Murnaghan 19.01.14 Interview with Eric Pickles, Communities Secretary

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well this week we’ll see another battle between Labour and the Conservatives on welfare. Each party wants to appear tough on benefits of course, especially those paid to immigrants and the first shots have been fired in today’s Sunday papers. The Mail on Sunday reports that the government wants to ban benefits for people who can’t speak English. Let’s say a very good morning now to Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Local Government and Communities. So no benefits if you can’t speak English, is this really a runner? No translators, no forms in foreign languages?

ERIC PICKLES: Well the policy is in a very early stage so I don't know what eventually will come out. From my perspective, last year I stopped translation with, inside the Department of Communities and Local Government and asked local authorities to do the same but at the same time I increased the amount of money available to learn English. We’ve done a series of quite innovative programmes of trying to target particular groups who don’t speak English to give them gift of our language.

DM: There are some well-established communities within the UK, sections of which we know don’t speak very good English. If they were on benefits, would they have their benefits cut?

ERIC PICKLES: Well as I said, we don’t know how this policy is going to be put out but what I do say is this, whether you are on benefits or whether you are in work, you can’t be a full member of British society unless you speak English and you are artificially reducing your chances of employment by not speaking English. I recognise that we haven’t been able to get to everybody, that’s why we’ve looked at finding places where people are comfortable to learn English, it might be in the mosques, it might be at work, we might even look at doing it in some benefit places but I’ve been to areas not very far from this building where young women have come to this country from the Indian subcontinent with no English at all and within a relatively short time have become very fluent and that’s very rewarding for them.

DM: Well I am not going to ask the question about at what point if they were on benefits they would either lose or regain their benefits because as you say it is not a fleshed out policy but would you be prepared then to see that operating throughout the EU because we know there are hundreds of thousands of Britons living in other EU countries here and if they have to access benefits they presumably wouldn’t have to learn Spanish or German or whatever it is?

ERIC PICKLES: Well I think if you are going to live somewhere I think it’s beholden on you to learn the language. I did once tell a bunch of expats in Spain that it would be a good thing if they learned Spanish.

DM: So this is a warning to the Brits abroad, you learn the local language or you deserve to lose your benefits?

ERIC PICKLES: By and large they tend to be slightly more affluent and unlikely to be on Spanish benefit but I actually think it’s a good thing, you need to be able to speak to your neighbour, you need to be able to follow what’s going on in a programme, you need to be able to tune in on a Sunday and listen to what you’re saying.

DM: Okay, while we’re talking about EU migration, I was wondering about your colleague Ken Clarke saying well, you’re going over the top in the Conservative party, there is no unacceptable wave of migration from the European Union, it’s part and parcel of being in the club.

ERIC PICKLES: Well bless him. I think it is very important to ensure that people who come here, come here to work and they are very welcome. We’ve gone out of our way to try and attract the very best into the United Kingdom be it from the EU or be it from the best universities in China or in India and indeed, the future of our country depends on us being a trading country, it depends on us having contacts in other parts of the world and of course the people in the EU who do the most travelling, who are more likely to spend their time in a foreign country, are the British.

DM: You’re doing your bit within your department aren’t you? I dug out a statement, an announcement from your department, it was at the end of the year and it seemed to get overlooked a bit but you are going to try and encourage councils to put local people at the top of the housing queue. It makes sense but that’s not the case then?

ERIC PICKLES: It does make sense and we have a number of cases coming from authorities to say returning service personnel didn’t quality because they had been in Afghanistan or in Cyprus and therefore had no local link and what we are saying is that people who have a link to a locality should be able to return so that they can be close to their relatives, their parents, their grandparents.

DM: But at the expense of somebody else there, there could be a pregnant migrant or something like that who technically in terms of that point scoring system be further up the queue than they are.

ERIC PICKLES: Well it could be indeed a pregnant person with a relationship with [inaudible] but if you take social housing, I think it is good that social housing is there to look after local people and what we’re saying is that they should be given a preference. There is some sense in that because the support system will be there. If someone turns out to be, if a woman turns out to be pregnant the chance are that mum or aunty or uncle, her father, her brother and sisters are going to be there so it makes some sense for them to go to their local support system.

DM: And while we’re on the issue of housing, what’s this we’re hearing from Nick Clegg who wants you to come clean about a report that you have been sitting on, according to the Liberal Democrats, about at least two new garden cities, in fact a ring of garden cities around the M25.

