be then. So they are in an impossible situation, and my view is, you know I know Andy Hayman, and Eliza Manningham-Buller, the people who front up our services very well, they are absolutely top rate professionals, they should be given support in getting on with the job, and I wouldn’t draw any conclusions from Forest Gate at the moment frankly.
Sarah Sands:
Are you concerned about the sort of Muslim backlash if you do get things wrong?
Prime Minister:
I am really not, because I think it is a real mistake to think that your average person from the Muslim community is any different from anybody else. They know perfectly well there is a problem, we know there is a problem with terrorism, you know we are coming up to the 7/7 anniversary, we know there is a problem with terrorism. You have seen today I think a whole series of people arrested in Canada for example. You know right round the world this is a problem.
Sarah Sands:
… successful operation though, there is some sort of concern about competence …
Prime Minister:
Yes, but I think, well first of all, as I say, I wouldn’t draw any conclusions about this particular Forest Gate incident at the moment.
Michael White:
The house in Forest Gate is not as big as Iraq, and they have searched it for two or three days, they appear to have drawn a blank, however honourable the motives.
Prime Minister:
Yes, but let’s just wait and see, there may be a whole series of things that they need to look into in relation to that. But my point is very simple, if they get information, and they think that information is reasonable, and these are people expert in this field, then my view is that their duty is to go and make sure that they do everything possible. And I think the Islamic community, like everybody else, recognises this will happen. And you know if it didn’t happen they would be getting slammed in the opposite way, if anything turned out to be, you know to go seriously wrong and someone then was able at a later time to say well here was a piece of information, why didn’t you do it? So I just think part of the modern world I am afraid is we have to live with a greater degree of precaution on the part of our security services and our police, and one of the reasons why I think it is so important at every level to defeat this terrorism is that this threat is real, it is out there, and it is in every major country in the world now.
Sarah Sands:
But we do need to be accurate, don’t we?
Prime Minister:
Of course we need to be accurate, but I mean we need to take precautions, and that will mean acting on information, without waiting until an event actually unfolds. And the real problem, the reason why I feel so strongly about this terrorism and why I think that you know a large part of our own opinion in the west has just got this wrong - but this is just my view - is that the point about this terrorism is that they are prepared to kill without limit. That is the difference. And I have got in trouble before for saying this, and so let me choose my words very carefully. Every single person the IRA killed, or Loyalist gunmen killed, that is equally wrong. You know any death through terrorism of innocent people is absolutely wrong. But the difference with this global terrorist movement we have now is that they killed 3,000 people on the streets of New York, you know they killed over people on the streets of London, 200 people in Madrid, but if they could have multiplied any of those numbers by a factor of ten, they would have done it, and that is what is different.
Michael White:
Indeed. You hold your monthly press conferences in this very room and I have heard you say that several times. Now terror on a different scale here, but nonetheless distressing. Joanne Sinton, she says:
"I am a Labour supporter yet I feel let down. Why? Well I live in Grimsby and like many other towns we decent ordinary citizens have come to the end of our tether, mindless thuggery, vandalism committed by yob culture"
She then describes how local people tidied up their different neighbourhoods, planted trees and tubs, and then:
"Along came idiots and destroyed the lot. My question is when are you going to realise that harsher penalties are needed for mindless of thugs, irrespective of their age."
And just to complicate this - she doesn’t say this - but we read in this morning’s papers the prisons are full and there wasn’t enough anticipation that new prisons would be needed, contracts to build them. So she is feeling let down in Grimsby.
Prime Minister:
Well first of all, because we are expanding the prison places, and we have expanded them, I don’t know, by thousands in the past few years.
Michael White:
And you let people out early because there isn’t enough room.
Prime Minister:
No. Actually people are staying on average in prison longer, the sentences are longer too. There are early release schemes, there always have been parole schemes, but I don’t think that is really the basic point that she is making. I totally agree with her, and that is why we have introduced the antisocial behaviour laws and measures. Now what needs to happen in any area is, what I have done is I have given the new powers to the police, and local authorities, and others, and we have given the resources because we are increasing both numbers of police and community support officers, and in the money we put towards policing, and it now is for the local communities, with the police and local authorities, to sit down and work out the best way to use these powers. But for example, it is not just antisocial behaviour orders, you can disperse gangs of kids, you can take away the money and the assets of drug dealers in local communities, you can shut down houses and evict the people where the house is used for drug dealing, you can close Public Houses where there are constant fights, you can have fixed penalty notices for vandalism as well as having to go through a laborious court process, and what is more I have said to people we will introduce further powers if people want them.
