Murnaghan 12.01.14 Paper Review with Lord Ian Blair, Stanley Johnson and Esther Rantzen

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well, time to take a look through the Sunday papers and I’m joined by the writer, Stanley Johnson, the broadcaster Esther Rantzen and the former head of the Metropolitan Police, Ian Blair. Thank you all very much indeed and we’ll stay with you Lord Blair and dive straight into the front page of the Observer, Brussels laying it on the line here and saying you can’t really do much to deal with migration or immigration from within the European Union.

IAN BLAIR: Well this is turning into almost a soap opera I think. We’ve got Martin Shultz now telling Britain that it can’t do anything about the …

DM: He’s the European Parliamentary President.

IAN BLAIR: The President of the European Parliament, telling Britain that Britain can’t do anything about the free movement of workers and that includes moving for benefit. If you read the Telegraph you’ve got Iain Duncan Smith saying we can. The Sunday Times is running it on the front page. There is something going on here particularly about the Conservative party having a conversation with itself. The Telegraph has got 95 Conservative MPs demanding a change to the law so that British law can override European law which would destroy the European Union from the beginning and this week has seen a Bill in the House of Lords to try and get a referendum in 2017 which is a waste of time because no parliament can bind its successor, so it is a complete waste of time.

DM: It’s not just the Conservatives is it because it came from Chuka Umunna, this issue on the front of the Observer from the Labour side, Stanley, looking at some of the categories of migration within the European Union.

STANLEY JOHNSON: I spent 20 years in the EU institutions with my time in the parliament, my time in the Commission and I think realistically there have to be some changes of this free movement, not just because of the migration but because you have actually had over the last ten years a colossal increase in the population of Britain and if we can’t have a say in what kind of population in terms of sheer numbers we have, then I think that …

DM: The only answer is the UKIP answer isn’t it, is to leave the European Union? You can’t meddle, you can’t tinker within the rules.

STANLEY JOHNSON: Well you can because the free movement of Labour has only recently been implemented throughout Europe so you could have a few retrograde steps and say look actually we’ve got to start looking at some of these things and have a backtrack on it.

DM: But what do you think, Esther? Because if you did you would have let’s say somebody turning up at an airport or a port saying I’m from Poland, here’s my family, I want to look at Big Ben and ride on a big red bus and then they go and look for a job. How do you categorise people coming from within the European Union?

ESTHER RANTZEN: I think we have to accept what the statistics tell us which is that immigration is a good thing economically for us and it’s a good thing in many, many different ways. I remember going to a comprehensive school in Luton South where the head teacher said that she depended upon migrant children to set standards to provide role models for the indigenous kids because they are ambitious, they want to learn, they crave education. That being said, Europe has changed so much in my lifetime. I was an ardent pro-European at the beginning but there is no question that there is a lot of imbalance now between the various nations joining together and I don’t think it is a Conservative issue, Ian, I think it is a European issue. I think Europe needs to look at this and work out what’s sensible, what works.

DM: Last thought on that, just on the migration issue, just on the borders of the European Union, could something be done?

IAN BLAIR: I couldn’t agree more that the expansion of Europe is a very significant factor but what needs to happen is that we need to have the conversation from within Europe rather than standing there and saying if you don’t agree with our changes then we’re leaving the club. Well the answer to that is ‘leave the club’.

DM: Okay, another story, Stanley Johnson, taxpayers foot the bill for HS2. This is the second high speed rail line, £300 million already spent, what on?

STANLEY JOHNSON: Well it has been spent on a whole lot of preliminary work. I’ve got a lot of interest in this because this train line is going to go within seven metres of my front door and the point I’m making here …

DM: Seven metres!

STANLEY JOHNSON: Yes, it was cooked up by the Labour government before the last election.

DM: But it is this government and Mr Cameron really pushing it forward.

STANLEY JOHNSON: They have to back off because the real problem at the moment, we have Lord Adonis of Camden – I think he ought to give up his title, at least give up the Camden part of his title because Camden, where I live, is going to be completely wiped out and in a nutshell one of the real problems is they have no provision for compensation unless you are actually knocked down. It’s ludicrous.

ESTHER RANTZEN: So you’re not going to get anything for the fact that you could sort of leap onto it as it passed your back door or front door?

STANLEY JOHNSON: We’re going to get about 20 years of disruption and …

ESTHER RANTZEN: What would that be worth in the Stanley Johnson household do you think? Many haircuts!

