Murnaghan Interview with Andy Burnham, Labour MP, 11.12.16

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Well now, it’s a question the government and the Labour party is still tiptoeing around – does leaving the EU also mean leaving the single market.  Well the former Shadow Home Secretary and Manchester mayoral hopeful thinks it should and Andy joins me now, a very good morning to you Mr Burnham and we’ll get on to that in just one minute but I just want your instant reaction to this news about Orgreave.  Now you’ve been those campaigning for a public inquiry into Orgreave, it seems that’s not going to happen but we are going to get some release of the many documents I suspect that the various police forces involved have held, you welcome that?

ANDY BURNHAM: Oh certainly and it’s credit to Yvette Cooper and the Home Affairs Select Committee who carried on pressing the Home Secretary so this is a positive development and I can’t see how any government can deny people the truth about what happened. As I repeatedly said, Dermot, we won’t have the full truth about Hillsborough until we also know what happened five years’ earlier after Orgreave because in my view the same police force used the same tactics, it tried to blame the miners in the same way as it would later try to blame the Liverpool supporters.  

DM: So briefly on that, you think the chance of public inquiry is still alive?

ANDY BURNHAM: Well I think it’s got to be because we need to see what these files reveal and if they reveal evidence of wrongdoing both in the police force or possibly within the government of the day, that will need to be looked at further so yes I think this is a positive development and as I say, it is credit to Yvette Cooper and the Home Affairs Select Committee.

DM: Okay, thanks for that, now on to the single market.  Isn’t it party policy that the UK tries to remain within the single market?  You think actually leaving it might be good for the north.

ANDY BURNHAM: I think to be honest, Dermot, things are getting very confused aren’t they? The government isn’t setting out its plans and so a lot of people out there are still rerunning the referendum campaign. I think what’s going to happen is people have got to go back to what the public voted for and here in Greater Manchester people quite clearly voted for a change to the current freedom of movement rules, that is the starting point it seems to me in this debate and what I am saying is let’s have a Brexit plan that works for Greater Manchester, that means it must respond to what people voted for.  So I would argue that there does need to be a system that offers more control but it’s got to be balanced, we want to continue to welcome people from around the world to work here, that’s our starting point.  The single market can’t be our starting point because that in the end here was not what people voted on.  

DM: So what do you have in mind?  Because we have been hearing from Labour for an awful long time now, the acceptance of a need for some kind of controls on immigration, can you be more explicit for us then?  Does it involve visas, permits, point system, what?

ANDY BURNHAM: The government has got to set out its intentions but I believe we have got to have a system that is more linked to people coming to fill a specific job in the labour market rather than speculative free movement which has actually caused some quite difficult challenges  in parts of Greater Manchester.  We’ve seen pressure, downward pressure on wages.  Now the public are right to raise concerns about that, Dermot, so we need a system that affords greater control, that allows us to bring people to work here and contribute to our economy and our society but also deals with the negative effects of all free movement which has been downward pressure on wages but also pressure on primary schools, GP services.  We need a system which balances those things together and that’s what I’m calling for.

DM: Is it because you are intending to be leaving parliament I guess if you win the mayoralty that you feel free now to talk out so openly against party policy, against what the leader says?

ANDY BURNHAM: If you look back actually over a long time, I’ve been making these arguments, I made these arguments in Cabinet when I was picking up concern about the way free movement was working back in the latter part of the last decade and when I stood for the Labour party leadership both times I made similar arguments.  You know, I’m not somebody who says we just abandon our relationship with Europe, certainly not and I hoped we might have been able to reform free movement from within the EU but the public have said otherwise.  They’ve asked us to reassess our relationship with the European Union particularly on this question of free movement.  It hasn’t been working for parts of Greater Manchester as I’ve just said so what we need to do is start there, accept the public’s call for a system of more control but balance that by securing maximum access to the single market.

DM: What is your analysis as you, as I say, you hope to turn your back on the Labour party nationally and as someone said, become the Boris of the North – I know you’re not going to accept that but what do you read into these two by-elections recently, in Sleaford and in Richmond, where the Labour party has been hammered in a massively remain constituency and then hammered again in one that was overwhelmingly leave?  Do you fear that the party nationally is no longer relevant?

ANDY BURNHAM: No, I don’t fear that. Labour has got a huge role to play going forward, standing up for working people, being a party that speaks for fairness but what we’ve got to do, Dermot, is respond to the times we’re living through.  We’re living through, it feels to me, something of a political earthquake where there is a major backlash going on against our centralised Westminster system of government.  Westminster in our view has failed large parts of the north of England, it let our traditional industry go without giving us any real help, it’s focused on selling off council housing rather than building the new homes that we need and it’s given us a housing crisis and it has failed to offer hope to young people. Now people at the referendum were calling for change on all of those things and they were also saying you haven’t been listening to us about the way free movement is affecting us so this is a moment of real change I think, Dermot, where we need to embrace devolution to the English regions and it is quite proper for me to argue for what benefits Greater Manchester and that might be different from what people say at a national level.

DM: Yes, it’s just because you are a seasoned campaigner, you know what it comes down to on the doorstep and you will have heard this from the Labour canvassers in Sleaford, they say they were knocking on doorsteps of people who had previously voted Labour and they were saying are you remain or leave, what is party policy?  And your party canvassers had to say well it’s more nuanced than that and people just went and it seemed didn’t vote for Labour and as you know from the British Election Survey, that more people now align themselves as a remainer or a leaver than they do with political parties.  This is a real problem for Labour.

ANDY BURNHAM: Well we’ve got to make sense, don’t we Dermot, of the times that we are living through and I don't think people want us to be in the Lib Dem position of trying to reopen the referendum.  What Labour has got to do is find a balanced approach to Brexit and a Brexit here that works for Greater Manchester and I think probably Labour’s problem has been over the last 15, 20 years, is we’ve tried to run a single line to apply to the whole of the UK and the problem with that is things look different here from Greater Manchester than they do in London and that’s why this change is important now, that it’s right that I can articulate how people here feel and develop a response that is right for people here and that shouldn’t in any way threaten, if you like, the national party so that’s the change I think we need to move towards and I’m quite clear that we need to look at Brexit and what it means for Greater Manchester in a different way because there is a balance also about the single market.  It may well be the best answer for the north of England to stay in the single market but Dermot, we also need to think about do we need more flexibility on state aid rules to help rebuild our industrial base and it’s those trade- offs I think we need to debate.  

DM: Just very briefly, if you win the mayoralty you going to stand down as an MP for Leigh and that it’s said might go to UKIP, your seat in that by-election.

ANDY BURNHAM: Well that’s a lot of assumptions there.  I haven’t won and there is no vacancy at the moment but I do hear that Mr Nuttall is talking about parachuting himself into this area.  To be honest I think that is part of what is wrong with politics, people don’t like the idea that people use seats as a place of convenience for them, they want to see people who come from the area that they represent but Mr Nuttall is also an advocate of privatisation of the National Health Service.  I look forward to him explaining and justifying those views on the streets of Leigh and in the middle of town.

DM: So you are going to stand down?

ANDY BURNHAM: Were I to be successful next year, of course I wouldn’t seek to do two jobs, Dermot, that would not be right but that is some way in the future.  I’m not taking anything for granted, what I am saying is that if I want to represent Greater Manchester then we need to start dealing with what people here were saying at the referendum and that’s what I’m focused on.  

DM: Thanks very much Mr Burnham, very good to talk to you.