Sunday with Niall Paterson Interview with Peter Dowd Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury

ANY QUOTES USED MUST BE ATTRIBUTED TO SUNDAY WITH NIALL PATERSON, SKY NEWS

NEIL PATTERSON: On Tuesday the Chancellor will deliver his Spring Statement with Labour calling on the government to put money into local authorities to pay for things including social care. Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury is Peter Dowd and he joins me now, a very good morning to you.

PETER DOWD: Morning.

NP: So what exactly do you want to see from the Chancellor this week? He’s got a bit of wriggle room doesn’t he?

PETER DOWD: He does have some wriggle room but the bottom line for us is we’ve got terrible stresses in social care, adult social care, disabled social care and increasingly stressors in children’s care. There are now about 75,000 children in care and that’s enough to fill Wembley Stadium so we need action in those areas and amongst all the rest of them – roads appearing to crumble, education services are under pressure, schools are under pressure. In fact the whole of the public realm, certainly in relation to local government, is under terrible strain.

NP: Be very specific then, what do you want the government to do then?

PETER DOWD: Well what we’ve said to the government, we want them to put an injection into children’s social care of around about a couple of billion pounds and in relation to adult social care, to get that moving, to just take the stresses and strains off them. They have got to fill in the hole that they’ve local government in with £5.6 billion worth of cuts over the past few years so there needs to be almost an emergency injection into local government to plug some of those holes.

NP: You mention social care and that is a topic that we’ve featured on this show a number of times, it is clear there are stresses and strains there but the wriggle room of which I talked about is only due to the fact that the government is now running a surplus on day to day spending. I mean you must welcome that then.

PETER DOWD: Well of course you welcome anything that makes the public finances better but let’s not get carried away, we have still got virtually the lowest growth of any of competitors, our productivity levels are 35% worse than the Germans, the whole of the economy is not doing well and whilst the economy is not doing well you can’t pay down the debt, you can’t reduce the deficit as much as you’d like and you can’t invest into public services, that’s what we’ve got to tackle.

NP: Still there are those cynics perhaps who would suggest that there isn’t a problem that exists in British politics for which the Labour party answer is not throw more money at it. I mean are there problems when it comes to local authority funding, we’re talking about social care, education, a number of areas, does it simply boil down to the fact that they are not getting enough?

PETER DOWD: Well it boils down to the fact that the government over the past few years chose to make cuts into the public realm rather than deal with it in a different way which is investment in the economy, so that money that they’ve taken out of particular services does nothing for the economy overall. So you can’t look at it just in the isolation of looking at local government expenditure or expenditure in the public realm, you’ve got to look at it as part of an investment programme into the economy, that’s the key. So Labour will invest in the economy, that’s the key to this, that’s the key to get sustainable economic growth, investment in the economy.

NP: I wonder if we can turn to those horrific events in Salisbury and what do you feel that the government’s response should be? We just had Sam Gyimah on a moment ago saying that we have to wait and see but what should the government’s response be given it does look once again that this is another incident of state sponsored assassination on our soil?

PETER DOWD: Well I think first of all we do have to wait for the inquiry, we’ve got hundreds of officers and security services working on this, the police, we’ve got to make sure that that job is done – which it will be done – professionally and expertly and wait for the outcome of that one but I think this sets the mood music that the government has been operating in in relation to, for example, the sanctions on anti-money laundering. My colleague Anneliese Dodds moved an amendment in relation to the Magnitsky clause, that is whereby you can take sanctions against for example oligarchs, Russian oligarchs, in relation to anti-money laundering crime and the government rejected that. So I think that’s the context that the government have been operating within, is that they just seem to be ignoring these issues and of course, the fact that they’ve had money from some of these oligarchs in the past as well, so it’s the mood music as well that’s got to be tackled.

NP: But given that links like an attempted assassination, given the Alexander Litvinenko case, the public inquiry in 2016 that not only concluded that a former Russian spy was responsible but it had been given the nod by Vladimir Putin, given that shouldn’t we just as a matter of course accept that Russia is one of a handful that could be responsible for this and take action appropriately? I mentioned in my interview with Sam Gyimah, the Russian Embassy sending out sarcastic tweets about incidents which have seen people, a number of people hospitalised and coming very, very close to death.

PETER DOWD: I think what we’ve got to do is find out this issue about proportionate action, I think you can take proportionate action but it has got to be in the context of the extent of what the Russians have been alleged to have been doing and get the full picture and then, and then rather than taking action that you either up or reduce in due course, you actually take the action once you know all the facts, that’s the best position to be in. So you could take action now, I heard you talk about asking for the Russian Ambassador to be withdrawn, you can do all sorts of things but the question as to whether that is appropriate, given what would come out of the investigation is a different kettle of fish.

NP: Okay, but was it then appropriate for you to appear on Russia Today this week, given the fact that as we both accept there are a handful of state actors that could have been responsible for this and frankly Russia is at the top of that list?