ERIC PICKLES: Let me make this absolutely clear, I have not seen formally or informally and I am told by my department that this report does not come from my department. We tend to be the experts in planning and housing so we would expect some degree of involvement. I don’t rule out an ambitious civil servant from some other department putting something together but both parties stood on a manifesto, we said that we would not force eco towns or garden cities on the population. Now we are through the local infrastructure plan, beginning to release a lot of large sites and so far we have released sites that we will build 69,000. We’ve got some more in the pipeline so by the end of the parliament we will have released 100,000 new dwellings.

DM: Is your preference to go for the big bang, I suppose garden cities, new cities where you are building lots of houses, fairly high density, garden cities obviously nice places to live but in that kind of sense of being a new city or is it piecemeal, is it nibbling away at the greenbelt, here, there and everywhere?

ERIC PICKLES: Well I looked at the figures on the greenbelt and there has always been a small amount of building on it right from the very beginning but the last year for figures under the coalition we built the lowest number on the greenbelt for a quarter of a century so there isn’t this nibbling taking place that people would have you believe. It’s important to set up settlements where there is going to be some infrastructure there, where there is going to be roads and the like. Now I think we probably can produce garden settlements, I think we could maybe produce a garden city or two providing it’s in places that people want it and there are authorities expressing an interest and we will be producing a prospective but it has got to be on the basis of consent. After all Labour promised five garden cities and delivered none and when that failed to arrive they promised ten and all that happened with that policy was just building resentment rather a single dwelling.

DM: But is there space anywhere in the UK for five garden cities or ten or however many it may require? When you look at the projections and you look at the continuing migration, you’re not going to get those figures down to the tens of thousands. The pressure on housing is relentless.

ERIC PICKLES: Yes, you’ve got to understand – and I’m sure you do understand – that housing is very much market driven. We inherited a position whereby house building had dropped to the level of the 1920s and gradually it is now starting to pick up. We are not going to get that by some great grand design, you need to go with the market, you need to lay a firm foundation whereby it can expand and after all, just about every authority in the country now are producing a local plan to deliver a five year and a fifteen year housing supply and by April around 80% will have published and 60% will have adopted and that’s the way to go.

DM: Let me ask you another question flowing from your colleague Ken Clarke A while back on this programme he came on and described UKIP, many of its members, as clowns. Is Nigel Farage’s admission today that he is going to clear out some of the nutters within his party some kind of admission that he does have the odd fruitcake within the party?

ERIC PICKLES: I’m not sure Mr Farage precisely used that language. UKIP is a political party, it is a respectable political party, there will be people in it who are a little difficult and it is probably sensible that he removes some people who are wacky but the one thing that it does seem to be about with Conservatives saying we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that, actually I don't think there is a single silver bullet to deal with UKIP but what I do feel they are about, I was on a train with a load of them not so long ago and I’m pleased to say they didn’t recognise me. I was listening to them talk and the thing that really occurred to me afterwards is these were people who think the best days of our country are behind us. The only thing they really approve about is our past and I don't think you can long-term run a political party about being against something and not offering some degree of positive …

DM: So is the message for Conservative supporters, well don’t look over your shoulder, look forward?

ERIC PICKLES: Yes, look forward. A political party should offer leadership and most people come into politics, into any political party, to make life better, to ensure that there is progress and ensure you can move forward with the public reforms. I certainly didn’t come into politics to organise a gentle decline.

DM: But that’s what you think UKIP are doing?

ERIC PICKLES: I do and I say that with great respect.

DM: Now can I ask you about your coalition colleagues? How do you think the Lib Dems have been handling all this hoo-hah, this investigation into the allegations about Lord Rennard?

ERIC PICKLES: Well I have to say Lord Rennard has always behaved quite properly with me, I make no allegations against him whatsoever. I’m the former party chairman, who had these kind of investigations. I was a bit surprised to find that the investigation proof was almost on a criminal level, which was beyond reasonable doubt but they’ve had that, they’ve cleared him.

DM: Do you think he should get the whip back in the House of Lords?

ERIC PICKLES: Actually, as Rhett Butler said, frankly my dear I don’t give a damn.

DM: Oh, okay, but I mean, you say he is a parliamentarian, would you like to see his face round - and you are in coalition with the Liberal Democrats – do you think he has still got a role to play in that party?

ERIC PICKLES: Well he won’t be advising the Conservatives, that’s for sure. Who they have in their party is a matter for them.

DM: Can you tell us, with hand on heart, that if such things have occurred or did occur within the Conservative party, that your party would handle it better?

ERIC PICKLES: Well we have a fairly strict procedure, we’re not hidebound by beyond reasonable doubt, ours is balance of possibilities. I have had people who have behaved in a way, it was alleged and I understand they have been cleared but on the basis of the allegations, that I have had removed.

DM: Mr Pickles, very good to see you, thank you very much. Eric Pickles there, the Communities Secretary.