DM: We’re getting on to haircuts in a moment or two but I just wanted to pick out for instance, Stanley, some of the things … people will be surprised that nearly a third of a billion pounds has already been spent. This is on the front of the Telegraph. What on earth have they spent that amount of money on?

STANLEY JOHNSON: The sort of detailed engineering which has to go into the thing. I mean you’ve got tunnels to build, you’ve got viaducts, it’s a lot of detailed work. A certain amount has gone to a firm called KPMG to produce a study saying yes, it’s a jolly good idea.

DM: A PR campaign.

STANLEY JOHNSON: But actually in France I think they do do it differently.

IAN BLAIR: I would dig the Newbury by-pass with Swampy. Again I notice when the French build the TGV they compensate people extremely well and there’s no arguments.

DM: And they get on with it.

IAN BLAIR: What we do is we … I know a particular part bit of that road, it ran through a line of houses and they just compensated the three houses they knocked down so people got a motorway at the end of their garden.

DM: Some sympathy for Stanley there. Esther, your first story and this on the front page of the Sunday Times, I suppose in the wake of Savile, 20 private schools facing ruinous child sex abuse trials.

ESTHER RANTZEN: Paedophiles are vile, callous criminals who target vulnerable kids and if they are kids whose parents are a long way away and they are quite young, a teacher in authority in the olden days – and maybe today, who knows? – could have his wicked way with them but there are two things about this story which really, really annoy me. One is a lawyer, one lawyer, representing the kids who are now grown up of course, says the new cases were drawn from the upper echelons of society which was unusual in child sex abuse claims. What planet is he on? Does he think that only common kids get sexually abused? Well heavens. So sack that lawyer, sack him. Then the other thing that is equally uninformed and stupid about child abuse says, “What is so unsettling” says this writer in the Sunday Times, “is the teachers involved were all popular with boys and staff, none came close to the caricature of the teacher abuser as a creepy weirdo.”

DM: Dear me.

ESTHER RANTZEN: What we know is that monsters don’t get near children, nice men do. Obviously the people who want to win the confidence and trust not just of the kids they’re grooming but of the adults around them, will appear to be the most popular, successful, happy go lucky teachers.

DM: Some real stereotyping there, isn’t it? Didn’t some of the Johnsons go to one of the schools mentioned?

STANLEY JOHNSON: Four out of a potential six went to one of the schools but I’m going to put in a word for this school at the moment, Ashdown House, on the front page of your paper. Well I’m going to put in a word for them, they did a very good job as far as we’re concerned. I know nothing about these allegations, that’s what Manuel said in Fawlty Towers if you remember, I know nothing and I’m going to stick with saying these are good schools until it’s proved otherwise.

ESTHER RANTZEN: I want to say 08001111. If any young person watching this programme is suffering at the hands of teacher or anyone else, Childline is there for you, Childline will listen and it is confidential and safe. It is open day and night.

DM: 0800 1111. Okay, let’s go to a very much lighter story. Lord Blair, the Mail and I love this, a £90 hair do is fine, Dave, but only if you’re a lady.

IAN BLAIR: This is a lovely piece in the Mail on Sunday about Mr Cameron. The first one is brilliantly called ‘Crimpergate’ and this particular piece also indicates what other people are spending so we’ve got Nick Clegg at £20, Andrew Lansley at £15 and I hear Richard Dannatt only pays £5 but a great line …

DM: How about you? What do you spend?

IAN BLAIR: I spend about £13 I think.

ESTHER RANTZEN: And you Dermot?

DM: I’m on about 20 quid I’m afraid.

ESTHER RANTZEN: Well it does look worth more, forgive me.

STANLEY JOHNSON: I go to Ozzie the barber in Camden Town.

DM: You don’t go anywhere!

ESTHER RANTZEN: But do you have a genetic hair eccentricity, you and your son?

IAN BLAIR: There is a great quote in here that says that ‘en are now getting the same treatment women have endured for years, oh look at him with his bald spot, he’s spend £90 and he still looks like a potato!’

DM: Stanley, caution, your mobile phone is watching you. People kind of knew this already didn’t they, they can track you anywhere if you have your mobile phone on.

STANLEY JOHNSON: David Davies, a remarkable man, a fighter for civil liberties, has pointed out in the Mail on Sunday that the government through its use of what’s called meta-data jolly well knows every time you ring someone up, they know who you ring up, they know where you rang up from, they can track you. You call Esther Rantzen, you call Childline, I’ll be calling that new line you’ve just set up there called Silver Line. I say to myself that David Davies is on the right track here, we cannot allow government to know too much about what we’re doing.