PETER DOWD: Yes, I appeared on Russia Today the week before last, I think it was put on the actual television at the beginning of the week and I’ve appeared on Russia Today on a number of occasions like I would appear on many programmes and …

NP: Do you accept a fee from them? Because we don’t pay politicians.

PETER DOWD: No, no, I’m glad not, no, no.

NP: But you don’t see anything wrong with appearing.

PETER DOWD: No, what I’ve said is in the light of the fact of these events we will sort of review that but I’ve got to say that I would appear, and I do appear on programmes, anybody who asks me to appear on a programme I make that decision.

NP: But should you though, this is the thing? John McDonnell was speaking earlier elsewhere and suggests it’s because of the quality of the journalism and the complaints that have been made about RT’s journalism have been made going back further even than you appearing on RT the week before last.

PETER DOWD: Yes, I mean I think in the light of events this week of course we will undertake a review of what we do in regards to this, as you will always do in these sort of circumstances but I have to emphasise that what I try to do is come onto television programmes like this and answer the questions that are put to me. It’s not for me to ask the questions, it’s for other people to ask the questions and if I can answer them to the best of my ability, I will do so.

NP: Indeed and as we know, your party leader is very, very keen on speaking to both sides of every argument. Just in terms of the structure of the Labour party at the moment, what’s your view of the role that the party membership should make in formulating policy?

PETER DOWD: Well we have national policy forums which they can participate in and there are lots of ways in our party that people feed in to the debate. For example about four weeks ago we had a debate in my constituency about the whole question of Brexit and I listened to those views, I take those views back to Westminster. We have a range of informal and formal mechanisms for developing policy.

NP: If it was correct for you to have a debate about Brexit in your constituency, why wasn’t it correct for the Scottish Labour Party to have a debate on membership of the single market?

PETER DOWD: Well I suspect that these debates are all over the place, we have…

NP: Not at the Scottish Labour Conference this week where motions were tabled to be debated around single market membership and they were removed.

PETER DOWD: Well I suspect they were part of the whole of the Policy Commission Process where they would be taken in the International Affairs Section. The point I was trying to make is the party debates these things in a whole range of fora, on an individual level I speak to members of my constituency party all the time on this so it is a plural three dimensional approach to debates on a whole range of subjects.

NP: It is fair to ask who are the strongest pieces on that three dimensional chess board that you mentioned a second ago. I mean the membership have a role to play, 87% according to a poll out at the beginning of the year, 87% of Labour members believe in continued membership of the single market after we leave the European Union. Where is their voice being heard in all of this?

PETER DOWD: Of course their voice is being heard but it is ever the way, it’s in the context of that we did have a referendum and that is important as well so the public have also spoken on this particular issue. The public have said they want to leave the European Union and we’ve got to try and balance all those competing views in policy terms.

NP: But does it not strike you that you want to hear the voice of the party, the rank and file, the one member one vote, you want to hear their voice up until the point in which what they say doesn’t chime with what the leadership say? That doesn’t seem particularly democratic.

PETER DOWD: Well democracy isn’t about just having a debate in a particular forum at a particular time, democracy is about, as I said, multi-dimensional, it’s about a whole range of issues, a whole range of points and discussions that you have to have and you then try to reach a consensus on that but this is particularly in the context of the fact that we did have a referendum, that is the elephant in the room that we can’t ignore.

NP: The problems with the membership and who’s running the party, be it the unions, be it Momentum, it seems most obvious around the debate about who should be the next General Secretary after Ian McNichol. Now the unions are clearly pushing Unite’s Jennie Formby, Jon Lansman seems to be the candidate of the membership, shouldn’t a vote as senior as the General Secretary be decided by a vote by the membership, one member one vote? That’s what they’re calling for.

PETER DOWD: Well the current arrangements, they might have always been the arrangements, is the NEC appoint the General Secretary, it’s always been the case. Now if the rules need to be changed in due course, that’s a matter for the party to have those debates at the conference and make a decision accordingly but at the end of the day, the current position is the NEC will make those decisions having interviewed the people concerned, whoever throw their hat into the ring.

NP: But who should take precedence in a debate over policy, should it be the unions or should it be the members?

PETER DOWD: Well it’s a balance, the Labour party has always had that balance between the members and the trade unions and affiliated organisations, the Socialist organisations, the Co-operative party, the Socialist Health Group. I mean the party has got a whole range of organisations that feed into it and you then reach a consensus, that’s what the Labour party is about.

NP: Yes, but it’s getting farcical now isn’t it? You’ve got Christine Shawcross who has been placed in charge of disputes with the assistance, frankly, of Unite votes, who is now calling for the unions to be disaffiliated.

PETER DOWD: Well that’s her particular view but the Labour party was set up by the trade unions a hundred years ago and I think that view that she has, she is most probably in a club of one in regards to that one and I hope she stays in that club of one in regards to that because nobody is wanting the trade unions to disaffiliate whatsoever.

NP: Peter Dowd, lovely to have you here, thanks for joining us.

PETER DOWD: Thank you.