Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with James Cleverly Conservative Deputy Chairman

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NIALL PATERSON: The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, will be back in the House of Commons tomorrow to explain the government’s policy with regards to immigration targets and what they’re doing for the Windrush generation. Joining me now to discuss that and much more, the party’s Deputy Chairman, James Cleverly. Mr Cleverly, a very good morning to you, can you just flesh out to me what you believe the criteria are for a minister to resign these days because frankly I’m a bit confused?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Well you are trying to draw me on the situation with the Home Secretary, I think what she has said is absolutely fair and right, that there were communications within the department that she didn’t see, she’s apologised for that but ultimately what she’s focusing on is making right this situation with the Windrush generation, making sure that their immigration status is regularised and making sure that we do that whilst continuing to do the very important job of removing people who have no right to be here, often involved in criminal activities and that is actually the right thing for her to be doing.

NP: I mean the question for some people is whether or not there has been a breach of the Ministerial Code. She says that she did not mislead the House intentionally and therefore it is not, that will be looked at tomorrow but the Huff Post’s Paul Waugh puts it better than me, there doesn’t seem to be any consistency. If you mislead about pornography you’re sackable, if you endanger a British citizen in Iran you’re not, a lack of candour about trips to Israel gets you the bullet, ruining the lives of the Windrush generation doesn’t. Isn’t the truth that it is simply politically expedient to keep Amber Rudd where she is, for the time being at least?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Look, I’ve worked with Amber Rudd for a number of years, she is an incredibly diligent, focused and effective politician. The situation with the Windrush generation was decades in the making, it’s a unique and it’s a terrible situation and we have apologised for the pain and suffering that those people have gone through. The job that the Home Secretary is now doing is making sure that we sort that problem out whilst also doing the really important stuff of tackling knife crime, tackling modern slavery, tackling those injustices and problems which …

NP: But the question is whether or not she is the best person to do so. I mean she has apologised five times, she will issue what one presumes will be another grovelling apology tomorrow to the House – isn’t here defence essentially that she is incompetent?

JAMES CLEVERLY: No. No, no, no.

NP: I wasn’t aware of targets, I accept that I should have been – it’s incompetence.

JAMES CLEVERLY: I think Amber is being very tough on herself which doesn’t surprise me because she is a very professional person, she takes an awful lot of pride in doing the job well. The questions that were being asked of her in the Home Affairs Select Committee were about internal management metrics that had been discussed in a previous evidence session that morning and were pieces of information which joined the many thousands of documents that float around inside the Home Office, many of those documents are addressed to her but actually it wasn’t seeing a decision, it wasn’t seeking funding, it was an update.

NP: It sounds very much to me that you are trying to pass the buck to the Civil Servants in the Home Office. She said herself ‘I wasn’t aware of targets, I accept that I should have been.’ You are saying, well, there wasn’t a decision to be made in all of this, there wasn’t … it does sound that … If Amber Rudd is not to blame then who is, for her not seeing this stuff?

JAMES CLEVERLY: No, I am absolutely not blaming the Civil Service, in fact it is completely the opposite. The memo was about internal management targets, it was about managers within the department discharging their duty professionally and giving a full information update up the ministerial chain of command. Many of those documents are created, not all of them are seen by Ministers and indeed certainly not all of them are seen by Secretaries of State. It is not passing blame at all, in fact it is saying there is an awful lot of professional decision making which is done at many levels within the department.

NP: But then again, to the point of Amber Rudd’s competence or lack thereof, does she read anything? There have been a number of reported documents that she hasn’t seen, take for example that Home Office report which saw a link between cutting police numbers and violent crime, she denied seeing that as well.

JAMES CLEVERLY: That was a leaked report that wasn’t sent to her so your criticism that she’s not seeing documents that she hasn’t been sent I think is a little bit harsh.

NP: Okay, if we take at face value that she didn’t see the memo – and we have no reason to think otherwise – that doesn’t necessarily mean that she didn’t know about the targets. I mean there is this line in the memo itself, it says ‘progress has been made on a path towards the 10% increased performance on enforced returns which we promised the Home Secretary earlier this year.’ So she knew there was a target.