IAN BLAIR: I think he is absolutely on the wrong track. This is a lifesaving matter. Two children have gone missing, if they have gone missing with their mobile phones ….

DM: And you would suspect that right now that is what’s being done. If their phones are still on, they could be off.

STANLEY JOHNSON: All the more worrying.

[All talking at the same time]

DM: Ian Blair knows about the policing.

IAN BLAIR: If you have a murder in a field in Berkshire the first question you ask is what phones have been in that field.

ESTHER RANTZEN: Do you remember the little girls in Soham? They tracked where they’d been and that’s how they found Ian Huntley.

IAN BLAIR: And a missing child who is going to hang herself, she won’t use Childline, she disappears with her phone.

DM: I’m sure you don’t disagree with that, Stanley Johnson, but what you want are the checks and balances.

STANLEY JOHNSON: I do disagree. In other to solve one or two problems like that, and I’m not saying they are not important problems, of course they are, a missing child is a tragedy but do you introduce a system a system which weighs so heavily on society as a whole, I think that is the question.

DM: But what happens if police lose that right?

IAN BLAIR: I think it will put policing back 30 years, I genuinely do. People who blew up, in Glasgow when they drove into the airport, the police were a few minutes behind them only, all the way from London, because they had the phones.

STANLEY JOHNSON: And with emails, the meta-data means they know exactly what email you sent to whom. They don’t know the contents but they know.

IAN BLAIR: They can, they can apply. In the new system they will actually be able to apply to actually say who emailed who?

ESTHER RANTZEN: What are you feeling guilty about, Stanley? What is it you don’t want people to know?

DM: That is the old question, that’s a way of saying if you have nothing to hide why are you worried?

STANLEY JOHNSON: That’s an easy way out. I think on the whole we cannot allow government to know too much about what we’re doing.

DM: Okay, Esther, you’re bringing us back I suppose to the issue immigration, migration, foreign nurses give NHS a lesson in tender loving care.

ESTHER RANZEN: Yes, I’m sorry to say this but my experience has been just that. When my late husband was in hospital with his final illness, the one nurse who was wonderful was an Australian agency nurse and the other person in the hospital was the Spanish cleaner who made us cups of tea when we sat by his bedside. Well I’m afraid too many of the other nurses were gathering together at the nurses station chatting to each other. Now you can’t actually examine people, you can’t put a qualification on a bit of paper for care and compassion but somehow or other, as people are saying these days, the nurses we used to describe as angels are now highly qualified but not necessarily the people we would want to nurse us.

DM: Do you think this is about national characteristics or it is just about numbers isn’t it? Do you think some foreign nations are intrinsically more caring?

ESTHER RANTZEN: I think that they understand what the whole nursing role is. If I had a whole group of trainee nurses in front of me I’d say right, you are getting in to those hospital beds, you’re going to feel bloody awful and we’re going to show you what it feels like when someone … Do you know, I had a friend of mine who had lost his sight, he was in hospital aged 90 with a heart attack. I asked how the food was, he hadn’t eaten any because nobody had noticed he was blind and therefore couldn’t cut up his own food. Yes, it takes time but it also takes that bit of empathy and compassion.

IAN BLAIR: It is partially to do with making it into a graduate profession, it’s the same, I have always objected to the police being an entirely graduate profession, it’s not right, we don’t do it that way. We need lessons in life and I think that’s what’s missing here.

DM: Okay, a quick last story. Stanley Johnson, William to lead global battle against poachers. Is this what he’s learning at Cambridge?

STANLEY JOHNSON: I think he probably is learning something about that but they have taken the lead, the Royal Family, ever since Prince Philip Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Charles. This is a vital issue now but elephants are going down the drain, the tiger is going down the train, the rhinos are going down the drain, something needs to be done and what needs to be done is to get the Chinese above all is to cut back on their demands and that’s why William Hague – it’s a pity you didn’t ask William Hague about rhinos and tigers the other moment, Dermot, if I may call you Dermot …

DM: You may, I’m calling you Stanley.

STANLEY JOHNSON: I wrote a book called Where the Wild Things Were and that tries to pin down these issues and the conference at Lancaster House next month will be start.

DM: I must end it there, thank you all very much indeed, Stanley Johnson, Esther Rantzen and Lord Ian Blair, very good to see you all once again.