Murnaghan 8.01.12 Interview with Chuka Umunna, MP

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SKY NEWS, MURNAGHAN

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, David Cameron has signalled his intent to give shareholders binding votes on executive pay as part of measures to deal with excessive salaries. The Prime Minister says the market for top people is not working and needs to be sorted out, well Chuka Umunna is Labour’s Shadow Business Secretary and is with me in the studio. Chuka, I know you would like to get involved in that debate I was having there with John Barnes, we’ll have to do that at a later stage but let’s stay with executive pay here. It seems like the Prime Minister, and I know you and Ed Miliband and others have been talking about this for a long time but he shot your fox today hasn’t he? That’s it, he’s on the right track isn’t he, the Prime Minister?

CHUKA UMUNNA: Well we set down a number of things that we thought needed to be done, not least the acceptance of the High Pay Commission recommendations in full and also compliance with three tests: one of transparency, accountability and fairness, and he has fallen short on all of those measures.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Fallen short? Well I’ve heard him say all of those things.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Well we haven’t seen him commit to implementing the independent High Pay Commission recommendations, in fact one of the commissioners is actually a coalition Treasury spokesperson in the Lords, it’s funny that they haven’t adopted these recommendations in light of that. There are a number of things on transparency, he has not said anything today to give us an indication that he will look to the simplification of remuneration packages so there is one salary and one performance related element of remuneration packages, so they are easier to understand for shareholders and the outside world on accountability. He has said nothing about putting into force the provisions of the Company’s Act that would require investors and fund managers to disclose how they vote on these matters and in relation to greater fairness, he said nothing about the reintroduction of a bank bonus cap.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But in terms of fairness, he did say we were going to hear a statement on it from the Business Secretary Vince Cable in the week but in terms of the direction of travel, because you are getting him on specifics, in terms of the direction of travel he is talking about ‘crony capitalism’ quote/unquote, you could have heard that from Ed Miliband.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Well it’s quite extraordinary because as you said at the top of this interview, we have been talking about these matters for a very long time now and when Ed Miliband sought to talk in some detail about this, about the need for a more responsible capitalism and a good economy in his party conference speech, he was ridiculed and rubbished by the Prime Minister, so it’s interesting that he seems to have taken perhaps an about turn and a bit of a conversion to what Ed Miliband had been talking about, in the same way that when Ed Miliband this time last year was talking about the squeezed middle and Conservative ministers sought to ridicule him for doing that, now we see much of the language, many of the things that Ed’s been talking about, being reflected in what Ministers are saying. In relation to the specific proposal though, on having binding shareholder votes, it’s interesting – we will look at it in detail. I think there are a couple of things I would say about it, first of all one of the problems is that shareholders do actually get to give an advisory vote at the moment but that tends to come after the event, after the package has been agreed with the Executive Director concerned and very, very rarely do those votes get voted down, when actually what we need, as the High Pay Commission has said, you need a forward facing vote from shareholders in advance of the packages being agreed upon.

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: It’s all another headache, isn’t it, for Ed Miliband who is searching still as we enter 2012, to get the ear of the electorate, this was one avenue and we have both accepted Labour has been talking about this for quite a while and now the Prime Minister has moved his tanks onto your lawn, Ed Miliband, in another area, struggling to be heard. Do you accept that he may not be leader in a year’s time?

CHUKA UMUNNA: [Laughs] I think that’s an absolutely comment I have to say. I do think it’s absurd because let’s actually look at the facts. Over the last year you have seen the Labour party win five by-elections, not all of them have been easy. We have got over 60,000 more members since Ed became the leader of the party and over 800 more councillors, many hundreds from the Conservative party. Let’s compare and contrast that to David Cameron and the position he was in in the same stage in his leadership and the approval ratings. Ed’s approval ratings are actually higher than David Cameron’s and let’s not forget – Dermot let’s not forget this, David Cameron was leader of his party for a good five or six years before the general election, had plenty of time to detoxify and actually put in place measures for him to win an election and he failed to win an election. He is governing at the moment thanks to Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats, he is not somebody who has won an election and I do find it extraordinary that …

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: But just let me put it to you that these are, and you will be well aware of them, sources from within the Miliband camp, Tom Baldwin saying that he is not Labour’s IDS, Iain Duncan Smith, planting that thought in our very minds and Lord Glasman, one of his own advisors, saying no strategy, no narrative and little energy in Mr Miliband’s leadership – I mean these are questions that are being asked within Labour itself.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Let’s just take an assessment of the situation the Labour party is in. In 2010 we went down to our second biggest defeat in history since 1918 and if you actually look at the last awful defeat we had in 1983, for us to get around polling to the 40% level took us about 36, 37 months. Under Ed Miliband’s leadership we are already doing that in a very short space in time and in relation to people like Lord Glasman who you have referred to, Lord Glasman is not an official advisor, he is a House of Lords peer who has recently joined. Now all of us are impatient for the Labour party to win back support and that is absolutely what we are all working for and the best way we can do that is not by talking about the sort of who’s up, who’s down Westminster soap opera which to the 4000 odd people claiming Job Seekers Allowance in my constituency really doesn’t matter. It is actually about talking about the big issues that are affecting people, the cost of living crisis that people are facing, the jobs crisis – 2.6 million out of work and remember, Dermot, unless we get people into work, unless we get growth back into our economy, how on earth are we going to reduce our debt?

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: We must end it there but I see you are second favourite according to bookmakers odds to take over as the leader!

CHUKA UMUNNA: Oh for God’s sake!

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Chuka Umunna, thank you very much there.

CHUKA UMUNNA: Thank you Dermot.