JAMES CLEVERLY: No, she … there was a commitment to improve performance, that should be the aspiration of all …

NP: But how do you know you are going to get 10% better if you don’t have a figure in the first place?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Well you’ve got to remember, she was saying about what figures she was exposed to, what information had been sent to her. Within departments there are key performance indicators, there are internal figures so that managers can manage the people in their charge.

NP: But what is a KPI if not a target?

JAMES CLEVERLY: It’s an indicator, basically it’s a measurement tool. I know this sounds semantic but it’s important because the difference between what the Home Secretary said and what people are implying she said and criticising her for their interpretation of what was actually said, it is a subtle but a very significant difference.

NP: It strikes me that perhaps it is getting a bit crowded on the head of that pin but let’s deal with the letter coming from the 200 MPs suggesting that the commitments made to the Windrush generation should be put into law. That’s probably fair isn’t it, given that they probably don’t have much reason to trust you right now?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Well the really important thing is that the Home Secretary and the rest of the Home Office team are doing everything they can to regularise their status, to make sure that this can never happen again, to make sure that the people who have got to go through a process do so without being charged, that we put it right. I think it is better to spend the time and effort delivering for the people who, through no fault of their own, have been disadvantaged by the circumstance rather than preparing a Bill because frankly that is – and I understand the motivation of the people, I’m not questioning their motivation, I just think frankly the resources would be better spent dealing with the situation.

NP: We have spoken time and again on this programme about the problems within Labour ranks about anti-Semitism and the Conservatives have talked about it as well but isn’t it the case that the Conservatives themselves have a problem with Islamophobia?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Well there are individuals in all political parties, these are big organisations that say and do things that are completely inappropriate. The question is how you deal with that.

NP: I take your point but do you concede that you have a problem with Islamophobia? Baroness Warsi said last week, ‘I know within my own party there are now almost weekly occurrences of Islamophobic incidents and rhetoric.’ That sounds like a problem to me.

JAMES CLEVERLY: No, I don’t believe, I don’t agree with that as an assessment. The point I was going to make is that where people have behaved inappropriately, our party, we have a Respect Pledge, we deal very quickly, we suspend people who have done something we believe to be inappropriate and if an investigation confirms that, then they are ejected from the party. I am very proud of the fact that we take a tough line on people who behave inappropriately.

NP: I mean George Stokeley who was, who still is standing for election in Cambridgeshire, no longer as a Conservative candidate, wrote that tweet saying he was ‘sweating like a Jew in an attic’. How do these people get past the vetting process?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Well as I say, when individuals say and do things inappropriately, and that is self-evidently inappropriate, they are suspended. They are given an opportunity to explain themselves and then if they fail to live up to the standards that we demand of them, they are ejected from the party. The reason is he is still standing as a candidate is that this came to light after the close of nominations but we have made it clear we deal with our problems. We are open and we are transparent about how we deal with those problems and it would be nice if all political parties were able to do so in the way that we have.

NP: I wonder if I might be able to encourage you to go a bit further than the Shadow Chancellor and give us an idea of how you think the Conservatives will do in the local elections this week? The Times’ Matt Chorley wrote this fantastic quote on Thursday, ‘Back in February I asked a senior Tory if things were going to be bad for them on May 3rd. No, they said, much worse, I mean really effing bad, particularly in London, London is just a complete disaster.’ Really effing bad?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Not quite the phraseology I am going to use on air!

NP: Is it really bad?

JAMES CLEVERLY: Predicting election results is now I think a bit of a fool’s errand because they are so difficult to call. We’ve seen the polling numbers, we know that London is going to be a tough fight for us, we know that the Labour party has been bragging about how they are going to get pretty much a clean sweep across London. We are fighting very, very hard, we have fielded a more complete slate of candidates than I think ever before, certainly in my time in politics. We’re fighting hard for every seat and we’re fighting hard on that simple, but compelling, argument that we deliver better local services at less money than Labour councils. If people listen to that message then I think we have got a good chance of doing well but we recognise that eight years into government, it is a really tough back job.

NP: And I really must bring up this picture that we happen to have …

JAMES CLEVERLY: This is fantastic!

NP: I’m not quite sure what is going on there but it looks like you have got his vote at the very least. Mr Cleverly, many thanks for being with us.

JAMES CLEVERLY: Thank you.