Sophy Ridge on Sunday Interview with Iain Duncan Smith

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SOPHY RIDGE ON SUNDAY, SKY NEWS

SOPHY RIDGE: Now rumblings about the leadership are nothing new for the Prime Minister and this week the flak seems to be coming from unhappy Brexiteers. Well my next guest knows a thing or two about leading a party and the plots that can bring leaders down, Iain Duncan Smith thanks very much for being with us today, lots to talk to you about – Brexit, you have written this article about the EU acting like a playground bully but I am keen to start off with abortion after of course that historic vote in Ireland.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Yes, a [massive?] vote really wasn’t it?

SR: Yes, exactly. Do you think the pressure is going to be now on Northern Ireland to change?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I’m sure that pressure will grow, there’s no question about that because one bit of Ireland has voted for it and so Northern Ireland will have to take a decision about it. I think the issue is to what degree is it a devolved matter and I understand it to be a devolved matter and it comes under the banner, as you were saying earlier on, of health and the Irish Secretary Karen Bradley has actually said already, she says it is a devolved matter. The problem of course is that at the moment there is no devolved government but I’m sure this will have to be discussed by them as well.

SR: Do you think that … when I was speaking to Jonathan Ashworth earlier he was talking about a free vote in the House of Commons and there does seem to be more MPs calling for some kind of intervention perhaps by Westminster. Is that something that you could support, overruling Northern Ireland politicians?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well there are two elements to this: you can’t stop the House of Commons having a free vote on something if the political parties agree to express their view on it. The question is whether legally anything that we express on this is binding because it’s a devolved matter and this is complex at the moment because the government has not wanted to take back the powers from Northern Ireland, because that’s very complex then, and govern directly so they have rejected that and tried to get the two sides to meet together to make a decision about this. This might be the spur that helps get them back to the table again to get the administration back in place.

SR: How would you vote? Would you like to see abortion decriminalised in Northern Ireland?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: As I say, Northern Ireland is not my remit but I have always said that my view about this, and I say it is as a Catholic, my view has always been that whilst abortion is a very difficult and terrible thing, nonetheless I have always taken the view that the person that bears the child is the one that has the right to make the final decision, hopefully it is well informed but certainly it is her decision and that’s where I’ve stood in all of these debates but it’s always been an individual vote. I recognise some people don’t agree with me on that and others will take a different view but as I say, like the vote yesterday in Ireland, I’m sure at some point there will be some kind of debate about this in Northern Ireland.

SR: Are you comfortable with the 28 week limit in the UK?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I’ve always maintained that now with science the way it is, with medical science the way it is, there is an argument to look again at the time scales, particularly issues around children who have disabilities where I think there are no timescales and I think there is some element and some debate about that but that’s a matter the House has already looked at once, may look at again.

SR: And you would vote for that to come down?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I think there is certainly as far as I can see an argument to suggest that the timescales may need to be looked at again but I say it no more strongly than that really.

SR: Okay, well let’s move on to Brexit because it seems like there is lots of talk at the minute about lengths of transitions, about how long we will stay in the Customs Union and when I spoke to David Gauke earlier, about prisons primarily but he certainly didn’t rule out the idea of the UK staying in a Customs Union beyond 2020. Are you worried that the timeframe for the kind of Brexit you want seems to be slipping?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I would argue to the government generally that the more you talk about something might be happening, the it becomes the rule. The answer is I don’t see any reason why there should be a need for us to be staying in a Customs Union beyond 2020. Providing we get on and make the decision about the kind of customs system we want, we work at that to get it done and understand what is the minimum we require in that system to achieve a proper set of borders, then there is no reason why we can’t do it. We have the time, there is some two years to go before we even do that, including all of the implementation period and I think there’s plenty of time to get this done. The trouble is everyone starts thinking you can’t do something and before we know what’s happened, civil servants then don’t work at it and …

SR: So that has happened ….?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: I implemented in government three very major IT programmes and it’s where you direct people and the way you look at it. The key thing to look at is what is the minimum you require to be able to function your borders and you can go on developing it after that but at the moment what tends to be going on is an argument that says well perfection looks like this and you can’t achieve perfection in time to leave.

SR: So who is pushing that then, civil servants, politicians, Theresa May?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I think when politicians start talking about what an IT system looks like you should run for cover because they invariably don’t fully understand it. The second element is, what’s needed I think is for people to sit down quietly and calmly and figure out what is the minimum required to achieve our objective of leaving at the end of 2020 and work directly backwards from that, not the other way round which is how can we achieve all of this? The answer is what do we need to achieve and how do we achieve that in the timescale and I think it’s highly doable.

