PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED Andrew Marr interviewed Chief Executive of the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party Harriet Harman on June 5th 2011. ANDREW MARR: Labour's Deputy Leader Harriet Harman has recently returned from Egypt where an impressive feature of the uprising was the involvement of so many women, especially younger women, but will women's rights be respected as the country's new political order emerges? Harriet Harman, welcome. HARRIET HARMAN: Thank you. Can I just mention, speaking on behalf of the guerrillas of Labour. We're in favour of a wholly elected House of Lords, but … ANDREW MARR: I'm not sure that was 'eu' or 'o' in guerrilla, but at any rate. HARRIET HARMAN: I think it was an 'o', I fear. ANDREW MARR: An 'o', right. Let me ask about Egypt because you've just come back from there. Lots and lots of women in Tahrir Square and we saw all of those great images. But actually in terms of the people who are now running the country and are writing the new constitution, how many women are involved? HARRIET HARMAN: Well unfortunately on the constitutional committee, there are no women at all, despite the fact that in the previous regime there were women on the constitutional court. And I think that there's you know absolutely a sense of optimism and hope for the future around the revolution and you know great optimism, but there is a real concern that women's social, economic and political rights will be set back. And I think that the government, our government has got a real role to play to support Egyptian women, making sure that democracy and human rights are a reality for women as well as men, because if they're not, then it will not be progress; it will be turning the clock back. ANDREW MARR: It's a difficult line to draw because clearly this is an Egyptian process for Egyptians to manage, and yet I suppose not just this government but all around Europe money and support is going in and so there is a sort of right to be involved, I guess. HARRIET HARMAN: And I very much support the money that the UK government's putting in and Europe, but actually this is about support for Egyptian women. I mean the Alliance of Arab Women had a huge conference and have produced their manifesto. Their top demand is that it should be a secular state, that they should have reserved seats for women in parliament - which they had before and there's now a threat that there won't be any reserved seats for women in parliament. So I mean if you … ANDREW MARR: Are you concerned with the Muslim Brotherhood? I mean they're clearly doing very, very well indeed. HARRIET HARMAN: Well it's always been a controversial agenda. The advance of women in Egypt has been a controversial and a difficult agenda and a struggle, and we've got to make sure that people then don't actually turn the clock back. I mean if you think of the situation, Egyptian women have made advances, but something like 74% of girls between the ages of 8 and 12 have female genital mutilation … ANDREW MARR: (over) I read that statistic. I can't believe that. HARRIET HARMAN: … which is a massive figure. And you know when I was there … ANDREW MARR: Is that really true? HARRIET HARMAN: Yes, it is. That's the UN statistic. And when I was there, I arranged to meet up with this woman and we were going to go to a restaurant together. I was going to take her out for a meal. And when she heard the name of the restaurant I was suggesting, she said, "Oh have we got a man with us, or is it just us?" And I said, "No, it's just us." And she said, "We couldn't possibly go there. You know we would be harassed by men in the restaurant. We've got to go here." You know I met a woman who speaks brilliant English, German and Italian, and I said, you know "Have you been abroad? Where have you been?" and she said, "I haven't been anywhere because I'm not married yet, so I can't go without my husband." And we met a woman paediatrician who'd worked all her life on FGM, Female Genital Mutilation, and she couldn't come out to meet us because she didn't have a man to escort her, so we had to go to her flat. So when you think about it, women's rights have been pushed forward by Egyptian women, but we must make absolutely sure that we - what I call progressive conditionality - that we use our money to make sure we back those women up. ANDREW MARR: Going next door, as it were, are you worried about mission creep and Libya at the moment? Do you think we're moving to full-scale regime change, which is not where we started? HARRIET HARMAN: Well I mean the use of helicopters obviously is a major escalation and does raise issues of concern about greater risk to security for our troops, and obviously we have to make sure that we're not bearing a disproportionate responsibility in what is an important humanitarian mission and obviously that it doesn't take away from our mission in Afghanistan. So I mean obviously we're expecting to hear from William Hague, we hope, this week about events in North Africa and the Middle East, but you know we'll be trying to make absolutely sure that the humanitarian focus remains the priority and that's why I'm glad that Andrew Mitchell, the Secretary of State for International Development, was alongside William Hague in that visit. ANDREW MARR: Let me turn to a couple of domestic stories. Presumably with your women's rights hat on, you would applaud what the government's doing or is announcing tomorrow on the sexualisation of children - lots and lots of proposals to cut down the way advertising sexualises young children, young girls, and bring back a sort of tougher watershed on television, so that there aren't too many exploitative or sexual images before 9 o'clock? HARRIET HARMAN: Yeah and let's look at the detail of their plans when they come forward with it. But let's remember that actually they are not going ahead with the Equality Act provisions on making employers publish the pay gap between men and women; they are not pushing forward on our agenda on domestic violence and sexual offences against women. On a whole range of things … ANDREW MARR: (over) There are lots of things they're not doing. Just you know when Ed Miliband came on the show, he was saying you know we mustn't oppose for the sake of opposing … HARRIET HARMAN: Yeah, but what we … ANDREW MARR: … and it did seem to me that here was something that Labour would probably support and probably be voting with the government. HARRIET HARMAN: We probably will, but in terms of the character of the government, let's not get any sense that they are really pushing ahead with women's demands. They're not. This might well be a very important bit of progress, and for that to be welcomed, but let's not lose sight of the fact that they have got a blind spot on women. I mean I hope they will do the right thing by women in Egypt and back up the new UN Women's Agency and I hope they'll actually think again on failing to implement the Equality Act, which they didn't oppose when we took it through when we were in government, but now they're just not implementing it; they're letting it gather dust. ANDREW MARR: Labour as an organisation is clearly in deep trouble at the moment - particularly … well particularly over the funding. You have a huge, huge funding problem - virtually no personal donors of any kind at all and serious worries, presumably, that you are now almost all funded by the trade unions with their agenda. How do you start to kind of dig your way back to sort of financial solvency? HARRIET HARMAN: It's not true that we have a huge funding problem. It absolutely isn't and our outgoings you know are not more than what we've got coming in. I mean we've got … ANDREW MARR: 16 million deficit at the moment. HARRIET HARMAN: We've got 70,000 new … Yeah and you know we're making sure that we're paying it off bit by bit and it's a legacy from before the 2005 election. But we're paying it off bit by bit and we've enabled and enhanced our ability to do that by having 70,000 new members of the Labour Party since the General Election. So the Labour Party is very vibrant, very determined. And you can see from our results only last month in the council elections where we took 350 seats off the Tories and 450 off the Lib-Dems and those Labour councillors are doing important work in their local communities, protecting against the cuts … ANDREW MARR: Still … HARRIET HARMAN: … that the Labour Party is in very positive and determined mode. ANDREW MARR: And yet 90% more or less of the money at the moment is coming from the trade unions. If you are going to be a sort of broad based party that appeals to middle class voters in the South and all the rest of it, that is a worrying place to be. HARRIET HARMAN: That figure doesn't take into account the money that we get from our members. Yes of course we want more individual donors, but I think trade union members through their trade union, paying the affiliated levy, the political levy and paying to the Labour Party - I mean you know we're very proud with our links of people working in the workplace who are members of trade unions and we're very much on the front foot. ANDREW MARR: Alright. Harriet Harman, for now thank you very much indeed. INTERVIEW ENDS
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