Justice Secretary Jack Straw MP

Gordon Brown is a 'very good crisis manager...' Jack Straw believes that the missing data debacle has been managed 'as well as any government could have anticipated'.

ANDREW MARR: ... but as a grey beard, clean shaven grey beard I should point out.

JACK STRAW: Thank you very much. I regard this as an outrage.

I've only worn a beard for two days and I abandoned it.

As clean-shaven as you are.

ANDREW MARR: All right.

JACK STRAW: Almost as young as well Andrew.

ANDREW MARR: That's very kind. Let's start, since we just finished with David Davis talking about the twenty eight days thing, there's almost sort of nobody it seems to be left in authority in terms of justice system and ex senior attorney generals and so on who actually supports twenty eight days now.

JACK STRAW: Well look, Jacqui Smith is involved in discussions with the other parties almost as we speak. She's giving it very, very careful consideration. Nobody in the government wishes to see an extension of twenty eight days, even under the most tight conditions unless there is a case for this.

And Jacqui understands that. But she has got the responsibility, actually greater than I had, when I was Home Secretary because of the scale of the terrorist threat, of judging how we keep this country safe. And it, she's not making the proposals on the basis of no evidence. She's doing it not least with proposals and evidence from the head of the security service and from senior police officers. But no decisions have yet been made.

And I'm absolutely clear that any proposal that she brings forward will be very proportionate and designed to cope with circumstances which it's all very well David Davis saying well no one's been detained longer than twenty eight days up to now, but I do recall that a few months before the seventh of July, not David, but some other people as it were, within the British establishment were suggesting that the idea of any major outrage was poppycock. Well tragically it turned out not to be the case. We have got ..

ANDREW MARR: So you're looking ahead as well as backwards. But ..

JACK STRAW: Yes, of course.

ANDREW MARR: .. can I just be clear?

JACK STRAW: Yes.

ANDREW MARR: Can I just be clear ..

JACK STRAW: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: It is possible that the government will come forward and say okay we've listened, we've learnt. We're not going to go ahead beyond twenty eight days?

JACK STRAW: Well I'm not going to go into that. What the, the situation is that Jacqui is giving this active consideration. She'll obviously discuss it with senior colleagues and then with the Cabinet before she makes a proposal. But, so we're not doing this as, as it were ..

ANDREW MARR: So you're not determined to press ahead to fifty six or ..

JACK STRAW: Well we're not doing this for macho, macho reasons. We're doing it because of the scale of the threat as we anticipate it. And you've heard Jonathan Evans, the head of the Security Service recently giving a speech based entirely on the facts as the Security, Service knows this, about the scale of the potential terrorist threat.

Now we've been lucky in this country, although we made our luck, because of the expertise of our police and intelligence services and security services, in avoiding a number of even worse disasters and atrocities than we've actually witnessed.

But we have to ensure that the police and security agencies have the powers that they need, but powers that are consistent with a free society.

ANDREW MARR: But Jonathan Evans of course was one of those who doesn't, you know would not go ahead and say we need more than twenty eight days ...

JACK STRAW: Well look, as I say that is currently being considered and let's leave it there if that's all right.

ANDREW MARR: Right. All right. Let's, let's turn to the government's position more generally.

JACK STRAW: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: You've worked with Gordon Brown for a long time. Is he somebody who is capable of widening his group of advisors, loosening that central control?

He is seen by all these people writing in the newspapers as a bit of a control freak who is now unable to, to kind of get a grip on the, the pretty appalling two weeks you've had.

JACK STRAW: Well I don't accept that description. There has, ... Cabinet government actually worked better than people suggested under Tony Blair.

But there has been a deepening of Cabinet government and particularly the Cabinet committees have worked in my view much better, without any question.

And Gordon far from trying to be a control freak has actually delegated much more than Tony Blair did to Cabinet committees and has been willing simply to go along with those decisions.

ANDREW MARR: So ..

JACK STRAW: And - sorry, go on.

ANDREW MARR: So analyse for us quite what's gone wrong over the last few weeks, because there have been a series of incidents which have rapidly become a sort of narrative or a story about Gordon Brown and about the government.

