Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London

ANDREW MARR: ... so when I spoke to the Mayor earlier I asked him why was he so determined to stand by Sir Ian.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: I've worked with him for seven years first as Deputy, then as Commissioner. He has driven through changes which have transformed policing.

Twenty years ago London's ethnic minorities and the police were at loggerheads; we now have a really good working relationship.

Crime was down 6% last year, it looks like another 6% this year - that's four years actually of falling crime.

And we have got on violent crime, on murder, on gun crime, on knife crime, all these figures coming down.

And in New York when that happened the world was told about it by the media; here it barely gets mentioned, and it's all doom and gloom.

And I think as well, because of the changes he's made, undoubtedly Sir Ian has offended a lot of the more traditional old-style policing supporters, and it doesn't play well with the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

ANDREW MARR: And yet you look at the report on the De Menezes shooting, which has hung like a cloud over him this issue now for two years, and it's pretty damning, and lots of specific failures itemised.

And this is not right wing newspapers, this is the judgement of independent people, juries, now backed by Labour MPs as well as people like Liberty - it's not exactly a right wing clique - all saying these failures, and particularly the failure to allow the inquiry to go ahead at the first stage, adds up to a pretty damning record.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Well I don't think so. The Judge was quite clear, there wasn't a systemic failure but a series of mistakes and error, which, bearing in mind they were staking out five separate locations where they thought a terrorist might be based, and not all, only a small minority of our armed police have been trained to deal with suicide bombers, and they were terribly stretched.

Now that won't be a problem again, we've put those changes in place. And I mean there's been a long tradition of left wing campaigns when the police have killed an innocent person, and all my political life this has happened, as it does, and..

ANDREW MARR: That's why a lot of people find your position surprising now I suppose.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Well I mean I think that in the past you had an awful lot of people killed in quite dubious circumstances, an awful lot of people tended to die in police custody. I've watched those figures coming down. If we'd had radios that worked underground, there's a good chance Jean-Charles de Menezes would be alive.

Well that's a decision taken fifteen years ago to buy cheap and ineffective radios. If only by some chance an individual hadn't had to go to relieve himself as de Menezes came out he might have been alive. Those aren't the fault of a Commissioner, and most certainly one who'd only been in office for five months. And I've watched him put in place now the corrections, so that's unlikely to happen again. We can't promise it won't.

ANDREW MARR: You want him to stay. He's still got to face the Metropolitan Police Authority later this month. Do you think he's going to be able to stay?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Well that's why we have the charade of the London Assembly passing their vote of no confidence this week, because they know that the Metropolitan Police Authority isn't going to do that. There's a number of party nominees on there, but the balance of power is held by independents who represent magistrates, people with a long-term interest in policing, London's ethnic communities, and they won't play party politics with this. And so this week's gesture was because they know they're not going to win. But I know the independents on that board, their main concern is not to follow a party line but to actually improve London's policing - they've worked with Sir Ian - and I would be very surprised if any of them came out against him.

ANDREW MARR: You mentioned the shoot to kill policy. Nobody likes the shoot to kill policy, but do you think the threat that London, and the rest of the UK but in particular London perhaps, faces is so grave that that's something that should be supported, it's, as you say there may be mistakes in the future but we have to live with that?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: I mean if Jean Charles de Menezes had been a suicide bomber and in that movement he made that persuaded the police he was he had been a suicide bomber and he'd done that, everyone on that train would be dead. And that's a terrible trade-off to have to make. And we still have people who will try and take lives in London, we get three or four more amateurish attempts a year, but we also know as long as we have troops in Iraq or Afghanistan we will remain a prime target for Al Qaeda.

ANDREW MARR: Do you think that greater controls at airports and ports, ID cards and so on, are necessary in the fight against terrorism?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Well I've always been in favour of ID cards, not so much because I think they'll stop terrorism because Al Qaeda will get perfect replicas, because vast millions of dollars have been poured into that organisation, but I think they'll just be very good at helping deal with low level crime and allowing people to identify who they are.

I'm very much more sceptical about extending the length of time people can be detained without trial. I think that is such a serious issue and we have to be extremely cautious. We haven't needed to extend it, I mean we haven't had a case yet that went beyond the legal limits.

ANDREW MARR: And what about the other big row there's been over the road at Westminster, immigration - not talking about the people who are here now but when you look at some of the forward forecasts of the number of people who may be living here.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Population fluctuates. We've had a huge influx of people because of the expansion of the EU and I think the Government made a mistake in underestimating that. Had they known it was going to be so large they might have tried to phase it, stagger it.