Now obviously what is happening to her is very, very wrong, and in her community. But I could take you to other communities now that have used these new powers and resources and have made a real difference to people’s lives. I mean just up the road from here I saw myself around the King’s Cross area how they managed to get rid of the drug dealers, and the vandals and so on, and you know this has been done by using these new powers.
Michael White:
So the perception that we have got a rising problem of violent crime, not crime overall, but violent crime, particularly at the moment it seems knife crime, is that a misperception, is that the media …
Prime Minister:
You know the facts as well as I do.
Michael White:
Well I don’t know, no, because we get conflicting versions, don’t we? We are told by one set of figures that crime is falling, and others, much more alarming and very important categories like youth crime is left out of some of the figures.
Prime Minister:
Yes, but the figures, whether on recorded crime or on the British Crime Survey overall show that crime has fallen. However, the point that I have long since learnt, there is no point in debating statistics with people about crime, because if you are a victim of crime, or you are living in fear of crime, the last thing you want to hear is me telling you crime has gone down by ‘X’ percent, because you don’t feel that, and you don’t think it. And I think there is, and this is the whole reason why I wanted to start this debate about civil liberties and the law, because I think this is the heart of it, there is an ugly side to today’s crime that I think is definitively different from when we were growing up. I think organised crime is far more viscous, I think the issue of drugs and crime make for a sort of sense of lawlessness that is far more profound than before, and I think you have just got a general disrespect on the part of certain groups of people.
Michael White:
But a lot of our e-mails say, yes but you are endangering civil liberties carelessly, you a lawyer of all people are doing this, and you know we can tackle crime but we don’t tackle crime by behaving in ways in which are wrong and without due process.
Prime Minister:
Well this is the debate I would love to have in the country over the next few months, because I think there is a fundamental issue here. Because I am quite sure, based on the experience I have had in government, you cannot solve some of these law and order problems unless you are prepared, quite profoundly, to change and rebalance the system of criminal justice so that you have more summary justice, more summary powers, more ability for quick and effective action to be taken, even if it will cross the line that most people normally think of as there in terms of civil liberties. And my view is that you can decide that you are not going to do it for civil liberty reasons, decide it, but then don’t say to the politicians and all the rest of it, you have got to deal with this problem, because you cannot deal with it in my view by the normal processes of the law, you just can’t do it. The way the world has changed means that the only, and this is why we only started to get any action on antisocial behaviour when we introduced the power to get Antisocial Behaviour Orders, summary powers for the police, and the ability to take swift action. Otherwise the scale of change in community, family life, economic and social life is just too great, it is too profound.
Now that is the debate I want to have with people, because what I get, you know one of the things that is very frustrating for me is, I get people saying to me why aren’t you doing this, this and this in relation to law and order, and then why I introduce the legislation in Parliament, you know in debates not often reported, everyone is opposing the measures.
Sarah Sands:
One last question: Tessa Jowell is flying the St George’s flag on her car. Will you be, and will be, and will you be recommending that the rest of your Ministers do so?
Prime Minister:
I know this is a difficult question, because I just heard about … Well I will certainly be supporting the England team very strongly. I will have to reflect on the best and most appropriate way to do that.
Sarah Sands:
Inaudible.
Michael White:
Some of our questioners are saying you shouldn’t do it, you are the Prime Minister of the four home countries, it would be quite wrong.
Prime Minister:
Well I think that is rubbish.
Michael White:
So you might do it?
Prime Minister:
Look, I think how you express your support is another matter. But I think the idea that it is wrong to put the England flag up, I mean why not? I mean it is the flag of England, I mean it would be completely absurd. I am sure that if Scotland were in the World Cup …
Michael White:
… the adjoining building.
Prime Minister:
And yes, he is perfectly happy to support the England flag too in terms of when they are in the World Cup. I think, come on this is just ridiculous, I mean why can’t people support the England flag, of course they can. Honestly, I don’t understand that one at all.
Michael White:
Let us end on an elevated note. Robert Page, writing from Birmingham:
"Does the Prime Minister have a vision of a good society? If so, does he think he might share it with us?"
Prime Minister:
Well I think I do, I hope I do. My politics is based on the view that you should have the maximum opportunity for everybody, regardless of their background, class, race colour, religion, and that should be matched however, matched however by responsibility from all, which means, which is why I am strong on the law and order ticket, I think that in the end it is our job to try and create opportunities for people, but I think the only way you can make a society, a good society, function is if those opportunities are matched with responsibilities as well. And I think the whole of my politics is really based on the idea of escaping the sort of left-right division that I grew up with, whereas the left always talked about opportunity, and the right always talked about responsibility. And any sensible basis for community life today means you have both.
So there it is.
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