SR: You see it’s interesting, you are sitting here, you seem remarkably relaxed about the idea that we are going to get a deal that’s going to benefit everybody and yet if you look at how the EU have been, you write in this article that they have been acting like playground bullies and they have been taking an extraordinarily tough line on things like Galileo, the satellite system and things like the European Arrest Warrant and things like not discussing trade until we’ve sorted out the divorce. I don’t understand how you can be so relaxed about it when they are clearly playing hardball and it feels like the government is caving in on things.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Sophy, I’m not relaxed about it, I am just answering the questions you asked me about what we can do in terms of the borders, that’s in our control completely. I’m not relaxed about the behaviour of the EU, far from it. I think the EU, as I say in my piece today, is behaving as though they want to somehow bully us and the reason for that is quite clear, if you peel away all the nonsense that M. Barnier talks almost all the time as far as I can make out, what you end up with is a real fear in the EU that the UK will be a competitor, and a rather good competitor, to the EU and that means that they are worried and when they’re worried they hide it, they hide it by a lot of blather which is going on about what they want, what they demand. The UK has got to recognise that we have got some quite serious cards to play and they do not want, absolutely do not want us to walk away with no deal at this point because no deal would mean we would be completely free to set whatever arrangements we want around trade and regulations and as we know, lots of countries in the EU are very worried about that. So my answer is, we need to be pretty tough with them and stop looking like we constantly beg them to give us an answer about what they want. The answer is, put it on the table, this is what we’re going to do with the borders, we’re not going to discuss it any further, Ireland and the UK can sort the border issue out in terms of the flexibility …

SR: But we haven’t really come up with an idea in Northern Ireland that’s going to work, have we?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: The idea is very simple, you have exactly what they call the Max Fac, which is the border process which even the head of the HMRC said is wholly doable, will not lead to more …

SR: But it’s going to cost more money than …

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: No, that’s complete rubbish. I looked at this very carefully, it’s nothing like that.

SR: So who is talking rubbish?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Because he was given a calculation, a lazy calculation, all sorts of issues about do you count every single bit of goods inside a container or do you count containers as one thing? The answer is, there is a very good paper being published that says it is complete nonsense. All of that stuff needs to be binned, the reality is we are leaving, we need to get a proper customs system in place. We already have a good customs system for external goods, it works, we need to enhance that for the rest of the UK. It’s not inventing something from nothing, it’s about dealing with what we already have and making it work.

SR: Now I wonder if you can clear something up for me because I’m slightly confused about this idea that the EU can simultaneously be a kind of playground bully, bureaucratic, interested in punishing the UK and also we are going to get a great deal at the end of the day. I just want to have a quick look at something you said in the referendum campaign which is, “We are the fifth largest economy in the world, are you telling me that with a trade deficit with the rest of the EU we aren’t going to be able to arrive at a deal? I don't think so, I think they’ll do that straight away.” If they are a playground bully they are not going to do that straight away are they, and they haven’t done.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well because we haven’t forced the issue. What we need to do is make it very clear that that is the key element to all of this. The EU has done this and divided it up into these three elements so that they can try and control the whole negotiation, get what they want from the early stages …

SR: But that can’t come as a surprise to you.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: No, not in the slightest, so my point is that I believe that they will have to come to deal, if they don’t they are the ones who will be severely damaged by it, by the way …

SR: And us.

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well the EU will be severely damaged, they sell more in goods to us, dramatically more, than we do to them. We are an enormous market for their cars, for their machine tools and France’s agriculture pretty much needs us to be able to keep their economy going so the point I am simply making is that as the single largest trading partner for the EU, and that is what we are, fifth largest economy in the world, we need to put our foot down a bit more and say do you know what, we’re not even going to get to this. If we don’t get to this it’s your fault, your problem but give us a call when you want to talk about it further.

SR: Tough talk. Now the woman in charge of sorting all this out of course is Theresa May and I’m interested to know your opinion on her current position because the papers this week have been full of alleged ideas to depose her. The Sun claim it’s Michael Gove and Ruth Davidson, you’ve got Jacob Rees Mogg apparently in the Mail on Sunday, how long do you think she’s got left?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I think she’s doing a pretty good job because it’s not easy really trying to keep a government in place when she doesn’t have …

SR: That’s not quite what I asked though is it?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Well I was going to come to your answer, an overall majority, so the answer I always say is if you are thinking about it and some have talked about it, I ask what do you actually want? Because a) we haven’t got the time for a leadership election because we’ve got very busy and important things going on at the moment with regards to Europe and negotiations and settling all of that and secondly, even if you wanted it, I don't think there are more than three people together in the Conservative party who actually know what they want so my answer to this is: Theresa May is doing a good job in very difficult circumstances and it is far better for colleagues, if there are some colleagues talking to the likes of you and others about it, it’s better if they just shut up a little bit, got on and said let’s get this job done.

SR: Are you hearing people talking to you about moving Theresa May?

IAIN DUNCAN SMITH: Sophy, no one talks to me about that because my opinion is public and clear, I am not interested in discussing leadership because I just think genuinely as a governing party we owe it to the British people to get on and deliver Brexit. That’s what they voted for, we are seen as the Brexit party and if we do it right we have a very good chance then in the following two and a half years to actually get the economy sorted in a sense that by the time we run for the election we could actually win a very strong majority because of our delivery but if we spend our time rowing about leadership, my answer then is that we will get what we row about which is nothing.

SR: Okay, thank you very much, Iain Duncan Smith.