JACK STRAW: Well what goes wrong in government is you have to cope, as MacMillan famously said "... with events dear boy, events". And let it however be put on the record that most of the newspapers were very praiseworthy of Gordon Brown and his Cabinet as being a Cabinet of great competence in Gordon's handling and say Jacqui Smith's handling of the terrorist outrage that took place almost immediately after he'd become prime minister. Then foot and mouth. Then the floods.

Further problems on terrorism. And there has been one set of crises which are quite, to use the phrase, exogenous, external to the government which have befallen us.

And if you're in government you have to take responsibility. And Gordon and ministerial colleagues have done this. And then the issue is how do you best manage these crises. Now Gordon is a very good crisis manager. Northern Rock was something which plainly was not anticipated any more than the HMRC debacle. And my own judgment is that - and being slightly detached from this cos I'm not directly involved in the day to day management of these issues - is that they have been managed as well as any government could have anticipated.

Let me just say this on Northern Rock. Yeah of course if government is faced with this kind of crisis - and I understand the intense public anxiety in respect of both - the Opposition are going to have some sport. But I notice that David Davis was very, very quiet when you put to him well the Conservatives actually proposing to cut a lot of Civil Service jobs. So, so the resources available for dealing with these matters would be far fewer than under the present government.

ANDREW MARR: And yet, when we look at something like Northern Rock, where the problem clearly occurred was in the so called tripartite agreement between the Treasury and the FSA and the Bank of England, something set up by this government. That's why people have been ..

JACK STRAW: Well ..

ANDREW MARR: .. pointing the finger. Is ..

JACK STRAW: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: .. you know it's been systems which this government set up which have failed.

JACK STRAW: I don't, I mean look, I, let us wait to see the result of the inquiries but I, but, I mean the truth was that the business model for Northern Rock was an extreme one. I think it remains a matter of entire conjecture whether any other arrangement, other than a tripartite one would have been better.

And what the tripartite arrangement has done, particularly the independence of the Bank of England, has been one of the major reasons why we've had such a sustained period of stable but excellent record growth. Can I just say, say this if I may Andrew. Yes we've got to manage these crises for sure. And I think we are managing them. And the striking thing about the polls as they go this rollercoaster. But Gordon Brown has also got this very clear forward agenda.

We have on the economy, we have on climate change where we are world beaters in terms of the legislation we're bringing forward. Education, health, dramatic changes which are more noticeable on the ground in our constituencies perhaps than in the newspapers. Housing where Gordon has accepted there's a real problem about affordable housing and we're now striking out on that.

And even on crime where of course it's a terrible issue for anybody who suffers a crime and that's a hundred per cent suffering. But crime levels have come down and they've come down very considerably. And it's a better record than any previous administration post war.

ANDREW MARR: And yet looking at the polls ..

JACK STRAW: Yeah.

ANDREW MARR: .. and behind for the first time since Gordon Brown, Gordon Brown's own rating is behind for the first time since he became prime minister, and all of that, apart from laying your hands on fifteen million people's records in the near future, what does the government now need to do?

JACK STRAW: Well we have to carry on managing this issue. And look the HMRC thing was a debacle. And Alistair Darling has been completely up front, went to Parliament ensure that none of this leaked in advance which was often the charge ..

ANDREW MARR: He said the banks told him that he must, he must do that and the banks clearing, the clearing banks group say they didn't.

JACK STRAW: Well I don't want to go into who said what to whom. I, I know Alistair. I've known him for years and years and years. He's a very straightforward man. He was determined to ensure that it was parliament who first heard about this. There is now an enquiry by the head of Price Waterhouse Cooper. There's another enquiry by the Treasury ...

ANDREW MARR: So if he, if he, if he says the banks insisted on this delay that's what you believe?

JACK STRAW: Well, well I certainly believe Alistair Darling. I'm not in any doubt about that at all. And he's a man of honesty as well. What have we got to do? We've got to keep our nerve. Look I've been here before. I remember in the early nineteen ninety nine in my own case, I'd been written up as a man who could virtually walk on water, fantastic Home Secretary.