ANDREW MARR: A bit like the French and Germans did ���.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: ���. but they got the calculation wrong. I mean if you take twenty-five British people in this city, fifteen were born abroad, they came here, they created their own economic success, they created jobs. I mean half a million people in this city work for foreign firms. I mean if we start erecting walls that keep out talented people that we need, we will suffer, and we've got to get that balance right.

ANDREW MARR: Are you still a leftie? In this particular context this is a city of huge, huge inequalities, the bonus culture and some of the poorest people in Britain co-existing side by side. Does that worry you and do you think something needs to be done about it?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: I do. I mean this is not the world I would have created, it's the world I have to live in. My job is to try and make sure Londoners get the best chance to exploit the opportunities coming. The biggest weakness in my power is I have no power to re-distribute wealth from the richest Londoners - who are fabulously rich, almost obscenely rich - to the poorest Londoners, and I would really like that, but I am not anticipating Government giving me that.

I do think the inequalities of wealth have become quite unacceptable, they're twice what they were a generation ago, and I suspect we're begin� I mean with all the fiascos now coming out of the banking system, where people paid these vast sums have screwed up on a scale which if it was the dustman or the shop worker they'd be out of a job, and I think there may start to be some correction of this. I think that the tide may turn in America and here.

ANDREW MARR: How are you getting on Gordon Brown these days?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: It's interesting because I've just started now, as I did with Tony Blair, regular meetings, and it's a very different style. With Tony it was I think more social, more gossipy, much more discussion about party politics, and I came away from my first meeting with Gordon and I felt it wasn't as much fun but as my Chief of Staff said, we got a lot more done. And oddly enough there was actually no discussion of party politics, whereas I mean when you were with Tony he was fascinated by all of this.

ANDREW MARR: What about your own election coming up? Boris Johnson you've said is a more formidable opponent that most of the ones that you've been up against thus far. From your point of view what are the big issues going to be, and the big differences?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Well I mean there are, I mean no-one's going to be able to say that there isn't a choice. I think the environment is now the most crucial issue, I mean we've seen the surge tide, the worst for fifty years, we've seen catastrophic flooding, hotter and hotter weather in the summers - we're getting more violent weather. So I think the issue of the environment and climate change will be pretty central. And now this big issue has come up, basically because of the inequalities of what we talked about earlier, affordable housing.

I am absolutely insistent now that no developer should build an estate in which at least fifty per cent of housing is not affordable by ordinary Londoners, and that will mean disagreements with some councils, like Wandsworth and Redbridge, that don 't want that, and I suspect Boris will be on their side. So these are going to be really serious issues. And simply because he is most probably the best known Tory politician after Mrs Thatcher, he's most probably the most popular, maybe the only popular Tory politician; he will be a very formidable candidate. A lot of people write him off - I don't.

ANDREW MARR: One final issue which I suspect will come up as well on the campaign trail is the question of stop and search, going back to policing, where we started. The Head of the Black Police Officers Organisation said actually we need more stop and search because black people are more often the victims of crime than white people.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: I mean stop and search is a vital part of a good police officer's skills, and it's a skill they acquire with time. I mean when a young copper starts out they're going to make a lot of mistakes.

Ten years down the road they've worked out how people walk, suspicious behaviour, and it really becomes a really valuable tool. If you think back to the terrible riots in Brixton, in Tottenham, where there's very aggressive policing, almost an idea of keep them in their place, and when the explosion comes it's terrifying and you've had an innocent police officer hacked to death. The police have learnt from that, they are much more respectful.

There are still ones that go over the top or make mistakes, but Londoners have seen the change, I've seen the change. I used to be one of the leading critics of London's police, and they deserved it - that was a generation ago. And now I watched first Peter Imbert as Commissioner, then John Stephens, now Ian Blair, transform that situation, and I have great respect for what they've done.

ANDREW MARR: So given that the Ian Blair issue is still very much alive, the Metropolitan Police Authority hasn't met yet, what's your message to all those critics who still think he should go?

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Well I've talked to the Home Secretary about it, I've talked regularly through this period with Ian Blair - we are all three determined we're not going to have a media campaign drive a Commissioner from office.

And other senior police officers around the country have been saying to Ian Blair you have to stay in there, because if you go the job will be worthless to your successor, they'll spend their entire term worrying if the press are going to get upset. We've never had that before and we can't allow it.

A Commissioner of Police must be focused on policing London, not worrying about what politicians are saying or the media. He is legally independent and we want to preserve that.

ANDREW MARR: Ken Livingstone, thenk you very much.

KEN LIVINGSTONE: Thank you.

INTERVIEW ENDS

Please note "The Andrew Marr Show" must be credited if any part of this transcript is used.

NB: This transcript was typed from a recording and not copied from an original script.

Because of the possibility of mis-hearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, the BBC cannot vouch for its accuracy

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