PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED THE ANDREW MARR SHOW INTERVIEW: HARRIET HARMAN DEPUTY LABOUR LEADER OCTOBER 9th 2011 ANDREW MARR: When Ed Miliband became Labour Leader last year, he said it was time for a new generation to take over the party. And after Friday's reshuffle, that certainly seems to be coming true, with several MPs from the new intake going straight to the front bench. But with Tony Blair's name openly booed at the party conference recently, is Labour also moving clearly to the Left? Well its Deputy Leader Harriet Harman has been there through the Blair, Brown and now the Miliband era, and she's with me now. Good morning, Harriet Harman. HARRIET HARMAN: Good morning. ANDREW MARR: Before we turn to the Labour Party, I suppose I should ask you about the Liam Fox story. I find it quite difficult personally to work out just how serious this is. What's your view? HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think it's very serious indeed, very serious. I mean it's not just the questions of national security and access to highly sensitive information. It's also the question of the probity and procurement. I mean the Defence Department has masses, hundreds of millions of pounds worth of contracts and there has to be absolute probity round that. But there's now a further question about Dr Fox's integrity and the question of whether he actually answered truthfully and fully all the questions that have been put. So I don't think it's good enough for it to be just an investigation in his own department. If there's a question of breach of the ministerial code, that has to be looked at under the Prime Minister's leadership by the Cabinet Office, and I think we need a full statement on Monday. ANDREW MARR: And do you think you're going to get one? I mean it seems that David Cameron has hit the accelerator pedal in trying to get some answers. HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think these are important issues and those questions have got to be addressed. ANDREW MARR: And to be clear, if it turned out that he was not telling the truth about that meeting, that would be curtains, would it? HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think that under the ministerial code but I mean just people expect secretaries of state to tell the truth. That is the absolute bottom line. ANDREW MARR: Okay, well let's turn to Labour Party matters now. You've got a new look front bench and all of that, and on Wednesday there's going to be an opposition day debate on the economy. Now one thing that seemed to be clear from the Labour Party conference is that you have as it were a new policy when it comes to the economy; that you are going to divide bad capitalists from good capitalists, you know predators from wealth creators. What is unclear to everybody is how you're going to do this, who's going to do this, and how you're going to decide whether, you know, Andrew Marr plc. sitting in the West End of London is a good guy or a bad guy. HARRIET HARMAN: Well there's obviously a very big interface between the government, between public policy and private business. I mean obviously government doesn't run private business, but there is regulation, there is tax, which can alter behaviour. And what Ed Miliband is saying is that we shouldn't be agnostic as to those that are productive and really helping the economy and those that are doing bad behaviour, and I think that there has been a sense that oh well if there's greed in financial services, oh well it's just one of those things and there's nothing we can do about it; if the energy companies are ripping people off, well that's just what they do, there's nothing we can do about it. And he's saying - and I think he's absolutely right on this - if people work hard in their ordinary lives, they look to the future and how they bring up their children, that's their values and how they lead their lives. Actually public policy should ensure that business embodies those values. And we all know … ANDREW MARR: So do you … HARRIET HARMAN: … there is good behaviour and bad behaviour in business, and public policy should reinforce that, not be agnostic. ANDREW MARR: Just to be clear, there is a view that in government, under Tony Blair and indeed under Gordon Brown, basically Labour let industry, business get on with whatever it was up to and absorbed, took the money, the tax money from that and spent it on more money in health, more money in education - all the priorities of Labour politicians - but that actually you should all have spent much more time looking at the structure and the shape of the economy and trying to change that. Is that a criticism that's fair? HARRIET HARMAN: Well Ed Miliband said you know we revived and did the infrastructure, but we didn't necessarily do it in relation to the values as well. And I think that where companies like, where sectors like the financial services sector put others at risk or where a sector like the energy sector puts consumers under pressure, at that point that is a responsibility for public policy to step in on the side of business that needs credit, on the side of consumers that need a fair deal. ANDREW MARR: In a sense fine to say it now, but had you moved to really regulate and change the City during those long boom years, you wouldn't have had … HARRIET HARMAN: (over) Oh yes. ANDREW MARR: … that huge bonus of tax money that you were then able to spend on things that you wanted