And then within two weeks there were a series of disaster. The Lawrence Report leaked, the annex disclosed details of victims. No one could get a passport. And then the same journalists who were writing up "How could this man even make a cup of tea" who was writing two weeks before that he's okay. Or the petrol crisis. Six months before ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JACK STRAW: .. a general election we've had ..

ANDREW MARR: We've had these ..

JACK STRAW: Of course.

ANDREW MARR: .. so you, you don't think this is a moment of real sea change?

JACK STRAW: No I don't. And the idea ..

ANDREW MARR: ...

JACK STRAW: .. of Ken Clarke - a great guy but prone to exaggeration is our Ken, the idea that this is an equivalent to Black Wednesday is utter nonsense because the difference here is this.

Governments of all persuasions have always had to manage crises and take responsibilities for them. What happened on Black Wednesday was something completely different.

ANDREW MARR: It was ...

JACK STRAW: This was personal decisions ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JACK STRAW: .. made personally by senior ministers, by John Major, by Norman Lamont, by Ken Clarke which caused that. And then of course the other thing was that the Conservative Party was just profoundly divided and lost its majority. Nothing like that. And we're two and a half years away from a general election too.

ANDREW MARR: Your own portfolio, prisons, ten thousand people we read are now out of prison early because of the overcrowding. You've got to build some more prisons pretty fast don't you?

JACK STRAW: Yes. The ten thousand - let me just reassure the public. This is short term prisoners being released eighteen days earlier than they otherwise would have done.

And I've made sure that the facts and figures about this are routinely made available each month as they will be at the end of this month. We are, we are, have a massive building programme at the moment. Nine and a half thousand additional places. We're ..

ANDREW MARR: ...

JACK STRAW: .. looking at this issue of new for old. That was announced by Charlie Faulkner back in May of this year. There's a review by Lord Carter of Coles which is examining the matter in detail. And I'll tell Parliament first about his report if you don't mind not, rather than your programme ...

ANDREW MARR: Sure but I'm, I mean a lot of people will be saying you know we're now in the situation where judges can't put people into prison who they think should be in prison for as long as they think should be there because there simply isn't the space.

JACK STRAW: Well that's not the case. And we are determined to ensure there is sufficient space for ..

ANDREW MARR: ... because ..

JACK STRAW: .. for all, all serious offenders. We've increased the prison population twice as fast as our predecessors. Twenty thousand places in the last ten years compared with twenty thousand over twenty years. We've got another nine and a half thousand places in hand in the short term.

ANDREW MARR: So when Lord Wolfe's ..

JACK STRAW: Lord Carter may very well propose an additional tranche of places and if that is the proposition I'll make announcements about that to Parliament in due course.

We're also looking at this idea of providing new prisons outside, on brown field sites, so that we can close and sell off some of the inefficient inner urban prisons. And that's been a matter of consideration by Lord Carter. And we are determined ..

ANDREW MARR: Yeah.

JACK STRAW: .. to bring forward prison places to cope with the demand.

ANDREW MARR: And finally ID cards. Must be dead in the water now.

JACK STRAW: I don't accept that for a second. And I thought David Davis who I, I like was profoundly unconvincing on this.

Look, the data that will be held on computers in respect of ID cards is the data that is already held by everybody for everybody in respect of your passport, with the addition of biometric data, fingerprints for example or irises which ensures better the security of this data. And David Davis has got no answer to the fact that however good your border controls we now live in a globalised society, in a very open society with hundreds of thousands of people going backwards and forwards each year.

If we want to ensure that migrants in this country, whether they entered legally or illegally, are properly controlled, that the only people to get access to benefits for example are those entitled to them. And that we know who people are and can also deal with the terrorist threat better, then my judgment is - and it wasn't, I was in a different ..

JACK STRAW: .. position fifteen years ago. My judgment is that we've got to have ID cards.

ANDREW MARR: All right. Well that's an argument I think will go on for a while. For the moment thank you very much indeed for joining us.

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.

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