Murnaghan Interview with Yvette Cooper, Labour Leadership candidate, 19.07.15

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO MURNAGHAN, SKY NEWS

DERMOT MURNAGHAN: Now then, the Labour party has been warned it might never win back the votes it lost to the Conservatives at the last election, that’s from a new report published in the Observer newspaper today into what went wrong in the May election.  The party has faced criticism from all sides of course, accused of moving too far to the left and not far enough, but as the dust settles is it any closer to deciding what the Labour party of the future should look like?  I am joined now by one of the leading leadership candidates, she’s in Camden in North London and a very good morning to you, Ms Cooper.  Well one way you don’t win back those Labour voters who deserted you for the Conservatives is giving Jeremy Corbyn such a prominent profile in this campaign.  I’m reading in the papers today that some of the MPs who backed him are now regretting their decision.  

YVETTE COOPER: Well I don't think that the majority of Labour party members want to just go back to the 1980s, I don't think the majority of people will support some of the things that Jeremy Corbyn has put forward and I think we are going to have a good debate at the hustings that we’ve got this morning but the really important thing for Labour is that we’ve got to win, we’ve got to get back into government if we are end child poverty in a generation, if we’re to get the new science and high-tech jobs of the future that we want our young people to be part of, if we are to make sure that we can have childcare and support families for the future.  So many of the things that we in the Labour party want to do but we will only be able to deliver them if we win back and get back into government, otherwise we let people down.

DM: That’s my point though, hasn’t Jeremy Corbyn already done quite a lot of damage?  There we have it written down about the number of Labour voters or potential Labour voters who decided to opt for the Conservatives, you want to win them back of course and yet Jeremy Corbyn is backed – and it doesn’t matter what the end votes are – Jeremy Corbyn is backed right now by more constituency Labour parties than you.

YVETTE COOPER: Well yes, I think the ballots have not yet gone out.  I think in the end this is not what the majority of people right across the Labour party want because in the end it is not enough to be angry at the world, we’ve got to change the world and that is responsibility on the Labour party.  All of the people that we need to stand up to, stand up for and stand up against the things that this Conservative government are doing that are causing so many problems to working families across the country, we can’t change that unless we get elected.  That’s why I think in the end the Labour party will want to choose someone who can be an alternative Labour Prime Minister from the start, that’s what in the end I think that people will be looking for.  

DM: But you sound a bit like Chuka Umunna in his interview on Newsnight the other night when you said there there’s no point being angry.  He said on Newsnight, you must have heard it, about being petulant like an indulged child.  Do you go along with that in terms of the debate at the moment?

YVETTE COOPER: I think the hustings debates that we’re having are very good, we’ve got another one very shortly this morning and we’re having this debate with the party across the country but I do think in the end when it comes down to casting that vote, people will be looking for what it is that we need to do to stand up for Labour values that are more important than ever at a time when there is rising insecurity, at a time when people are worried about the future, we have got to have a Labour optimistic vision of the future but it has got to be credible as well, it’s got to be one that we can deliver.  Yes, framed around our value but also practical, deliverable and realistic about the world and the concerns that people have and that’s why I think in the end most people don’t want to turn the clock back, they don’t want to go back to the 1980s, they don’t to go back to a time when we had lots of protest marches and we protested and we marched but we didn’t actually change anything.  In the Labour party our job is to try and change things for people.  

DM: But in that search for credibility people are going to judge you on your specific actions and you have got one looming large in terms of the mess that Labour has got into in its response to the welfare changes in the budget.  You’ve got a vote tomorrow and you have now decided you are not going to take a view, you are going to abstain just to keep it all hunky-dory, to stop people fighting within the party about which bits of it you oppose. Shouldn’t you take a view?

YVETTE COOPER: Well Harriet Harman has said that we will be opposing the Bill through our alternative amendment setting down an alternative Labour approach.  I think that’s the right approach because I think there’s a lot in this Bill which really is very objectionable and will hit working families hard and will mean that parents are actually going to be worse off in work.  That is not the right way to support families, to make sure that they are better off in work and to make sure that you actually support the economy for the future as well.  That’s why I think it is the right thing to oppose the measures in this Bill but also to set out what a Labour alternative would be.  I’ve called for a Welfare Reform Commission, a Labour one based on how you support work for the future, how you make sure that people are better off in work and you also lift children out of poverty.  I just think it is wrong that in the 21st century you have nearly five million children living in absolute poverty and parents having to go to food banks to put a hot meal on the table.  We should be helping more of those parents not just get back into work but get into higher paid work, support the jobs of the future and it’s why I am also talking about us investing with businesses, working with business rather than pushing business away, to support the high tech science jobs of the future because we can get even more high tech manufacturing jobs if we support the future.  

DM: Specifically Ms Cooper, the two child policy, your colleague Steven Kinnock said that it reminded him of Nazi eugenics.  You might not use that phrase but specifically you oppose that, the two child policy on the removal of tax credits?

YVETTE COOPER: My concern about that is that it means a lot of families with three children for example will end up being worse off in work.  I don't think that is the right approach because you want families who have got three kids to also have an incentive for parents to be working and supporting their families.  Also I think they have got some really serious problems with the way that they have drawn this up, that they want for example somebody who can still get the child tax credit for a third child if you’ve been raped.  What does that mean, that a rape victim is going to have to go and take the evidence to the DWP in order to claim tax credits?  Or going to have to talk about their third child that they are bringing up being as a result of rape?  I think that puts rape victims in an extremely difficult situation so that’s why I think the government’s approach is simply not thought through and that’s why I think it is the wrong approach and that we should have an approach which supports work.  Let’s help parents get on in work and support their families as well, let’s make sure they have got the childcare so that they can work, at the moment they don’t.  So all this government talk and George Osborne’s talk about supporting welfare reform and supporting working people, he’s doing the opposite. Working parents are being really hard hit and working mums being hardest hit of all.  

DM: How would you like to see Labour vote if Mr Cameron puts an attack on Syria or attacks on Syria before parliament?  

YVETTE COOPER: Well we need to see the Prime Minister’s proposals and what the military objectives are.  Clearly there is already British engagement in military action in Iraq because where we are involved in the air strikes but there of course we are there at the request of a democratically elected Iraqi government and it is clear who the ground troops are who are fighting ISIL.  ISIL is a barbaric movement and we do need to do everything we can to defeat them and this is a generational challenge to us.  The problem with Syria of course is that the objectives are simply not clear, the government has never set out what the clear military objectives would be, what the strategy would be because in Syria you have President Assad who is in power and it is not clear who the ground troops are on the ground that David Cameron wants us to be supporting so I think whenever you have a situation where British troops or British armed forces are to be put in harm’s way, you have to take very, very seriously any of the proposals, you have to scrutinise them very carefully and act with caution.  We have not yet had any proposals from the Prime Minister and I think we should act with caution and scrutinise the proposals he puts forward.

DM: Sorry to hurry you, just a last quick thought on the MPs pay rise, you’re going to donate yours to charity.  If you were leader would you make all Labour MPs do that?  

YVETTE COOPER: Sorry, it was really windy then, the wind’s just picked up Dermot, can you say that again?  

DM: I’m sorry, we’re out of time.  I’m terribly sorry we’ll have to discuss it at another point.  Yvette Cooper, thank you very much indeed.