to spend money on. HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think that's fair, that's a fair criticism, and I mean we're taking it forward now … ANDREW MARR: Yeah. HARRIET HARMAN: … and saying that things should be done differently, and that there is no area where we should simply say it's hurting you, it's causing you a problem, but it's just one of those things; there's nothing we can do about it. ANDREW MARR: So who decides who's a predator and who's a good wealth creator? HARRIET HARMAN: I think what you do is you have a framework of regulation, and also the tax system contributes to ensuring that you have good behaviour and that you don't have bad behaviour. I mean if you look at what happened … ANDREW MARR: (over) So looking at an example: Philip Green, Top Shop - very much in the target of campaign groups like UK Uncut and so on because of the amount of tax he doesn't pay in this country, lives abroad. And yet you know - you've got young children and so on.- Top Shop is an enormously popular and successful shop, employs huge numbers of people. So you take someone like Philip Green. Quite hard to see whether you'd make him a predator, a bad guy, or a good guy. HARRIET HARMAN: Well I don't think it's about individuals. It's about making sure that we have highly productive companies which are not put at risk by the bad behaviour of the financial sector and that consumers get a fair deal. So it's about … It's not about you know every single individual in business being identified and labelled. It's about public policy taking its responsibility for ensuring that good behaviour is reinforced. ANDREW MARR: And is this part of a shift somewhat to the Left in the Labour Party? I mean one of Tony Blair's former speech writers writing in The Times said that Ed Miliband had decided to fight to the Left and lose on the Left. HARRIET HARMAN: Well I don't think that's true. And, incidentally, at our conference the week before last, it was a tiny, tiny section of the conference that did a kind of groan at the mention of Tony Blair's name, and I think they were wrong to do that and that was not the view of conference as a whole and people were very aggrieved by the way that that's been presented. I don't think it's particularly Left Wing to say that people shouldn't be ripped off on their energy bills. I think that that's right. And I think that the issue is less how is it labelled in terms of by political theorists, but whether or not it's what is important at the moment today for business and for fairness, and that's the arguments that he's putting forward. ANDREW MARR: In the reshuffle, you've taken over media responsibilities and culture responsibilities. Are you in favour of some kind of register of journalists, so that journalists who misbehave can be struck off? HARRIET HARMAN: No, I don't think that that's going to be a proposal we're coming forward with. I mean I've been always a very, very strong protagonist for a free press. I mean it's absolutely essential for the democracy, for our democracy, and we shouldn't over-regulate it. But we do have to have fairness, so we shouldn't have monopoly power in the press, and we have to have a fair complaint system for people who need redress. And I'm also going to be the strongest supporter of the BBC. I think that its role in terms of the creative industries, let alone the fact that it's a huge British institution … ANDREW MARR: (over) No, you've got to stop being … you've got to stop being nice to us on this programme. Let's … HARRIET HARMAN: Well I believe it's really important. ANDREW MARR: What about the Press Complaints Commission? Do you think that should be on a regulatory statute? HARRIET HARMAN: Oh I think it's completely failed and I think there needs to be proper redress. But you have to get the balance right to make sure that it doesn't … ANDREW MARR: (over) So should it be an independent sort of statutory body standing outside the press as it were without editors and so on sitting on it? HARRIET HARMAN: Well I think … I know that the press are arguing that it should be self-regulation still rather than have independent regulation, but I think that they've got quite a high burden to rebut; that actually people will be able to have confidence if they're essentially regulating themselves. But we're going to have a new framework post the sort of Murdoch debacle and the phone hacking debacle in the summer, which Ed Miliband played such a big leading role on. We're going to have a new framework now and I'm going to be listening to what people say about how we make sure that we get fairness, freedom in the press but proper redress as well. ANDREW MARR: Okay. Very, very briefly, the Harman principle or the Harman rule that Labour should always have either a female leader or a female deputy leader. Have you sort of won on that, or is that just still an aspiration that happens to be met at the moment? HARRIET HARMAN: Oh no, that is won now. That was voted on by our conference. It is an absolutely historic change and we expect to see women and men working together in all areas of life. We've now in the new shadow cabinet, we've got nearly half women. And you know women in the country will know that there are women in the Labour Party, in the official opposition, speaking up for their interests and concerns. ANDREW MARR: Harriet Harman, thank you very much indeed for joining us. INTERVIEW ENDS
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